Zenfandel


If I could just get an eye up
to that peep-hole in the sky.
It’s only the usual moon, now
full at winter dusk, its surface

a gliding onion-skin disk, its
bad complexion as pale blue
as the fading prim scrim of sky.  
But it’s teasing me as I chase it

amidst bare branches boxing
the road we drive to dinner, to
chai and sushi somewhere new.
What’s through to the other side?

I’d like a flight of enlightened
tour guides waiting to whisk me
weird-city-ward or into the mouth
of months of liberated afternoons,

ho-hum evenings opened anew. I’m
hoping the piano praying on the radio— 
the roadside weeds keening from our
reeling wheels—means to mirror

a latent and proliferating lunacy.
The feeling is fleeting, the fanning
heat just a hush-hush entourage,
but when I find myself seated

at our sizzling skillet of a table,
a waiter bearing the sweating wine,
the neon fish, some sage surprise,
a school of wry Buddhas riffles by.





Beyond Compliance, Beyond Resistance
When asked once who his greatest spiritual teacher had been the Dalai Lama responded, “China.”

The cat’s reactions to my fingers’
scratching, remind me I’m often
automatic: twitching skin of each
thank-you-very-much, arched back
of jockeying for a slender compliment,
submissive flop-and-grovel of every
please, please, please. But then

that prance of defiance across
invisible piano wire spanning
table to out-of-bounds countertop
to stove controls, my dainty paws,
claws approximately withdrawn,
picking out the touch-pad tune of
bake, broil, clean, clock, and cancel.

Lately I’ve been working on my
up-and-walk-away, my saunter
and dusty-sandal forefoot flick,
my vertical tail-like-a-flag of
nonchalance—which I plan to plant
somewhere pacifistic, somewhere
beyond this rage against my own Beijing.





Now


Once upon a then not long ago
enough the nows became
delicious, and every other then
took on its flat feel of “My,
how I have wasted….”  Yes,

yes, you are who you are
because of blah, blah, blah--
all that dullness, too, that
boredom.  But now you can love
the nows, love those who

show you, look forward
to a better later, even risk missing
this now or the next.  Today’s
faint sun struggles to cast
yesterday’s delicate warmth

but because it is now--
here’s its half-fazing glow
through filtering clouds
and its more mottled effect
on water and the water’s still

steady sound and this alighting
bird who fans the translucent
arc of her tail feathers
through which you can see
the occasion you call now.