Tumbling Toward the End

PART I

Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

ROBERT FROST

Morning Meditation

Stand beside the woodstove,

hands on butt, palms turned out.

Face the window to the east.

What’s left of my tea in its

capped cup stays warm on

the stove behind me.

Stare out through the window:

at sunrise, snowfall, cloudy day,

branches of the apple tree,

birds moving to and from

the dooryard feeder.

Watch the day.

Empty mind,

empty self,

into which

this poem

now comes.

Whenever

Whenever I do the last things for the year,

like smoke the last bunch of sausages or

load the woodshed, or the first things of the

year like defrost the freezer on a subzero

night in January, as we did last night — we

put the freezer’s contents out on the porch

so they’ll stay colder than had they been in

the freezer at ten below — I wonder if this

will be the last time?

This Place

Whatever is produced by the help of another is likely to dissolve

and perish.

EKAI (1183–1260)

I came here almost fifty years ago well quit of the world, or so

I thought, and in retreat to these remote and lonely mountains

in imitation of my ancient Chinese brothers who also fled

the dark and dreck of political intrigue, the idiocies of arrogance and pretense,

all of us

fled small minds and pompous bearing to a world of natural simplicity in

which my

neighbors could be those who knew

the meaning of the turning seasons, of life and death, of drought

and plenty, who lived their lives and knew enough to take their dying

seriously, who

stayed alive and faced their deaths without excuse,

who suffered and let go. I came into this place and found a life

with people who would rather see you find out, find it, for yourself than lift a

hand to

help you, not out of arrogance or distance, but out

of modesty, respect, for your own self and for the impossibility

of ever telling anyone anything, born of their own hard-won experience,

which has taught

them all to know that nobody

learns anything they do not need,

and seek out by themselves, to know.

Vanity, Vanity, All Is Vanity

I’m full of aches and pains. The bottoms of my

feet hurt constantly, I’ve got arthritis in my

thumbs. My right arm is so weak I can’t