Poems that I love

I Checked All the Boxes

2026-06-28T17:28:19.290-07:00

6/28/2026
56th San Francisco Pride
Ken Ireland

I love a parade.
I love a marching band.
I particularly love the village bandstand with friends singing and dancing.
I love inviting people who are hungry for love and affection into the circle.
I love seeing people being exuberant. Anyone, Everyone.
I love the chance to sing off-key without critics circling.
I love being supported and loved for who I am
Without pretending to be someone who ain’t me.

I love a chance to feel free enough to express a few things hidden that need to be said.
I don’t mind if a few friends get a bit out there and sloppy.
The ring of tolerance has expanded a bit. I still feel safe.
I know I can trust you.
I know that there will be more than a few apologies tomorrow.
I’ve been there.
I am open enough to let a few things slide.
No grudges. No recriminations.

I checked all the boxes, but something still feels off.
Last year, I had trouble paying the bill.
This year, to help and even expand a bit,
I said yes when you asked to sell some stuff and put up a sign.
We can all use a little help from time to time.
You promised no strings
I took you at your word.
Nothing was said.
Nothing's been unsaid.

But then I noticed that there were more signs
Taking up more space
And you asked that lizie with the blue hair send her friend
And not hang out so close to the cash register.
And then the disc jockey spins your songs
Even the ones that were not jingles
And then you asked that my friends keep their homemade brews at home.

Today, the diameter of my circle feels smaller
Like a ring around my feelings.
They don’t measure with any accuracy
I tell myself.
And tomorrow will change again.
The blues may be more blue
And closer to my heart.

Originally

2026-06-28T17:01:40.628-07:00

Carol Ann Duffy

We came from our own country in a red room
which fell through the fields, our mother singing
our father’s name to the turn of the wheels.
My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home,
Home, as the miles rushed back to the city,
the street, the house, the vacant rooms
where we didn’t live any more. I stared
at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw.

All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow,
leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue
where no one you know stays. Others are sudden.
Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar,
leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boys
eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand.
My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth
in my head. I want our own country, I said.

But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change,
and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only
a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue
shedding its skin like a snake, my voice
in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think
I lost a river, culture, speech, sense of first space
and the right place? Now, Where do you come from?
strangers ask. Originally? And I hesitate.

Carol Ann Duffy

From New Selected Poems 1984-2004 (Picador, 2004). Originally published in The Other Country (Anvil, 1990).
Reproduced by kind permission of the author.

On Being Mauled by a Bear

2026-06-18T21:27:42.445-07:00

Last winter

The bears came down

Below the snow line.

They were hungry.

Word got out that they were four,

A she-bear with cubs.

What went through these women’s minds

when the bear lunged at their face.

They also had a right to go about their business.

I wonder.

Astonished.

I ask myself if I would be brave.

One who lived is a friend of my cook’s wife.

She was up at the well early

To pump water for the day.

She claimed to have put up a fight.

The village was proud.

The strong survival reflex of these mountains.

The Tibetan woman on the kora was not so lucky.

The Dalai Lama should have sent a representative to her cremation.

Her holy work was his.

The bears are back up in the mountains where they should be

Now we just contend with rain and flooding.

Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.

The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening..Psalm 104

Memorial

2026-04-06T18:06:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in the room with Phil Whalen
When he got that call from Allen.
It was the room where I had served
Them tea and cookies many times
While they told stories, joked and laughed.

It was at about the same time that
Allen usually dropped in
On his old friend,
Just before Zazen,
The time for everything and nothing.

Sometimes, a memory would
Float to the surface and they’d
Go on and on, words and memories
Bouncing off one another
Sometimes sad, more often bright

Then no words.
But always love.
“I’m so sorry,” said Phil’
“Thank you for calling,”
His voice trailing off.

He put down the phone,
His voice soft and shaken.
“Allen’s dying,” he said.
“I’m so sorry."

Then he cried.

I’d never seen him cry before.

