Green Onion Heart, and Box

A second Ash Wednesday story. Yesterday, our church was open from 10am to noon for prayer. Though not a Protestant custom, I brought my Zen zafu and sat cross-legged in the nave. Not in Zazen, but to prey. One wonders, why when the same petty prayers go unanswered, what else there could one find?

And after that, special 2 for 1 today, and yes a  box blew by.
　

Green Onion Heart

To sit with you still a moment,
I hear I am the querulous child in prayer,
'Please save me from all of this,’
‘Please spare me the chore of that,’
  ‘Make some ill one well once again,’
All the duties of my adult life restated
  In the whines of a tearful baby,
Ever begging the nearest parent to fix

With only the view of this wine colored carpet,
  I saw myself an onion,
Swaddled in crisp brown paper skin,
  As coated by exposed and petty rust,
  Or in the green patina of Lady Liberty,
Which, with awareness of, I could slough,
There to reveal my ‘I’s’ in the plump naked rings
  Of all my ages, an uncut tree’s uncounted selves,
Deepest wherein sprout a green tongued bulb,
  My heart, reaching toward -
    You are my sun



Box

A box blew through the yard today,
Seemed not to want to go, or stay,
The wind blew it in somersaults,
It’s presence here was no man’s fault,

It blew into the neighbor’s yard,
Where it haunted in hungry ghost brush,
Soon settled there, in word and deed,
I guess it found all that it need

Oh, to see this box globetrotting free,
It did stir an envy in me,
Although I choose live in our house,
Giving my all, with loving spouse

For men are not meant to be free,
Man, do not pray to end your cares,
We know ourselves how by we’re bound,
Seek to answer another’s prayers