What Nature Does With Pain

The best stuff always starts
with a grain of truth,

be it the tiniest blood-drop
of a dinosaur's life
carbonized and compressed
until nothing's left
but blazing eternity;

or be it a thumb-sized dingleberry
from the bottom of the cat tray
that inadvertently strays
on your jaunty stroll
to the recycling bin,
slips and slides rolling
into the storm drain,
a turdish U-boat shrinking
desiccated by salten soaking
for weeks at sea
until a single
irritating remnant
slithers down some clam's
proto-esophageal tube
slipping like a sharp
and bitter spike between
slime and shell.

The faceless animals
all agreed it was hell.

Where the pain begins
the pearl grows fat.

Watershed

The water line to the washer blew,
the basement flooded.

The Awakened One’s altar
remained dry,
became an ark I carried
upstairs to the study
where it studied me,
knitted my disorientations
into forty days and nights of dreaming
in a single sleep while waiting
for new land to appear.

Everything that was
is gone.

All the old plans
are dust and gratitude,
tears and laughter;
and even those pass away
the moment they arrive.

Sub-horizon’s incandescence
hollows out the former darkness,
chips away at every shadow
until all the trees glow green again.

Breath blooms unblocked,
unburdened by brand-name carcinogens,
broad as the first morning wind
through this virgin valley
untouched by any past,
unpenetrated by expectations.

There is nothing here.

No one’s watching,
and something brighter than the sun
is rising from
a sleep that never was.