A Purification

2026-03-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

by Wendell Berry

At start of spring I open a trench

In the ground. I put into it

The winter’s accumulation of paper,

Pages I do not want to read

Again, useless words, fragments,

errors. And I put into it

the contents of the outhouse:

light of the suns, growth of the ground,

Finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,

and to the faithful trees, I confess

my sins: that I have not been happy

enough, considering my good luck;

have listened to too much noise,

have been inattentive to wonders,

have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse,

of mind and body, I close the trench

folding shut again the dark,

the deathless earth. Beneath that seal

the old escapes into the new.

Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems

PERFECT STILLNESS

2026-02-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Peter Matthiessen, 1927-2014

You whose written words ushered so many

Into the theater of meditation

While all the while as restless as a leopard

Confined to a soiled cage of his own making,

Who sought connection but evinced a cruel

Detachment from his wives, his family,

What have you left for those of us who still

Believe in prose, regardless of its author?

Perhaps it’s nothing less than an open mind

Teeming with unsummoned memories

Of Himalayan vistas, the Serengeti,

Greenland, Florida, a distant father.

Little wonder that the title Roshi,

However earned, rested uneasily

On you, even as you sat in perfect stillness.

By Ben Howard

A Love Letter to Minnesota

2026-02-02T00:28:00.000-08:00

If they gun me down

in my own street someday

may my crime be compassion.

May the record show

from every angle

that I was helping a woman up

after they pushed her to the ground,

that not even their weapons

could stop me from extending

my hand to those in need.

that I was a walking example

of the best my elders taught me --

that everyone is equal

and worthy of defending.

If they tell the nation,

from the highest podium,

that I was a domestic terrorist,

let it be known that my radical act

was believing the best in people

when they wanted nothing more

than to divide us.

By Michael F Dubois

One of Their Gods

2025-07-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

When one of them moved through the marketplace of Selefkia
just as it was getting dark—

moved like a young man, tall, extremely handsome,

with the joy of being immortal in his eyes,

with his black and perfumed hair—

the people going by would gaze at him,

and one would ask the other if he knew him,

if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.

But some who looked more carefully

would understand and step aside;

and as he disappeared under the arcades,

among the shadows and the evening lights,

going toward the quarter that lives

only at night, with orgies and debauchery,

with every kind of intoxication and desire,

they would wonder which of Them it could be,

and for what suspicious pleasure

he had come down into the streets of Selefkia

from the August Celestial Mansions.

Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis. Translation copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Princeton University Press. For reuse of these translations, please contact Princeton University Press.

Growing

2025-02-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

By Kenneth Rexroth

Who are you? Who am I? Haunted
By the dead, by the dead and the past and the
Falling inertia of unreal, dead
Men and things. Haunted by the threat
Of the impersonal, that which
Never will admit the person,
The closed world of things. Who are
You? Coming up out of the
Mineral earth, one pale leaf
Unlike any other unfolding,
And then another, strange, new,
Utterly different, nothing
I ever expected, growing
Up out of my warm heart's blood.
All new, all strange, all different.
Your own leaf pattern, your own
Flower and fruit, but fed from
One root, the root of our fused flesh.
I and thou, from the one to
The dual, from the dual
To the other, the wonderful,
Unending, unfathomable
Process of becoming each
Our selves for each other.

Left to right: Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, and James Laughlin.

“If Adam Picked the Apple”

2024-10-27T20:00:00.001-07:00

by Danielle Coffyn

If Adam Picked the Apple

There would be a parade,

a celebration,

a holiday to commemorate

the day he sought enlightenment.

We would not speak of

temptation by the devil, rather,

we would laud Adam’s curiosity,

his desire for adventure

and knowing.

We would feast

on apple-inspired fare:

tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.

There would be plays and songs

reenacting his courage.

But it was Eve who grew bored,

weary of her captivity in Eden.

And a woman’s desire

for freedom is rarely a cause

for celebration.

In the Valley

2024-09-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

What was teaching

in that first Pennsylvania winter

but listening to directions

and learning how to drive

on icy two-lane roads

from Easton to Bethlehem?

You were tested

by a deer standing starkly

on the yellow line

and a dead opossum

freezing in the gravel

and the radio playing spirituals

about going home

on a lonesome highway.

The sun skidded to a halt

in the smokestacks

over the river

and I can still see you

climbing the snowy hills

and coasting

past the empty factories

and abandoned warehouses

to a Catholic school

on the edge of town.

