The cup of coffee at rest in its place
seethes in its resting. Like dark incense it
arrests you with its rising steam rising and
welcomes the morning come well your way.
You do well to have a thing, some plain thing
call you into the day--like a monk's bell
bids prayer or the cell solitude--a thing
routine to seize fears and raise awareness.
When all the gods have died and not a thing
lasts to pray to, you stop trusting in gods.
Still you pray, but no more as discipline,
as deed. No need to pray you pray still
and praying still you plead not for gifts
from the gods but you obtain the grace
of the bare deed, its elegance and ease,
its goodness and mercy. Still in
prayer you listen for benedictions
of the commonplace but cling to none.
Anything simple serves while you observe
your day in its simple and dreary detail.
If you listen close you can still hear cold
water from the ER basin dripping with
ruthless habit as a gunshot brain dribbles
gray onto the concrete cushion and
the daughter, too young, demands to see
then disturbs the hush, "I had to be sure."
You choose to let her see and you choose that
over the unhappier consequence--
not seeing and not knowing the mess made
by a depression in the brain.
Bare deeds do not bear the burden of drama
but not a thing you do affects you alone.
Some days are like this,
you settle down
in the quiet
alone
by the gold page
but nothing
not a word.
You wait
with the patience
of bone
to be brought back to life
still nothing
no declaration.
Tending
to the silence
you welcome
the absentee landlord
the break from sound.
All the while
the gold page
sits there waiting
bare, unclothed
like cold shadows
empty of own-self-being
linger in the lane
alone.
Some days are just like that.
Lately
you've been thinking--
a thing you do too much of--
Why is it you seem to have so
few troubles?
Next thought--
So Few Troubles?
Just today you notice--
plaster falling will not
not fall and will not default
to some prior condition
to you more desirable.
Climbing the ladder to make out
the problem is hardly a solution.
Recently you became
unemployed from good
work with good people--
first time ever and there's no
prospect in sight.
With this economy is that not
honest-to-God trouble?
And all your life--
well since you were a
young lad of fifteen--
you've had to take out your
teeth to brush them and had
to get intimate with one
dentist after another.
So few troubles?
(For J. Krishnamurti)
You know what's round the bend
when you've seen all around it
and come to a place to notice--
clear of mind and awake with
no choice and no judgment
of what you see. This seeing
needs no optic nerve.
Keen observation's required
to attend to what's there and what
not. Apart from point of view
and beyond remembrance of things
past or pained or pondered
you attend with no effort and
thus attending you conclude nothing.
You must issue no verdict of
self or self-interest and rest
present with presentments not
chosen. One other thing,
there must be no envy
ambition or greed for action
to spring well from its rightful
place.
problems are not troubles.
Problems are real and get
born onto this earth pregnant
with their own solutions.
Troubles are more like
poems, birth pangs of somebody's
imagination.
