Watching a Panda Eat Bamboo at the Zoo

The pearl light of morning

Glazes a new green on the leaves.

A breeze stirs the wind chime,

Teasing bird song from the air.

He quizzically tilts his black-and-white 
Head at the hum of a truck going by,

Then turns toward the sun,

Shifting in the dapples of 
Tear-shaped leaves.

He snaps off shoots and munches.

Between bites, he rests on his hinds,

Allowing the bittersweet to pass

Over his fat pink tongue into

The blue sky of his Buddha belly.

Learning to Pray

At the first hint of spring,

I am a melting river

In the deep woods

At the break of dawn,

With a mild wind

Rushing over water,

Bubbles welling up

From the pebbly bottom,

That I melt into

As it rushes over me.

The Amputation of the Untenable

You are a stranger to me,

This phantom limb

I spent 20 years

Hanging onto.

Now nothing but void

And the insolid of the solid,

In this hollow un-reality,

As if the time never existed at all —

Those sunny afternoons

Or harried Monday mornings,

Babies gasping first breaths

In birthing rooms,

Funerals of brothers and grandmothers.

This is the lesson that we live each day:

Many lives in this one, and

It is all a billowing dreamplay

In which our minds and actions

Shine the light,

Create the narrative,

And drop the curtain.

I know you no longer.

You are not there,
My dear. 

Departed.

I neither care.
Nor care to care.