October 19 (for Nina)

Whatever else in the world
Does not matter.
The centuries-old grudges,
The wars, the suffering, the misunderstandings
In ten thousand dark corners.
One look from this child and it all falls away ...

You have always been this way
From the moment you emerged,
Blinking, warm, and wet,
Into the glowing white light
of a Boston birthing room
Four years ago this morning
At 8 o'clock.
You embodied peace,
You emitted a light
To show us
what remains possible.

Bright Blue Bird Eating From My Hand

Descendent of dinosaurs,
this dainty delight flitters
like pure spirit in my hand.
The feel of the scratchy tickle of
the clawed foot in my seed-filled palm.
"Trust me," I try to telegraph, "and eat."
The fragile heads pecks and picks out a single seed,
then alights in a blink to a nearby skeletal branch.

Hearts

They thump along

Within our breasts,

Moving to the same

Rhythm, whether 

pope or prostitute,

Teacher or terrorist,

Lamb or lion.

The blood courses in us.

We are the blood and

The blood is in us,

No different from

one to the next.

The same valves, 

Chambers, and arteries that

Clog with our excesses are

Capable of such brightness:

Tears and joy bunch up

Inside these walls.

All beings arise from the heart.

The place of sadness and hope, 

Soul's winter and summer —

From the salmon struggling upstream

To the Peruvian peasant
On the mountainside,

We all exact a beat

That illuminates the world.

Watching a Panda Eat Bamboo at the Zoo

The pearl light of morning

Tesselates the green leaves.

A breeze stirs the wind chimes

And brings on birdsong.

He tilts his massive black-and-white head 

Quizzically at the alien hum of a passing bus,

Then turns toward the sun and seems

To swim in the dappled light

Filtering through sharp-shaped leaves.

He snaps off shoots and munches.

Between bites, he rests on his hinds,

Letting the bittersweet pass over

His fat pink tongue and into 

The blue sky of his Buddha belly.