Last night when I was dozing off to sleep with a book in my hands, trying to read just one more line, get through at least five pages before giving over to sleep, I had this realization that I was feeling content. The whole day I had this feeling, though I had not named it. It was one of those days in L.A. where the morning haze never did burn off and it was that kind of overcast where no rain is going to happen but everything is muffled; colors, sounds, movements. I spent most of the day in the house, only went out in the afternoon to run to the pet store for dog food, the beauty shop to pick up some facial cleanser and Trader Joes for the macaroni and cheese I just had to have for dinner. I didn’t do anything special during the day, though everything I did felt special in some way or another. Even paying the bills or watching TV later on in the evening–taking in a few minutes of a Laker game and liking the look of the team this year, actually considering going to a game and cheering them on (which I haven’t felt since Magic & Kareem hung up their tennies).

It was elusive, really, where that contentment originated, but I think most likely it was a response to all the traveling I’ve done in the last few months and the appreciation deep in my bones, to being home, to being secure and comfortable–an appreciation for all that I have and not wanting to be anywhere else or with anyone else at that moment. Everything was just as it was supposed to be. I was just as I was supposed to be. It was sweet to drift off to sleep with these thoughts in my mind. I thanked the comforter on my bed, the green water glass on the nightstand, the carpet on the floor, pictures on the wall of my son and my teacher and the Golden Temple in India. It was all right. Perfect. In harmony. Ah, to be human in these moments is such a blessing and helps me understand the other side, those dark nights of the soul, so much more. They exist side by side. Just as there are dragons and goblins and mice that come into my life to shake lose what I hold onto and open me up to what I fear, there are those moments so soft and tender where no one is witness; those moments when life is poetry and poetry is all around, not in words but in essence, in vibration, in every cell and molecule in and around me.

********

Ten Thousand Flowers

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
this is the best season of your life.

Wu-Men

***

Why Log Truck Drivers Rise Earlier Than Students of Zen

In the high seat,
before-dawn dark,

Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging on Poorman Creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.

Gary Snyder

***

The Perfume of Flowers!…

The perfume
of flowers! A haw

drops such odour
it stops me

in the wall
of its fall. Love

arrests

Lime-trees
saturate

the night. We walk
in it

On a path jonquils
fill

the air. Love
is a scent.

Charles Olson

***

West Wall

In the unmade light I can see the world
as the leaves brighten I see the air
the shadows melt and the apricots appear
now that the branches vanish I see the apricots
from a thousand trees ripening in the air
they are ripening in the sun along the west wall
apricots beyond number are ripening in the daylight.

Whatever was there
I never saw those apricots swaying in the light
I might have stood in orchards forever
without beholding the day in the apricots
or knowing the ripeness of the lucid air
or touching the apricots in your skin
or tasting in your mouth the sun in the apricots.

W. S. Merwin

***

from
Vacillation

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

William Butler Yeats

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