poem: going into the meadow after the retreat

From the just-about-out Bardo (you can buy it from me, from Amazon or by clicking on the cover to the right of this blog and following the link to 'Bardo'), and because I mentioned horse's breath yesterday, and in memory of our little pony, who died as a result of an accident a few years ago:

going into the meadow after the retreat

in the meditation hall
we interrogate the silence
for a way of being human

then later again
barefoot and slow on wet spring
grass in the wild dervish storm

and back
picking twigs, ash, feathers
out of the ‘no inside no outside’ teachings


later, home
the horse’s light breath on my cheek
the way he delicately politely

only just
meeting my eyes reads my face
hands hair with his gentle muzzle

as if he smells
questions, as if I were an event
blown in on the whirling wind


as if
from within the zero
of Zen in which he dwells

he barely
recognises me, each thing wholly
new, every encounter the first



– Roselle Angwin