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!

 

THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN

  

I dug a recess in the Earth,

Just big enough to bury there

A bucketful of stony dirt,

And poured in it some fusty beer.

 

I planted phlox and zinnia,

Some goldenrod and lavender;

Hibiscus, pink azalea,

Lilac and purple coneflower.

 

The butterflies came winging it,

And gathered in a puddle club

Upon the beer-soaked bucket’s brim,

Fluttering to sip the flood.

 

My garden was a sunny spot,

Where I could watch from house or yard

Without disturbing my mascots,

Whose vision of me was so blurred

 

Due to their nearsightedness,

That I appeared to them to be

Amorphous as the cumulus

That soared above so weightlessly.

 

These connoisseurs of flowers danced

Like fairies when I closed my eyes.

The Sun was focused in his trance

Upon my host of butterflies,

 

Of which the Monarch, poison-jawed

From sucking at the milkweed’s mead,

Curled up his tiny, tubelike straw

And dared the crows on him to feed!

 

A Butterfly was I that day,

And dreamed that I became Chuang Tzu--

And kept my predators away

By waving my Owl-Eye tattoos.

 

LAO TSU RETURNS FROM THE FRONTIER GATE

                         FOR AN ENCORE

 

The perfect stranger is like water.

pure as the void despite any pollution.

Flowing to accommodate all circumstances,

he becomes your state of mind.

 

Divert him and he will only surround you.

Flee from him and he is your looking glass.

Go through him and the world is turned inside out

to reveal its true nature.

 

He dances and sings

silently without moving,

and participates in all things

as those things themselves.

 

Why is he standing here without speaking?

Why do his acts reveal the Way?

Why do his thoughts reverberate

in the hearts of all beings,

and their thoughts reverberate in his own?

 

Why are his thoughts so nebulous,

like clouds illuminated with uncreated light?

 

He is the perfect stranger,

and is symbolized by water.

The point of no return is good enough for him,

for he has vowed the vow that is no vow

and minded the mind that is no mind.

 

He is the perfect stranger.

His camouflage is what you wear.

 

FALSE FREEDOM’S CHIME

  

The convict pines away within his cell

For scenes that lie beyond its iron bars.

The highway by his prison stretches far,

Into a land of plenty where men dwell

Whose Liberty hangs cracked like some great bell

Before which jaded tourists shuffle by

With longing gaze, like his, from deep inside

Their independence, pent within themselves.

 

How long before his jailor must he kneel?

Though pardon or parole may yet be gained,

No Bill of Rights can halt the fateful wheel

Of Justice that evolves in each man’s brain

The kind of prison that best suits his crime—

Wherein he thrills to hear false freedom’s chime!

 

MORNING AT CASTLERIGG

  

Trudging an hour uphill with backpacks, soon

We rose toward the rising Sun. The dew

Still gleamed upon the fields well before noon.

At last we reached the shrine we sought to view.

 

Blencathra, Skiddaw, Lonscale Fell, all turned

In prayer to face the sky. The cows and sheep

Grazed calmly on the withered mountain fern,

Outside the Circle, in the stone walls’ keep.

 

“What is it you have come to see?” they asked,

Just glancing toward us when we glanced at them,

Then turned again to munching leaves of grass.

We were but reeds that trembled in the wind.

 

All History upon us had devolved.

Five thousand years passed—who could tell us how?

When Moses smashed the Tables of the Law,

Those rocks had grown as old as Christ is now.

 

Did Druids worship living Stars by name,

Or Stone Age men here bargain for an axe?

The Dead surrounded us; but whence they came,

What Spirit world unknown, we knew no fact.

 

The soul of Saint John’s Vale became our own,

Through which all creatures dwelt in us to be.

We sat together on one timeless stone

And smiled before the camera. Suddenly,

 

A military jet roared through the clouds,

Maneuvering toward Keswick, where it shied

And vanished in the future, roaring loud.

Old England’s glory flashed before our eyes.