Statue

hours on end focusing on the glass screen
really it’s mind and more mind
it could be the same if you sat still
and closed your eyes
you’d find the joy and horror of
your lives and thoughts
the burning

years back I nearly spent
one hundred hours of meditation
in ten days near Dallas

it stuck with me
the lessons are still making
their way here
etching etching etching
like new experiences
those days of the holy silent vow
not allowed to read a line of anything
I thought maybe I could find a
pamphlet in my bag or a receipt, anything,
but no

so I grabbed rocks from the rock garden
outside the meditation hall
and brought them back to my room
and read

read them at night as I propped up
against the wall
peering into every detail

memories came
questions

how are you, brother?
where did you get this scar from?
oh, a rain fell and you got scrapped
by the other rocks?
you got it from the others?
a wind drug you along?
you got caught under the door as it opened?
as it closed?

looking into the rock like craters on the moon
I spotted even bigotry and anguish
I went to a place and dedicated myself to
yet another staunch and maddening practice
to contact humanity and maybe something beyond it
what some of us may call Big Mind

thinking through—
we may arrive
if blessed
to the limits
of our materialism
and cast it back

encouraged to stay with our breathing
the one thing all of us have
meditation could not be
in and of itself holy
only if we discovered…
only if we stayed…
didn’t collapse…

I made myself a statue
but felt like an old house
creaking in the silent night
I would fall apart slowly like any other
and it wasn’t personal
it isn’t personal