The suffix in «Zennish» does quiet work. Add "-ish" to a word and you shrink your claim: greenish isn't green, tallish isn't tall. The speaker is not announcing enlightenment, only something in its neighbourhood. The poem that follows is about an afternoon spent alone, with a glass of wine and a gentle refusal to turn the experience into a spiritual achievement. Its central idea is that contentment is spoiled by being named and pursued. The moment someone tries to be Zen, a third party has entered the room.
The first couplet sets the scene in four words and six more. "Alone together" is a paradox we normally apply to couples, to people who share a space and a silence. Here the companion is "the afternoon," a stretch of time promoted to a friend. The grammar adds to the effect. "The afternoon and I" puts the speaker in the subject position, as an equal partner and not an owner of the day. The vowels are slow and rounded: *alone*, *together*, *afternoon*. You can almost hear the hours loosen as you read them.
Then comes the turn, signalled by the small word "but." "My Zen comes with wine" borrows the language of menus, where a main course "comes with" a side. Zen is reduced to part of a package, and the joke is gentle. It may be that wine is how this speaker's calm arrives, or that the calm is merely an extra the evening throws in. Either way, the grand tradition is treated as something domestic and slightly tipsy. The last line then dismisses it: Zen "is sent home on foot." Sending someone home is what you do with a guest who has stayed long enough, or with a child who has misbehaved. "On foot" makes the dismissal more humble still. No taxi is called and no ceremony is made. It also happens to be the sensible way for a wine drinker to travel, so the line has a second, wry layer of responsibility.
The poem leaves the reason for the dismissal open, and that ambiguity is where it gets interesting. Perhaps Zen is sent away because it intrudes on the pleasure of simply being with the afternoon. Perhaps it has done its job and can leave. The first couplet's "alone together" then reads as the result: once Zen has gone, only two companions remain, the speaker and the day. Judging by the tone, the speaker would rather have the plain company of the afternoon than the philosophy built around it.
The construction is neat without being fussy. Each line is short, and the syllables run five, six, five, six, so the couplets echo each other without locking into a strict pattern. There is no end rhyme, but there are sound-links across the lines: "Zen" is answered by "sent," "alone" by "home," and "I" by "wine." The poem is also stripped of punctuation and capital letters, apart from two words. Those two are "I" and "Zen," the self and the philosophy, and the first sends the second packing. Everything else is lowercase and unpunctuated, so the whole thing reads like one relaxed breath, an offhand remark and not a pronouncement. That casualness suits a poem about not trying too hard.
Its significance lies in how much it manages in so little space. The brevity recalls haiku, and the subject recalls Zen's own love of the plain and the everyday, though the poem keeps both at a wry distance and never poses as either. It deflates reverence without mocking the thing revered. There is a final irony too. A speaker who can send Zen home on foot, without fuss, is perhaps behaving more in the spirit of Zen than someone who clutches at it. The poem is too modest to say so, and that modesty is what the "-ish" in the title admitted from the start.