You were a skeptic

in the Valley of the Lord

who carried “Pied Beauty”

in your jacket pocket

and drank scalding coffee

in the teacher’s lounge

with two old priests

and a lanky young nun

who played pickup basketball

and noticed all things

counter, original, spare, strange.

What was teaching

but quieting a classroom

and learning how to stand

at a blackboard

with an open book

and praise

the unfathomable

mystery of being

to children writing poems

or prayers

in the failing blue light

of a weekday afternoon?

- Edward Hirsch

Raksha Bandhan

2024-08-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

For my sisters, Julie and Elen. For brother John, who is no longer with us.

Tradition bids me tie a ribbon on your wrist

To say that you and I are related,

And it will always be

No matter what

What husband, what wife,

what daughter, what son,

What lover, what friend,

May kisses, caresses

Abound.

May wounds be few.

No matter,

There will be love.

What prizes and honors won,

Include the ones you lost,

What joy, what laughter,

what grief, what loss,

What trouble, what pain,

what fear, what tear, what discovery,

Embrace it freely.

In this moment

You are my world.

We are blood and yet so different

It makes no difference

What barrier, what fence

What wall, what boundary.

Cross, venture, explore,

A postcard now and then might be nice.

Calls are also cheap these days,

But neither is required.

I know there are only so many

Seconds, minutes, years granted to us.

Use them as best you can.

As best we can.

I will try.

Make mistakes,

I will join you.

We are forgiven in advance.

You are encouraged to make as many as possible

Unharmed or even injured.

Try to stay safe.

Continue please.

You encourage me.

Forgive me if I have hurt you.

It was not intentional.

I know that I can be blind and careless.

You are also forgiven.

The world as we find it

Is a blessing.

You are part of my world.

Sounds trite

But it’s true.

“If This Is a Man”

2024-03-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find on returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man

Who works in the mud

Who does not know peace

Who fights for a scrap of bread

Who dies because of a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman,

Without hair and without name

With no more strength to remember,

Her eyes empty and her womb cold

Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:

I commend these words to you.

Carve them in your hearts

At home, in the street,

Going to bed, rising;

Repeat them to your children,

Or may your house fall apart,

May illness impede you,

May your children turn their faces from you.

— Primo Levi

Translated by Stuart Woolf

This World is No Match for Your Love

2024-02-27T12:25:00.000-08:00

This world is no match for your Love

Being away from you

Is death aiming to take my soul away

My heart, so precious

I won’t trade for a hundred thousand souls

Your one smile, takes it for free

Hafiz, it may be that you’ve just poured a toast

that will wash love clean of all its pictures.

~ Hafiz

"WHEN YOU ARE OLD"

2024-02-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

(One of the last poems that W.B. Yeats wrote. Born 13 June 1865 – Died 28 January 1939)

Early December in Croton-on-Hudson

2023-10-17T15:12:00.005-07:00

BY LOUISE GLÜCK

Spiked sun. The Hudson’s
Whittled down by ice.
I hear the bone dice
Of blown gravel clicking. Bone-
pale, the recent snow
Fastens like fur to the river.
Standstill. We were leaving to deliver
Christmas presents when the tire blew
Last year. Above the dead valves pines pared
Down by a storm stood, limbs bared . . .
I want you.

"Early December in Croton-on-Hudson" from The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Gluck. Copyright © 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1995 by Louise Glück.
Source: The First Four Books of Poems (The Ecco Press, 1995)

BCR Case 30

2023-09-06T19:34:00.004-07:00

Ken’s verse

Issan wove a tale about a secret recipe

For chocolate chip cookies.

He would share it if you helped in the kitchen.

Of course I helped.

We all helped.

It was like a promise.

Everyone did.

How could you say no to Issan?

After we’d put on our aprons

After all the ingredients had been found

Dry stuff from the pantry

Butter from the refrigerator

Lots of it

Sugar from the top shelf

Neat brown bags with chocolate

And chocolate chips

Carried in from the back seat of the car

The oven was preheating.

He was a stickler about the temperature

The cookie sheets laid with parchment paper.

We each had our bowl and task assigned

None was burdensome

Though some were more fun than others.

