The Zen Of Mike
Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed. Lao Tzu
We surround ourselves with the familiar,
the comforting objects of our lived lives.
An Emu egg, old paratrooper wings, pictures
of children grown and gone, a crystal
picked up in Tennessee, a tattered sweatshirt:
markers and talismans evoking past memories.
But when you wake up and drag your tired ass
to the cushion and sit down to breathe,
the day is always a new, empty, promising void.
You settle down and begin for the first time,
though you have done this for fifty years,
alone with the something that is no thing.
Snow outside falls on the gelid, eternal earth.
Failure, success, loss, pain, and gain
depart as your monkey mind stops chattering.
You become an empty slate of no self,
an old man sitting on a thin pillow
whose body wants to be anywhere else,
vulnerable as a lone wren in flight,
uninhabited as the night sky above,
flowing like a river in unseen banks,
a who who is not even a who, upon
an earth that does not need you to turn.
Life is not long, life is not short.
it has no beginning, knows no ending,
boundless, complete, joyous, beyond time.
The day is stacked against who
you imagined yourself to be.
What is proceeds without need of your notice,
acting without doing, working without effort,
the only universe that is, perfect in itself,
where you sit like a dog expecting nothing,
one still point among many turning galaxies.
If you like this piece, and can afford it, please consider donating.
I no longer place poems in the Medium Partner Program. If you like my work, this is how you can show it.
