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.
Clutter has built up
around the edges of the room.
Facing the altar,
I can not see it,
but the gravity
of its accumulation
pulls me backward
toward the west window.
It isn’t much –
an iron, a board,
and hangers from the morning;
my daughter’s cloth cuttings
spilling from a box she has
decorated in tissue paper;
a small book of poems
without a shelf;
remnants awaiting
places to fit
just so.
The lineage scroll from Jukai rests,
tucked in the flickering shadow,
behind the incense bowl
and grandmother’s Buddha —
cold rattles the window and hardens the floor.
in the midst of sitting
at the temple,
my mind began
to compose a poem
about how across the hall
in the dokusan room,
which i could see from my seat
in the zendo,
the chairs are all mismatched.
i don’t know what happened to it.
sitting
with a mind that
won’t come to ease,
dragged about by
the insistence of the mundane.
the old steam radiator whistles
and
i am in the room.
bussokuseki 