Right Mindfulness (poem)

 

 

 

 

Right Mindfulness

 

being a starving person

having ambition for a seed you’ve planted

wanting a bean, an iota of life, feeding life

to sprout and thrive

Happy bean

tendrilling to strings and stakes

Your own buying of these, pushing them, tying them, in place

Dreams for beans, so big, so vaulting

(well, let them laugh, who judge)

Giants belong in the sky, with pie

With pigs that fly

With stalks for chutes, for firemen’s poles

for chasing errant peasants of the earth

who slay them, hoist them with their own petards

That is, their heft, their mass, their gravity that suddenly intrudes

There, the majesty, of a cultivating entrepreneur

a bean-grower, axe-wielder, leguminaire

 

why not say to the dying, walk

be healed, rise, ask for shoes brought and fiddles played

here are miracles, fortunes in beans

a wallet full of dances for another day

…to the vigil-keeper

nothing in this power to sow the wind

Engenders a faultlessness, of mien

Don’t die, he thinks, and carry your loathing

to the dark underworld, unspoken

Regard me, if it takes an effort, let a witness say

In your eyes was seen redemption

an offering of peace

 

but leave this room

and stoop

and plant the small thing

only with fingers that consume its texture, its smoothness, its seam

the slight moisture of the soil

the breath of the crouch

and return to stand again

 

 

 

 

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Eightfold Path

Right Concentration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2025, Stephanie Foster)