AT THE EDGE OF THE GREAT SWAMP

Seven Poems of Redemption Midst the Virus

PAUL WEISS

 

STARTING

If we must start somewhere,

let’s start with mist.

Let’s start with this gray first morning

of spring; a clock ticking; a crow.

Let’s start with that brush pile,

waiting to be burned before the rain

begins; this warm sip of tea; this

breath; this burp. Let’s appreciate the

way life has been scattered like

pick-up sticks, shifting like dreams.

Enjoy the array. No hurry.

Soon you will act.

GONE VIRAL

I finally got it. Just sit

and do anything. Ponder. Stare. Wander

around the house; pick up a

magazine. Put it down. I walk in

my woods. I rake last year’s leaves.

Those are the peaks.

Late afternoon, I sit by the window.

Watch this light snow, so modest

and discreet. It’s the 30th of March;

and it’s been a gentle season so

we have only good will for

these innocent snowflakes,

skipping like schoolyard children

this way and that. Keeping a

social distance from each other.

Refusing to stick. They have gotten

the message. We are all pulling

together to stay apart. Stay put; keep

moving. Don’t visit. Don’t cling.

Don’t work. But find some-

thing meaningful. Ah, that’s the trap

of an earnest mind. The world is

under siege, and out of joint. Be useful,

be fruitful. Surely my strong point;

but no. I wander in circles. I hide

my naked restlessness under the ragged

cloak of occasional relevance;

wisdom; service; art. I look at the sky;

or frown. I pick up a book on trees.

Or put it down. Things fall apart.

I hear the radio: the clues.

This time I get it! There is only one

news and it includes all news.

The news is everywhere. Just find a

chair. Or find a snack. Distract

yourself. Walk on the road. Rake last

year’s leaves. Let time go down

the drain. It is a good drain. It is

the drain by which things enter and

things leave. Or care. Or are released.

Or bask in unknown relevance.

Or sit in peace. Or stare.

MARCH 30, 2020

WOULD YOU SIT WITH ME THAT SLOW?

When the focus is still,

you can see the moon move

higher above the treetops.

The slower you sit,

the faster the moon moves;

As fast as the tide

rising on a quiet bay.

Can you feel the ache

for a home when the earth

was that slow?

And you could hear the breeze

inviting each needle of the fir

to dance in the moonlight.

When watching the moon rise

was the only news—and to watch

was our only ambition.

When life was analogue, and the brain

fired like a slow leaping dancer

over the fields of light,

and the moon-stirred waters

of the black sky

settled under the skin.

Would you sit with me that slow,

like someone who had the time

to put his money

on the winning snail?

 

SPRING MORNING

Dampness rises from the morning earth.

Smoke from the fire.

The body growls a bit and sends out its warmth too.

Rain in the air. The trees know everything.

Thoughts, feelings: it’s all snow melt.

This growling is a subterranean hum. Let’s growl along.

Something complete is moving as the earth moves.

Resting on our foundation, the universe is accomplished.

Heart recognizing heart. The rest is artifact.

Didn’t we pass this way a million years from now?

I’m gonna let this timeless buggy take us home;

stick with what’s true; sing with the clacking wheels.

Simple opportunity is given every day—

which we cast out with the morning sink water.

Trying to manage the world by thought is

like trying to balance a cup atop a gushing fountain;

or to operate the sunrise from a smartphone.

I think I’ll let the day play me for a fool.

Be just as stupid as this rainfall.

Give me a ring, and we’ll walk together.

AT THE EDGE OF THE GREAT MARSH

On the late afternoon marsh, a sea of reed grass

trembles in the least breeze.

This is the pregnant hush of a great voice.

This is the language of the slow.

Here in the awake world is a mutual respect.

The grasses and their witness

are of one intelligence.

The mosquitos nod and give safe passage.

We are each of the other.

Only this silent . . . hearing begins.

Only this slow . . . the earth moves.

There is no forbidden door,

but we do not seek admittance;

we do not bow in entry before the great open.

There is a community as vast and intimate

as space, and we are its lost children.

I have come back to my home

by the great pine at the edge of the great marsh.

