RAKE
When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what is happening?
The golden wind is revealing itself. — Zen koan
Poetry showed
me a red wheel
barrow alone
in the rain
but there is
also a red,
ruined rake,
prongs twisted
and metal split,
lying in a
suburban street.
The cars veer
to miss it
but no one
stops to save
their own (or
others’) tires.
They are
busy regarding
the future
through their
windshields.
Well, I stop.
I swerve
into a store
lot, dart
my self into
the street, move
that rake
from its
concrete grave
and throw it
in the backseat.
I drive, and
then arrive
at the zendo,
where people sit
in silence
then converse
on falling
leaves and
the gale or
graceful forces
of the season.
But the koan
of the day
doesn’t quite
hit me that way—
sweet autumnal
phases and
how we shelter
when it’s necessary.
I see
the twisted rake,
beneath a
withered tree,
or adrift in
my backseat,
and feel
relief.
To know that
it doesn’t
all depend
on that pure
wheelbarrow,
living eternal
on the page.
To know that
we—our tools,
our dreams, our
hardened streets,
the way you
lick my neck
and furiously
need me—all
fall away,
and what is left
is really nothing
of our own making.
When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what is happening?
The golden wind is revealing itself. — Zen koan
Poetry showed
me a red wheel
barrow alone
in the rain
but there is
also a red,
ruined rake,
prongs twisted
and metal split,
lying in a
suburban street.
The cars veer
to miss it
but no one
stops to save
their own (or
others’) tires.
They are
busy regarding
the future
through their
windshields.
Well, I stop.
I swerve
into a store
lot, dart
my self into
the street, move
that rake
from its
concrete grave
and throw it
in the backseat.
I drive, and
then arrive
at the zendo,
where people sit
in silence
then converse
on falling
leaves and
the gale or
graceful forces
of the season.
But the koan
of the day
doesn’t quite
hit me that way—
sweet autumnal
phases and
how we shelter
when it’s necessary.
I see
the twisted rake,
beneath a
withered tree,
or adrift in
my backseat,
and feel
relief.
To know that
it doesn’t
all depend
on that pure
wheelbarrow,
living eternal
on the page.
To know that
we—our tools,
our dreams, our
hardened streets,
the way you
lick my neck
and furiously
need me—all
fall away,
and what is left
is really nothing
of our own making.
Amy Elizabeth Robinson is a writer, poet, mother, and historian living in the hills of Sonoma County, California. She holds degrees from Princeton, University College London, and Stanford, and now studies Zen and the creative process at the Pacific Zen Institute. She was recently named a Contributing Editor of PZI’s forthcoming online literary/arts journal, Uncertainty Club. Her writing has appeared in Vine Leaves, DASH, and the North Bay Bohemian, and as part of Rattle’s innovative Poets Respond program. Amy is currently training to become a poet-teacher with California Poets in the Schools, and when kids and poems aren’t calling she blogs about creativity, spirituality, and social change.