No Need to Panic

Sometimes meaning slips away
without prior arrangement and
I am left exposed once again.

The tattered clothes of habit
refuse to cover the nakedness
of my inner darker confusions.

Left alone to my own devices,
without access to the familiar
landscape of routine, my constructed

world reveals itself insubstantial.
I want to run for the hills or dash
for the door or cry for help—

but the terrain is jumbled
and my voice has already fled.
I am not very brave. I am prone

to faint at the sight of syringes
and blood. I have very little tolerance
for pain and always ask for extra Novocain

at the dentist’s office. But I’ve been
here before and I remember a thing
or two. So I lay low and give up hope

of anything else. Tossed and swirled by
my fears and sure that no good will ever re-emerge,
I go along for the ride as best I can. Only this.

Only this now. Maybe breathing is
the only true work we can ever know.
Maybe there is no need to panic.

Time With an Old Friend

Having run out of options,
I give myself permission
to be tired and unuseful.

I surrender to the brown
couch and repeatedly read
the many versions of Mary Oliver’s
one poem of appreciation.

I dreamily wonder if life
could possibly be
made as she claims—
for such easy delight.

If so, what about
the fierce intention that
brought these lovely
poems into the world?

Smiling at my
relentless complaint,
I dog-ear the best
for future remembering.

Snowy Considerations

Tuesday morning. The storm has mostly blown through. In the early darkness a few neighborhood snowblowers begin their happily ferocious roar. The snowplows that have been scraping the streets all night are quiet for the moment and the accumulation of the past 18 hours has ceased. The wind continues, but the worst/best is past. I sip my morning tea and appreciate the warmth of my laptop on my lap as I tap away on the black keys—writing and preparing for meditation, breakfast and then a morning of snow removal.

I did go out briefly last night around eight to have a small adventure and to perhaps do some initial clearing. By that time about eight inches had fallen. I easily cleared the backstairs—the snow was light and fluffy. I then wandered across the wind-swept parking like an arctic explorer treading over vast white expanses. At the street, I paused to assess the situation and to make my official-snow-removal-guy assessment. There’s a certain self-importance that comes with these practical jobs. Perhaps it is our innate desire to be useful or perhaps it’s that so much of what we do is hard to measure and snow removal is a job with a clear and satisfying end-point. With the strong winds and the continuing-through-the-night forecast, I decided to ‘keep my powder dry’ and wait till the morning.

Snow removal in New England is an art and a science. Shovel too early and you waste valuable energy and time. Wait too long and the drifts get soggy or frozen or simply too high to penetrate. The solution for the city snowplows is simply to go through the night. Worcester (unofficial snow-capital of Massachusetts) owns a fleet of snow removal vehicles driven by city workers and also relies on a militia of independent drivers, guys (there must be some women who are in the business, but I have yet to see one) with pick-up trucks and snowplows, to clear the miles of city streets.

It’s been a quiet winter for these snowplow drivers. It’s a seasonal business with no guarantee of steady or even adequate income. You’ve got to be willing to go out at all hours and keep going. To be able to stay in the business, you’ve need enough regular customers that you maximize your income but few enough that you can get to them all in a timely manner. A delicate balance.

But I’m just an amateur and have the luxury of waiting till later. I looked out the back door when I got up at 5:30. I was pleased to see that the small shoveling I did on the back stairs was completely filled in with the wind and the overnight snow. This validated my decision to wait and also meant the temperatures had not risen to the wet-heavy-snow range so the shoveling and the blowing later on this morning should not be too difficult.

I am happy to have these considerations. I am blessed to have the (new!) snow-blower and the physical constitution to still be able to perform this necessary winter ritual. So after I finish my tea and after meditation and after breakfast, I will gear up and tromp out to fulfill my important responsibilities. Such is the shape of the good life this morning.

100% Snowfall

The storm has begun. Up from DC, Baltimore and NYC; the snow has begun to fall. The latest predictions call for 9 to 15 inches before it passes out to sea tomorrow morning. A white day. A snowy day. Memories arise of assembling a pile of books and some hot chocolate along with a blanket and a young daughter to sit by the sliding doors to the porch and watch the snow fall. We were safely snuggled and inspired by the water-color pictures of Miss Rumphius planting her blue, purple and pink lupine as we watched the porch slowly disappear under fluffy mounds. Over a quarter century later, I am still warmed and delighted by that one white morning.

Now having another young friend who’s almost two, I’m amazed again at the life-giving properties of very young people. As a child, I was sure that I was just waiting to become an adult for real life to begin. I thought being a child meant being only a partial being—someone who was limited by physical, emotional and mental immaturity. But now that I’m nearing the end of my 7^th decade on this planet, I’m much more aware of the equality of it all.

Of course there is little and big, young and old, strong and weak, more able and less able. But looming much larger is the beingness of it all and some mysterious exact intertwinkling necessity of each and all. As living beings, we are always limited, dependent and contingent. Even a person at the ‘height of their powers’ cannot jump over tall buildings nor survive without food and shelter, nor exist except within the interactive support of sun, earth, water, plants, stars, stray dogs and mosquitoes. Limitation is not a limitation, it is life itself.

In some ungraspable way, we are, each one of us, a part of it all—perfectly arising beyond our intentions and plans, perfectly manifesting ourselves in each moment, and perfectly passing away at some appointed and unknown time. In each moment, from our first breath to our last (and I have had the privilege to be present with others both in the arriving and the departing) we are 100% full of life. 100% living into the circumstances of our life. Even resisting and complaining and wishing it were otherwise is 100% too. Beyond measure.

Yesterday I walked with a friend beside a partially frozen river yesterday where geese swam easily in the water that would quickly kill either one of us. We, for our part, did our best to resolve the great issues of life-and-death, meaning-and-purpose, red-and-blue. We didn’t get very far, but we did arrive at the realization that measuring is irrelevant to the most important things in life. While there are innumerable and fierce measures that are pressed upon us from the earliest ages, many of which become an unthinking part of our constant self-evaluations—none of them can measure life, nor tell us what we should do.

Buddha spoke of the eight worldly winds: prosperity, decline, disgrace, honor, praise, censure, suffering, and pleasure. We are all subject to these dynamic, erratic and unavoidable conditions. His teaching was that it is our attachment or aversion to the coming and going of these conditions that causes our suffering. Prosperity comes and we feel good. Decline comes and we feel bad. When we allow ourselves to participate in whatever condition arises, we can appreciate the fullness of our unlimited conditional lives.

So I appreciate the perfect ‘help’ of my two-year-old friend when we wash the dishes together and am honored to help him change his soaking shirt after we tire of our chores. He is 100% full of life though he does sometimes seem to leave me at about 30% as I do my best to keep up with him. Nothing lacking on either side. Exhaustion is 100%. Squealing and jumping up and down is 100%.

As the snow falls today, the little ones of past and present are here with me. We are all playing and working and struggling and delighting as best we can. May we all today appreciate the whole miraculous catastrophe of our 100% life—in whatever form it may appear.

On the Frozen Lake

When the mass of doubt is shattered amidst all the particulars, one thing covers the blue sky. (Taego Bowu 14th century Korean Zen Master)

On the frozen lake,
snow sparkles and
crunches under our feet.

Four old friends still
out walking on ice
under the vast azure dome.