The interior of a celadon cup
Reveals a tea-stained fracture.
The exterior of a hand
Displays a finely-wrinkled web.
Do not disdain either
Or consider these as flawed.
Each holds unique beauty,
Testimony to time’s passage.
Recognize their value
And hold them dear.
Open eyes, open heart.
A sip of tea in the morning.
A stain on the fabric of the chair.
The first, it brings a sense of relief.
I no longer hold my breath in tensed anticipation,
No longer wonder, “when will it happen, and how?”
This marks it officially used, officially mine.
I can quit being so damned careful and relax.
I can sit and think and eat and drink,
A worn person resting in a smirched chair.
We fit each other now.
I would like to say I’m waiting.
Expectant, open to the new day.
Open like the door through which I stepped
Early to check the morning sky.
Open like that very sky,
Accepting every color of cloud.
But I am not.
I sit inside in a darkened room
Watching the letters of every word
Blur into meaningless squiggles.
They are not that, and I know
You would gladly read them aloud to me,
But your voice would become the message,
And the story lost still.
I have given up hope for the moment,
Letting the door stay shut in the silence.
Silence that fills the air.
Silence that hangs in hushed abeyance.
Silence that carries its own sense of longing.
I close the book and leave the room.
I’m not excited about your arrival.
I’m not.
(The world is poised in anticipation,
Breath held, one hand slightly extended with a tremor.)
I don’t care how I look.
I don’t.
(The trees have rearranged their leaves multiple times,
Dropping the yellow, one leg swinging forward to showcase ripped jeans .)
I don’t wonder about my voice.
I don’t.
(The birds exchange songs back and forth,
Deciding on a warble, one hello deepens in tone.)
This is just a date. I’m not bothered at all.
(Please let her like me like I like her.)
Sometimes (ofttimes) I want to be finished with this life.
The wearisome minutiae of the body demanding attention,
Insistent muttering claims that needs must be addressed over and over and over.
I answer these as best I can.
I do so in full knowledge that these efforts are but a slight delay.
Everyone crumbles in the end and flees their particular carapace.
Mine was not well constructed or comfortable or nice,
A hasty and ill-conceived effort from the beginning.
Like all fleshy dominions, it has pride of being and the illusion of remaining.
I want to shrug it off and move on to whatever comes next,
Sick of being sick, and harried by the futility involved.
Let me be done and close my eyes.
(In my worst moments I fear doing just that.
Only to find on awakening that I’m once again here.
And here. And here. And here. A cicada who lives on,
Dying forever.)
Still, suffering mind. Breathe and know you’re breathing.
Let the beads slip with that rhythm through your fingers.
Om mani peme hung. Om mani peme hung. Om mani peme hung.
Scientists discover the shape of a lithium atom:
In the absence of corrosion, the crystalline structure
Is that of a rhombic duodecahedron.
The die used in Dungeons and Dragons, also a particular 12-sided throw.
So perhaps the universe does provide a gamble.
Should I chance this?
Or will I find that rather than the orderly form,
I’ve thrown instead metallic bones with spiky filaments
That ultimately produce an explosion.
No good result there.
I am no scientist, merely a wordsmith.
I’d better not tinker with that sort of risk.
Words alone can be tricky enough,
Sometimes becoming spark to a fire that burns uncontrolled.
Then I stand bewildered
In the midst of an unintentional conflagration.
No sleep this early morning. I rest in corpse pose.
The salt from my tears, the salt from my sweat
Has become the salt in the water of the sea.
Waves collide in tumult under a bone-white moon.
I sink beneath them into the depths of subtle mind.
Down, down, down into the emptiness,
Losing self in the interconnectedness of it all.
The world breathes into the Challenger Deep.
The atmospheric circulation, the sigh and gasp of existence,
Moves through the body as a dream of life.
Opening my eyes, I taste salt on my lips.
Throughout the day I catch the linger of the currents
And shiver from the thermohaline flow.
Gravity changes according to mass.
Will an ancient heart, burdened by woe, drift faster
Than a feathered laugh?
What hidden weight calls forth tears to flow
More heavily than a midnight’s rain?
If griefs collide like tectonic plates,
Do they join in mountainous uplift?
What unseen anomalies can change despair’s descent?
What will catch the fall of sorrow?
Walk with these and look behind,
To judge how deep footsteps go,
Then make them lighter, lighter, lighter still.
Today becomes tomorrow.
The tea growing cold on the table.
The book lying open on the chair.
The ceiling fan whirring the air.
The door hanging half-ajar.
I have gone now,
Walked over the sill without a backwards glance.
Everything is as it was.
All could seem like a dream,
These grey skies, this pouring rain, this sodden earth.
But it does not, for these are real as anything.
What does this mean that these exist,
Measured against the need to say farewell?
Sorrow and joy have equal weight;
Turn one over to find the other.
As I look down the length of my days past,
I do not mourn.
The clouds have always been beautiful;
Tears matter no more than any other water;
The dirt accepts us without regard.
If I have forgotten to thank you or you or you,
Let these words suffice as time runs out.
I am so very grateful.