Zen and the Chocolate Croissant

 Zen and the Chocolate Croissant

Of a Saturday Morning 

I saw a car out in the drive 

  Man with an orange coat in it

No matter, we get these U turns frequently

Yet hung upon the kitchen door a bag

Within a box, within four …

  Sugar powdered, waning moons

Someone who knows my address

A church friend for sure

But from whom no matter

  Chocolate croissants,

I’d been Jones’n for one all week

So special, so baked, so gifted

I decided to take one Oryoki style

  My knees don’t do full lotus anymore

Shakuhachi flourish makyo

First bite, meets teeth

Tongue and saliva

  No chocolate in this pointed end

Powdered taste buds sugar on my lips

Oh for the wonder of Zazen

Simple in the mind restraint control

  Argument with my brother takes a back seat

Good to know what’s important: Chocolate Croissant

The second bite brown joy

There is the chocolate flake crust shell 

  Cold and softness pudding in my mouth

Cold black coffee bitter the balance

The third bite 

Is greater than the first two

  Yet not as great as either

Getting what one expects defies its expectation

Half done is well begun

I’ll save the other half for tomorrow

  Oh for the wonder of Zazen

Cold black coffee bitter the balance

Christmas Afternoon

 Christmas Afternoon

Is the white bearded senility with age

That rounds out the raveled year

  With whom and wherever we hold most dear

Before that sleep which wakens queer

  In a wassailing for Spring

Cold and wet, the wassailing for Spring

Christmas is the time for bone aching

Sedentary, watching the fireplace like a Tv set 

  Complaining how the wine isn’t as good as last year

When last year’s wine wasn’t so good either,

   Just as this year’s memories aren’t selected yet

And how many memories

  We’ve yet to forget

Merry Christmas my dear, 

  Bar the wassail cold and wet

Wintergreen

 Wintergreen

Christmas is a blue sky cloud

  Which becomes a something new

And now looks new, a new something new

  With a hinting twist of wintergreen

Our bottle brush tree,

  So called as it came to us in a test tube

And is now taller than I

  With arms grown that reach wider 

Is now all slack-a-limp at ease,

  Coated by a drizzle weighted down

Of winter’s white vanilla frosted glaze

  That’s been applied for several days

Leaving me believing in Christmas cookies, 

  Fresh pine mint and sugar powder flavor,

And a fine respite from the Foole Yoole mayhem

  For we to scratch and sniff and savor

Season of the Saw-Bird

Season of the Saw-Bird

Sunny of a Tuesday 

As I sit out on my porch

I won’t take my bird walk today

In a heat wave summer scorch

Years ago I learned to hear 

I know my birds I’m rarely wrong

And watch my wild birds by ear

Distinct as plumage is their song

Except I never heard this one before

Kind of a goes “we-heeeee ..’

Followed by a ring and a buzz

Er – Errrrr – er – errrr- er – er-rent!

   Wing wing wing wing …

From out back the plumber’s house

He renovates old bathrooms

Keeps his shop in his garage

Home with old tools and his brooms

Late July’s the quiet time

Most the Spring birds have nested

Mating songs are over with

Young fledgling’s wings long tested

‘Cause birds don’t fly north in summer

Their migrations commence after these doldrums

  Quiet summer birdless doldrums

Now here again, 

  The season of the saw-bird

So, yeah, 

I know he’s cuttin’ tiles

And that old coot’s no old bird

Still on a summer Tuesday

He’s the only bird I heard

The Rolling Thunders of a Summer’s Empty Nest

The Rolling Thunders of a Summer’s Empty Nest

So this happened yesterday, I noticed it all too quietly, 

Cocked head I listened, and attuned to the raucous silence

Our house wrens both had gone! 

Ago, the slack-water of Spring’s ebbing into summer

Brought in the pair of wee wrens come to claim stake of my rental 

The male stuffed with twigs all three of my hand made nest boxes

No fear of no bears within this little brown Goldilocks, oh no

The female finally settling in the big one on the garage 

Then singing singing singing, a veritable two bird Woodstock

Until next about two weeks in a coarser chatter began 

Harping like a New Years party ratchet, chat chit chit ... 

Intending to warn me away, mostly from the female 

Henpecking her mate to stand his ground with me, pick a fight!  

  And I who put up that nest box too!

That chatter in latter days the only sound that either made 

Until third voices, fae faerie twinkles deep within the box

Told me me warm summers brood patch had worked it’s magic in their nest 

I long for that month, six weeks even maybe while they cheered me 

Or as rude neighbors will, forbade me checking in on their brood

Until today of a sudden, 

   what’s wrong? 

Echos the rolling thunders of an empty summer’s nest

Summer’s heat bereft of chatter, long flown cool cheerful songs 

No tails flicking on the runner string bean trellis. 

No little grubs in beaks tweaking on back step rails

Cantankerous little cuties 

If you see ‘em, tell ‘em I miss 'em.

Neighbors

Neighbors

At a distance I can hear their sounds 

Ghost of a Nana scolding children

Echo children’s shrill return

  “I wanna …”

    “He just …”

      “Do I have to  … ?”

What I know of them comes on the wind 

As is the wind alone makes up my mind

  Mind is wind

No difference despite the inverted squiggle

I think I know where from they come

A street off my street house up one 

  Turn right, two houses from that one

Sight of their play is blocked by trees

I’ve never gone to see them from here

  Would I side with the kids if I did?  

They are what the wind brings to me

Weekends bear the songs of woodworking

Power tools and planes, not the airborne kind

  But the thing that looks like a shoe, makes wood curls

Sounds stronger downwind, thinner when up,

Like naturalists banding songbirds, 

  Caught in nets between my ears

Shall I go see his works?

Happy to hear the clear wind blow

  I decide best I ought not know

Good neighbors make good fences

The Magic Chip

The Magic Chip

First time we brought him to the vet

She placed a little metal chip under his skin

  On the back between his shoulder blades 

Imbued with its specific magnetic frequency

With the wave of her magic wand 

  All his clinical data was born

If you could have a metal chip implanted, 

  Would you?

“No way, I don’t my ‘information’ in there,”

   Funny the God fearing, fear ‘God’

After implanted, the vet waived her wand, 

Made funny faces, - suspense moment - 

  “Ah! There he is!”

We joked his soul lived in that chip

Successive visits, the wand waived on,

“His weight is down, his vitals down,

  His kidney’s acting up”

After he died we got his ashes back, 

  Picking him up

She waived once more the wand over his ossuary,

  “Nope, he’s gone”