MY BODY IN SAMSARA

Sun washes back of my neck.
Is the first meal silence or exhaling?
Through a narrow sightline a shimmer of silver
rises and passes the dark surface.
The reinvention of breath.
The sweet-scent-of-all-things-love.
At first tsa lung, openness of crown,
and already have lost count!

I stretch my legs out in solitude.
Who is here to be offended? 
No one.
I return to sitting.
The heavy branch, dead, that fell on the stream
is a dormitory for insects.
School in samsara is year-round.

While my head spins the cawing of raven:
the self of every sitting is unique.
Just now I heard the neighbor girl
singing a snippet of Amazing Grace.

What good
are bodies if we can’t
let them go?

5/17/20