Lone spider threads glisten silver in the late sun

like slender streaks of moonlight.

All share one tremulous anticipation as sun paints

the marsh from descending angles,

and the air grows cool: The Great Mother Bear

is coming in her dark robes

to hold close the trembling tribes;

to wear them as her own fur.

To keep them to the world’s end.

To be shown through with the new day.

RADIO FREE PLEASURE

There is hope for us here,

beyond the barbed wire fences of the mind,

the propaganda of its loudspeakers

squawking its old sad tune; its message of

need and lack. Unseen behind the old tool shed,

we sit and tune our dials to the thin band

of attention and surrender ready to receive the

ever growing voice from the world beyond

the Camp; beyond the stifling oppression

of the guards, and our poor found substitutes

for joy or freedom.

It is our hard won faithfulness to keeping

the dial tuned that welcomes in a growing stream

of good news, a growing clarity and lightness.

Until, through the static, we pick up the signal of a

steady stream of pleasure, beamed from we know

not where, beamed at no cost, no monthly plan.

It is a pleasure unconstructed and unsought for,

taking over our bodies, inviting us to the next level

of discernment; the next release.

When we look again, the barbed wire is melting,

the loudspeakers silenced; the guards are puppy dogs.

Casually, we pull others aside, one by one,

from their mindless collaboration with the work gangs,

the death squads; and slip the earphones over their

heads, tune the dial, sit still, and watch their growing

smiles, as slowly they discern the silent voice

of Radio Free Pleasure.

 

GREAT HEAD

(FOR ADAM)

1.

Walking the shoreline, kicking wet sand

from my shoes, following the path your soul

might have traveled to release itself

from your body. I ascend the higher rocks.

Could it have been here, or here, where you entered

the water? And there where the currents might

have carried you after several days? Your

soul like a lemon twist added to these waters;

wrung out, twisted; all these lemons, only

you couldn’t make lemonade. The rowboat

wasn’t steady, although all the fresh ingredients

were yours at the start. When the wolves were quiet,

the mud slides cleared away, a true fire gleamed

from the inner cave. Your journey is ours.

2.

It is a privilege to witness this late afternoon sparkle

of sun on the ocean. The late breeze

not knowing whether to blow warm or cold.

Spring like a toddler trying to find her balance on the

paths out of winter. Even the inevitable is brave.

It is a secret joy to be the raw energy of life,

the outlawed id of divine pedigree. To feel the thrill

of radiant being under the fingernails; to feel the

truest skin under the skin of our misgivings,

never going into exile with the mind’s self-exile,

but singing consistently in the branches

outside our prison gate, cooing “Touch me, I am

already yours.” Touch me even in the moods

of your bleakest winds; find me in the motions of

your mundane tasks; feel me in the respirations

of the heart, whose pleasure is your only currency.

3.

It is a privilege to mourn. To savor the gift

of frailty at the peak of each wave—collapsing as

it goes. And to pause and to kick here against

the driftwood and the bladderwrack with our stubborn

humanity. To walk in the company of a world

so vulnerable that its very appearance is the promise

of its passing; while where it has come from, and where

it has gone, is a space more real than the object

we tried to grasp. It is a delicate proposition, this

body-mind with so many moving parts, each so capable

of dent, tangle, or recoil; each so capable of bleeding

in a world so creative in its pain. It is a privilege

to grieve; and so concede, not in defeat, to the dark roots

of our own breathing; to the incessant breeze

against this shore; to the wind that will carry us

as a dry leaf to its sunlit rest.

A poet since childhood, Paul Weiss has spent most of his adult life on the coast of Maine. He began his study of zen and tai chi in New York in the mid-sixties, and continued his studies in India and China over the course of many years. He founded The Whole Health Center in Bar Harbor in 1981 as a vehicle for his teaching, counseling, meditation retreats, and healing work, evolving a Buddhist and tonglen-based therapeutic model of compassion, integration, and healing. He is the author of You Hold This, a book of poems, and Moonlight Leaning Against an Old Rail Fence—Approaching the Dharma as Poetry, a collection of poems and commentaries.