a Zen story

Men with guns rule the world
we are not oblivious if we take
advantage of the Ohio sun bearing
down late October;
if we walk along
the Erie Canal,
name the flora and fauna we can never
know from the inside but for the gift
of being human.

The heron speared a perch, we waited and left,
it takes a long
time for a fish to die and be swallowed,
I had a lucid dream once, perhaps it was you,
smoke-feathered coming closer...

We grew little tomatoes last year, some people
grew freedom out on a limb, once in a while, memory
joins us, lifts us out of harm's way
with a Bodhisattva's prayer.

Life unfolds as it will. There is Zen in everything.