Delivery Instructions

I often go missing—
find myself lost
and slightly confused.

But the familiar story
of lost and confused
is suffused with
unmeasured moments
of ease that come
tumbling one after
the other to rescue
me from my
self-ish duties.

The Judge, however,
routinely finds me
and charges me with
abandoning my post.
‘What about the
host of obligations?’
he says ‘Who will
take care of it all
while you are out
and about on another
aimless escapade?’

In spite of my self
I feel his point
and willfully relent
and grudgingly return
to bear the full weight
of my various
self-requirements.

But no sooner am I
back in the harness
than I am planning
my next escape.

It’s really so easy.
Wherever you are,
just stop. Stop
in the middle of any-
thing and the spell
is broken. The doors
come unhinged
of themselves and you,
you are the one
to step across
the well-worn threshold
into the world
of grass that grows
green by itself.

Cherry Tomatoes on the Porch

I grew cherry tomatoes in a pot on the porch this year, in the southeast corner, next to the nasturtiums. I had an extra plant and there wasn’t room in the garden. At first I staked it up, but after it got up to five feet, I tied it to the column. Since then it’s bent over with the weight of the carefully clustered fruit. For the past month, they have been sequentially ripening and I have been sequentially picking. It’s all quite convenient.

I like cherry tomatoes, the small red spheres that bring a burst of sweetness in the mouth. The fruit, and it is a fruit not a vegetable, sets itself in paired arrays of four or five. Tiny green peas are magically born from the yellow flowers. The peas swell to marble size before green turns to orange and, eventually, all goes red and ready to eat.

I’ll sometimes eat one in the morning just as the light comes up. Cool from the September night, it’s a little treat. I suppose I could eat a nasturtium blossom to go with the cherry tomato and have a truly ‘al fresco’ salad. But the nasturtiums are too peppery to eat alone and I’m not sure the combination would be good on an empty stomach.

My eyes water in the early morning. My tea is hot. The cars rush by on their important journeys. I’m becoming an old man—not so interested in rushing anymore. Happy to sit slowly on the dark porch and write about flowers and fruit. I pick my way through perception and memory trusting the words to find their own coherence and lead me somewhere I have never been.

I’m a writer of some sort, though I don’t know what sort I could be or what my point might be. One should always have a point. But I write small (and unfinished) essays and poems. Daily I write and send them out over public airways to a few friends, students and colleagues—or whoever else happens to find them. I fancy myself distant kin to the medieval wandering poets of Asia. The ones who didn’t seek fame and fortune but were content to brush their poems onto rocks and scrap pieces of paper.

But the only hermit poets we now know are the ones who had someone else to take over their public relations duties. Or the teachers like Hakuin who began all his writings with a disclaimer of how he was only doing this because his students were begging him and how he would rather remain silent. All the while, it turns out, he was writing letters to wealthy patrons to raise money for his next publication enterprise. A healthy ego, a large ego, it turns out is useful for publication and dissemination.

But not so much for happiness. Large ego, small ego is just one more thing to work with. More and bigger is rarely better. I read a study many years ago that claimed to have discovered the optimum number of lovers for happiness—turns out it was one. The cultural imperative for more and bigger and better is the endless trap. Well-published and best-selling authors are not happier than those of us that write in smaller ways. (Even if we do dream…)

The morning moon glitters through the dark leaves of a maple tree to the east. Light seeps in everywhere and seems intent on hiding the moon before it can rise to the open sky. The gurgle of water falling into the koi pond fills the sound space between cars. The rushing cars too sound, if you listen in the right way, like water—like waves rushing up on the beach and falling away. Everything comes as it is and I’m the one who says good or bad. This reminds me of that. That reminds me of this. Nothing is a thing alone.

If I stay very still, I can find my way right to where I am. And if I sense the faint scent that invades my nose, I can follow it right to where I am.

Journey Forward with Care

Buddha’s final words to his few remaining disciples (most had fled or denounced him as an inconsistent teacher) were ‘Journey forward with care.’ It wasn’t about being loyal or never forgetting. No promises extracted from them or pledged by him. Just ‘Journey forward with care.’

I imagine walking into a dark forest. With no moon everything is dark. Without me seeing, the trees wiggle their branches in silent greeting. The forest animals and insects know exactly who is here. I alone am blind. Without plan or destination. I simply find myself walking. Slowly. Slowly.

I am nearly overwhelmed by the weight of the darkness. I feel like falling to my knees in despair. But one more step. And then another. The terror passes and I keep moving. No destination is evident, only this boundless darkness.

Slowly, my feet learn to follow the path and the sounds of the night forest reflect shape and distance to my dim eyes. Shapes and sense appear even without light. Even as I learn the darkness, the faintest light reveals itself. My body eases into itself.

Morning comes and my feet follow the path that guides me. Now the world is bathed in light. The tall trees continue to preside over the dedicated inter-twinkling of the many forest beings. They sing and call to each other—sending favors and receiving gifts. Each one precisely related to each other.

And with each step I glimpse again my belonging. I am a tree that walks—the patterned insect with soft exoskeleton—the complex microbe who moves toward ease and away from discomfort. I am part of the darkness and the light. Lost and found are simply the unique weather patterns of my being.

‘Journey forward with care.’ I begin again to sense what this might mean.

Disturbed Again

Bird calls crackle the moist air. The dull roar of distant traffic seeps through the shelter of dark trees. The damp morning twilight is unbothered. I, however, am disturbed once again. Is it all louder in the morning or are my ears just more sensitive? These irresolvable quandaries of life. One poet says God disturbs us toward our destiny.

