zen and suffering part stillness (joy is being willing for things to be as they are)

a preference for
observation, not
participation;

a box made
for bodies surrounded
by yards of gravel;

overestimating
the time it will take
to do your doing,
re-return a good full
half hour early;

several bags
of compost shipped
more than a thousand
miles from a farm
in a different climate;

bedrock so near
the surface, might
as well dig out
the soil, might
as well fill in
with gravel,
might as well expand
the area for rest;

your friends’
parents like dust
when you embrace
them, you
feel yourself as
stone;

a vacancy
that results in
a staying, a
keeping near,
a sleep-soaked
afternoon;

filling well past
full, the fillings
changing, the fullness
remaining the same;

only two
real routes for
your re-return,
each with a
handful of variations,
you choose
based on exposure,
based on grade and pitch
of hill;

a number of shelves
for the keys,
an assortment of bags
for the keys,
keys clipped in,
keys set upon,
an uncertainty of
keys;

again sick
with desire,
again feverish
for presence,
again a mistake
of separation;

despite
the artificial
glow, the
elimination,
the polluted buzz,
still, the moon;

an evergreen
with limbs that do not
start for twenty feet
up the trunk, thirty
feet, its top
laden with cones;

a preference
to be as
tree, which is
to say, rooted,
unattached, neither
participant, nor
observer.