Road to the Shrine

After breakfast
in the middle of all the things we have to do
and pieces of this puzzle we have to put back into place
my sister and I turned

taking the road under the gate
     guarded by the japanese cedar
             leading up to the shrine at the top of the hill

"Look for mushrooms," I said.
            a search I had started one month before
in a poem i never wrote
      but acted with all feverish sincerity
            this psychadelic treasure hunt
                    this conversation cycling between myself and the earth

God fell asleep in the cloudy morning
                     left his toes sticking out of the covers
        Hazelnut caps and stems that stain blue
The systems of mycelium that spread underground
all the while I was rushing past
        carrying only faith that they exist
until the day when we saw them pushing up
          past the carpet of grass and dew

a whispered word to each kami I passed that day
from the hill top to the little church in the valley
           where we heard
love is not a feeling but an aching of the will
that should always lead to action

In the evening we sat waiting for the rains to come again
I talked with my wife of the journeys
       these toenail clippings of God
could take me on
           Why I would go she could not understand
                 we opened our hearts and hurt
to see such difficulties between us
and pushed on
      questioning ourselves
                    our ideas of wholeness

deciding to leave the mushrooms alone
we left the room
to walk on our own
   
       I sat on the stoop of a pre-fab hut filled with junk where no one lived
         and kept conversation with the neighborly Sri Lankan mechanic
as the rain tapped at our shoulders through the cracked plastic roof
                          He said without a doubt
a world without beggars
is possible
     and of course we will have to do away with most boarders too

And I saw the tree
          the one that had waited all spring to put forth its leaves
now had the modest hangings of foliage
      no one leaf bigger than your eyelid
             and each one greener than the word of God

      sitting on the concrete
      with the other rain drops I heard
the liquid carbon slide
           up the grey trunk
                         and out on tender reaches of the farthest twigs where
it came forth to catch the sun

Not So Simplicity

On the day that you realize

not all white, American, once-where-Buddhists

understand

that all beings are one

because they hate roaches

you will also hear of free ranging Jersey cows

in Georgia

eating out of mother’s flower bed

milk so fatty the skim can be butter simply

seal in a jar and let the kids make a game

of rolling it back and forth across the floor

as the farm van climbs the hill at the

end of the workday, filled with fall

conversations

the smell of deep soil and fresh carrots

you will also see the dirt drying to a grey powder across

your hands, showing well the lines where

the skin prunes

curling in upon itself after

tugging all day

at the earth

in the dream worthy blues

of your darkened bedroom

you will tell your wife that she

never has and never will understand you

completely

which is true

for everyone but God

though

you don’t have to tell her that way

Macro Econ Craze

Macro is where I aggregate

my thoughts to 

big picture ponderings

Company in Condition

I am sitting in the

no-light. We are, at night

deep, down under

darkness. Blinking eyes

but nothing, anywhere

we are. No. Where

I am sitting, she might be

close by, and whispers

“It’s okay. I can’t see

anything either.”

Heart-bulb

beating to another.

Understand how light

was spoken.

How Odd, I Am

Some days I can’t believe my

hands—or rather why they are

held out by oily pink arms poking

awkward hair. Does God sit in

econ class and wonder why he

is the way he is, the universe

staring baffled at the strangeness

of its own toes, under draping bath

robe? Or is his view so large

beyond the idea of why or

why not, knowing normalcy

and strangeness are slippers

we put on—he probably sits

so stoned with understanding

that everything simply is.