Kolam

from

macramé

a mother can learn

to truss up husbands, sons,

all in inextricably complex knots

to keep them close bereft of closeness

but, from my own children

I can learn each day

the unknot

one

Genesis

What is first a fantastic story and speaks to children
What is abstruse and foreign
Vessel of every ancient breath

                This would have been enough

What is history and myth and hybrid

What stands at the cusp
Marks a transition,
an evolution and unfolding of self-consciousness

                This would have been enough

What is contradiction

What is interstice
What is fragment, incomplete
and source of all man’s theology

                This would have been enough


What is inexhaustible
of exegesis and every hermeneutic
Deconstructed to brittle letter
dismissed and fed to burning stacks
and found again and held up–oh my Torah

                This would have been enough

But when I read:

“Never again will I curse the earth because of man”

                This is enough.

I have done nothing

but stress through Saturday
watch TV and wrestle with the next
Nothing I can bill for
or weigh, stand back from
and declare–hey
I did that!

But let me in this last hour

give the weekend its flower still

I did awake, in amidst darkness, with an answer
to that sore, sedulous question:
“It is not to seek so much a place to be
as to be a place instead”

And even the apostate in his caducity can say: “…each one of us is unique, of inestimable value…”

Old Poems: Rain

The rain begins again—whispering
to the window pane
The television’s blizzard snaps to a single brilliant point out

A dim green from the street enters the room

melting away the tight tethers around a deep breath
He feels himself unfold, stretch out
taking in the dark objects of the room

Memories come in on the tide

Her face is bright as the sky above them
She stops and, drawing with her free hand
a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth,
she smiles at him
Walking on, side by side around the cold lake

Outside a dog’s incessant barking

ricochets down the street and stops
Step by weary step
his neighbour’s rough soles go up the twist of stairs
and to the door
A child begins to cry, needling through thick walls

He thinks—I could have another cigarette now

Folding back the turned down corner,
he flattens the crease with his finger nail
and begins the chapter again

He reads until twelve, closes the book

and switches off the lights
In the dark he undresses slowly and gets into bed

The strange place of my story

Later still
I think up strange stories
Which grow in the ingles of the night
Shy of the raucous sun
and all but one face

A mosquito in my thoughts
Drawing me out of my slumber
With minute intention
And nowhere to land

Between the palms of my hands
Is an inner world
Whose creatures go about their commerce
I am a tourist amongst them

The Free Self

If you want to be free,
get to know your real self
It has no form, no appearance, no root, no abode
but is lively and buoyant
It responds with versatile facility, but
its function cannot be located

Therefore when you look for it
you become further from it,
when you seek it
you turn away from it all the more

ZEN MASTER LINJI from Zen Essence