Every poet knows this.

The photos gave homage to Weston
with a nude in place of green peppers.
He covered her body with black ink
and posed her in intricate ways,

the swing of her knees
the sway of her hip
the fall of her back
the rise of her lip

through the lens he saw lines bending,
glowing, fading.
It shaped him.

After hours of exposures she went to the shower
he went to the darkroom with a clock and red bulbs.
Half an hour later she called to him
sweetly
when he answered she asked him
to get her a towel.

He brought it, the doorway was open
the room had gone dim with the sun.

He noticed a streak near her earlobe
ink she had missed when she washed.
He imagined her hands on her body
rubbing the soap on her body

he turned and returned to his work.

My lucky number broke down.
E Pluribus Unum, padre,
my soul is poor.
Dominus omen
dominates all men
the augury
of an innocent Sunday morning.
The words we spoke
had blood in them
and the cup
we had to stand around it
around the cup and altar
while the bread turned to body
or mush
we stood
hands crossed over small hearts
beating under gilted vestments
How much longer?
Lord, have mercy?
We’re saying that again?
“The doors, the doors of wisdom . . .”
Yes, yes, wisdom
“Let us attend . . .”
Yes attend.  Pay
attention everyone
they’re passing the plate
the priest says some things in whispers
sometimes only God can hear
He’s having mercy
because we’re making the sign
some are swatting flies
holiness crawls
on the yellowing walls
in the golden robes
in the painted icons
stained glass facing east
it is rising
the sun
the song I hear
that lady singing
her blonde voice
echoes through the dome.

Aiden O’Shea sat with his head
holding up the sky
gazing at a far off mountain
and the many green trees in between.
His hands moved the pen round the page
like the painted men of an Apache circle
moving the Great Plains energy
around a bonfire,
to the rhythm of the drum
beats of summer.

The cat appeared,
he named her Dharma,
and she rubbed her cheeks on the legs of the chair
saying, “This is not the human
I left an hour ago.
Can the human body-mind consume itself
in fire,
and rise from its own ashes
fully alive, swaying
like reeds, singing
like songs in the wind?”

“Ah, cat!  This is my way,
like you in your movements with the mice.”

“What do you hunt?”
“What do you hunt?”

“I think I see.
Can you say more?”

“This Earth of ours
takes endless breaths, not human
breaths which exist as ideas,
but an unnamable action at which
we can point ourselves with sacred icons.
Sometimes we miss the rising and falling
suggested by the image, movements of bone and muscle
moving grass, moving branches . . .
A man once dipped those branches in paint
and after a night of moonlit breathing
the Earth revealed her Work.
We call it complex,
nonlinear, the rhythm
of fruit on forbidden trees.”

“The Earth paints with trees.
Man paints with brushes and pens.
How does Heaven paint?”

“Why do you postulate any movements but these,
themselves but postulations?
Man cannot understand
Heaven and Earth, little Dharma,
because to stand under them
means to stand in subjugation  
to parts of things.

Aiden O’Shea once had a dream, little Dharma,
and in that dream he becomes lucid.
Not like you when you simply dream
of catching mice.
He knows his own presence
in the dream, on a sidewalk,
some indeterminate time and place.
And first he tries to fly.

He leaps into the air
with determination.
He falls back down, hard,
sprawled on the cement
which feels so much like cement
that he hugs it
pausing to enjoy the irrational grit,
the tiny pits and peaks,
an expansive craggy wasteland to the ants
crawling near his fully sensitive hands.

He briefly considers the idea of having sex,
but instead stops a passer-by,
a woman with curly hair
carrying a red umbrella.
He says, ‘I’m sorry
to bother you, but I’m looking
for a very old,
very wise man.’
She looks at him with scorn
as if he merely wants to seduce her,
and she stomps away.

‘They play their parts well,’
Aiden
thinks.

He stops another person,
a woman dressed in a woman’s business suit,
carrying a brown briefcase in her right hand.
He chooses the words carefully:
‘This may sound
crazy, but supposedly
a very wise man lives
near here
and I want to find him, to interview him
for the newspaper.’

‘Right in this building,’ she replies,
pointing to a lefthand path.

Aiden goes inside.
He sees an old man,
probably blind.
He sees that he must take a number
and get a fortune cookie
from a bowl.
While waiting to see the wise man
each person opens his cookie
and writes his question
on the slip of paper inside.

When Aiden woke up
he could remember neither his question
nor the answer the old man gave.

By dreaming of a wise man
Aiden doubts his own wisdom.

But since he dreams
he asserts his own wisdom.

By not remembering the question
or the answer
he again doubts.

But the Awakened One walks in Silence
and teaches by holding up a Lotus.

When he wakes, Aiden
cannot say the question
or the answer.  
Did they exist in the dream?
Or did Body-Mind maintain
a Noble Silence
offering only a blooming Lotus,
the dream itself?

Ah, cat, the moving pen
does not mean,
does not answer or ask.
The poem blooms.
Hold it in silence.
Someone will smile
and wake up.”


Appendix

“There must be some distinction
between Aiden
and the wise man.”

“Aiden calls this
transformation,
or the equality of all things
Great and Small.

Back and forth he moves
in thinking about these boats in the docks:
fool or sage,
sage or fool?

He mimics the gestures of Heaven
and Earth
by engaging this movement, meditating
on Wisdom
and Ignorance, Freedom
and total Dependency.

He makes a mystery
of himself
of his two selves,
Sage
and Fool,
Angel
and Insect,
Mind
and Body.
What remains?

The Maker
of this Mystery.

(What happens when I make
a mystery of you, cat?)

If only he can complete this Mystery,
allow the non-existent Maker to make him
wholly mysterious, wholly
hidden in the Universe
he will become totally found,
totally able
to See.

Until those eyes come,
he looks with the vision of a predator.
He hunts–almost like you.”