THE ANIMAL PHILOSOPHER

 

Walking with my young daughter to school,

she asks, seemingly out of nowhere,

"What are words anyway?

They don't mean anything, really.

What is a girl, or a tree, or the ocean?

To an animal, the words we use are just

sounds like any other sound."

And I, who have spent the better part

of a lifetime believing in the beauty

and possibility of language, of building these

small temples of measured sound,

can offer no reasonable defense against

such a pure distillation of truth.

Have I been exposed as a mere hack,

a mild mannered charlatan? I am strangely,

secretly wounded when she throws

out the question of ages: "Why are we here?

No one knows. The animals would know

because they were here long before humans.

We can't really understand their language

yet; but we could learn if we listened."

Which is all her father, poor simpleton, can

manage today, tagging along, listening

to all that we need not say.

BODY, WORK

 

In the morning, slowly stirring into wakefulness

and reasonably good sense, muscles

stirring, uncoiling, it is sometimes difficult

to tell if we are, in fact, mostly body,

or not the body at all. Only moments before,

hovering between those two incongruous

worlds, we seemed just fine without it.

Yet only weeks ago, when my head hit the hardwood

floor as mindless as a fist, only the matter

of matter was felt, or needed,

a not-so-gentle reminder of the humility

required before the fact of one's own flesh.

I am thinking, too, of a friend in California who

speaks in reverent tones of body work,

her hands having touched and touched again

the shoulders, backs, and ribcages of

hundreds, working circles into those hidden caves

previously unknown until the pain spoke

a little louder. rattled the locks nearly loose.

If I am being honest, I must admit to

envying her unequivocal love for every form,

of not seeing any as broken, or even flawed,

merely wondrous, as they must be.

Another friend tells recently of leaving the body

entirely during deep meditation, his wife

and children calling out for him, the corridors

of his own slender frame suddenly so small

that he feared he might not be able to return.

I, of course, want to believe in both --

the body at last finding its way toward

acceptance upon this earth, at home within itself,

rooted and admired as any tree along the river,

while the spirit, wild as ever, grows so

expansive that the gods themselves must shift

to make room, turning away like the lazy lovers

we always suspected them to be.

NOTES AFTER A BLACKOUT

For days -- then weeks -- after the fall,

when those sudden waves of dizziness would

arise with even the smallest of movements,

and turning over in bed meant pulling

the whole lopsided world up beside me

as well, I found myself practicing gassho after

a long and lazy absence -- first in my

mind's eye, then placing my palms together

just above heart level, centering, centering,

denying the duality of left and right,

up and down, false gravity pulling me

in both directions at once. It surprised me,

this seemingly inadvertent reverence, as if I had

been granted a small offering of grace,

the unassuming dignity of walking slowly,

cautiously from one room to the next.

I felt a measure of kindness to the bruised and

swollen face gazing back from the medicine

cabinet mirror -- face that here needed neither

explanation nor apology -- the same face that

had been waiting there for all this time.

TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS AT FUNERALS

 

It was, my cousin reminds me, once quite common for one family member or another to snap a photograph of their loved one in final repose, a keepsake to be placed among the golden locks of hair, the bronzed baby shoes, and that tiny bracelet that somehow fit on your grandmother's wrist. They would not have minded, we would like to imagine, going as they were before the Maker in their Sunday finest, faces freshly painted and powdered, sunken cheeks glowing rosy once again. In childhood, those images never failed to startle, while thumbing the thick pages of the family album -- the scene shifting suddenly from kids laughing through the candlelit glow of birthday cake, or your mother holding your sister next to a dog whose name no one can recall, to a waxen, expressionless face peering above a casket's satin pillows, its exterior dark and final. It seemed ghoulish, and perhaps selfish, the need for that one final image of one who could neither smile nor offer consent. But perhaps such clinging is not unreasonable. Perhaps I am no different, telling this to you, conjuring with words the unreliable visages of the past, endlessly attempting to name and reclaim a part of the world that has long since departed.

CANDY CIGARETTES

 

We bought them with the nickels

and pennies of our weekly allowance

at the Little General corner store,

tucked them in our small paper sacks

along with the crystal blue and amber jewels

of hard candy, the Tootsie Rolls,

Red Hots, and aptly named Jawbreakers.

We practiced looking tough, or just thoughtful,

practiced those mannered turns and gestures

of the wrist, flicking imaginary ashes

upon the ground, or into our open palms,

white sticks of sugar dangling from

the corners of our mouths as we spoke,

blew imaginary smoke rings toward

the blue shimmering sky, tapping one end

of the pack against the soft mounds

below our thumbs, the way we had seen

the grownups do. We learned to squint like

the stars of Westerns and war movies,

rolled the crinkling packs into the shoulders

of our thin cotton tees, before setting off

on Big Wheels and bikes, the sand and

broken glass of housing project sidewalks

crunching beneath our wheels, toward a future

already being written for us, up there

amongst the shifting clouds.

SIMPLETON

 

Upon further reflection, I think that I should like

nothing more than to become what was once known

as a simpleton -- that shapeless, shiftless,

unassuming character residing in the corner house

handed down by one kind family member

or another, concerned, naturally, for his wellbeing --

yard wildly overgrown, weeds and wildflowers

interchangeable, shuffling out to the mailbox

in bathrobe and stocking cap, humming something

nondescript and long since out of fashion,

speaking to the neighborhood cats

as old friends and familiars. I would endure

the unintentionally cruel laughter of children,

and the exasperated sighs of adults with

the patience normally reserved for fools and saints.

Never again would I be burdened by others

asking my opinion or insight on any given thing.

I would eat my simple meals and enjoy my

simple pleasures, all based around the simplest

routine; and should I dare to call you friend

or ask your honest advice, you would understand

it to be meant with no ulterior motive

or guile. I would be too simple to explain

my thoughts beyond a nod or shrug of affirmation.

But you, by far the wiser, would have

learned to listen well.

NARRATOR

 

I have always questioned

everything, but now,

with the signature of so

many years becoming

indecipherable, I question

most the one asking

the questions.