Zazen
morning Zen
I would be a pear
on her mat
Contemplative poems
Contemplative poems — a collection of the best works on PoemShip.
Self-made man
eloquent lives I fear:
the door to a college
the herring poor
my father’s buckle
Orison
morning, put me in order
like the afternoon
or a letter home
Mining region
in the heart of the country
we expect no ambassador
coming here is coming home to ore
and the ordinary feast
I am put in mind of a marsh with all
the all they name nothing in it
Quietist
having been the barking dog
that could not sleep
I believe as well as a bell
in the discourse of snow
Living art
the painter went home
and saw paint
his night is my night
an art I ought to be
A Wryness from the Old Wives
Click, clack says my walking stick,
& the soft buzz of a rattlesnake
shivers from the rock.
You go for water & bring back a strange new lover:
that’s how it is in the tales the old wives
used to roll between their palms.
One long noodle of clay made a bowl, a mirror
you could drink from. Coiling or uncoiling,
something always gets loose.
Risk assessment
the rich fear too great a liberty
hands singing in the fields
without calling God
to make a new ground
without the price of order
bound up in a book
Jing Ting Mountain
painting the peak like a peak
some sage for the bedside
how to have that peak
now making up the plain
I will tell my heart
to change lodgings
Hunting ground
I go out hunting
from an urge to see
though never to lie in a field
in idleness is almost
to miss the truth of the place
in the guise of quiet
Traveler
who ever had less
than the same innocence
as the wise?
she keeps house
where the day rooms
out in the bare-legged corn
Division
where day and night parted
I receive my legacy of oughts
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