Gratitude in meditation

Hello friends, here is a poem from “Chewing Down My Barn,” my second book of poems [2014]. While I’m thankful for all family and friends, and institutions that helped me along the way, “A Thanksgiving for Strangeness” underscores gratitude for the mysteries of eastern and western modes of spirituality that shape my meditations in old age. The book’s cover features my own art, an unconscious painting. I call it “Honoring Animals.” Best, Gene

A Thanksgiving for Strangeness

After a few yoga moves and push-ups,
after a breakfast geared for diabetes,
I walk into yellow leaves and fresh sun
to do Tai Chi between a BB&T bank
and swift traffic in the “real” world.
I feel somewhat strange,
but not enough to desist,
recalling with thanks those who
taught me to embrace this weirdness
that makes children point at the funny
old man in the parking lot—look mommy!
What’s he doing? Is he drunk?
Too bad more mystic oddness hasn’t
caught on without drugs of some sort.

Yet there’s a quiet right-now kind
from Ignatius, Buddha, Lao Tzu,
desert mothers, Whitman singing himself,
that allows me to blend breath with
the five brown hens and vigilant rooster
out of place here in their designer coop,
and to meld with the splendid double red
weeping maple that shows our Janus-face
reality of things both bright and blood dark,
things ever beautiful yet caught in life’s pain,
all softly rising from a single silent root.

Then I think of my Siamese Max, offered to me
from a trailer in the Georgia hinterland
by a bible-school preacher who couldn’t
recognize the feline guru born under his roof.
This master of meditation purrs on my
chest drawing me into an all-encompassing
baritone rumble to make dying a bit easier.

Yes, I lift my cap to them all, these
mentors of weird ways to live and let go.