Two Poems

These I just rediscovered.

As they were written many months apart, I didn't intend both these poems to feature Buddhism, animals and death. But they do. I hope you enjoy.

I hope the mayfly I just killed was Buddhist

Death by newsprint –
the business section eclipsed the table lamp’s
mirthless glow as a story on Citgo’s Venezuela
trouble hit hard an unintended audience.

Perhaps he was meditating on death
or fashioning tiny mayfly prayer flags
from stray banana peel fibers,
which he’d dole out to other Buddhist mayflies

to place wherever Buddhist mayflies’ prayers need saying.
I’d like to think the life I took
just might have had a prayer
because Buddhist flies get another chance.

A mayfly’s samsara:
eat shit and mate.

I would have sent an incarnation onward as a station
on Nirvana Railways, giving it a second or third
hundredth shot at bodhi, which for Buddhist mayflies
is realized simply one day at time.

- - -


“The Badgers are on fire!”

Billy’s callin’ – I let it ring
because I know he’s watching
the Wisconsin game too, and wishes
to discuss the ten unanswered points,
and the announcer’s absurd observation.

I wonder if they’re worried, the badgers,
confronted with their abruptly
existential condition, combusting spontaneously like
frantic badger-shaped logs soaked in kerosene,
sputtering like stuntmen or popping like prop jobs,
these also on fire.

Or are they transcendent little furry burning monks,
tranquil as a phoenix in its last moments aflame
with foreknowledge of impending rebirth?

I imagine shouts of “FIRE!” in the Kohl Center –
spectacle of the unexpected. Still the squeak
of high tops, the quickening cadence
of leather on maple continues
as the home team smokes its competition.
Bucky bravely stands, sentinel on the sidelines,
mascot-ed head immersed in a Gatorade cooler.