over to you

.

Finding a Bible in an Abandoned Cabin

.

Under dust plush as a moth’s wing,
the book’s leather cover still darkly shown,
and everywhere else but this spot was sodden
beneath the roof’s unraveling shingles.
There was that back-of-the-neck lick of chill
and then, from my index finger, the book

opened like a blasted bird. In its box
of familiar and miraculous inks,
a construction of filaments and dust,
thoroughfares of worms, and a silage
of silverfish husks: in the autumn light,
eight hundred pages of perfect wordless lace.


–Robert Wrigley

.

 

the heaven of animals

.

Here they are.  The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains it is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.
 
Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open. 

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field. 

For some of these, it could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done,
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe. 

They stalk more silently,
And crouch on the limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright backs of their prey 

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward:  to walk 

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain 

At the cycle's center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they are torn,
They rise, they walk again.


–James Dickey 

.

lines written in the days of growing darkness

 .

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don't say

it's easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

–Mary Oliver

.

questions

 

.

Just before Ninakawa passed away the Zen master Ikkyu visited him.
“Shall I lead you on?” Ikkyu asked.

Ninakawa replied: “I came here alone and I go alone.
What help could you be to me?” 

Ikkyu answered: “If you think you really come and go, that is
your delusion.
Let me show you the path on which there is no coming and no going.” 

With his words, Ikkyu had revealed the path so clearly
that Ninakawa smiled and passed away.


from Zen Flesh Zen Bones
compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki

.

the day we die

 

 

.

 

The day we die
the wind comes down
to take away
our footprints.
 
The wind makes dust
to cover up
the marks we left
while walking.
 

For otherwise
the thing would seem
as if we were
still living.

Therefore the wind
is he who comes
to blow away
our footprints.


—Southern Bushmen
from A Book of Luminous Things
edited by Czeslaw Milosz

.

opening octave to “[96]”

 

.

It will seem strange, no more this range on range
Of opening hopes and happenings. 

Strange to be
One’s name no longer.  Not caught up, not free.

Strange, not to wish one’s wishes onward.  Strange,
The looseness, slopping, time and space estrange.

Strangest, and sad as a blind child, not to see
Ever you, never to hear you, endlessly
Neither you there, nor coming  … Heavy change!—


—John Berryman
Sonnets to Chris

 .