Award-winning poet Brynn Saito, intrigued by the teachings of Zen Center founder Shunryu Suzuki, shares with us her poem in response to the master’s teaching.
“Sometimes a flash will come through a dark sky…The sky is never surprised when all of a sudden a thunderbolt breaks through. And when lightning does flash, a wonderful sight may be seen. When we have emptiness, we are always prepared for watching the flashing.”—Suzuki Roshi
How to Prepare the Mind for Lightning
In the recesses of the woman’s mind
there is a warehouse. The warehouse
is covered with wisteria. The wisteria wonders
what it is doing in the mind of the woman.
The woman wonders too.
The river is raw tonight. The river is a calling
aching with want. The woman walks towards it
her arms unimpaired and coated
with moonlight. The wisteria wants the river.
It also wants the warehouse in the mind
of the woman, wants to remain in the ruins
though water is another kind of original ruin
determined in its structure and unpredictable.
The woman unlaces the light across her body.
She wades through the river while the twining
wisteria
bleeds from her mouth, her eyes, her wrist-veins,
her heart valve, her heart. The garden again
overgrows the body—called by the water
and carried by the woman to the wanting river.
When she bleeds the wisteria, the warehouse
in her mind is free and empty and the source
of all emptiness. It is free to house the night sky.
It is free like the woman to hold nothing
but the boundless, empty, unimaginable dark.
Brynn Saito, author of The Palace of Contemplating Departure, has just published her newest book, Power Made Us Swoon.
