is it
grasping or clinging
to try and remember
his voice?
shattered / fragments [4]
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Tag Archives: fatherhood
shattered / fragments [3]
His clothes are waiting.
There’s a pile on the floor,
tucked into the corner
and ready to be washed;
another on his chair,
haphazard but clean.
A few others sit in a basket,
neatly folded.
He would have picked through them
the next morning,
getting ready for the day.
I pull out a pair of black pants from the dirty pile,
notice a bungee cord strung through
as a makeshift belt.
I fold them slowly,
tuck them under my arm,
and, for now, leave everything else behind.
shattered / fragments [2]
A police sergeant
stopped by the house this afternoon
with my son’s wallet
and an accident report
we don’t ever have to read.
He’d been first at the scene that night,
then sat in our living room
while my wife called me
in Los Angeles.
Today, I offer him a cup of coffee
and hope he’ll stay with us for a moment.
shattered / fragments [1]
I now understand
the meaning of
shattered.
I can’t even tell if it is okay
to smile at my wife–
but I’ll go for a walk,
and while I am out,
get her the box of chai
she was searching for.
—
I don’t know where to begin. I’ve lost my son.
I don’t know where to begin. Perhaps deciding to simply sit here, inside this not-knowing, inside this feeling of being shattered–perhaps this is something Zen gave to me, having turned out to be nothing I was actually looking for.
I don’t know where to begin. Except to return here, reach for my pencil and scratch out a few of the fragments I find.
untitled
the afternoon sun is strong
even though apple blossoms are weeks away;
only the slightest hints of early-green
appear on the knoll horizon
smoke drifts from the pile of collected brush
as my father points out streaks of grey
in the stubble on my cheek
—
i always wonder if there is more to come
ten
it was a purple one that first caught his eye
as we walked through the field—
perhaps some sort of clover,
but i don’t know the name in french.
papa, he showed me,
adding the smallest white daisies
and a few others i don’t recognize—
a tall thin grass, and
even dandelions, too.
they might not last the car ride home,
but they’ve once been collected,
spilling gently over the edge
of the vase he made of his hand.
—
My first post here in more than eighteen months. I think the moments have still been with me. Perhaps I’ve been better at not becoming attached—or perhaps I’ve been neglecting to pay attention.
I Peel an Orange
Our home is a pale shade of blue,
one you might find looking west in the spring
minutes after sunrise,
or in a robin’s egg whose green tints
have been replaced by gentle grays.
It was once a deep red,
more readily apparent in recent years
from the street-facing, sun-bleached southern side,
where spots of peeling and chipping have grown
past neighborly size,
reflecting the same inertia
that has kept me from replacing
the almost imperceptibly dripping basement pipe.
I peel an orange –
the fruit itself is disappointing and dry;
my son pushes the lawnmower
back and forth across the lawn,
glancing to me each time he makes a turn.
It’s the first time I’ve stood back so far.
Touching the Heart Mind
I finished work early today,
walked out of the office
I built in my barn
into a cool afternoon.
I took the clippers from the
upstairs linen closet and
cut my hair with the shortest blade.
There were still a few errands to run
before I came to sit here in our kitchen,
distracted by house sounds and
typing out a home-leaving poem
for sesshin,
where I’ll sit with the sangha,
alone together
under autumn skies.
Untitled
birthdays, too,
hold misunderstood questions
alongside bright smile greetings.
at the end of the day,
I stayed late at the Temple
to water Roshi’s flowers.
oceans of bright clouds,
oceans of solemn clouds.
—
The final couplet comes from the words of Dogen in our school’s translation of the Ninth Precept.
Lazy Ovals
I’ve scolded my son for riding
the old green bike
(the one with training wheels that used to be his)
when he runs to get it before his little brother can,
riding it gleefully away from him.
Today, though, his brother wasn’t home;
so he pedaled slowly
around the driveway, pulled gently
at the duct-taped edge of the handle
as he rode.
I heard him talking softly to himself and
humming as he made lazy ovals
in the bright sunshine.
He kept going
until his sister called to him from the porch,
asked him what he was doing.
I heard the first words of the story
he began to make up,
then turned away so I wouldn’t
hear the end.
bussokuseki 