IN THE CITY OF SHIPS

  

Washing my dishes,

I can see through the window

The Great Crane that points

Diagonally to the moon

From the south side of town.

 

Colossus of iron,

He towers like the heron

In the marsh below—

Practicing right mindfulness

For the moment of action.

 

Destroyers await

Their unholy christenings,

And the sailors freeze

In rapt attention,

No option but to obey,

 

Forfeiting their freedom

For God and for Country,

Sworn to defend the Bill of Rights:

The supreme self-sacrifice

For the sake of corporate gain.

 

The heron’s bill stabs

An eel in the rustling reeds;

Spontaneous nature guides

His flight across the river

To a nest in a gnarled pine.

 

Battleships of black cloud

Threaten preemptive strikes

Against the American Empire.

The heron broods on its egg.

I wring out my wet dishcloth.

 

 

Bath, Maine

 

     BUSYBODY

 

The snow is falling like nobody’s business—

So why am I writing about it?

 

It pirouettes beyond control,

Insistently whispering against my window pane:

 

Why don’t you just leave well enough alone?

Why can’t you just let snow be snow?

 

THE CAT’S MEOW

 

The whistle of the wind

Between the carpet and the doorsill.

 

A trembling branch of yew,

Ripe with undripped rain.

 

The bark of a dog, in a fog that is dark

With smoke from a neighbor’s chimney.

 

Outside, you stared at the door;

When I let you in, you growled.

 

The wind is high enough to caper

Through the leafless treetops,

 

And low enough for you to crouch

And sniff it under the door.

YOUR BOOK OF WONDER

  

Reindeer Lichen, Bunchberry Dogwood;

Fog blurs the Hemlock canopy.

Three trails converge Nowhere,

When the Wheel of Attachment ceases.

 

What Granite boulder of Dhamma

Posed for the photograph on the cover

Of your paperback Buddhist essays,

O Bhikkhu Nyanasobhana?

 

The seasons circle through the senses

Without beginning, without end;

My campfires smolder to ashes,

While the Arhats’ footsteps leave no trace.

 

Solomon’s Seal, Gall of The Earth;

Snares of the Bowl-and-Doily spider

Woven in Red Spruce saplings;

Silver mists on Pemetic Mountains...

 

 

AT WILKERSON FIELD

  

Kid’s softball is over now;

The summer twilight gathers

About us like a cloud.

 

The winners and the losers

Slap each others’ hands in line:

“Good game, good game,” they murmur.

 

The minister calls out “Wait!”

He gestures for both teams to form

A circle round the home plate.

 

I’m not close enough to hear

More than his opening words:

“Lord, we know that you don’t care

 

“Anything about softball—

But you do care about us...”

The rest is the crickets’ call.

 

Little Casey aims his bat

At a foam-rubber softball:

Swing and miss! He runs with that,

 

Not minding which base is which—

Then he wields his bat and waits,

While twilight throws the last pitch.