breathless light struggles —
long shadows arrive early
in the day’s passing
—
I feel like I’ve been writing around the edges recently. Circling around words that need to be expressed but aren’t ready to be committed. My notebook is littered with opening lines and untitled strings of paragraphs that don’t quite go together. This haiku managed to emerge complete, perhaps a part of circling inward. It is, in any event, one step next to another step, and what this moment holds.
I have been holding my breath again,
not leaving you much choice
but to wait.
This has always been my first response
when frightened —
but you learned this years ago.
I feel
your yearning
to speak
after the children have been tucked in
(we wouldn’t be interrupted)
and as the tea kettle births
steam onto the darkened window;
your abiding
in the deep quiet
(so ripe)
that hours later
envelopes us in our bed.
But exhalation
gives life to fear —
merely scratching out a poem,
lightly and in pencil,
would risk too much.
So you bear the silence for us,
even as our skin touches,
the cold back of your thigh
reminding me
you are there,
giving me everything
just by lying still,
waiting for me to breathe.
Thumbing through the copy of
Merton’s Birds of Appetite
she found on our living room shelf,
my wife asks me who it had belonged to,
curious about the writing in the margins.
I look and recognize the hand of an old friend;
we used to talk about Zen and Shakespeare.
She wonders if I ever hear from her —
but I have grown so much quieter,
and I can’t bear to intrude
upon spaces so large.
What would I say?
A scroll hanging in the entrance hallway at our Temple reads “No Merit”. It recalls the conversation of Bodhidharma, who brought Zen to China, with the Emperor Wu. When the Emperor asked Bodhidharma what merit he had accumulated through his support of monks and building monasteries, Bodhidharma replied: No merit.
One of my initial attractions to Buddhism was, in fact, the possibility of accumulation of merit, the idea that through diligent work in this life, I could earn merit that would propel me towards eventual release from suffering. The idea provided me concrete and tangible comfort from my fear of loss and annihilation. There was something I could do, after all.
And so Bodhidharma’s words and this idea in Zen initially came with a sense of loss. I came to the practice for the promise of comfort, because I thought (in an interesting connection to my family’s Puritanical roots that will someday make a separate topic for writing) that I could earn my way out of my fears. As the years go by, it doesn’t feel as much like a loss anymore, and more like an example of what simply is. No loss. No gain. Loss and gain. No idea.
I’ve been thinking about this tonight because two fellow bloggers have written to recognize this blog. Yesterday, hillbillyzen wrote to say she had nominated the blog for the Reality Blogger Award. And today, Linda at mayandseptember wrote to say she was giving a nomination for the Leibster Award. I know well that none of it makes me a better blogger or writer or more worthy of reading. But I think we blog because we’re interested in sharing what we think and notice and feel, but perhaps a lot of us (or, speaking for myself) don’t otherwise know exactly how. Recognition might mean that we have met our intention.
And so I will accept the kindness, badges or not, offered by hillbillyzen and mayandseptember (you should visit their blogs), and may try to recognize some fellow bloggers (perhaps in this space). As for the rest, I still don’t know how I feel about the whole process. Neither accepting, rejecting, nor ignoring the awards quite feels right. That not-knowing does feels just about familiar, though.
A long day apart
followed by another
will make these tender ones remote —
but late at night
passing an upstairs window
and caught by the moon
as it mingles with the dim street lamp,
I will pause,
and notice the overlapping snowshoe paths
behind the house,
evidence of our time together.
Rust and fallen snow
rest upon cracks and fissures
revealed by soft light,
confirmation of failure
weathered by time’s measured grace.
As we turned the corner in the grocery store, my five year old son walked a step ahead of me, clear about where he was going and full of intention.
Making trips to the grocery store isn’t my favorite activity, and the number of cars in the parking lot told of a large crowd inside – but I didn’t mind making this Christmas Eve outing. As we drove to the store, I watched my son clutch the dollar bill that he had pulled from the old tea container on his dresser, preparing to contribute it towards his big brother’s Christmas gift. I listened to the assured way he spoke, without revealing everything to me, about what he had decided to give to him.
He marched confidently most of the way down the toy aisle and stopped. This one, he said, pointing towards the shelf. I followed the direction of his hand and saw the blue box of eight matchbox cars. He pulled it from the shelf with both hands, bringing it to rest against his winter coat as he examined it closely, then turning towards me as I caught up, hopeful I would approve his choice.
It was the same gift his brother had gotten for him the year before. The same gift he had loved. I remembered him opening it Christmas morning, how he couldn’t imagine his good fortune at receiving a box of eight new cars, all at once. What could speak more clearly of his love for his brother than wanting to reciprocate, a year later, with the same?
Yet, as I stood there with Robin looking up at me, all that ran through my mind was how to get him to choose something else. His brother True is seven and a half, and hasn’t played a lot with cars and trucks in the last year. I knew he would be gracious in receiving the gift, but it seemed an awful lot of cars if he wasn’t going to spend much time with them. And at $12.99, well, it felt like a lot.
Let’s look around, I said, see what else is here. I suggested the small Lego sets that were in the same aisle – True loves Legos, doesn’t he? I suggested card games and even some smaller sets of cars. Robin dutifully obliged and examined that the alternatives I offered, but his heart wasn’t in it, and I knew it. I could feel the way the big set of cars pulled on him, even as we stood at each different shelf, motionless. He dismissed all the other options without words and returned back to pulled the box off the shelf. As he did, I thought I saw my opening in the form of a box just behind, a sort of combination track and ramp for matchbox cars that could be set up from a table to send cars flying. He’ll go for that, I thought, as I pointed it out it to him.
He looked, but didn’t take long. No, he said, I want to get this one for him.
He wasn’t demanding – just trying desperately to show me his sincerity, sincerity born from the warm feeling that still lasted from the previous Christmas, and his desire to share that with his brother, to get him the perfect gift, just like the extra large box of tea he had picked out for his mother.
Every bit of me could see that, could feel it, yet for some reason still struggled against it.
You don’t want this? I asked, holding up the track again. You could have races to see which of the cars you already have goes the farthest. I tried to paint a different picture than the one he had composed, the one he was holding dear. No, he replied, this one. Don’t we already have those cars? I flailed. No, he pointed out, these are different. He’ll love these.
There was nothing left for me to say. I could have flatly said no, that the set was too expensive. Or told him I didn’t think True really wanted eight new matchbox cars. But I couldn’t do either.
So instead I did something worse.
Dear ones lie still,
near and peaceful,
yet quiet has settled too deeply,
darkness persistent, final —
can these shallow breaths
be the full completion of Dogen;
sudden loneliness,
truly buddha nature;
restlessness,
realization;
misgiving,
it?
I’ve gained nothing
from the practice,
instead losing some
of what I used to have.
What I looked for isn’t here.
Still fearful,
bitter at separation —
but, too,
softened against the day
and quicker to tears.
My daughter’s pockets
are filled with shiny rocks,
just like mine.
I salvaged a set of antique doors
that were piled in a yard
close by the ocean
with other detritus
from a torn-down house.
Hoping the owner would let me take them,
I talked with him
and listened to his stories
about who had passed through them,
what rooms they had separated.
It isn’t easy to find ones just so,
with the hardware still intact.
Perhaps if I hold on to them,
I thought,
and shape them here or there,
they’ll fill up gaps —
shut out the draft from the
old ice-box pantry,
dampen the kitchen noise that drifts
so easily up the stairs
when our children are sleeping.
But I wonder
if I will have time to use them,
or if someday
someone will come
and collect them from me.
bussokuseki 