Three Poems
Life in the Ocean
Ode to an Outrigger
I see you
a tiny speck
in the vast blue ocean
in a David and Goliath battle.
Pulled down under
the belly of a rising wave
the outrigger springs
amazingly
right back
thumbing its nose
at the mighty brute.
Defeated
the waves roll up their frustration
to Himalayan heights
dash their heads
frothing at the mouth
hissing along the beach
pulling at the hair of sand
in the receding angry current.
Enjoying the moment
you sway to the music
of the dancing ripples
until….
In Praise of a School
Well-schooled
you do wonders
swimming
just beneath the net
tugging at it
like hit and run rebels
using every trick of the trade
daring
on occasion
to enter the enemy gates
within the folds
of the floating net
as if to check out
for yourself
who is smarter
the man
in the amude thong
at the stern
net in hand
or you
the proud flag-bearer
of the School of Fish.
The Stilt Fisherman
Your flimsy seat
barely above the reach
of the pounding waves
your hand-net
tugging at you
testing your balancing skill
you travel the world
sitting on a stilt
stuck in the water
silhouetted against the rising sun
in the glossy splendour
of the National Geographic.
Tracing Gotama
I
When you tiptoed into the night
stepping over bare naked ladies
exposed on the dance floor by the divan
beyond the late late shows,
returning three Palaces
to the care of father Suddhodana
in memory of mother Mahamaya,
you left, kicking one extreme,
not the world but a world layered
by a stratosphere of dark ignorance, leaving
prints in the cement of time,
like a thick smog in the heart of a city.
II
Casting a searchlight into the eerie dark, you stopped
first at the lampposts of a beaten path, pulled
by the magnet of Alara Kalama, looking
for a spark to ignite the dried leaves within, scaling
in his shadow a tamed tree, tasting
the fruit of empty-space-unlimited, only
to turn thumbs down
to a happiness of this world,
an invitation to co-lead.
Searchlight focus narrowed, probing
the deeper recesses of mind, you scaled
a taller tree following Uddaka the son of Rama, tasting
a sweeter fruit of subtler taste,
neither-consciousness-nor-non-consciousness,
thumbing down again
a happiness, an invitation.
Looking for opportunity, you immersed
in the Group of Five, denying
the barest morsel, keeping
a breath breathed out, out,
fire flaming out of your ears,
thunder and lightning competing
in your exploding nerves,
yet again to turn your back
on another extreme,
self- mortification, answering a call within
to seek not farther afar, but deeper within.
III
Meditating at night, buried
in the wombs of dark thickets, making
friends of mammal and reptile, fruit and bark, the
hard-nosed you returned
to a life, of three perhaps two
meals a day, glimpsing
not long after, the glow
at the end of the tunnel.
Batteries recharged, the light within reach, you looked
for a flowing river to sit by, where man and beast roamed,
to cut through, in the shade of a new tree,
the last vestiges of attachment, excitations
of the heart in flight, delusions of the brain
vanishing like stars at dawn as
new doors opened, in
a cessation of perception,
paving a Middle Path
for a mind Awakened
to a never-before land
beyond the tunnel
into the calm of Truth.
Hawaiian Memoirs
When you, native
of the soil, love
and patience tested by two little-uns,
one on your lap, the other tugging,
offered a dollar, a US dollar no less,
saving face for this tourist who carried
no exact change,
you built for me a brazen palace,
brick by civilizing Aloha brick,
pushing the bottom line into hiding shame
beneath your caring shadow.
Ripped of long-worn dark glasses,
watching the new Yankee face come into view,
the Canuck ponders a matching move,
when, noting movement at the seat
as the bus eases to a halt,
he shoves a bill,
a five-fold bill,
into an open tote-bag.
Smiles cross along a pathway
of humanity,
momentary
but momentous.
Aloha!
