TAO MAN

  

He stands

Within a forest scene

That bursts

With futile energy,

Which flourishes

And yet must die.

 

His triumph

Is a Poetry

Without a rhythm

Or a rhyme:

His body

Like a withered tree,

His mind

Like slaked lime.

 

I wander

Irresolutely,

Against the winds

Opposing me,

Yet wonder why

I cannot burn my seeds

And stand,

My branches breaking off,

While wind becomes

My winding sheet—

My sepulcher,

The earth and sky.

 

His Vision

Lacks the artistry

I strive to rein

With word-strung lines:

My vision fails,

While his remains

Within the depths

I cannot plumb,

Or mine:

His body

Like a withered tree,

His mind

Like slaked lime.

 

PAPER WORK

 

I looked at a tree.

It looked back at me!

I turned away,

Red-faced with shame:

For the woods looked

More real to me

On paper, and in memory,

Than in their green

Reality.

 

But wouldn’t I rather

Have joined in the laughter

The humorous breeze

Tickled out of a myriad

Fanciful leaves?

 

Alas! I would rather

Be back in my study,

Typing away—

The simulated

Wood-grain panels

Reflecting the myriad pages

Of my treatise

On Ecology!

 

FEBRUARY SECOND

 

 The ground hog that lives underneath our shed:

If he’d come out today, would he have seen

His shadow and slipped back to where he’d been

These past few months, snug in his home-made bed,

Digesting all the flora that has fed

His ravenous and constant foraging?

Or was the sun behind a cloud, passing

Just when he wriggled out his sleepy head?

Had we made time to see him, we would know;

But we were as preoccupied as he

When he was nibbling on our garden rows.

Our day was spent desiring shadows cast

Before us in the sunlight, while his sleep

Absorbed his appetite through winter’s fast.

 

 

          POLYPHEMUS

  

Throughout this fabled country of the free,

And dominating every living room,

There squats a Cyclops sentry guard to whom

All dwellers in each cavern must concede

A backward posture, so that his eyebeam

May cast upon the darkened wall shadows,

Which take the shapes of things they cannot know--

And this is how they realize their dreams.

 

But woe unto the man who sues for grace

In meditation, or who longs to hold

Communion with a living human face!

He winces, when upon the cave’s damp mold

They worship an electrical device,

And in that trance envision Paradise.

 

THE TWILIGHT LANGUAGE

 

Before the sun sets, the landscape grows dense

And darkens into ambiguity.

 

All objects take on a significance

At once familiar and hard to see.

 

What we dismissed as nothing new or strange—

Trees, stone, moss, fences, sky, stars, grass, river—

Speak to our hearts in the twilight language.

 

The boundaries of our bodies quiver,

And we dissolve like raindrops in the sea.

 

A lightning flash illuminates the gloom

Of all our furtive, momentary dreams.

 

The mudras of the pine boughs pierce the moon’s

Mandala and the mantra of the wind

Chants wordless tones that still the storm within.

 

JANUARY SEEMINGS

  

Today my brains

are like clouds

in a windswept sky.

 

Without concentration

they bounce about my skull

like a roomful of ping-pong balls.

 

Perhaps it was the blizzard,

and all those feet of snow

that walked round my house for hours--

 

stood on the roof, waiting,

till that old arctic wind

blew them off into a break-dancing

 

frenzy in mid-air: Fancy footwork,

disintegrating in wild

self-abandonment to the windswept sky--

 

scattered like brain-clouds

through January’s gray Mind

of trackless amplitudes.

 

FIFTIETH  ANNUAL

  

The dainty little goat

licks my hand as I stretch into her stall

to scratch behind her elegant ears:

 

I, who have been her father and mother,

sister and brother, lover and friend,

through all the twists and turns of Samsara.

 

She stands upon her hind legs.

I draw back my arm, pleased

at such rapport with the animal world.

 

From the corner of my eye a poster

warns the crowd at the County Fair:

“Wash your hands if you touch the livestock.”