the dharma blog

I walked around a familiar park one warm and golden evening with Katie and Lola. We walked first through a brushy woods, lots of buckthorn, and then down a path sandwiched between a barbed wire fence and a row of pines. The trail took us down a small hill through a healthy stand of sumac. To our left was a hillside, all prairie, and we walked around the edge of it when we emerged from the sumac. We talked of the future.

Oaks at prairie’s edge
The dog splashes in a pond
    Empty bluebird house

I came to this same park once with a good friend when I was a restless senior in high school. It was the middle of the night but the moon was full and we played tic-tac-toe on a scrap of paper by the light of that moon, then we rambled around the trails, finally stopping by a lake.

    Black trees, black sky
Silver glimmering water
I throw a rock, splash

One summer, I came out here a few times a week to run the trails. I remember the mosquitoes being terrible and not being able to take a break and walk like I thought I would be able to. But I also remember the woods themselves receding, my heartbeat, inhaling and exhaling becoming the only thing that mattered.

Breathe warm humid air
    A narrow path up a hill
Think of distant things