Arts & Culture / Convergence / Politics / Vol. 2 No. 4

from Where Here Were We

Susan Bee, Anywhere Out of the World

Image Credit: Susan Bee, Anywhere Out of the World, (2019), 24″ x 18″, 30” x 24”, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist.

June 24

Every once in a while
well maybe not every
when the wind is
especially fierce
there’s a rawness
without sorrow
or wound, shouted
into storm, the low
the high the good
the bad. Well maybe
not bad but it feels
that way, like a slap
across the face or
piercing glance and
then you realize not
at you, but it might
as well have been
not at you but, like
they say, slappers
slap at chimeras,
sailors sail to where
they can’t be found,
though the bluster’s
raised and the sea
storm howls and
the raiders go back
to their raids, swapping
ships, go they, back
to ruin and back to
wreck, till you’d
hardly find a dry
eye in the sink
or a ring around
the pokey.

Author: Norman Fischer
Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. From 1995-2000 he was co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. His recent books are The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path and Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language, and Religion (University of Alabama Press). His recent poetry books include Magnolias Not Enough and any would be if. For more information >

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