Anti-koan

 Anti-koan

"Does a dog have Buddha nature?" he asked me.

 "Ask the cat." I said.

I went walking where the red sunset

was an understatement unshelling

behind the fog and rain, where wind

turned hearts and umbrellas out,

where working girls and

insurance agents were indistinguishable,

past the murmuring parkbench beds, made up in

newspapers sprouting disconsolate beards, eyes sunset red,

kicks drowned behind apricot shadows.

 I was still free in the California wine

of air and sea, and the chains to come

could only speak as prophets speak, annoyingly,

Marley's rattling unheard. I climbed the streets

in meadow disguise, up Mt. Tamalpais and back

breathing heat, soaked in birdsong, inhaling a world

untroubled by buddha or his nature, a

perfect thing in my ignorance, content to be filled

with wide emptiness.

"Love is a condition of distance," I said.

"Night sings a lonely death," he replied.

"By the streams of the moon..."

"I know, I know--

...but not yet."

~April 2013

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Challenge: Destinations and Dialogue

The irrepressible Corey Rowley asks us to write of place, and include some dialogue. The italicized lines at the end of this piece are borrowed from a poem written by my first husband. (Thanks, Lurp, wherever you are.)

 Process Notes: Marley = Marley's ghost from Dickens' Christmas Carol, not Bob Marley. (Because, there's a considerable difference.)




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