SAMSARA

The search for transcendence
ends in traffic. Everyone stopped
at a light or everyone walking

& looking down. I can’t tell
the difference between being awake
& being wakeful anymore.

The dawn, manicured lawns–
tidy lines leading down a lane where
the children sleep. How do we

come & go without account
for the long history & tilled up stars
of another cosmos? Birds nipping

at the grass, morning sun awash
on the blue wall. Most days you wouldn’t
notice I’m endlessly disappearing.

I come & go. Light from
the past telling me to wake; light
in me. All this time, going nowhere.

PINK CHERRY

The bough: cold petals, rolling wind.
I said enough, but I miss you in spite.
I want to tell you, but think better of it.
This is one more spring. You, old
ornament, how have those branches
let me go? My biggest sin was always
looking for meaning. Each morning, I
take in the dark & ask it to tell me:
bright undertaking of my own falling
satisfaction. I write down each small
life I had; no one will read it. People
I love still asleep, some in other homes.
My whole life: one petal letting go, then
the next. I haven’t been myself, native
only to my delight & disbelief. The tree
keeps green, survives. The tree means
nothing but survival & stands satisfied.
The tree & I unheavening in another
spring, the bluest morning in months.

BIO: Dave Harrity’s writing has appeared in Verse Daily, Ninth Letter, Copper Nickel, Palimpsest, Memorious, The Los Angeles Review, Softblow and elsewhere. His most recent book is “Our Father in the Year of the Wolf” (Word Farm, 2016). He is a recipient of an Emerging Artist Award and an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council.