Monkey Mind \ Six Ways To Know Water

Alan:  Once, long ago, a friend told me this story from some TV show he’d seen.  At least that’s what came into my own Monkey Mind years later when I wrote the poem.  

Monkey Mind

Monkey is magic!  Monkey is power!

Monkey defeats all the animals in his net of words.

Monkey is quick!  Monkey is grasping!

Monkey taunts the world and races to the end of the universe,

relieves himself at the pillars marking the edge of space and time.

Oh Monkey, look at Buddha’s hand,

urine trickling down His palm.

You’d give anything to be with Him for a moment

and He’s always here, taking your abuse.

Monkey Mind, stop and realize:

He is always here.

Sit still, hold your tongue.

Do not defile the guardian of all worlds.

Nancy:  This poem wrote itself during a 10-mile car trip while I listened to a CBC radio program on the search for extraterrestrial water.  The first line came unbidden, and soon the rest followed.

Six Ways To Know Water

Feel the gush of it between your legs;

after nine months the child must leave

water, learn air.

Stand in the gorge, stand between the stones

in the spill of the dam and feel the heat

of the sun, the cold of the deep water.

Wait for a small dark hole to form in the pond.

Push the canoe out across the ice, which will

break slowly into diamonds.  Strike the crystals

until you are floating, until the ice

acknowledges April.

Fly through it in a small plane made of

sticks and fabric and yellow paint, always

staying in the center of the rainbow.

Watch the cold sea boil into the colder

air; watch it build the peaks and valleys

of a nameless range; watch them tear loose

and drift inland, dragging their shadows

over the barrens.

Query the planets:  Water?  Ask the moons,

look into the stars.  Water?  Are we alone?

Water?