in my 3-mat hut
[ a reverie... ]
like his— not one of thatch
but of plywood, gypsum, sheetrock.
surrounded by busy roads
on all sides and the thrum of this city,
it forms not a silent seclusion
but is a loom of solace nevertheless,
where rest and language,
dream and reading— being…
abide for me in equal measure.
then i go for a walk as the evening
deepens well past dusk. looking
for the Dog Star rising serene
in the southeastern sky, i hear
the familiar hum of driverless cars
etching intersections as seam
and flux ‘round everything I see.
Ryōkan’s lines and fractal words
vest in me a kind of grace and longing,
pitched as they are in purity,
in my ear echoing none of the
ten thousand things of the world
but a plenitude of samādhi—
as an old, beloved story.
when I return, sometime later,
to my own three-mat hut, I think
of his lonely window in the mountains,
that view of the vastness outside—
and marvel at the mirror his mind’s
moon made, with its infinity inside.
then, for a moment,
just for a heart’s beat of time—
i am gone, to the far side
of bone and breath, gone.
[ P.S.: ...the phrase "the mirror his mind's moon made" was an emendation suggested by Claude in a conversation we had about the poem whilst still in pre-final draft form; my original phrase was a fair bit more prosaic. I immediately loved this suggestion, and implemented it.
The photo below is of 13 crows at Moscone Playground this mid-afternoon... ]
