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Enlightenment

Andy Posner 1 min read
poetry
Enlightenment
“Wallpaper Zen Spirit 1400x900 edition 2006” by Roberto Zingales, CC BY-ND 2.0

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging
sense that this enlightenment wouldn’t last, that
whether I crushed it or saved it would determine
the course of my life, which I knew to be my one and
only life, and I knew that I would get it wrong, that one
day I would own a house and have a wife and son
and no amount of introspection would clear the crumbs
I hadn’t time to sweep between this and that
priority, that when the ants came looking for food
on Christmas Eve like a parable of how the living world
exists for the living I would set to work with poison
and impatience because the hour was growing late
and we are all made in God’s image, which is to say
we are power-hungry gods, we have things to do,
we can kill without consequence.

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Ages ago I kept a diary in a hand legible to
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rain clings to pinecones like wet feathers,
the evening slips into its velvet gown,

and starlight pitter-patters on my head
like drops of gallium. I am thankful

the day is dying, for I have forgotten how
to live. Who wrote those words belongs

to an empire that collapsed under its
own grandiose weight, its high priest

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Foul Weather Friend

I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings

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First Game

There in the back of the closet
of the room that was once my room
and is now a museum to childhood
is a photo, slightly curled with age,
of ten scrawny kids in awkward poses,
baseball gloves stretched out as if
to catch a ball just out of view;

and there in left field am I, shielding
the sun with my glove, tracking
the fly ball, an ice cream truck playing
its melodies, metal bats ringing on
nearby fields,

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