Take a zooming shortcut.  Be a phoebe,

balance on a limb. Tail-wag, fly away.

I love spring mist, the jonquils’ moist yellow—

nothing slapdash out there. The narrow

fellow in the grass doesn’t dash, it sidles

or stills itself, hoping I won’t notice.

As for me, I count one to ten on each outbreath.

I want to clear my head of thoughts.

Breath-death, breath-death. In and out it goes.

Life should be life with no trace of death.

Death should be death with no trace of life.  

I rarely make it to ten. No problem.  Start

over. And when I do make it to ten?  Begin

again.  Breath-death.  Balance on the hyphen.

No, I’m not cooped up at home. Homebody,

arm-chair traveler, tourist of the woods,

gardener whose garden is my lover’s body,

sky-in-the-pond gazer, cloud oh-so-slowly

going nowhere, I could stay here forever,

and that’s precisely the problem.  Revise—

change it up.  How’s this?   Rooted, ready

to spend my life here, I’m also prepared

to leave here in the morning if need be—

an attitude that seeks to balance the sheer

luck of being here at all with the will to choose

the road that leads everywhere all at once.

Clinging’s an adopted child of fearful mind.

Trouble is, the mind can cling to freedom, too.

Because I am, you are.  Inseparable,

we interact, interweave, sustain,

enrage, entertain, sometimes mourn.

Earth’s a revolving evolution

of die-back and start over, an inscrutable

roll of the eons.  I have star dust in my bones,

an opposable thumb, a much too keen

sense of survival and danger.  Watch me

twitch and quiver, nose to the wind, very

like that shade of brown on four nimble

hooves now stalking my lilies and garden

roses.  The vole skulks, the red-tail rises

above a world that’s cruel but generous.

It’s “the way things is.”  Go on, eat my roses.

I remember waking to bells, city-wide,

an ode to joy on the loose, and to sex, also

before breakfast. Hard rolls, chocolate.

That was 1970, the Klimt frieze

to Beethoven, 1902—before my puritan

parents were born. Just now, I receive

a friend’s photos of Vienna:  a rhino

in the zoo, (exotic); the Klimt, of course;

a building bombed to rubble WWII

in the German retreat: beauty and waste,

No one, and something always held

captive.  Nowhere is there joy without angst,

the fuel of pleasure.  See Klimt’s golden women

(with pubic hair) (behind them, skeletons).

Habeas corpus—but who has custody

of the mind? Thoughts come in flocks, sway

through the air, and then the bird gang’s gone,

only to be replaced by words I wouldn’t say

to my worst enemy.  Mind rhymes with kind,

but thoughts kick like a cat in a sandbox

who’s just done with its business and has its eye

on climbing the curtains. The drunk monkey

is another way of putting it.  Just breathe. 

Offer the elephant a little stick to hold as we

move through the day, trying to outwit the fox.

Yes, it’s a zoo. Yes, we pretend to love reason, do

justice, listen closely, follow the heart

to the greater good . . .  Then the mule stamps its foot.

Am I in over my head?  Well, it’s my head,

and I jumped into the old pond on my own

volition.  Or so I contend, old frog unsure

if I’m moved by free will or by the crazy lure

of the depths.  Watch my thoughts float, surface,

then melt—airborne. Gone?  I’ll just be a lotus.

There’s mud down here aplenty to root in.

I’ll meditate until I’m provisional, makeshift,

rather than slapdash in the image of God

as I was told.  Or is God made in my own

image of the self, transformed by the unlimited

power I covet when I’m tangled up in fear.

So much for old pond, frog jumps in—splash!

Enough.  I’m on my way up now for air.

I’m asked if I think I can make a living

writing poems.  That’s a question to ignore.

One good look at the word livelihood,

and it’s clear I’m in it for nothing—

for life, for life’s hooded mystery laid

bare.  For that alone.  Each line is a road

to nowhere.  Each word is a silky snare.

Gather and let go, follow the impulse

that leads away from my indulging the will

to pleasure only.  Now don’t get me wrong,

I’m in it for joy, not for gain.  As for pain

that flashes along a nerve—it lessons

me, relaxes my grasp on impasse

and fear.  Gather and let go:  a discipline.

Take action? Or do nothing?  It offends,

does it not, doing nothing when the Earth

is endangered—too much carbon, and a greed

that profits off another’s poverty, ending

life as we know it.  But do we know it?

We know, Take no prisoners.  We know, I’m safe

enough, who cares? We know the complicit

pact between deceit and action—

and we do nothing?  Doing nothing is

an action.  Here’s the rub:  Nothing doing

is a spiritual path that embraces life’s

generosity and protects it by doing nothing

that would harm.  We come as close as we can.

Make an effortless effort.  Take a breath.