From the Ditch
Sunday Poems 2025 9 14
It was my intention to take August off from publishing and instead concentrate on steadying and deepening my zazen practice as well as developing some of our programs at work. All that has been fine, if slower than expected, and the garden (which is an aspect of my Zen practice) has been a good teacher.
This era we have lurched into is disastrous. I feel it in work, my sleep, at home. And as religious practice is really about the world, I feel it there, too.
A few weeks ago I began to occur to me that I would like writing poetry to be a clear expression of my Buddhist life, for it to be central like meditation and caring for others is. And since then, I have no feeling of poetry whatsoever! If you came over yesterday you would have found me puttering around in the garden wondering why the tomato yield was so wanting. But there were a few poems that appeared. I didn’t work them too much. They seem uncertain and heavy footed, which is how I feel about the general state of things. So i will offer them here.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.” - H.L. Menken Salvages dry season bake pan to left, pan to right, and slide into the oven. "a recipe for disaster" cooked up by oligarchs and served to the people. and the ingredients are us. The fires are jumping to the next forest. she was damp and fertile, independent, a host of life, now dry and angry, dead before the fire touches. ok, putting aside the darkness and the crazy light: for a moment what is the Zen thing to do? Retreat, if you can afford it, and have somewhere to go. if your retreat is cut off (by poverty, or commitments to justice) (or love, or lack of imagination) (or wanting to keep your home on the hillside) if your retreat is cut off, you are invited to stay. Aren't you fortunate to stay in danger? Chosen to bear the flame? Be present to oppression, to the oxygen being suck into the sky above you. Imagine! You survived to speak of it! The stories, the tours, the talks, the books, the podcasts, the enthusiasm the infusing of the reward into your fleshy self. Oh, chosen you. oh, oh, chosen you. The wasteland you left behind. 2. poor jesus crucified again & again they idolize his death ignoring his life his last breath was abandoned like the strife of his land stamped by crisis upon crisis does a man at dawn on the cross to face another day of dying wrong feel loss? or does he still look at the women at his feet and long?