with thanks to Glassman sensei,
who assigned this practice
I
the forest floor is white
the sparrow touches
down, finds the bread crust in the snow
bamboo leaves fall only in May and June
his heart beats like a ferryboat
between two islands, endless
dream of docking
why do you apply mathematics
to your pain
as if the turtle in a warm haze of spring
evades its shell
the two fat inmates on the bridge
are hoping for rain
the self-confident guards
try to tell the weather apart
one and one and one and one
although the understory of the wood is white
you apply three, nine, thirty-three
to your pain
do you think they are one and one or perhaps one
like the observant healers
who try to tell the healing apart
his heart beats between
an endless dream of docking
and the idea of number
does the turtle choose between itself?
no islands - or is it
no continents? in and out
as if an eye
breathed
to be clear about this, with
with no place to be clear from. . .
might as well call yesterday's lentil soup
tomorrow what's left is
one is left. no words. no book.
having arrived at this no-place
you see how the adjectiveless world
in its practice
can't see itself
as its attributes. such
nonesuch. o bright crust
of snow unseperable
magic show.
II
not who you are
but how you act, is that
the law of form? is it,
that is, how you act means
who you are, a means test -
so there's no present
outside the circle of your flighty
cockrush, glinty sand all scattering and the traces
of where to start
domineer or lie fallow; when you choose
you fall adream
in the sleep of out-there,
caparisoned
happiness, how pleased, you,
to have to deal with the harassment
of such zests and gauds
you want acute access
of forgetfulness, so many pieces
of world, high decorative exile.
III
ah here, earth; now, soil
of minute uncountable pearls.
not the wind. not the copper bells but the mind
rings. you feel betrayed
by a straight line, rush
cocklike to undo its appearance
whose origins you've lost.
all right, toilsome spinner, let's say
you need your melody or say
you become it, uncaring and free, inside a fine
round dawn,
why these crampons, these iron
shoe-plates, anti-glide
to be clear about this, with
with those paradigmatic voicemaps
you nightmare, full of twos, eat,
kill them, crush them, so much
laborious autism - or anger of damp
energy
in the flaked light
as you walk alone
thinking of your son alone in his bed
his true origins the same cause
as yours in the tracing
of no emergency but a conditioned
wish to discover and leave
and leave alone...
you ask
is anyone too damaged?
you recklessly tie yourself
to the idea of a sanctuary-city, not
to learn but to hide as if places to hide
existed there, as if
the bright flakes differed from darkness
or could so any way differ
IV
unhappiness, islands, continents
such thorns as we are, until...
branching-
and so, still, the bright thorns, the dark leaves