Rock Arrangements



I took a string,
Tied it to a stake and scribed a circle,
Filled the circle with ditch rocks.

So there it was,
A circle of rocks,
Muddy; multicolored,
Sucking up heat from the summer sun.

My grandson comes.
He has his wagon.
Seriously, meditatively,
According to the promptings of his materials,
He carries rocks from one spot to another,
Fits them in here and there.
It takes a half an hour.

Finished he wipes the dirt off his hands,
Comes into the porch where I am reading.
He tells me some rocks were in the wrong place.
“Hmmm,” I say.

“But don’t worry,” he says.
“I fixed them for you.”

Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning


The sensorium is real enough,
Though, like dream worlds, it passes by,
Riding an endless milky way
Of forms, transformations.


But the Buddha world changes too -
Dry and tasteless says the Roshi -
So wet and sweet or bitter too, perhaps,
But in the end different than the beginning,
tho there are no husks left behind
Like the husks clambered over
By the ever moving sensorium.

And no one sends back reports from the world of the dead.
Maybe there isn’t one,
Or the dead, being bodiless, can’t write them.

This pen is a borrowed one.
An old friend has too many pens,
Too much paper;
When people ask he fills a bag,
Pushes them out the door before they can change their minds.

This city is owned by somebody else,
More the product of entropy than anything else,
Yet it keeps up a brave front
With street sweepers and glass buildings.
During floods it holds its breath,
For earthquakes it plugs its ears with cotton wool.

My grandson is happy all day;
Every molecule in his body
Smiles the whole day long,
As if he were all tender belly
And the Universe tickling him with wiggly fingers.