Recent Poetry, May 2024

Compassion

Our notion of love’s just a misconception,

Gaining, at last, from the “other” some affection.

We’re wrong. There is no “other” that’s not you.

Love’s just seeing that. Knowing that it’s true.

Reaction to:

A Hidden Wholeness:

The Zen Photography of Thomas Merton

A Show at Boston College

There was in this most wondrous show,

One photo that for me did glow:

A tree on a Kentucky hill. No reaching.

That tree, he knew, stood for the teaching.

That tree has all we need to know,

But so do Hong Kong, Kokomo,

And dogs and snakes and also croup,

And full rain gutters, lentil soup.

Though all’s contained within that tree,

It’s also every place we see,

And that’s the photo Merton took,

The tree contained it too. Just look.

Betty McDonald

(1907-1958)

When I talk of influences on my writing,

I have to speak of you.

You are the main influence.

People don’t know that writing humor,

Is the hardest kind of writing.

Nothing is ever forgiven, as it is,

With any other kind of writing.

But you knew it, and what’s more,

You passed it on.

Limerick on the Gospel of Thomas

“Cut some wood, and I am there,”

Said Jesus Christ. He didn’t care,

If folks would understand that stuff.

He knew they’d get it soon enough.

And if they didn’t, they’d be rare.

Time

It is only our convention,

Our make-believe and our invention .

All occurs at once without it,

And that is why we need to shout it.

When we see its nonexistence,

We always laugh at its persistence,

For we find this moment, dang,

Is  the same as that old Big Bang.

Diana Athill

(1917-2019)

I’m a bigger fan of your memoir than your fiction,

It’s like they recognized the  good writer in you,

And not knowing what else to do about it,

They asked you to tell stories,

As good writers usually do.

It didn’t work.

But I am one who knows that good writing

Is about having something to convey.

Not about doing silly exercises.

It’s been true for many ages,

Though few get it.

What you had to convey was in your nonfiction.

No one ever looked at their own behavior with

So little embarrassment.

I thank you.

Richard Long

(1945-  )

I chanced upon your work

At the Guggenheim Museum in the 1980s.

They gave you the lower part of the ramp

And the atrium.

By the time I got to the end of your show

I was crying. Not for any of the walks

Or piles of rocks, but for the photos

Of your land sculptures.

One could not be sure if these were

Naturally occurring or man-made,

And it only got subtler as one proceeded

Down the ramp. And that was the idea.

Two Truths

When you’ve had a major stroke,

It’s just the Buddha rising, bloke.

The stroke is nothing but that gent,

Showing you the stroke’s intent.

It’s universal. He will tell you.

But it also sucks. There’s that too.

Both are true, and not just one,

Both have to be. One’s not much fun.

Johann Sebastian Bach

(1685-1750)

If not for Mendelssohn we might

not have known you.

But you were an astonishing genius,

Who happened to compose music,

So fast and so beautifully, it took my breath away.

Now, because of modern,

Recording technology,

We can listen to The Goldberg Variations,

Or the Saint Matthew Passion,

As often as we want,

Even  multiple times in succession.

You couldn’t do that.

The secret we discovered with our recordings:

The B Minor Mass never gets old. You can

Listen to it a second, third, or fourteenth time.

It is always fresh.

I see you smirking through the centuries.

You always knew it.

We're All One

There is no you. There is no me.

We made that all up. Don’t you see?

Maybe it’s best to realize,

This, when a much-loved person dies.

The boundaries tend to go away

Then. Or just sit still, but every day.

Otherness

In Christianity they make a great big deal,

That God is always other, always real.

Buddhists say that God and I are one

God’s not real. You’re wrong. And that’s the fun!