In the most recent issue of Buddhist Poetry Review Volume 3 Issue 4, I have these three poems published, alongside many other wonderful poets and poems.
After
After the anger dries up
and falls away like an old dried husk,
it might be you feel
like laughing—
at yourself it turns out—
and all that is now possible
whispers to you
like wind in the meadow,
and where before you saw
a single path
you now see thousands,
and you wonder
how you never noticed it before
the way every step
receives you.
One Way to Spend an Afternoon Together
Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something.
—Tenzin Palmo, Three Types of Laziness
Sit with me. Let’s say nothing at all.
There is nothing that must be said.
The impulse to comment on weather,
we’ll feel it rise and melt away.
The weather will do what the weather does,
will rain, will shine, will hail.
Perhaps we will feel the need
to comment on the light or to wonder
when things will be different than they are now
or to worry about all the problems
that we will never be able to fix.
Urgency only lasts so long before
it disappears. How did we ever
believe we belonged anywhere
but here? Though the rain
is gone, the scent of rain persists.
If we are quiet long enough,
it will say everything that must be said.
Meeting This Moment
There was that night when the cats were frightened
because they saw a feral butterscotch cat outside the door—
and for days they yowled and shrieked at each other
out of fear of what they didn’t understand,
intimidated by what they didn’t know how to fight.
So they fought each other.
Displaced aggression, said the vet,
and she encouraged us to give them space.
Today, when the news is full of butterscotch cats
that come to my door, I understand the instinct
to wail, to caterwaul. I understand the impulse
to fight with someone, anyone, to raise my voice,
to find my claws, to hiss and arch and attack
in an effort to discharge this aggression that pumps in me
churns like a river in flood stage, filled with debris and mud.
And that is when some inner voice,
a voice so quiet it’s almost impossible to hear,
suggests, “Singing is still an option.”
Suggests, “Can you shine in this moment?”
Suggests, “If you choose to speak only love,
if you choose to give space,
how might that change the only thing
you are able to change?”