It’s possible to go wild again, says the woman sitting next to me
over breakfast this January morning at the monastery.
There are neurons in our hearts and guts,
and we fail to heed them because we’ve filled our minds
with language.
I’ve just met this woman
sitting here at this table by the ox-herding pictures.
She tells me she’s a farmer and that she speaks to the earth.
Getting messy is my dharma. The soil is alive
and it wants us to listen.
I live in the city where, I confess, my fingers never touch the soil.
I have to seek the wilderness inside, among
our cups and bowls and my children’s many
miniature cars and trucks. My dharma is simple.
I wake in the dark to write poems by hand, and the words
rise up from inside of me, unbidden.
They want me to listen.
