Mirrors
The vast blueness
of a cloudless sky
rests
in the unmoving water
of a mountain tarn
Guanyin
A bubble
on a rushing stream
flows through the empty room:
The room is Guanyin’s.
In it
there is a place for everybody.
It is not far.
You can get there.
If you can sprint 100 yards in 9.85 seconds, you can get there.
If you can run a marathon in under 3 hours, you can get there.
You can get there running, jumping, hopping, skipping and tumbling.
You can drive your Chevy,
or your Mercedes Benz,
even your Harley.
You can reach it crawling.
You can be carried in your mother’s arms or on your father’s back.
If you are old
and your knees hurt
and your back aches,
and you walk v e r y s l o w l y,
you can get there.
You can bring your black cat with the white spot on her chest,
your collie-shepherd mix-breed pooch,
your pony, your gerbils, and your cockatiel too.
You can get there in a wheel chair.
You can get there on crutches.
If you have no arms and no legs,
you can still reach it.
You can reach it walking beside the river,
holding your lover’s hand.
You can reach it picking through trash at the dump on Saturday.
If you follow the mountain path up over the snow-choked pass,
you can get there.
If you are stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway,
you can get there.
If you circle the earth in the space shuttle Discovery,
you can get there.
Guanyin stands at the door.
Her arms embrace you,
and her room already shelters you.
Trees
Some of the big ones
were rising from the New England soil
when Columbus ravaged Hispaniola.
The really old ones
were sprouting
as Leif Ericson
sailed out of the New Foundland fog
to see waves
breaking on the rocks
at L’Anse aux Meadows.
But only the most ancient
drank in the sunlight
as Brendan’s coracle
floated from the myth that was Ireland
to face aboriginal America.
Snow
not yet
autumn’s first
mountain snow
this fluttering moth
Flies
only a few uneaten kernels
remain
on the corn cob
three house flies
and now
five
Spring
quivering beside the barnyard fence
a puppy contemplates
the old mare
the sound of chewing
the honking of a lone goose
flying into the rising sun
the underside of her wings
aglow
Mirror
Above the wash basin
I see a pair
of hazel-coloured eyes,
not clear as the deep sapphire
skies of the pure land heavens, more
like tourmaline,
aluminum boro-silicate impure with spices:
chromium green,
copper manganese blue-green,
magnesium Malawi yellow or,
even truer than that rainbow gem,
the pattern
of Hebridean wool,
shorn from ewes
huddling in the heather
as winter squalls
sweep bare the North Atlantic beaches.
The knobbed fingers bent over the shuttle, the oar,
the hand line, the hoe, the spade:
all a living translucence.
