But what about tomorrow?

This has been a good day.
The warm sun did not make it good.
The blue sky did not make it good.
The joy of family and friends did not make it good.
Not my strong body.
Not my settled mind.
Not the absence of difficulty.
Not this warm bath.
May I never know the source.
Today was a good day.


Easter Saturday 2011.  Just flowing through my day.  Things did not go as expected.  Maybe because what expectations there were, were fluid.

Memory

Smoke twists and rises like a cat stretching when the sunpatch has passed it by.
It fills my head and wraps around deep memories.
A mountain hall filled with inward light.
August heat draws sweat.
Humid air dampens the smoke.
I am carried there on the rising cloud.
The Zen Mountain is carried away in a box.

Although I just got back from Zen Mountain Monastery, I wrote this poem back in the early spring.  Since I first visited ZMM 14 years ago, I have used their zendo incense in my mediation hall ever since.  The smell of the place was one of the stronger impressions I had of the place.

Stop!

The loom is unattended.
The thread rests upon the shelf.
Just thread.
No dust can settle here.


Sitting by my window on a Sunday afternoon, drinking tea.  If I stopped trying to propel the universe forward, what would that look like?  More and more things seem like zazen.

Spark

Struggling to make it fit,
there is much resistance.


Exhausted it cannot proceed a single step.


Relax the tension.  It rests like a heavy coat; moving with me, but weighing me down.


Stopping, sitting without direction an opening appears.  It surrounds me.

In my art practice I have been working on creating without intention.  Sometimes I find that in the creative process, the intent to make a specific thing fells like tight clothing.  There is movement, but it is restricted.  Zazen keeps coming up.  Everything can explode out of the stillness, even great activity.  Too much intention can limit the freedom of creativity.

Scrunchie

Sunday morning is pretty quiet in the Gas Light District,
but she moves with purpose, she is going somewhere.
More accurately, she is going away from some place.
Where college girls might make the walk of shame, she just walks.
Shame is either non-existent or buried beneath a leathery countenance, 
developed by necessity and the futility of circumstance.

Her speed should be impossible.
Thin legs prop up an equally thin body, churning forward, 
lugging chunky black heels that make up half of her body weight.

Without breaking stride, she reaches blindly into her purse and retrieves a single condom.
Step! the wrapper is stripped away.
Step! a flick of the wrist snaps the pale tube to its full length.
Step! she holds the ring at the base firmly in her teeth.
Step! the length of the sheath is torn and away and discarded to the side walk.

With a precision born of pure muscle memory, 
she gathers her thin brown hair into a pony tail, securing with this improvised scrunchie.  MacGyver never misses a beat.

In these short seconds she has refined herself.
In some small way she is put back together from whatever may have pulled her apart the night before.

Composed and oblivious to onlookers and gawkers, she marches on into the dawn.

A number of years ago I went on an Aikido trip to Vancouver.  One morning, as we drove through the generally empty Gas Light District, we passed a woman of the night.  As my eyes were caught by her awkward appearance she began this dance.  It was over in seconds.  As strange as it was, she executed the steps with an air of  normalcy that made the incident more striking.  It was a reminder of the stark contrast between the details of each of our lives.  Often, we miss these details.  Tending to associate with those like ourselves, we rarely meet and exchange with people with such drastically different circumstances.  In that moment she shared with me something that was simulatneously tragically comic and deeply profound.  She pointed back to our own lives the insular tendencies we all have.

The Walk Down From The Cabin

Leaving home, I step into the darkness.  
Though I cannot see my destination,
gravity pulls me forward, faster and faster.


The ground is uneven and loose.  
From the shadows, roots reach across the path, 
ready to trip me.


In time, the rough ground gives way to flat stones,
laid by those who have walked this path before me.  
Even still, the stones rock and teeter.


To one side, the canopy is pulled back, 
and light illuminates the Way of Reality.
To the right are light and grassy open fields.
To the left, darkness, tangled vines and nature's decay.
The path splits the two, yet there is no division.
Just the Great Way.

In July I spent the month at Zen Mountain Monastery.  Although I did not intend poetry as my art practice, some emerged.  My accommodations were up a but from the main building and each day I began the walk down in just the slightest hint of dawn's light.  In the evening, I made the trip back up in the dark.  abandoned cabins, woods, clouds and clear skies played off of each other creating variable fields of black, soft light and a mysterious shifting shadows.

Seeds

In Amherstburg?   Srsly?   Yup.  AND, it was awesome.

A small art gallery called the Mudpuppy in my town celebrated its 1 year anniversary by organizing its second open mic poetry night today.  The group as a whole, has as its goal, the promotion of art and creativity in the community.

As the Amherstburg I knew as child continues to morph into the Amherstburg I live in today, I am always amazed and inspired by the efforts of the people of the town to express what it means to live in this little stretch of riverfront civilization.

Fancy restaurants, little pubs, "Snack Attack" (may it rest in peace).  I love that they come into being, regardless of how long they exist or their commercial success.  But the mudpuppy and this poetry night filled in a little part of the whole in my being that was left by the disappearance of Boblo, Bruins Bakery, the bowling alley and the movie theater.  Tonight I found something I was ready for, and apparently, so were many others.

Published poets, both local and formerly local (Penny-Ann Beaudoin, Dani Couture and Robert Earl Stewart) shared the mic with unpublished locals like myself and my cousin Lorraine. (to name those who's names I can remember.  There were more, and they were great)

Julie read a poem I wrote for the occasion called "Seeds".  I accompanied her on the shakuhachi.

It was a wonderful night, and it illuminated the soul of this town and its people.  Thank you to all who made this such a wonderful event.

--------------

Seeds


Spring air, freshly warm.  It still has that new car smell.


So young, this season stumbles in awkwardly, table to sofa, like a wobbly infant.


Even now, in the midst of birth and potential.....    Summer is dying.


Leaves of gold, brown and red spy on children in the park, concealed behind a mask of chlorophyll.


THESE are the cool winds of Autumn,  Incognito.  Distorted.  Played backwards like a Pink Floyd album.


And yet...   the odor of cut grass overwhelms.


Distracted by the smells brought forth by propane flames, I head out in bare feet,


Willfully ignorant of the end that awaits.