Maple Leaves and Moon

  by Susan Stevens



From where you are you cannot
see these swirling maple leaves

in their redundant heaps about my feet
(perhaps the gambel oak litters

your lawn in like profusion); but moving
my eyes just, say, three yards on a horizontal

from the maple’s crown, there is that white
hemisphere, bas relief on blue, which 

you can see.  From where you are, some
ninety miles away, you cannot have

these metaphors that mix like water and oil
in my own wrong practice (perhaps

Zen’s single-hearted effort
lets you accept the ultimate shin ku myo u

that you are here, right now,
or, should I say, there).  Unable to accept 

things as they are, I sort papers, old cans
from the leaves, yet with care

not to sculpt the eddied, ochre mounds
as in raking.  The rigid thought before

we act always leaves some trace, according
to Zen, whereas our own activity

should burn itself completely, leaving
no trace.  I toss handfuls of leaves

high above my head, pressing moon-faced
Buddha for his calm and ordinary practice