Life Is

Relentless. I think

of my infant daughter

named for a towering tree

and an immortal goddess,

with the usual persistent

refusal to accept what is

as is, without

imagining the impossible,

which is what

I like about us,

and I know her hunger

is every hunger

her freshness is

every beautiful new thing--

she wants she wants

she cries she smiles

already blazing with whole life

alive with desire to be alive,

and yet we are not

that hunger itself,

we human awarenesses,

whatever nothings we are

we are the soul

that is awareness

beyond, even if

also less, than all.

The Mystery

It's not really.

We know this world;

we understand

the main rules.

If you're born

you have to eat,

you have to eat

something that was alive

and then you have

to die yourself.

Simple rules,

we just don't like them.

The fields are gray,

the mountains white

today in midwinter,

and tomorrow will be spring,

and life will be hungry

again and again.

Mindful of Mindless

Ah, our mindless meditator

keeps slipping away from the moment

from the present, from the now,

from what is, from loving what is,

the way he used to slip his pew.

What can we do, what can he do

if he won't stay mindful? Not

a bad boy, really, maybe not,

but ripe for meditation and prayer

right? Only not his own.

The Given

The problem that does

not admit of any

solution is not

a problem. That damn

thing is a given.

Another Long Pause

That. That was it. That was

reality. I almost missed it.

But I remembered it

from childhood--peculiar

not-quite boredom,

not-quite melancholy,

stillness, almost

satisfaction, the underneath

of being human

doing human things,

when the not human

world rises, floating,

into uncertain

becalmed awareness,

be it a blue sky

outside, dusty sun

inside, the lack

of voices or music,

everything nothing

doing, a crack in the floor,

a long pause before

another long pause--

that. That was it.

That was reality.

Tiny Prayer to My Daughter Sequoia, Seven Weeks Old This Morning

Oh child, oh infant

if only you slept well

you would be happiness

personified. You, my joy,

are the most fascinating

child on Earth, I swear

and yet you can scream

oh you can scream

an extraordinary ascending

rupture in the night

sufficient to scare

the local mountain lion,

to send the desert foxes

back into their dens trembling,

to give the coyotes pause

and to silence the cry of the peacocks,

yes, a beautiful, powerful

arbitrary, murderous

hollering bellow to horrify

a horror movie itself into silence.

I'm so proud. I'm so impressed.

Please don't do it again.

Try

Behold this spiral

in her hair, regard

those spiral branchings

in that tree, observe

that spiral made of

stars and promise not

to link them, promise

yourself to let them

be, to signify

nothing, let them mean

wonderful nothing,

nothing, the only

real world miracle

that cups everything

in its emptiness

dour only to us,

we few somethings who

remain the bridges

between manifest

spirals and unreal

labyrinths. Believe!

Believe, have faith, trust

in nothing itself,

wonderful wreckage.

Trying costs us nothing.