Daily Archives: July 6, 2003

Chuang Tzu

Sometimes, life is simple, clean and pure lines
like the woodcuts in my edition of
Chuang Tzu; there is a sense of stillness that
permeates the busy scenes of action,

that slices right through the day’s busy-ness
and yet is un-noticed, like the soft pause
of the flute when the oboe’s line plays through;
in the epiphany of rest, the soul,

often against the mind’s better judgment,
finds the vast, empty spaces between breath,
where there are no ancestors or teachers,
no lessons or ways of becoming whole.

Now that you have finished up your dinner,
what remains is the washing of the plate.

06 JUL 2003

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Hanging Prayer Flags

You can’t hang those outside our house, she said,
looking at the string of fifteen small flags
that I carefully unrolled and held out,
stretched to full arms length across my big chest –

it will look like an all-night Buddhist pub –
and everyone who passes by will stop
at all hours for a cup of jasmine tea;
or, she said low, those Monte Carlo boys

seeing blue and red colors in the breeze
will cross the street, seeing competition
for the mind-altering stuff they pander,
and maybe bust a cap in someone’s ass.
I laughed. The mind of a fifteen year old
is quite a strange place to visit, sometimes.

06 JUL 2003

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