Winter Haiku

Winter Haiku

Winter's sudden fright

Curled oak leaves wind-blown down

Spiders crawl on snow

Barry G. Wick

I Am A Monk

I Am A Monk

(for my children who are confounded by their father)

“Be still with me....you know where I am...keep breathing...”--Imogen Heap

I am a monk

without chanting sutras,

without simple robes,

or affectatious langot.

There is no exact word

to describe the faith

I practice. Some are close.

Ranjung sangay?

The self-enlightened?

Pratyekabuddha?

The path of self-enlightenment?

I would be a poor choice

for such great words.

My study wat

is an old trailer

where I cannot kneel,

where there are no devotees

to help with my simple needs.

There are no attachments

or so I think

as I examine everything within

or attempt to suspend the world.

Unlike a real monk

I cannot walk my city with a bowl;

I need and sometimes carry money.

In this obsessed society

it is not begging to accept money

since cooked rice and vegetables

rarely come or survive in the mail.

Those who give to me

practice their faith in generosity

and reveal truth in charity.

For the few who serve me

I give what I simply can:

a poem,

a caring ear,

a kind word,

my time,

confused attempts at love,

a smile.

I wasn't always on this path.

It would be impossible

to explain my life to others:

the silence of selflessness,

the study of what's inside,

the walk inside a cage.

I fail every day to match ideals

of monks around the world.

I do aspire to a higher way;

to answers that complete me.

I claim no awareness or

enlightenment.

Normal clothing will cover me.

It's not important for others

to recognize me by my exterior.

Many will judge me

with or without robes

and the trappings of a religious.

As a teen,

I once told my mother

I wanted to live in a monastery;

the undiscovered truth I later found

was to get away from her.

Not being Catholic, Thai Buddhist,

our own Congregational Christianity,

some other religious group

with monasteries, I never

found pantheists who share

in communities. Some may exist.

My back on a lawn

in the starlit dark of night

is a way for me

to partially glimpse gODD.

I have achieved the basic

requirements of such a life

without the company of

other monks.

I contemplate and pray.

I read lessons that come

or are presented before me.

I learn from everything

what it is to live striving

for an ideal I'll never achieve.

My monk's name

was given to me by my parents

and those who came before me.

Out of respect for their paths,

right or wrong,

I now keep the name

in reverence for their sacrifices

that put me here,

unable to walk the road

or to visit those who need me

in my advanced years.

My service is simple

without desires for fame or wealth.

What I create is free.

What I take comes freely to me.

I spent much of my previous life

failing at everything I touched.

I was greedy, egotistic, glutinous,

foolish, caddish, and more.

I am accepting now

that I've found where I belong.

I am alone;

with or without

friends and family,

sitting with my experiences.

While I listen for a priest

ringing a bell,

here it becomes birdsong,

squirrel chatter,

wind rippling the metal roof,

the frozen noises

of the siding that complains,

falling icicles, thunder, rain,

voices in a dream or on radio,

music of every student,

even the professional ones.

All sounds come from gODD

in a vast spectrum of the visible

and invisible.

Sometimes a person becomes

what they once thought they

wanted to be and never expected.

I am a monk.

Barry G. Wick

The Shadows

The Shadows

I stare at the morning from the window

to the snow. The shadows of branches

demonstrate the measures of music.

With reverence. gray fingers play slow

notes of an organ from a star to recreate

the keys caressed by Cameron Carpenter.

Barry G. Wick

For Poet Nanny Gunderson

For Poet Nanny Gunderson

Mother told me about your

pacing the house in Vermillion,

picking words out of the air

as if they were flying to you.

Then you'd speak with your mother

in Norwegian and her blindness

in a silent room with her knitting

that you'd pull apart every day.

I don't float through a dictionary.

A few useful words stream

through the ice striped window

while snowplows bank the useless.

We are all blind in our rooms

knitting some sense to our lives

with gODD pulling things apart

each night for our next day.

Barry G. Wick

Night Travels

Night Travels

I wash clothes

in a small room

that was coupled

to my childhood

I compliment the new owner

on the white cupboards

that I don't remember

from years ago

Back and forth

from the patio

to the kitchen entry

I see the two dogs

who meant the most to me

the white Great Pyrenees

and the St. Bernard

who hangs around my leg

begging for the touch

I give him in these clouds

I go no further inside

and make a call

to the Frenchman

who lived with us

after his years fighting

in Algeria

I hear his voice

saying that he can't stay

on the line for long

when an insistent woman

calls my name

in a tone that wakes me

and I'm left with the feeling

I shall be here again

Barry G. Wick

Silence

Silence

I love communication

with silence

It says so much more than

the flicker of lips

in candlelight

It's especially useful at a distance

The planets and stars

told humanity

truth with it

Wives and angry friends

use it frequently

After one extended silence

a person knows exactly where

the switches are

since darkness surpasses

even a wordless dream

Any query brings

the dreaded

“If you don't know...”

It is not gold

because gold will purchase

all the chatter

anyone can stand

at the end of your arm

staring into the noisy abyss

A length of rope with which

to hang oneself

brings on

the kind of noiselessness

we are all applying for

at the moment

of our first wail

Return us to a heartbeat

it says

or less

much less

We only have to wait

much too long

through interminable

meetings and industry

best left for the deaf

How I envy them

some days

With deafness

all say the same nothings

the hearing can't understand

those useful hand gestures

one has to learn

in order to

get yelled at

Imagine a world

where the numbers of hearing

and deaf are reversed

There would be no mufflers

on engines

There would be contempt

for musicians with no support

for concert halls and orchestras

who performed badly

With silence

we know where we stand

at the center

of a great city

a nothing

a nobody

a zero point zero

Chopin or Led Zeppelin

will lead you away

from your own creations

Something as small

as a poem

is a noise

with which to rend

all others

with bombs in their heads

See?

I am the king of crash

the wandering boom

from whom you flee

Only the ice that

falls from the eves

into a drift

is the Aztec knife

ripping open my chest

sending me where

even friends want

me to be silent

Silence is my destination

all I ever knew

all I ever will know

will be lost in its library

Here is my ticket

to an empty shelf

no one will dust

My silent cough

attests to its reality

its gold-less beaches

filled with unknown beauty

illuminated by a cold sun

on a tumbling rock

that watches itself slow

as the light recedes

across its expanding years

which cannot count themselves

Barry G. Wick