While I travel the world’s
geography, history,
and virtual present,
in mind and poetry—
a September reality
knocks, constant
as a wound-up alarm clock,
startling me from work,
leisure, and sleep equally,
as if to remind me of the world
my body lives in, regardless
of metaphysical distractions—
the house over-spread
by the massive oak,
whose acorns slingshot
deck, and shotgun metal roof,
like Tolkein’s angry Ents,
while the rest thud softly
onto lawn, as arrows into flesh.
Do I mistake as warfare,
an offered harvest
I thought belonged
to squirrels and chipmunks?
Should I contest
rodents’ rights,
eye-to-avaricious-eye
on weeping sod,
snatch their manna
by the bushel,
cook up a way—
pan-seared or baked in cake—
to make acorns appetizing?
Am I meant to mind
the oak’s business,
instead of what I thought
was mine, install
a nanny-cam to better spy?
Do I need to be outside,
attentively breathing
autumn air, and drinking
Chardonnay light,
like a Buddhist Bacchus,
walking barefoot
on cool, dewy grass—
and bruising woody knobs,
to avert being unwittingly
slain in the spirit?
Shall I ask the oak
to favor me,
with a direct hit
on my foggy noggin,
to wake me
to the present present?
The Beyond
To all the experiences
I will not have had
in corporal form—
parasailing, storm chasing,
space flight, ejaculating—
rest ye all in peace.
I will be giddy to have gone
beyond laundry, taxes, Tweets,
hangnails and corporate corruption,
police states, corpulent anxiety,
corporal punishment—
and even past my corpus,
which will not delve as deep
as one pollinating bee,
nor comfort me,
as one spoken word
from my mother would—
nor be as brilliant
as even the smallest waterfall.
I will, I hope, have gone
beyond my corpse,
but no one who knows
is talking, and that is
as it should be.
- The Knock-Knock Bardo & The Beyond - April 12, 2019
