Skip to main content

Kevlar Vest

We grow famished with duty, hold a boney line.
Do the right thing. 
Say the right word.
Live the right moment.

Here we go, combing days for purpose, an army of sea urchins. 
Swooning for octopus, supple and keen this one – could we be that? 
Could we trellis darkness with ink trails like the one you climb now,
word by word?
Can duty sing beauty like catgut on wood?
Can it upholster days in both silk and sacking?
Make Tuesday a rich brocade.
Wednesday, corduroy,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday tatted Chantilly lace.
Sunday and Monday matted felt.
It’s a Gordian puzzle – and how did it happen?
A march for Maslow’s dream – our bruises the crown and scepter,
climbing, climbing and where would we be?
Not Avalon nor Shangri-La, not nirvana nor Eden,
crawling to another frontier – a fresh start.
Out of sticks and stones and mended bones, we light another fire.
And this Kevlar vest, we unbutton it – notion by stoic notion.
right view and intention
right speech and action and livelihood
right effort and mindfulness, even to distraction and
we stop marching -- for 
there is light leaking in,
a soul shine, see,
Kuan Yin,

she holds the mirror.

Comments

Tracy P. said…
Reading this reminds me of the Oliver poem I have in my bathroom: "Mysteries, Yes." She writes about how we "come from the delight or the scars of damage to the comfort of a poem." Thank you, Rosa, for reminding me to turn to a poem. This one fits the bill. I love you.
April 8, 2014 at 8:16 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2020 Pandemic Journey Day 44

May 4, 2020 Today’s idea – What has the fog of our modern conveniences begat? I read an article last night published in 1950 by Berton Roueche’ titled The Fog . In October 1948, a toxic smog settled on the borough of Donora, PA. This town is tucked away on a meander of the Monongahela River in the Allegheny Mountains.   During that time, it was home to three huge mills, a steel plant, and a zinc and sulfuric acid plant. The towering factory stacks of these industries pushed out thick plumes of coal smoke all day and all week. Also, given the town’s proximity to the river, boats and trains added their emission to the cocktail. To seal the deal, Donora sits in the topography of secluded bluffs and hills that allow for little or no wind to carry the smoke and fumes out of town.   So the place was known to be a smutty, smokey mess, tolerated by residents who referred to the sulfurous stench as the smell of money. On this weekend in October, a thermal inversion put a tighter li...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid19 Journey Day 20

April 10, 2020 Today’s idea – Maybe we’ve needed this for a long time.   To be stopped so we could take a long moment and assess what is alive in us and what is mere rote living, what is unnecessary and what really matters; what we carry by empty habit. To know that busier doesn’t make us more worthy- a good work ethic is not to be confused with constant motion.   We’ve needed this to   learn how to be together as family again, to sit together in conversation, to listen to one another, to play and read together, help solve problems even do homework together, cook together, sit around a table again. And to say to each other, here are boundaries, this is okay and that is not okay because we do that for the ones we love. We needed this to understand that isolation can be hard on some people sheltering in place, the abuser with the abused,   those that must shelter alone, those who need consistent home care for a chronic illness or condition, the family receiving h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more