A poem

Thanksgiving morning 2015 and when I woke up, I  picked up a book by Wendell Berry.  Opening the book to see what poem might speak to me, this is the one I saw, and yes, it spoke to me.

Questionnaire

By Wendell Berry

1.    How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free

market and global trade? Please

name your preferred poisons.

2.    For the sake of goodness, how much

evil are you willing to do?

Fill in the following blanks

with the names of your favorite

evils and acts of hatred.

3.    What sacrifices are you prepared

to make for culture and civilization?

Please list the monuments, shrines,

and works of art you would

most willingly destroy.

4.      In the name of patriotism and

the flag, how much of our beloved

land are you willing to desecrate?

List in the following spaces

the mountains, rivers, towns, farms

you could most readily do without.

5.      State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

the energy sources, the kinds of security,

for which you would kill a child.

Name, please, the children whom

you would be willing to kill.

At a volleyball game watching the sadness in the eyes of a player sitting on the bench, not being allowed to join the play, I take refuge….

The Buddha offered this wonderful image.  If you take a handful of salt and pour it into a small bowl of water, the water in the bowl will be too salty to drink.  But if you pour the same amount of salt into a large river, people will still be able to drink the river’s water. (Remember, this teaching was offered 2,600 years ago, when it was still possible to drink from rivers!)  Because of its immensity, the river has the capacity to receive and transform.  The river doesn’t suffer at all because of a handful of salt.  If your heart is small, one unjust word or act will make you suffer.  But if your heart is large, if you have understanding and compassion, that word or deed will not have the power to make you suffer.  You will be able to receive, embrace, and transform it in an instant.  What counts here is your capacity.  To transform your suffering, your heart has to be as big as the ocean.  Someone else might suffer.  But if a bodhisattva receives the same unkind words, she won’t suffer at all.  It depends on your way of receiving, embracing, and transforming.  If you keep your pain for too long, it is because you have not yet learned the practice of inclusiveness. 

The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Sitting in Cafe Ventana
Chinese poets
the state of the world
Your life is your religion
Who said that?
The Dalai Lama?
No, my mother

In a restaurant

I hear a mother going over grades

With her daughter

A high schooler

wearing a black fedora

trimmed with a multi-colored band above the rim,

Wire rimmed glasses perched on her nose

And a stuffed animal necklace around her neck.

One ear bud in her ear.

Questions about points and averages

She needs to get that A

She nods and only begins to speak

But the conversation is so fast

No one is listening

It changes

She turns and gets lost in her phone

Moving away from a conversation

She was never having.

At another table

A man tells his eight year old daughter

That she has to set up at the table

He is lost in his paper and

She is laying on the bench

Did he notice her because

She has kicked him

With her foot

She gets up and walks away

Then returns to grab his phone

Trying so hard to engage

A father who is so far away from her 

But right next to her.

Not together

But at a distance

Far apart

What a wonderful day

It would be

If they could laugh together. 

Dipa Ma taught that the mind is all stories, one after another like nesting dolls.  You open one, and another is inside.  Open that one, and there is another story emerging.  When you get to the last nesting doll, the smallest one, and open it, inside of it is – what? It’s empty, nothing there and all around you are the empty shells of the stories of your life. 

Because Dipa Ma was able literally to see through the stories of the mind, she did not acknowledge personal dramas of any kind.  She wanted her students to live from a deeper truth than their interpretations of, and identification with, the external events of their lives.  Dipa Ma knew all about life’s dramas.  She had personally suffered chronic illness; grief at the deaths of her parents, husband, and two children; and crushing despair.  Only when she had gone beyond identification with the stories and dramas in her life did she begin to live as a free person. 

From:  Dipa Ma The Life and Legacy of a Buddist Master by Amy Schmidt.  

It's raining.
I'm going 
out
to
dance.
I am already
wrinkled.
I can get
as
wet
as
I want!

For Lily

Before you left
I snuck a tiny book
into your purse,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
So you would
read
and know
that your life
is a
poem
too!

August 2014

When I Read

By Chris Wallach

Why it is that when I read a book

I feel like I have to become a

character in that book.

Like right now

I want to talk with a southern accent

and feign a capricious air

about all that is passing me by.

This beautiful spring day,

little leaves emerging on the

bud ends,

flower ovaries growing

into the beginnings of the fruit

they will become,

sweet to taste when they

become fully ripe.

Like this should be a metaphor

for my ripening.

Am I developing

into something that will be

sweet on the tongue,

words in someone’s mouth

about my possibilities

or my loveliness.

Perhaps,

when I am the main character

in the book I am writing.

That will be glorious