When the time came we each took

What we had and Issan directed us

Towards a big mixing bowl

And we folded them together

Not rushed or with a lot of jerky motion

Big globs of butter stood out

From bits of Hershey

Putting them on the sheet with the correct spacing

Because he was always generous with the portions

This was perhaps the most difficult of the operations

Issan said watch me.

He used his thumbs to push and adjust

So that they didn’t stick together

Too much

And everyone would get a taste.

Totally ordinary

Everything from the Safeway

Humble

But they were magic

And the smell!

So much better if the party were

Drag and laughter.

This recipe is now written in my DNA.

Thank you Issan.

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

2023-06-30T16:22:00.001-07:00

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the way.

this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.

it could mean freezing on a park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter, its

the only good fight

there is.

– Charles Bukowski

Regret

2023-06-12T19:23:00.006-07:00

Sometimes I wish

Who I was

Was not

What I did

Did never

And was also not

But that’s not right

To make it

disappear

I shift the story

Slightly skewed

The end is wrong

It doesn’t fit

It cannot ever end at all

I craft my tale

For a dark winter’s night

When nothing’s right

That‘s also wrong

She says she wishes

She was 18

I say 60

We only dream

She says

Slight is slight

I say

Dark is dark

And night is night

Neither’s right

Who we were

Is not who we are

Right now

Ken Ireland

Mother of Muses, sing for me

2023-06-12T00:21:00.004-07:00

by Bob Dylan

for Rebecca del Rio

Sing of the mountains and the deep dark sea

Sing of the lakes and the nymphs of the forest

Sing your hearts out, all your women of the chorus

Sing of honor and fate and glory be

Mother of Muses, sing for me

Mother of Muses, sing for my heart

Sing of a love too soon to depart

Sing of the heroes who stood alone

Whose names are engraved on tablets of stone

Who struggled with pain so the world could go free

Mother of Muses, sing for me

Sing of Sherman, Montgomery, and Scott

And of Zhukov, and Patton, and the battles they fought

Who cleared the path for Presley to sing

Who carved the path for Martin Luther King

Who did what they did and they went on their way

Man, I could tell their stories all day

By Tony Attwood

I'm falling in love with Calliope

She don't belong to anyone, why not give her to me?

She's speaking to me, speaking with her eyes

I've grown so tired of chasing lies

Mother of Muses, wherever you are

I've already outlived my life by far

Mother of Muses, unleash your wrath

Things I can't see, they're blocking my path

Show me your wisdom, tell me my fate

Put me upright, make me walk straight

Forge my identity from the inside out

You know what I'm talking about

Take me to the river, release your charms

Let me lay down a while in your sweet, loving arms

Wake me, shake me, free me from sin

Make me invisible, like the wind

Got a mind that ramble, got a mind that roam

I'm travelin' light and I'm a-slow coming home

Hafiz

2023-04-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

This world is no match for your Love

Being away from you

Is death aiming to take my soul away

My heart, so precious

I won’t trade for a hundred thousand souls

Your one smile, takes it for free

Hafiz, it may be that you’ve just poured a toast

that will wash love clean of all its pictures.

~ Hafiz

Man on Donkey

2023-04-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

By Peter Steele, S.J.

Beaten, still breathing, as awkward as a dog,

He swags across the donkey, unaware

Of who’s beside them, footsore in the slog

Uphill for shelter and a kind of care.

Under the bloody bandages, some oil

Soothes where wine has washed away the dirt

To leave him clean and mortal. Alien soil,

Continuing fear, is mingling hope with hurt.

Downslope, the priest is hustling on his way,

Clean as a whistle, and the levite too,

Who thought that pausing meant the devil to pay,

And all the hours awarded them too few.

By the plodding beast, wordless and out of time,

The stranger braces once more for the climb.

Mihi videtur ut palea

2022-12-19T06:19:00.011-08:00

Father Nolan’s baritone would have made a camel blush

But he launched into “Tantum Ergo”

With the enthusiasm of an Irish barroom brawl.

He was tone deaf

Bringing the mystery of all things transcendent

Down to earth where mere mortals can fight about them.

