Recent Poetry, September 2025

Enlightenment

If we could see things as they be,

God and Satan, beans, that tree,

Are all just me and In my ken.

There is no separateness then.

Hateful actions make no sense,

When no one’s there to take offense.

History of the World

Some say the world’s whole history

Is no great secret, no big mystery,

It’s just a great evil, understood,

Battling a same-sized force of good.

That simple understanding’s not quite right,

Grossman concurs with all his righteous might

The story of we humans, after all,

Is big evil battling goodness, small.

Big evil is our natural state. It’s well.

Goodness makes no sense this side of hell.

Small goodness should have died before our eyes,

But seems eternal. That is  the surprise.

The secret’s this: goodness is worthwhile,

It never goes to waste. It makes you smile.

Simone Adolphine Weil (1909-1943)

You never wrote a book, your own,

If you had then you’d be known.

You were a Marxist through and through,

But you had a secret too:

It was this: you loved your God

The Catholic version, not too odd,

To you. You never “joined” it e’n a little bit,

Or they’d say, “anathema,” baby, “sit.”

Salvation

St. Paul said,

By way of explanation,

There is no Jew nor Greek

No male or female

No slave or free.

He was only getting us started,

In the perception of the nondual

Reality known as salvation.

He didn’t know

About the Chinese,

Back then. But he’d have

Included them too, if he had.

It’s like Zen Master Seung Sahn

Used to piss folks off,

When he said women could not

Be enlightened.

It was just that having

The “male” and “female” dichotomy

Was something we created ourselves.

And it was necessary to get past that.

When empathy became a sin,

“Holy” just did not fit in.

Christianity’s compassion,

Fit not the state in any fashion.

Impermanence

Everything (it’s true) does change,

It isn’t even all that strange,

We do our best to try t’ignore it,

When rather we should just adore it.

To vibe true, all must be eternal,

Not permanent? The thing’s infernal.

Impermanence thus brings us grief,

When it should rather spark relief.

The Flower

When you’re

Enlightened

You’re far less prone to

Picking a flower.

You’re more likely to just

Cradle in in your hand

A bit, once you get that there is

No significant difference between you and

The flower. That, in fact, makes it

Even more beautiful.

Or you might still pick it.

It doesn’t really matter.

Then, that moment will probably go away.

Take out the “probably.”

But the reality of the flower and you,

Will always be there despite

Your perception’s going away.

The trick is not in perceiving the flower

Perfectly. But in not preferring the real

Beauty of the flower to the pain that

Will inevitably arise too.

The secret: the flower can save the world

(So can religion, Cleveland, soup)

Only when the preference is seen through.

Until then, it is only a flower.

Identities

On my solo walk today,

Four teenaged boys came ‘cross my way.

They saw me handicapped, alone.

It’s then their hearts were turned to stone.

And they said harsh and dreadful stuff.

To me. I offered no rebuff.

They were trying on entire

Identities, which would expire,

As soon as they no longer fit

Or sense could not be made of it.

I saw identities for them galore.

Many different ones in store.

Perhaps they’d be completely sports,

Or fathers, or Bermuda shorts,

Or cars (they’d be that special kind),

Or girls, or wine, or life of mind.

Or maybe they’d become compassion,

Though that is never much in fashion.

Peggy O’Neal (1957-2025)

Though we didn’t

Look much alike

(Unless you knew where to look),

We were like two wings

Of the same bird.

Seekers made so by the pain,

Of the upbringing we both had.

You were always on the edge,

Trying something completely unheard of.

I was always more traditional.

But neither of us could ignore the other,

Thus we kept each other honest.

You were named for the song, “Peggy O’Neal.”

The original Peggy was the wife of John Eaton,

A member of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet.

The wives of the other cabinet members,

Thought Peggy to be too low-class 

To invite to their fancy teas.

(That Peggy was Irish, and had worked as a barmaid.)

A scandal ensued. And the song.

More than a century and a half later,

The wives of the other cabinet members are all forgotten.

But Peggy is not.