Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Why perpetuate myths about fig leaves and apples
when we ourselves are the garden—
and the serpent’s tongue and the unforgiving god

and the naked bodies we have no choice,
as with the knowledge that would clothe them
in reverent obscurity, but to desire?

What calls us here, what carries us across the threshold
into existence, what breathes life into a handful
of dirt and casts it staggering along the orbit of its fate?

Maybe the sun has a message for me after all,
a message written in silver intaglio
long after the molten gold of midday fades.

I stand abased before its annunciation, this light
that carries itself like a herald from the king,
acknowledging its command to waste nothing,

never to misstrike the chisel,
to make of each rough block some essential shape,
of each page a poem fateful as a star.

Make it beautiful and true, that’s all,
that’s all. I’ve done what I can—
take these words, plant them, and tell me

if an apple tree grows there.