Davis Lakes
July 2, 2009
The upwelling of clouds
Over the craggy peaks
Brings with it the roaring hiss
Of icy winds that sting
My skin, still tingling
From immersion in the
Pristine, glassy high sierra cirque
Each and every cell aches
For the sun to poke back
Through the billowy whiteness
So I can store it’s energy
To prepare for yet another plunge
The act of which fulfills
A tiny part of the
Endless cycle where hot meets cold
Which vanishes back into the
brilliant heat again
I shiver, salty sweaty beads
Of water brushed off by the wind
But the cold doesn’t matter at all
Not in a place this worn
And outsized and
Real
Zen and the Art of Mosquito Maintenance
I wonder,
Is it possible to be Zen
About mosquitoes? Even when
They form a hovering anxious
Cloud around your heated frame?
And you anticipate the interminable itch
Accompanied by a most grotesque and
Unnecessary swelling?
But they mean that I must be
somewhere exceedingly wonderful . . .
I’ve killed at least a dozen already.
The Smell of Pine Needles
I think that nowhere is
The sky so blue
Than in a pine forest
The warm crisp smell
Must act as an intoxicant
Allowing us to see the
Rocks, rivers, grass and clouds
In their true nature:
Stark and bold and endless
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3 comments:
I'm home, your poems tell me
but I was there, they say
There where ice and sky
and sun all meet
Where pines echo
the cries of the sky
You are home,
and my heart aches
for some wilderness
for the mountains
to envelop me
in their sweet magic.
You are a better poet than I
You tell of your experience
I tell of dreams as yet unfurled
You are the poet of my soul,
Sweet child, intrepid wanderer
Wordsmith.
I love you.
The mosquito poem brings to mind a section of the book 'Eat, Pray, Love.' When she's at the ashram in India, one of her major breakthroughs is when she is able to sit completely still for two hours in the garden at sunset. Indian Mosquitoes and all!! So I guess, yes, it is possible to be Zen about mosquitoes. But you might just have to be at an ashram in India to do it.
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