Another Night of Dark Soul, Three in the Morning

Last thing of a night, reminder to awake and sit za-zen.
The master is in town, bamboo in hand. Say nothing
you know or don’t know, disappear into your body,
but welcome him to this house with bay windows
not in San Francisco. Next thing, share morning tea,
slow calm setting over the brow, frost on one window,
sun through the other, I have run out of words. What do
they do? Nothing can come true through words only,
Words, like tongues, grow quiet and, with a body, leave,
one cat following another, back and forth, my itinerary
in precis. After the master goes, I hear echoing
on out where the scar heals a reprisal to blows.

In Japan a bridge leads through the house across the floor,
eyes aligned with eyes, one way to love, a line across rocks
to the lagoon where I have never forgotten the way. I am
nowhere now that the no-mind is up for auction in the West.
Here the noumenal world takes its course through no aid
of mine, I have so little to give abstraction. Or that is all . . .
They say the storms assaulting Kyoto leave temples unfazed.
I have heard the lash of wind carries the words of the dead.

(3–4 a.m., 17 December 2010)

copyright 2010 by Floyce Alexander