Serpentinarium

Basic truth: Life is hard

Center lost today,
Climb hill again, again
Mind only changed,
And all changed

Look in: Thoughts fall like oak leaves
Feel wind here, now there
Up, bare branch, sky behind
Truth is

Truth

Peace

In this early autumn, winds have blown, snows threatened
Wrong turns taken, mistakes made, greed succumbed to, lies told

I look inside at reality

Past weighs heavy, future frightens
But now: Peace

Sunlight sparkles
Spiders draw threads through space
Trees green and turn, grass shoots tall

In this world I've hurt no one today

I have what I need

Peace

Grass fell done: quiet
Breathe Bassai in dappled shade
Spinning, blade alone

An attempt at a haiku to capture this moment:

After taking the hour or so the trim the tall stuff that grows around the pond, I was making the walk—a couple hundred yards—back to the house when it occurred to me: Do a kata, right here, right now, while it's so nice out. And so, having not done Bassai Dai—the Shuri Ryu version is a bit different than the Shotokan one shown in Wikipedia—in a few months and missing one move, I performed it again, there in the sunshine-dappled shade, the trimmer laying by the side of the road, its shoulder harness thrown over it. There's a turn where one spins not quite 180 degrees into a stance; I sometimes lose my balance a bit there when I'm out of practice and did this time. That and shoes making my feet heavy on heightened the moment, familiar movements welcoming me back on a beautiful day after a bit of honest work.

My respect for poets grows and grows.

After work, picking up a problem child
at the healer, I took a different route.

Not big highway this time, but old road through old town.
Big highway is fast, wide, it goes far places. Like
flying in a plane, land scrolls by unnoticed,
a blur on the periphery of the tunnel of attention on people before.
Old road strolls through old town, not so fast, but faster than walking.
Thirty five, not sixty five, not seventy.
Trees stand close and offer shelter: I glide by, cool shadows soothe.
Homes behind trees quietly observing passersby.
Evanescent memories drift into now.

I arrived forty years later than fifteen minutes ago.

A man lived his entire life just to make himself happy. Because of that, things that didn't cause him pain were of no concern.

People ask him to do things to help them out. They ask him to stop doing things that hurt them. Because he feels no pain, the requests go unanswered. People's situations become desperate and they become frantic in their requests of him, demanding even. This causes him pain and so he grudgingly responds, irritated that his serenity has been disturbed, oblivious as to why the people around him are so angry and hurt by his behavior.

People would talk to him about why they were hurt. That was unpleasant, so he resolved to change. Soon after the unpleasant talks were done, the pain of them disappeared and so, with no pain and nothing else to guide him, he set about his life as before, harming the same people who had ernestly entreated him to not to.

One morning, after talking with one of the people he had harmed, he wakes up and realizes what he's done.

Now what?

Crazy oak drops leaves,
Runs green with life, touches glass
Squirrel laughs: Tag, you're it