Though you cast your net
A thousand times and more,
A million shinning fishes
Live and wriggling on the sand,
You can never catch the Sea,
Or hold it in your hand.
As some readers of this blog may know, I was the recipient of a liver transplant a little over two years ago. It was, in fact, the transplant experience that first stimulated me to begin writing poetry on a regular basis. Within a few weeks of the transplant I developed a persistent bile leak that has been a constant source of trouble for me, causing constant pain and landing me in the hospital on a regular basis. The doctors placed a trans-hepatic drain through my new liver in an attempt to allow the leak to heal. It has failed to do so. As a result, I am having corrective surgery done on Wednesday morning, September 8th.
I'll be in hospital for a week or so and laid up for the better part of a month. Before I do so, I would like to thank my friends and readers for your encouragement and support through these last two years. I hope to be back soon and posting new work here.
I'm posting two poems today, the first above this text was written earlier today, inspired by something I was reading in the classic "Blue Cliff Record" , Case #38, where Feng Hsueh speaks of "... scouring the oceans fishing for whales, I regret to find instead a frog crawling in the muddy sand". The second, below, is one of those nagging little intruders that appear sometimes during meditation. I'm often not exactly clear on what they mean. What, for instance, is the handout that the self comes looking for so tenaciously? Any thoughts?
Who is this,
Tugging at my eyelids?
Just myself, again, I'll wager,
Come poking 'round
Between the breaths,
Looking for a handout!
The net-casting image was taken from:
http://www.depthastrology.net/tools/for-entrepreneurs-part-v/
