Wednesday Poem

Cratershan ……… 15 August

When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.

…… orange juice is what she asked for
………. bright chrome restaurant, 2 a.m.
…… the rest of us drinking coffee
…… but the man bought orange pop.      haw!

late night, the eyes tired, the teapot empty, the tobacco damp.

Almost had it last night: no identity. One thinks, “I emerged
from some general, non-differentiated thing. I return to it.” One
has in reality never left it; there is no return.
………………………………. my language fades. Images of erosion.

“That which includes all change never changes; without change
time is meaningless; without time, space is destroyed.   Thus we
arrive at the void.”

………………………… ~~~~~~~

“If a Bodhisattva retains the thought of an ego, a person, a
being, or a soul, he is no more a Bodhisattva.”

…… You be Bosatsu,
…… I’ll be the taxi driver
…… Driving you home

The curious multi-stratified metamorphic rock. Blue and white,
clouds reaching out. To survive a winter here you learn to browse
and live in holes in the rocks under snow.
Sabi: One does not have a great deal to give.  That which one
does give has been polished and perfected into a spontaneous
emptiness; sterility made creative, it has no pretensions, and
encompasses everything.

…………………………………………………………. Zen view, o.k. ?

by Gary Snyder
from Earth House Hold, Lookout’s Journal
New Directions Books, 1969