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April 27, 2012

I Have Wasted My Life.


Image credit: designer Christian Jackson, squareinchdesign.com

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

by James Wright 

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Lying in bed at four o’clock in the morning having an existential crisis

by Michelle Fajkus

Over my head, I see countless projections of boundless joy and bottomless stress,
As my mind concocts splendid, scary stories
That begin tomorrow.
Down at the foot of the bed, the long black cat stretches his paws toward heaven,
Except there is no heaven up there.
Liberation is already his, as a fully embodied feline.
To my left,
A silver spiderweb full of dead fly memories
Clings to the corner where the ceiling meets the wall.
Where is the black widow? When will I die?
I lean back, as the sun rises over the city,
experiencing the glory of this morning: empty, full, connected and intertwined with everything.
Too soon, thinking returns.
The seer separates from the seen; the breather divorces breathing; the actress falls for the fiction.
I have wasted my life.

***

To study the dharma is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. ~Dogen

 

~

Editor: Tanya L. Markul

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