‘Seeking’ and Other Poems

I met Lauren Ruth Wiener at a meeting of the Port Townsend Sangha in Port Townsend, Washington. It is an insight meditation group officially, but mostly a place where, in Joseph Goldstein’s phrase, all lineages meet in “One Dharma.” However, Lauren’s primary place of practice is a zendo that meets in a tiny concrete bunker overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an eerie remnant of military fortifications at what is now Fort Worden Historical State Park. (And an extreme example of turning swords to ploughshares, I suppose!) This zendo-built-for-few is led by the Rinzai monk Teitaku Isaac Gardiner.

Soon enough, I learned that Lauren was a poet. Her poems often begin with a story that places the reader in the midst, in the mix, in our shared muddle, but as with haiku, or the rhyming couplet at the end of a Shakespearian sonnet, the story exists only to provide a context for something unexpected, a condensation of the story’s energies. Or call it what it is: a moment’s illumination. 

It’s a device as old as poetry itself, but always welcome when done so well. 

–Curtis White

Seeking

Eight point two miles northeast of my home,
a broad sandy beach stretches along
a wide river. On a fall day
it’s quiet. I bring my dog here,
find her a good thick stick and
hurl it into the water. In she plunges,
a mad splash. Legs pumping,
she reaches her goal and
               snap!
Triumphant jaws lift
the stick above water;
half-strangled savage growls
escape her throat.

Eight point three miles and
three hundred feet above us,
three sandhill cranes fly in
an isosceles triangle,
ratchety voices speaking
of seeking winterhome.

Like a turning sunflower I rise
to them, up
onto the balls of my feet, head
tilted till it hurts, binoculars
searching out
light
that just bounced off their feathers . . . 
will the mere sight
of that light
transform me?

Eight point one miles
(on our way back to the car)
my dog and I surprise a
flicker
working an acorn. With a flash of its white butt it
rises
from the brown crumble
to shelter in an oak.
My dog lopes through. The flicker
waits. It remembers
the acorn.

Absence

Walked over to your zendo this morning.
Didn’t go in, though.
Just stood on the porch and looked out to sea.

I did finally turn
to gaze in the window at the tidiness
that used to be there—
plumped cushions square on their benches,
blankets neatly folded beneath.
On the floor
a speck of dust you surely would’ve removed,
lanky frame cantilevered outward,
long arms reaching—
no need to uncross those legs.
On the altar, a lump of candle
long snuffed. An empty
space. And the vase with
no crocus,
no poppy,
no sprig of winter green.

I turned to go. But for one last moment I lingered
to watch a gull
fly north.

Somewhere to Go

Walking down the street
thinking about my mother—
if she had lived,
how old would she be
today? right now this minute?

Answer: 83.

And there she was waiting at a bus stop,
a woman in her early eighties,
crinkled face, warm brown eyes . . . 
I looked deep into those eyes

impossible to say who started smiling first, her beam hit me
just as I felt my own cheeks contract
heart expand
the first subterranean stirrings of unfathomable joy

as I passed.
Because I hadn’t stopped walking.
I had somewhere to go.