microscope field

john martone

samuddo / ocean

the thousand million-fold world lotus sutra

my garden a big antenna tuned to heaven

evry word a vow of silence

peaplanttendril radio-coil

a scare crows op posite

per fectly still & openhanded youre a birdfeeder

yellow-throat warbler again & again inventing the wheel

his old skillet birdbath!

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for you this empty kitchen

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spotless quiet little kitchen

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cottage kitchen lets you just turn around

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kitchen window kitchen garden

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solstice filling a stainless pot

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cottage kitchen you line up all yr vitamins

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he goes to the kitchen to wash his eyeglasses

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white towel white stoneware mug white undershirt

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immaculate kitchen ants

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spotless floor sleeping mat

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line yr sleeping mat up w/ the floorboards

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sleeping mat down w/ the dust you are

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light under that door sleeping mat

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a sleeping mat & half-pint milk carton once

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water glass eyeglasses sleeping mat

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sleeping mat all rolled up daylilies

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yr stainless pot no better bell

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yr stainless cook pot a garden tool

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who are you in summers microscope?

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in shorts & undershirt at his microscope

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summer solstice my microscope mirror

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glaucoma squints in his microscope

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microscopic daylily pollen canoes!

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sixtypower holly hockpollen hima layas

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you pull a bindweed flower apart for the ovum

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even the bindweed flower you black worm

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half-inch black worm not at all an earthworm

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microscope youre the heaviest thing

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microscope d make a good boat anchor

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legs mirror eyepiece stage my microscope buddha

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looking more closely yes were all seethru

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sees nothing thru his micro scope & draws this perfect cir cle

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you think its just a ring of light its full of life!

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He should make the kasina of clay like that in the stream of the Ganga, which is the colour of the dawn. And he should make it not in the middle of the monastery in a place where novices, etc. are about but on the confines of the monastery in a screened place, either under an overhanging rock or in a leaf hut. He can make it either portable or as a fixture. [It] should be made by knocking stakes into the ground in the form of a lotus calyx, lacing them over with creepers. If the clay is insufficient, then other clay should be put underneath and a disk a span of four fingers across made on top of that with the quite pure dawn-coloured clay. So, having thus made it delimited and of the size prescribed, he should scrape it down with a stone trowel a wooden trowel turns it a bad colour, so that should not be employed and make it as even as the surface of a drum. Then he should sweep the place out and have a bath. On his return he should seat himself on a well-covered chair with legs a span and four fingers high, prepared in a place that is two and a half cubits [that is, two and a half times elbow to finger-tip] from the kasina disk. For the kasina does not appear plainly to him if he sits further off than that; and if he sits nearer than that, faults in the kasina appear. If he sits higher up, he has to look at it with his neck bent; and if he sits lower down, his knees ache. Visuddhimagga iv, 21-26
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peapod still translucent

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pea-plant rains opposite

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prairie cone flowers his inner watchgears

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racemes of mint a sudden pine forest

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virginia creeper pulls his house down

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lies right down garden rows his bedroom walls

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napping between my garden rows cantaloupe head!

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gladioli tomorrow

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my shoulder gladiolus

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how many vertebrae gladiolus

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gladiolus the mind is underground

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gladiolus a sword among sunflowers

gladiolus pollen a star-field

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order liness gladiolus

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spaced so gladiolus blooms words

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gladiolus my distaff

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gladiolus finally thunder

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sunflowers face every which way dont you see

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jack cd climb this sun flower stalk but its al ready heavn

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sun flowers & gold finches knew all along

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sunflowers nearly my attic window

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my sunflowers challenge the pines

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my microscope fields all sun flower

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sun flower stalk & leafs bristles yes theyre mi cro scopic rays

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sunflowers side-by-side full moon

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all weve got in common sun flower plantlouse me

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road west no breakfast countless hubble space fields either side w/ queen anne galaxies soon to be bird nests, chicory, levertov-fireweed, cumulus star-nurseries, & none of this if any one thing didnt change, if there were not unborn selflessness. You neednt worry anymore once you see. Corn crib, grain-bin spaceships & you too on yr way to this world

queen annes lace weightless roadside astronaut

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boots & shovel infinitesimal lettuce seeds

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a dead rabbit & lettuce just sprouting

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bury that dead rabbit here a time capsule

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dead rabbit virginia creeper s also endless

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And I too, monks, before awakening, while I was still the bodhisattva, not fully awakened, being liable to birth, aging, disease, dying and sorrow because of self, sought what was likewise liable to birth aging disease, dying and sorrow. Then it occurred to me, monks: Why do I, liable to birth, aging, disease, dying and sorrow seek what is likewise liable to these things? Suppose that I, being liable to birth aging, disease, dying and sorrow because of self, having known the peril in what is likewise liable to these things, should seek the unborn, the unaging, the undecaying, the undying, the unsorrowing, the stainless, uttermost cessation of bondage nibbana. Ariyapariyesana sutta

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hollyhocks wild grapes pokeweed his pruning shears fall apart

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a compost pile behind closed eyes

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cumulus too in yr mind compost

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this heatwave scorches my last sweetpeas

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heatwave my large-print book

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fingerling phallus womb these eggplants

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weed heap in sun yr veins

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footbridge over culvert (the cottage abandoned)

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hes a blind astronaut

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I become the cipher that my blindness tells me I am. John M. Hull

first thing this morning look over garden now that youre blind

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blindness itself looking looking sunflowers

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yr eyes yellow from glaucoma drops sunflowers

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blind as can be off to meet that buddha of infinite light

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mothers almost blind youre a shadow

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gracious eyelids a ferry

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eyelids for yr compass

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His secret a 3/8o.d. tube the length of an old mans cane. It attaches to the end of his garden hose; and evenings he goes plant to plant plunging it down, soaking roots, wasting hardly a drop on the dusty surface. With 6 tomato plants & 8 peppers & countless okra, basil, & who-knows-what, hes not done till dark, thankful that his gardens no bigger than it is. This watering tube leaves a tunnel behind at each plant wider than ants would make, narrower than a snake or crawdad. There among the roots, rhizomes, pupae, & undiscovered species is a breathing-tube of light. Surely, if he could see, he would see Lascaux Magdalene, those paintings at the source, but that old man just pokes along, not seeing a thing in oblivion.

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botany book in an attic box & his trip to mars

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spiderwebs bandage those toppled garden stones

july 2011