COMPOST©

SPRING CLEANING

WHILE CHOPPING ONIONS

perhaps a mind clearance sale?

like at Santa Clara Library

when the shelves get too crowded

my skull is as big as it will ever get

more and more stuff piles in

getting reformulated all the time

the accumulation is exponential

new insights displace predecessors

jumbled treasures are scattered on a table

needing a decent cremation

perhaps a eulogy

a period of mourning

gargoyles in mute patina

as with many an antiquity

are buffalo nickels for collectors

edible chrysanthemums

a dance of dragon flies

new year's shimmering body in brilliant reds, yellow passion

so tremulous the replacement

spring creek blossoms

held for a time by surface tension

so delicately floating

NEITHER BEG NOR DIFFER

IN DAYS OF YORE FOR SKEENING

I thought a lack of education

or at least a deficit of reading

was the relative muteness

of my meaning

until realizing that language, meant for something else

is a vehicle ill equipped for transcending itself

since skeening it

the way, of necessity, is clear

no use arguing over the merits of traditional terms

a new one beseems

or two

slithey toes and the bandersnatch notwithstanding

skeening skips and plays on sunny days

in storms darkened with thunder

and feels at home on a young bird's wings

starting her nest in the ears of budding spring

ENDLESS VOYAGE

it's a change not well understood

there is no transformation

just a shuffling of deck chairs

visited by bug eyed vessels

the last step trips off the edge of the world

as though our planet was the last word

tube worms are the last word

depths of sea besiege any usual reckoning

limits of mortality entombed

dying and being replenished

through an arc of ages

tube worms are before words

begonias in full bloom

babies screaming

a skeening of days

babies are memories reborn

sagas that eventually find words

and craft vessels for a voyage

to places unknown

THE GOAL

the ordinary events of civilization

are summed by individual lives

that come and go

origins forgotten

so that each asks another

from whence and so

it seems that we should ask each other

as though it might be remembered

whether it was a carrot or a stick

when in fact the notion is revised by daily discoveries

eddies and tide pools notwithstanding

the tide of everyday experience

carries everyone

as the vast universe lives all

not asking anyone

COMPOST

the Buddha is compost

temples, golden statues, throngs of worshippers

compost all

including me

we all have Buddha nature

everything that is

was

something else

nothing stands still

how marvelous the smoke of many fires

gathered in living flesh

we share each other beyond memory

birds in the trees

frogs in their ponds

plop!

the very water of our flesh

is our mother

necessary for decomposition

basis of endless lives

this life

with its suffering released

in compost