Readings: Oh, my...

X
Below is another selection, #54, from Jim Harrison's AFTER IKKYU:


This morning I felt strong and jaunty in my mail order
Israeli commando trousers. Up at Hard Luck Ranch I spoke
to the ravens in baritone, fed the cats with manly gestures.
Acacia thorns can't penetrate these mighty pants.
Then out by the corral the infant pup began to weep, abandoned.
In an instant I became another of earth's billion sad mothers.
X

Readings: from After Ikkyu by Jim Harrison

X
~ 6 ~

Shoju sat all night in the graveyard
among wolves who sniffed his Adam's apple.
First light moving in the air
he arose, peed, and ate breakfast.

...and another:

 ~ 12 ~

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don't know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch. 

...yet one more:

~ 24 ~

The monk is eighty-seven. There's no fat
left on his feet to defend against stones.
He forgot his hat, larger in recent years.
By a creek he sees a woman he saw fifty summers
before, somehow still a girl to him. Once again his hands
tremble when she gives him a tin cup of water.
 
X