ZEN TODAY

Beyond ideas of right and wrong
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.

RUMI

PHEASANT

Bullies like Fatty Robbo formed me.

After terrorized weeks he got me,

But only a bloodied nose.

I got a second clout

For what I called him in front of Mum.

“Go sort it out” she said. I did.

Jumping him in his own hallway

I gave him the glad news.

And that ended that.

Ever since I’ve hated bullying.

So I feel for the cock pheasant

Having his beak pushed in it

On the long drive,

Harried by his rival every few seconds:

A dandy in finery going to no ball.

I deal with the bully.

A .22 and a roasting pan.

That old element of surprise.

RIME

Da dah!

We wake to your glory, great one!

You’ve bejewelled everything,

Transforming the ordinary.

And I’ve got to say.

It’s miraculous

And beautiful.

But the ordinary still gets my vote:

Looking harder to see the divine

In a black thorn,

Finding God in clay,

Blades of grass,

A fir cone.

In other words,

We don’t need your glad rags

To start in.

Anyone, sing.

Anyone, go and look.

Anyone, put a pen to a white page.

ZEN TODAY

Do what you can
With what you've got.

ZEN TODAY

Beating myself up,

Who is doing the beating?

And who is being beaten?

ORPHEUS IN NORFOLK

He said ‘Hadestown’, my son,

And I pretended to have heard it wrong:

‘I’ve been there.

Got drunk in the Tavern overlooking the wild reeds

And the deceptive fens,

With their dark hoards, pike

And treacherous mud depths.

Tried to cycle home.

Fell off. Hurt myself.

Had to sleep in a barn.
As though of Lethe I had drunk.

It was cold.

I turned my duffel coat round for warmth.

Course,

When I woke up

I thought I was dead.

Black hood, you see’.

He looked at me like I was mad.

‘Haddiscoe.

Where Sebald went.

Not far from the sugar beet plant.

Mud. A rookery at Loddon, by the church

Where I sang as a visiting chorister

And afterwards was fed sandwiches and cake

By old ladies finding boys to tempt and spoil,

Ladies who ran the fetes.’

Aghast, he said, ‘Hades, Dad. Hades’.

‘Wasn’t that bad’, I said.

ZEN TODAY

Build an observatory of your own mind.