Four Short Meditations from a Cloudy Shore

1. Apology

The poem is always better behaved
Than the brain that takes credit for it.
Even the most scatological
Or curmudgeonly, misanthropic,
And just plain hateful of poetry
Probably amounts to rebrewed tea.
Trust the honest, the confessional,
And the revolutionary least.
The naked will have the most to hide.

2. Sutra

We only think that we know what we want.
We only want what we think that we know.

We only know what we think that we want.
We only think that we want what we know.

3. The Dog That Doesn't Care

There's a boy on a lawn, throwing a ball.
There's a dog on the lawn, ignoring him.
It's summer, or almost, in Canada,
But the rain is still raining every day.

The boy wonders why the dog doesn't care
While his mother, inside the house watching,
Wonders why everything about her hurts.
The dog gets up and goes into the woods.

There's a boy on the lawn, tossing the ball
To himself and catching or dropping it
Between fits of showers, while his mother
Talks on the phone inside. The dog is gone.

4. Watery Ear

The lake is dark this afternoon,
No gold underwater today.
One duck keeps croaking urgently.
A chainsaw buzzes in the woods.

The globe is warmer somewhere else,
One supposes, and colder too.
The brain sets up scenarios
From memory of the unseen.

If a mind could stay here, right here,
Emptied of the news of the world
And thoughts of greater importance
Than a dog's bark, a fish's jump,

The soft, continuous echo
Returned by the mirroring lake
That sums raw wood and village sounds,
Would that mind be released or trapped?