I Open The Window

What I wanted
wasn’t to let in the wetness.
That can be mopped.

Nor the cold.
There are blankets.

What I wanted was
the siren, the thunder, the neighbor,
the fireworks, the dog’s bark.

Which of them didn’t matter?

Yes, this world is perfect,
all things as they are.

But I wanted
not to be
the one sleeping soundly, on a soft pillow,
clean sheets untroubled,
dreaming there still might be time,

while this everywhere crying

♦

From The Asking: New and Selected Poems by Jane Hirshfield (Penguin Random House, 2023).

In Tibet it is said that when

the sunlight comes in

from outdoors, touching the wood

on your floor: it is holy.

♦

From Love Poems in Quarantine. © 2022. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company,  LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Deer Park

No one seen. Among empty mountains,
hints of drifting voice, faint, no more.

Entering these deep woods, late sunlight
flares on green moss again, and rises.

♦

From The Way of Ch’an: Essential Texts of the Original Tradition. Edited and translated by David Hinton © 2023. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boulder, CO.

When They Plow Their Fields

When they plow their fields
and sow seeds in the earth,
when they care for their wives and children,

young brahmans find riches.

But I’ve done everything right
and followed the rule of my teacher.

I’m not lazy or proud.
Why haven’t I found peace?

Bathing my feet
I watched the bathwater
spill down the slope.
I concentrated my mind
the way you train a good horse.

Then I took a lamp
and went into my cell,

checked the bed,
and sat down on it.
I took a needle
and pushed the wick down.

When the lamp went out
my mind was freed.

By Patacara, India, 6th century. Translated by Susan Murcott

♦  

From First Buddhist Women: Poems and Stories of Awakening by Susan Murcott, Parallax Press 1991, 2006.

Sanctuary

Suppose it’s easy to slip
into another’s green skin,
bury yourself in leaves

and wait for a breaking,
a breaking open, a breaking
out. I have, before, been

tricked into believing
I could be both an I
and the world. The great eye

of the world is both gaze
and gloss. To be swallowed
by being seen. A dream.

To be made whole
by being not a witness,
but witnessed.

Give Me This

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving, all muscle and bristle: a groundhog
slippery and waddle-thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog more closely and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

♦

From The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Ada Limón. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions. 

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

—Gary Snyder

♦

Excerpted from Turtle Island, copyright ©1974 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. 

Sandbars free of overnight clouds

village walls lit by the morning sun

a pristine pond encircled by trees

last night’s rain scattered by the wind

happy having nothing to do

my mind becomes one with all this

♦

From Written in Exile: The Poetry of Liu Tsung-yuan, translated by Red Pine. Copyright © 2019 by Red Pine. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

Under dark pines
all is the color
of falling snow
the mountain path
already swathed in whiteness

♦

From Gazing at the Moon: Buddhist Poems of Solitude by Saigyo, translated by Meredith McKinney © 2021. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications.

each time
the monk passes autumn
his Buddhist robe
is drier than a yellow leaf

♦

Tran Le Khanh, “journey to emptiness” from The Beginning of Water, trans. by Tran Le Khanh and Bruce Weigl. Copyright © 2021 by Tran Le Khanh. Translation copyright © 2021 by Bruce Weigl and Tran Le Khanh. Reprinted with permission of White Pine Press.