1.
I have been
getting familiar lately
with the flavor of
grief. It comes on me
with no warning.
Driving up-river,
to shelter-in-Nature.
At 76 mph, passing
a too-slow, white
Chevy truck. There
it is. A watery
film glazes my eyes.
It curls up, like
fog on a pond, when
the weather turns
and water reacts,
a heat differential as
sun boils air.
I am not, I should
add, grief-stricken.
Though, it’d be easy
to tune into it, like
locking on a radio station
amid a miasma of static.
2.
There is enough
grief going round, what
with a pandemic
expiring hundreds of
thousands, right and left.
A million sons & daughters,
fathers, mothers, friends
& cousins. Reprobates
& saints. This virus
claims them all. Then,
there’s the grief that
fuels the anger
with a clown-show
president, uninterested
in the lives he helps dispatch.
Couldn’t, honestly, it seems,
care less. Would rather
mull the many
slings and arrows of
his outrageous misfortune.
One white golf shoe
pressed to the floor,
going hole-to-hole,
masticating his
interminable grievances.
As we, his audience,
enraged or darkly
entertained, pull up
short, after yet another
mate gets called
positive. And like a
relentless grandmaster,
wielding bishops &
pawns, bears down upon
our sanctuary.
3.
There’s a lot of
grief going down.
But I don’t think
this grief is
that grief. This
murky, sudden-rising
grief seems old. Inborn.
The grief, perhaps, of
childhood’s shock,
when we were promised
innocence, but daily
living overtook us
like a steamroller,
flattening all. Or we,
in our wounded ways,
level other people’s
lives. Hurt people hurt
people, as they say.
(And let it be said,
whomever ‘they’ are,
they’re fractured, too.)
It comes with the
territory. This
grief, I mean.
4.
There’s a word in
Buddhist thought — samvega.
It’s the dawning horror
we’re yoked to this
water-wheel of life-after-
life, spun round
for aeons, if ignorant. ‘Long
have I wandered in samsara,
seeking, but not finding
the builder of this house …’
That grief is maybe the
sort I mean.
Be curious, my
kalyana mitta — my
spiritual friend — says
B, with whom I
undertake an inquiry
once a month by
telephone, across
the length & breadth
of America. Sometimes,
he’s on the Left Coast,
sometimes New Orleans,
it doesn’t matter. The
guidance remains the
same. Don’t flee! Don’t
exit the field, back into the
cockpit of my forebrain. A
familiar cave, where I race to
out-think these churning thoughts.
5.
That’s a hopeless, age-old
dodge. Be curious when
the demiurge, or sleek
panther of rage appears
(that’s a powerful fellow,
that one.) Not jet-black,
but composed of inky
charcoal smoke, flecked
with grey ash. Who’s he?
Be curious. Remain
in the room. And so,
now, driving, slowing,
gazing for the
turn-off, I end up
in the noon-time sun.
Cigar in one hand. A
couple of dragonflies
helicopter down
upon my white pants.
Such curious creatures!
I don’t shoo them off.
But photograph them
with my phone. Realize
the taste of grief is gone.
6.
For now. It had risen
at the back of my throat
like gorge. Gone in this
minute with the
dragonflies, as they lift,
alight anew.
I am sure it will be
back. Until I attain
nibbana. If, that is, it’s
even possible to ‘attain.’
This grief, I’m sure,
will be a traveling companion
for the long road. For
I sense — distantly, yet
with certainty — my grief
has distinctions. Nuance.
Eras. Colors and flavors.
I hardly know them all.
Greenbottom, WV | nov27-28.2020
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