TWO YESTERDAYS

 

My grandma’s Mason jars are now antique,

In which she canned the produce of her farm--

The peaches, beets, tomatoes; but their charm

As toys for idle children in the weeks

Of school-less summer, that fine meek

And Christian woman could not soon suspect:

No Great Depression weighed upon our necks,

Like yokes of oxen dragging plows that creak.

Instead our days were ignorant of care;

Our evenings passed like fireflies in flight,

Which we would trap inside the sturdy jars

With grass and twigs, the lid just cracked for air;

And gaze upon their struggles in the night--

Their abdomens of mystic, yellow light.

LONESOME OLD GRAVEYARD

 

These stones are here to make a wall

Between the Present and the Past;

They soothe us, like the moss that grows

Upon our speechless Epitaphs.

 

As soon as we are born we roam

This cemetery’s fateful yard,

Stoop-shouldered with our memories--

To lay them down is too too hard.

 

It’s such a park-like setting, though;

Unlike the grounds of  Buddha’s day.

What’s out of sight is out of mind--

Or so it seems to us to say.

 

Think back to ancient India,

And lay your Ego’s burden down

Where, swollen, blue, and festering,

The corpses are strewn all around.

 

Oh who could bear to see them laid,

In olden times, where hawks and crows,

Black vultures, jackals, dogs and worms

Licked meat from off their crazy bones?

 

Whose weeping eyes today have chance

To scrutinize those skeletons

Whose flesh and blood’s last remnants hang

In ragged shreds by loose tendons?

 

The undertaker primps and preens

Our loved ones like our children’s dolls:
The fear that drives this modern age

Promotes his business aims withal.

 

Compassionless, we turn our heads

From all in whom ourselves we see--

In spite of all our former lives,

Denying what we all must be.

 

For gamblers play against the odds,

And bet their bodies on the deal

With bones gone loose as tumbling dice

Cast thoughtlessly upon the Wheel.

 

The bones of hand and foot and thigh,

Of skin and pelvis, spine and shin,

Will contemplate no funerals

While lying in the rain and wind.

 

What chance have you to recognize

Your Image in that charnel field,

Stripped down to bones that rot and drift

Like dust upon the Ancient Mirror?

 

We modern folks have no such thoughts

While roaming in this world’s graveyard,

Stoop-shouldered with our memories--

To lay them down is too too hard.

 

It’s such a park like setting, though;

Unlike the grounds of yesterday.

What’s out of sight is out of mind--

Or so it seems to us to say.

 

These stones are here to make a wall

Between the Present and the Past:

They soothe us, like the moss that grows

Upon our speechless Epitaphs.

 

 

 

          ALTER EGO

  

The man I was looms over me,

Like a father teaching his son to read.

     Like a shadow cast

     From the fateful past,

He haunts me with his deeds.

He wants me to carry on his seed.

 

This man is more than history--

His inmost core a mystery

     That he disowns.

     I reap what he has sown.

My passion flows from him;

And where he ends, I must begin.

 

But when his folly shall no more

Delude me, and the Other Shore

      At last I’ve reached,--

      And from that beach

The undulating waves

His errant footprints have erased,--

 

That man will be a Parable

Of human destiny, as well:

      A lesson learned,

      Not to be spurned

By those who seek to free

Mankind from self-made misery.

 

NOT AS FOOLS WALK

  

My God, whose fault was it:

   The child’s who ran in front of me

(My automobile his last thought),

   Or mine, that I failed to see?

 

Oh, it was more my fault,

    Though he didn’t look both ways:

I sat behind the Juggernaut’s

   Grim wheel, in the parade

 

The tramples on our Paradise—

   For in its path are cast

The ignorant and helpless,

   Who writhe on broken glass.

 

The weak are crushed and maimed—

   The aged and infirm,

The homeless and insane,

   The gasoline-soaked worms.

 

Struck blind by our headlights,

   Bewildered deer are slain

While paralyzed with fright.

   The sun and moon seem stained.

 

Not only mine this guilt,

   Though I must voice its plea.

I hope one day to build

   The courage to release

 

My fingers from the wheel,

   And find somewhere to park

This sterile husk of steel,

   And circumspectly walk—

 

Not as a heedless fool,

   But as a man with eyes,

Who lives by Mercy’s rule

   And not the law of Sacrifice.

 

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS

  

Hear my advice, O seekers of truth:

Never forsake the surface of things.

Even Dante’s Celestial Rose was a seeming:

Nothing that you can experience

Reveals more than a wall.

 

Just mind your own business—

Stop worrying about other things.

When mind does not give birth to mind,

There is nothing left to torment you.

 

Bodhidharma sat in a cave,

And for nine years contemplated a wall.

He was minding his own business.

He was serving all beings

By showing them how to look at mind.

 

For him the wall was no obstacle,

As it is for you and for me:

For we wail and gnash our teeth at walls,

So anxious to get behind them.

But whatever you think of the Patriarch,

The man knew how to look at a wall.

 

There are surfaces everywhere you go,

But they are all of your own mind.

To contemplate them is to abide

In the absolutely present moment,

Never disdaining appearances.

 

And should this gazing interfere

With how you think life ought to be—

Should this wall stand between you

And the object of your hopes and dreams—

Just take these parables to heart:

 

You can shout all day at the lowering clouds,

But the spring rain is not forced thereby.

You can point all day at mysterious moons,

But it only serves to stiffen your finger.

 

You should mind your own business,

And walk the path before you—

To arrive at your destination

By seeing no more than meets the eye.

 

       PRETTY MARSH

  

Few visitors there are to this dim place,

Where sixty years ago a park was built

Beneath a canopy of evergreens

By the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Here, even on the hottest summer day,

The temperature may stay at ten degrees

Below the rest of all Mount Desert Isle.

We stagger to the bottom of a steep

And wooded hillside to the picnic site,

Which covered for protection from the rain,

Extends a stairway to the shore below—

A beach of rocks and driftwood, empty shells;

No sand to cushion soles of shoeless feet.

The surf is rarely rough here, for the span

Of Bartlett Island shields us from the storms;

Although the cold sea water creates fog

And mystery within the harbor’s fold.

The beauty of the landscape there below,

Or here above, seen from a picnic bench,

Consists of what the mind elaborates

In harmony with its intrinsic laws

And the Ideas that from Nature’s flux unfold

As mountain, tree and shrub, and sun that fades

Beyond the island in the glowing clouds—

Unfold out of our inner being here,

Surrounding us with what we call the world.

 

          CICADA

  

My shell was getting tight,

And hardly could I breathe.

I strained with all my might,

And scaled a poplar tree

To reach a certain height.

 

No farther could I climb.

The past was growing dim.

To leave it all behind

Was all my longing grim.

Arthritis seized my spine.

 

I waited and I watched;

A Quaker paralyzed,

Enduring all to reach

Beyond what I despised:

My liberty to hatch.

 

And all that I could think

Was bounded in the shell

That held me on the brink,

While still my spirit swelled!

I sought the missing link,

 

And found it suddenly:

The world that I had known

Evolved from out of me,

As the same shield of bone

That rendered me unfree.

 

And what was yet to come

Would mirror me likewise.

When all that I had done

Cracked open, I did rise

To see my armor hung

 

Like a museum piece,

To scholars hearts so dear:

Who study every crease

While on their deafened ears

My droning mantra beats!