I will not love you
not now that you do not love me
now that love belongs only to itself;
instead, i will watch sunlight
on pine floor
chair shadow inching to slide
with hanging rope by porch door
near road where silver car stops
voice saying “well, i don’t have
a lot of money but i have a lot
of love,” then drives up hill.
I am given this fragment sounding
monday morning as nuclear bomb
explodes over hiroshima — as if
history has no time any longer, just
fact, the fact of it remaining constant
occurring over and over, the horror
sitting in empty rocking chairs
cricket pitch, bird voice, fly buzz
engines and tires between silences.
I cannot tell where anything begins
or ends anymore, the erroneous
certainties of younger thoughts
unaccountably erased by summer
green and flower fragrance, mountain
moisture, unfluttering branches leaning
with zendo stillness in observance of
invisible sangha, cousin to Grover’s
Corner, patiently observing, gently
inquiring who is it comes up hill?
Those who sit in silent stillness
have no time. It is merely place
that surrounds each quiet breath,
where others pray as we enter
and, when we remember, we pray
as eyes no longer need to see outside
outside outside faded and abandoned
going within, going within, gone
beyond what any body knows,
alone and one, that, that, I am
as God is alone, as God is one
and so it is I am, we are, dangling
rope in summer ante meridiem,
carvings of Francis and Siddhartha
prayer flags and leaning flowers
it is begun, it is finished, it is begun