Brawls with priests in attendance are nothing new

And not usually a laughing matter.

Choirmaster trains with a whip

No mercy for wayward lads.
Nolan was deadly serious.

I was once on his list.

Aquinas tried to complete the work

Of Nicaea. Truly god is truly god.

True means true. It means

When you bite the coin

It cracks your teeth.

Breath that rattles straw.

More straw please.

A Few Still Words

2022-12-05T08:33:00.002-08:00

A retreat Chapbook

Rohatsu, 2022

Ken Ireland

Pilgrim's Progress

In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline

Why Did Bodhidharma Kick Up His Heels?

In defense of really bad poetry

This One Precious Human Life

A Dream

Drape All the Mirrors

Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's)

by Lucille Clifton; translation, Ken Ireland

Outside My Window

Pilgrim's Progress

Will my heart ever warm to these foreign gods?

No matter that we shaved our heads for a while.

No matter that we wore socks that felt more like gloves

than the fingerless mittens that mother stuffed our hands into

when the pond froze over.

There is still some mystery the heart cannot speak.

Sometimes I feel as if I've been snowed into that one room school

my grandpa talked of,

huddled around the stove, a gang of kids

jostling for attention like best grades,

playing with tongue tangled words in a Sanskrit yeshiva,

parsing phrases as cold as Tibetan snow.

I aim for the precision of the shovel

I used to dig out the family car

after the blizzard,

cutting square white blocks to toss before the plow.

I train my body to own the rhythm of

swinging forward, bending down from the hips,

throwing my arms towards the ground.

It feels like falling.

When the conversation overheats,

almost as loud as at auntie's Sunday table

before we were hushed,

I hear my own voice inflected at the end of sentences,

if I can get to the end.

I still believe the end matters.

The snow will melt soon enough,

and return again

when the Sun swings low.

This picture was taken on the Maine coast where my father spent many years. It is at least 100 years old (shorter than a kalpa, but older than me). It got me thinking, in a very personal way, about Buddhism here on 'foreign soil'; I remembered that poignant line from Puccini's Madama Butterfly when the abandoned Cio-Cio-San sings to her maid after chucking out the household altar: "The Buddhist gods are fat and lazy, the American gods and swift and sure."

In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline

She might have even been as Spartan as Father Ignatius

if her taste had not run to plastered walls, a few modest chintz prints

and poignant photos of helpless children.

You could have fed a child in Haiti for that price, Sister.

Alok asked me about priest-craft—

appeasing hungry ghosts with big bellies,

tight mouths, and one might presume assholes,

not to mention pussies. Forgive me, Sister.

The antidote contains no eyes, no ears, no tongue,

no body, no mind, no assholes

no thought, no perception, no old age, no ending of old age and death

—and no sex. You know that practice, Sister.

I knew, or at least said, more than I ought.

Phil told me that the rite was no more than sleight of hand:

chocolate, cardamom tea, ripe kiwis,

none of it really satisfying or nourishing.

Hungry ghosts think it’s dinner.

Anything looks like dinner when you’re starving.

Big bellies and big ears arise simultaneously –

evidence, your pictures of starving children in the Sudan.

Trick them. Stuff them with dharma.

No bellies. I know about greed first hand.

If you’d had just a little more imagination, Sister,

I might have discovered a unicorn in your garden,

a mythical beast. But no. It had to be a nasty tigress.

Her bad breath nearly killed me.

But right then and there

I stuck my head into her mouth,

to fulfill the requirement for courage,

no fear, no lipstick, no kisses.

Then I heard a small voice demanding attention –

Don’t be an asshole. Don’t arm your daemons.

No Crusades, no swords,

No preaching, no stones, no death.

And we were saved.

Thank you Sister.

Why Did Bodhidharma Kick Up His Heels?

All boys of eight

Should don white gloves

Clean as traffic cops,

And bow before giggling girls,

'May I have the next dance?'

How else stem the rush of hormones, and

Pray for ease

As tiny couples shyly move

In the line of direction,

Marching to the measured pace

Of Miss Comer's spinster sister's piano waltz?

With luck, the beat of

The Dragon's dance

Will stay in China where it belongs.

In defense of really bad poetry

I once knew a girl whose father was filthy rich.

