Laura M Kaminski Verse-Virtual 2018 January

January 2018

I offer this poem in memory of Joseph Lisowski, now with us only in spirit, a friend I met through the Verse-Virtual community, a poet whose words inspired and continue to inspire me. This poem is from The Heretic’s Hymnal: 99 New and Selected Poems, forthcoming from Babylon Books / Balkan Press in 2018.

Considering "Natural Perfection"
response to a poem by Joseph Lisowski (may he rest in perfect peace)

"The Tao that can be told of / is not the Absolute Tao."
- opening lines of Lao Tzu's TAO TE CHING, (translated by Lin Yutang)

The blue heron is still –
still there,
still standing motionless
and silent.

I, too, have tried to be
like this,
to be the embodiment of
serenity –

have tried to practice
a zen-like
detachment from everything
that stirs

up the the waters within
me, agitates
and clouds them, makes
them murky.

At night, when I'm in bed
I curl up
one leg, place a foot upon
a knee,

close my eyes and try to see,
to practice,
to learn by doing how
it's done.

Last night, I tried again
to let
the bedroom slip away, become
the pond,

let the sheet draped over
my body
begin to feel like cool,
still water –

and then, for just a moment,
it happened:
I became the heron, motionless
quietly staring

at the surface of the water
and beyond –
I looked down from beneath the wide
black stripe

above my eye, I looked through
my own
golden iris, I was intent upon
the surface

of a rock, submerged, half-covered
with mud
and the shiny-slick green slime
of algae

and I watched the rock and waited
to see
if I, with practice, could learn
to mimic

its zen-like detachment from everything
that stirs
up the waters, agitates and makes
them murky.