Tao Te Ching Morning

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

27

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
She is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.

One of My Own

I was going to post one of my poems here today.  But nothing's done, nothing seems finished or right; all I have are beginnings of things, scraps.  Things marked incomplete.  So?

This is the first blog in the new house.  It's a windy day; the bamboo wall that separates our yard from the neighbor's waves back and forth.  A flash of red: a pyrrhuloxia.  All kinds of birds flit between the--blades?  What's the right word?  Isn't bamboo just some kind of mutant grass?

Anyway, speaking of birds, here's an unfinished poem about seagulls I started four years ago, when I was still living in Northern Michigan.  It fits: I've been thinking of Michigan a lot lately.  And summer is fast approaching--I must plan my escape. 

Seagulls

A course language

caked with salt,

or cackles.  That's what

the seagulls speak. 

They spend their days

crouched on a shit-

caulked rock burping

up fish guts and Big Macs,

or circling, french-fry eyed.

They've developed

bread crumb radars. 

The one perched

on the light post ogles

my hands, antsy

for anything to drop.