He built row upon row of tacky boxes

that mar the views on the outskirts of San Francisco,

a wilderness that chokes out coffee houses, bars and brothels,

all the places where freedom and language get down.

He passed his declining years trying to rhyme

2 x 4, pencil and Uncle Sam,

verse that would make Ogden Nash blush.

Once she asked me and some friends to her hot tub.

We all had big dicks that she tried to rhyme with fun.

We were naked and she wore a bathing suit.

I was thankful her father had trained her well

in the art of really bad poetry.

This One Precious Human Life

“One theory says you won’t remember dying any more than being born.” – Franz Wright

At noon

they sat the lama down in front of TV.

Some real experience of life

outside a meditation crib

seemed like a simple request.

Remote control in hand,

he flipped to All My Children.

Stop. “Stop!

“Oh watch out!” he cried inside.

“Amanda, you can’t hide your lies, silly bitch.

“Jake knows David is the daddy.

“You’ll never get away with it.

“How can you be that stupid?”

Where did that thought come from?

These families, really?

Westerners, really.

Love your momma.

Flip more.

One Life to Live.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Better title—

Too Many Lives to Live.

"No—Oh no, David, don’t kiss Oliver!

“Please don’t!

“That Path leads in only one direction—

“All the Teachings agree, male or female,

“male and male, female and female, no difference,

"but...

“Good luck. Looks like trouble ahead.”

Real tears for imaginary men.

Can’t fast forward.

The lama begins to slump.

General Hospital

ends badly.

Gunfire. Ears. Ouch.

Dominic hustles Sonny into some big black car.

Max, Milo, and Jason escape. Whew.

Joey wasn't so lucky—

Oh dear, bodies scattered all around.

Joey asks a vagrant for help,

who snaps his neck as quick as a skilled headman.

“Is the homeless demon posing Joey's body

“for the final fire?

“He walks away, tosses a coin,

“‘Keep the change.’

“What can that mean?”

“Can I see some reality less intense,

“perhaps more real?” the lama asks.

“How many times can I do

“Powa with full blast visualization—

"high pixel resolution, all that compressing,

“surround sound?

“I'm tired out,

“and lost count.”

Suddenly

from the base of the spine

to the middle of the heart

the remarkable

bodhichitta starts to show up in all its glory.

Lama, loud and clear,

“Cookies and milk all around!

“Ordinary Hope is dead.

“Three cheers for Samsara.”

*I don't even own a TV, but I confess, I have seen All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Guiding Light. The story lines used in the poem are real as real can be. Trust me, but if you can’t believe it, check out. It’s online at http://www.soapoperadigest.com/. As real as real can be. The lama’s inner voices are all made up.

A Dream

I don’t know if it’s possible

but I’ll continue to dream it,

juggling the fine points when I have to

to lend it a kind of reality.

Some kinds of hope are just virtuous dreaming.

I’m dreaming back to last night,

glimpsing at men walking down the sidewalk,

wondering what they dream of.

The carpenter hadn’t hammered the last nail—

I heard his banging for the first time in many years

when I thought he too had vanished.

What was it that disappeared before

I noticed something missing?

Was that a dream?

How could I have missed it?

Are we forced to

carve a purpose out of nothing?

Did we dream it like a vision, or did it dream us?

(This is, I guess, a technical question, and no one can be expected

to provide more than a best guess.)

I juggle the timing of the wash cycle

so that I can try to keep a date

with my dreams.

My future doesn’t seem to be pretending to be something, someone—not me.

I didn’t patch it together with

tinsel, latex, fabric, and strut on the

stage when heels weren’t optional.

Yet I’ve hit that same impossible note.

I knew that hope wasn’t dead forever,

even though I tried to murder it.

The carpenter showed me how to fit

a flight of stairs with a return into a tight corner.

Now anyone can climb up under

the rafters and look out from

where the roof opened to the sun.

Dreams are timeless and yet

we imagine we can walk through them,

one step following another, just like in real life.

Today I win the lottery.

Later I hold you in my arms.

Then you disappear, vanishing like that carpenter,

gone, gone—a ghost, or perhaps a dream.

Is it possible to glimpse the sun through you?

