So Much

All morning I've felt it's too much. The cold beyond the blankets, the dark morning outside the window. The alarm clock's ring. Too much to open my eyes. Out of bed it was too much to boil water for coffee though the gas range does the work. No rubbing sticks or stirring the embers. No wood to carry in from the shed I don't own. Fill the kettle, turn the knob. It's so much. So much. Then the writing. My eyes darting toward the clock ticking down. Three pages, too much this morning. The snow in the driveway demanded shoveling. The shower demanded my presence. The hair on my face screamed for the razor. And then, walking to work, snow shifting with each step, I thought, this is too much. Lifting each boot, again and again, too much and too much. At work I sighed at the thought of plugging in the laptop. There were no tissues for my running nose and email was stacked higher than I could endure. My shoulders fell. I took a deep breath. Held it until it really was too much, then let it out and clicked on an email. The daily poem. David Kirby. "Poking Stuff With Sticks." Not too long, not too much. I read through to the end: "So much stuff out there, just waiting." I looked out the window at snow drifting down and felt my breathing in and out. So much stuff, I thought, but maybe I'm just enough.

Gods & Fire

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.

— Carl Dennis, The God Who Loves You
   

Perhaps the god who loves me resides within. For all I know, the god may be me. That's where gods begin. Like the dead who are gone until I bring them back, the heavens are empty until I populate them with the gods I create and come to believe. I begin with a pen, a sheet of white paper empty as the ether. The pen marks that emptiness, disrupts it, mars its clean surface. Each letter a star in the blank firmament, a soul remembered, a god written into the pantheon. The friction of nib on paper starts fires in a vacuum where it seemed nothing could ever burn. Pen strokes become letters become words become sentences become paragraphs. Constellations of ideas are born, tremendous things that move with impossible grace following mechanics of motion we largely fail to understand and attribute instead to the whims and desires of gods above who, come to think of it, are stories we've written under an empty sky growing so dark that soon I'll have to kindle some kind of fire to lights my way to the end of the story and keeps me from the fear of being all alone.

Chinese Poetry (a prose poem)

Billy Collins' poem "Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty, I pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of their Titles" has me wanting to read Chinese poems. It's a common desire, really. Most people I have seen today surely feel that same urge. The woman in running clothes waiting to cross the street was composing a poem about a river. That kid driving past the deadened lake, steering with his knee while lighting a cigarette, was writing of a stone bowl of rice in a fire. The fluttering scarf of the child standing at the edge of the road holding his mother's hand was itself a Chinese poem. Or maybe Japanese. I struggle to to tell them apart. Maybe I want both. Maybe we all need both and will know one from the other by the slant of the light, the soft force of the breeze, and the wings of the heron beating the water. Hey, that sounds like Chinese poetry, I say aloud. I look for someone to nod and agree, but I'm alone here with a desire. That desire, I would explain it, maybe write a poem about it, one with an extraordinarily long title about why and how this feeling has come to bloom inside me and spread like wildflowers or wildfire or maybe just yellow dandelions across what has been a frozen landscape, but of course everyone already knows, having felt the yearning for the Chinese poets and their translated words, having stood in the shade of their mountains and dipped their toes into the cool lake by which our huts all stand. Our doors are open. Inside each hut a Chinese poet sits drinking dark red wine from a tall green bottle and waving us inside.

Buddha Morning

“A thousand Buddhas populate this house. The Buddha of pepper. The Buddha of brooms. The chimney Buddha and the dustpan Buddha. While we are away the Buddha of bowties stands in front of the mirror and marvels at how handsome he can become. The landscape Buddha snips at the hedges with his scissors. The wildlife Buddha tends to the tranquility of birds. The Buddha of good tidings greets us upon our return and the Buddha of raincoats and galoshes assists us with our wraps. The Buddahs of yet unspecified destinies wait in the hallway. One will become the Buddha of smoothed over domestic squabbles. Another the Buddha of unrealized dreams. Each morning a thin, old Buddha rakes a pattern into the sand of the Zen garden. When he is finished he looks over his shoulder at me standing behind the picture window. He knows this should be enough to lead me to the end of the Great Path. If only I were ready. ”

— David Shumate, "Household Buddhas" in High Water Mark

This is about all I need in a poem. It may be pretty much all I need. It's like an incredibly well-tooled joke with a strong set-up complete with dustpan, bowties, and galoshes. Two thirds of the way through everything picks up pace just a touch and a thin, old Buddha materializes raking answers into the Zen garden. I look out and largely past, not yet able to see well. The joke leaves me smiling but also a little sad. It gets me to thinking.

I consider the thousand Buddhas in my own house. The Buddha of the ink bottle. The Buddha of the dictionary and calendar who does both jobs needing money to pay of his student loans. The Buddha of shaving admires his smooth skin continually touching his face with one hand gently, gently. Outside, the Buddha of dogs accepts the neighbor's untrained beast barking at every passerby and most cars, but looks strained from the lack of sleep. The Buddha of grey skies and rain holds the door open for the Buddha of first flurries. There is a Buddha of our porch lights who appears earlier every evening. The Buddha of desire sleeps in each of our beds with cold feet and sharp toenails. I would tell you about the Buddha of cats, but each cat is Buddha. We have no Zen garden to rake, but a young child Buddha sits at the kitchen table under the light holding a pencil in her hand. She writes a single word on a blank page. This is the whole story but I take it as a prompt and fill the rest of the page and two more with all my thinking. Though if you ask I can only just recall the word she wrote there and couldn't possibly pronounce it.