That kiss that burned one Tuesday, four a.m.,
Won't make it into any bulletin,
Nor that flicker-flash of  bird, that garden time,
Nor his shameful need, nor the white wine
Left in the glass, obituaries of hours
Unmourned at cards, some ode to spring
Her blinking heart sang, nor childish chores
Of Sundays drained. Not light. Not anything.

No and no and no. Dim and dim,
A vacant voice pronounces prayers at him
While worlds wane small as words some woman said
Meant hope or love. Then no one else is there
Who peers through dark. Who weeps, or blanks of care,
Or hardly knows him, writing he is dead.

Say you want a cat. A dog's too easy,
would wag when wag is inappropriate,
and slobber on the guests. You'll take the cat,
so different and strange, it drives you crazy,

its shiftlessness, its ins-and-outs, its chi.
You call. It does not come. Is this a pet,
this Dharma ***? You say you can't accept
its vacant gaze, its scorn, who yearned to be

at home with feral grace, with all you're not.
But you're a Body safely locked from Mind,
that Problem no Mind solves. This point's defined
for you by ****, who's not the pet you thought

but Otherness, one owned by God, or none.
Cat sleeps for hours, wants out. A job well done.

a liar in love
a crow in the cold
beginnings ascend
from the carcass of folly
what remains is the will
what survives is what
was there all along
courage is knowing