(I don’t know and the sun ain't saying.)

But I climbed that flight of stairs one foot after the other.

I can retrace my steps if I must prove it.

I feel so alive—certainly more alive than yesterday.

I glimpsed the sun

through the hole you opened in the roof.

Drape All the Mirrors

Julia Wilson Carroll

a poem for my aunt

I sit by the phone and wait for word that she has died,

ready to cry.

But the news is still the same: she is resting comfortably.

If she has lucid moment, yes,

I will tell her that her nephew from California loves her.

When we last spoke I was 10.

If that is how she remembers me, I will not complain or correct.

She only complains that the fall had blurred her eyes.

She could no longer call the pitch strike or ball.

Keep your eye on the ball, you are the best aunt in the world.

My last words.

It was just a spill that an ordinary person could have walked off,

but it shattered her back and pelvis.

Unable to speak, she pointed to the legal paper she had prepared.

The priest was called. He forgave, prayed and left.

An intern hauled out the tubes while my father stood

expecting her last breath.

15 days later, nurses and doctors admire the body’s desire to survive

while she lies waiting patiently for her hereafter now.

There is no looking back, no food, no water, no death.

I will drape the mirrors and exaggerate stories of no hitters.

Judy Carroll died in hospice care, Tuscon Arizona, noon May 13, 2006

Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's)

by Lucille Clifton

Translation, Ken Ireland

For my dear friend Bonnie Johnson. Please join me in praying for her safe passage between this and that.

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it

will love your back

may you

open your eyes to water

water waving forever

and may you in your innocence

sail through this to that

bendición de los barcos

(En el puerto de Santa María)

por Lucille Clifton

puede la marea

que está entrando ahora mismo

el borde de nuestra comprensión

llevar a cabo lo

más allá de la cara del miedo

puedes besar

al viento y después aparte de él

seguro, confidiado de que te

vas a querer igual.

que puedes

abrir tus ojos al agua

ondeando el agua para siempre

y que en tu inocencia vas a

navegar a esto a aquello.

Blessing of the Tuna Fleet at Groix 1923, a painting by Paul Signac

Outside My Window

dedicated to Chris Wilson, head of practice at sesshin, a generous, guiding spirit and friend

The constant light rain

clears momentarily.

Cold.

A bird's three bare notes—

infinite variations

flood over me.

Red Camellia blossoms

fall

upside down.

A Dream

2022-12-04T23:09:00.001-08:00

Ken Ireland

I don’t know if it’s possible

but I’ll continue to dream it,

juggling the fine points when I have to

to lend it a kind of reality.

Some kinds of hope are just virtuous dreaming.

I’m just dreaming back to last night,

glimpsing at men walking down the sidewalk,

wondering what they dream of.

The carpenter hadn’t hammered the last nail—

I heard his banging for the first time in many years

when I thought he too had vanished.

What was it that disappeared before

I noticed something missing?

Was that a dream?

How could I have missed it?

Are we forced to

carve a purpose out of nothing?

Did we dream it like a vision, or did it dream us?

(This is, I guess, a technical question, and no one can be expected

to provide more than a best guess.)

I juggle the timing of the wash cycle

so that I can try to keep a date

with my dreams.

My future doesn’t seem to be pretending to be something, someone—not me.

I didn’t patch it together with

tinsel, latex, fabric, and strut on the

stage when heels weren’t optional.

Yet I’ve hit that same impossible note.

I knew that hope wasn’t dead forever,

even though I tried to murder it.

The carpenter showed me how to fit

a flight of stairs with a return into a tight corner.

Now anyone can climb up under

the rafters and look out from

where the roof opened to the sun.

Dreams are timeless and yet

we imagine we can walk through them,

one step following another, just like in real life.

Today I win the lottery.

Later I hold you in my arms.

Then you disappear, vanishing like that carpenter,

gone, gone—a ghost, or perhaps a dream.

Is it possible to glimpse the sun through you?

(I don’t know and the sun ain't saying.)

But I climbed that flight of stairs one foot after the other.

I can retrace my steps if I must prove it.

I feel so alive—certainly more alive than yesterday.

I glimpsed the sun

through the hole you opened in the roof.