I can’t help myself from looking for the cracks in things—for those places where I can glimpse past the glossy surface—where I can get lost somewhere I have never been. The snotty nosed neighborhood of my mind gets too confining. The same opinions are repeated again and again—each time with full sincerity and accompanied with an imperceptible wink which indicates a willingness to collude. In this neighborhood we agree not to ask hard questions like: How does racial injustice help benefit me? Where does my coffee come from? What happens to the RoundUp after it kills the irksome weeds in my lovely brick walkway?  In this neighborhood we don’t look too far over the fence under shared agreement to pretend. Don’t look too closely.

In The Truman Show movie, Truman (True-man/Jim Carrey) slowly realizes that his life is actually a TV show where everyone else is in on the joke but him. Truman lived a charmed life with everything anyone could want, but it wasn’t enough. Just like us, whatever the surrounding luxury and good fortune, it’s never enough. The only way out for Carey was to sail into what he feared most and be willing to die for that ungraspable and life-giving truth beneath the surface.

So too for all of us. In this time of racial reckoning, evolving environmental disaster and an increasingly desperate authoritarian President, we have to look beyond our inherited beliefs and opinions. We have to look beyond our cozy lives of denial and fear. Into the heart of things.

We must. We must. Not out of kind-heartedness, though that may be part of it. But because there is no true freedom without leaving everything. There is no true rest until we have given everything away and head out beyond the familiar.

And there/here, waiting for us, is a life beyond measure. An authentic life is not for the faint of heart, but is available to everyone willing to set out. The necessity must be uncovered again and again. And then, only one step is required. Again and again.

Still Waiting

Days are shorter these days. Autumnal equinox is approaching and the sun travels noticeably lower in the sky. As the great blooming of summer comes to a conclusion, I feel my connection to the garden loosening and already I’m beginning to think about which seeds I want to start next March.

The fourteen morning glory seeds I planted in mid-May have created a lush screen of green on the north side of the pergola. While every small sprout that comes from a seemingly inert seed is a miracle, the height and the abundance of the morning glory foliage is astonishing. The heart shaped leaves, each the size of a human hand, have grown in abundance—launching out from every inch of twisting stem which keeps seeking support to rise. Hundreds and hundreds.

But my lush morning glories plants that twine delightfully on themselves and whatever is offered are empty of flowers. Each day when I water, I check for buds, the small conical pods that portend the azure trumpets that delight me so. But not one has appeared. And just yesterday, my helpful google photo app showed me some pictures of my morning glory plants from several years ago—covered with blooms. I suppose I should just appreciate the foliage, but….

I’m not a careful gardener. I’m an enthusiastic gardener. I don’t like to keep detailed records or work too hard to get things just right. This spring I did try to keep track of exactly when I planted my seeds, but even in that, I was rather sporadic. I much prefer to let the garden do the work. This serves me well on the enjoyment front, but I think I miss some of the subtleties of what is going on—like maybe why my morning glories aren’t blooming.

I admire detail people—people who take careful notes of what they do and learn the subtleties of the process they are involved in. I care about details, but only in the moment, then my wayward attention is taken by the next details. I want the immediacy of the thing itself—the touch, the smell, the shape. I care about the sense of the whole and how the particulars come together to create something more. It’s the something more I study and depend on. I want to be surprised. Purposefully vague in my intentions, I trust that what emerges will be better than any detailed plan I could draw up.

I try to watch and learn as I go. Of course I remember which plants are happy where. I have a sense how much sun falls where and whether it is the easy morning sunlight or the demanding afternoon blaze. I notice the naturally damp places and the drier spots. But I don’t remember and am not consistent in exactly what mix I use for my potted plants. Sometimes I mix compost and leaf mold with growing medium. Sometimes I use only growing medium. Sometimes one brand, and sometimes another. Fortunately, usually it doesn’t make any difference.

Mastering any creative art, like gardening or cooking, is partly about learning what differences make a difference. A recipe that calls for one cup of onions, will probably be fine with a quarter cup more or less. But a tablespoon of salt where a teaspoon is called for could be disastrous. Certainly each plant has its own preferences for water, soil and light. I have learned that some are flexible and some are fussy. I tend to prefer the flexible plants which are able to cope with the vagaries of my memory and the weather itself.

But with the annuals I grow from seed and buy each spring at the local nurseries, once something flourishes in a particular place, I repeat it again next year. Nasturtiums are always nestled between the three columns in the southeastern corner of the porch. (Though trailing nasturtiums are lovely in the garden itself, in this garden, the seedlings are quickly gobbled up by the bunnies that are not gobbled up themselves by the foxes who are not run over by the cars when crossing the street.)

For eleven years now, I have planted morning glory seeds in large rectangular planters that rest in hangers on the pergola behind the weeping cherry tree behind the Buddha. They always flourish and obediently climb the five strings I place for them to guide their way to the top. As the ratio of leaf surface to volume of soil in the container rises, I have learned to water them more and more. These days it’s a gallon of water in the morning for each planter and then an afternoon top off if the day is especially hot.

But still no blossoms. There’s been plenty of sun and I know they like the hot weather. They say that if the soil is too rich they won’t bloom, but I haven’t put any fertilizer on them all summer. They also say that God takes her own time.

So for now, I’ll practice appreciating the rising and tangled green cloud of leaves while I keep an expectant watch for signs of cerulean delight.