There is too much- The coming and going of pixels, products, and personalities, Demands, desires, deadlines, debts, Bandwidth saturation and buffering, Buffering, always, While the world continues to clickclick. Who hears anything? Who sees anything? Pay attention—a friend of mine just died. I didn't write acquaintance. I wrote friend. He needed things. Not much. I couldn't pay attention. It isn't all my fault, but Really it is. Not his death, but He could have left with more love and Care. Instead of waiting… Waiting for the buffering to clear.
Tag Archives: poems
The Vigil
This is the vigil-
To protect you from the wolves
After the nights
Sitting up,
Singing to you
Heart Sutra.
“Don’t leave me.”
I won’t.
Holding your hand,
Touching your heart,
Fingers in your hair.
“You don’t get tired.”
It isn’t time for me
To rest.
For you though –
Watching you breath
Watching you stop.
Open the doors.
Sunrise.
Keep the wolves away.
Wait.
Feel the sudden change.
“Where is she?”
Gone. Gone. Beyond gone.
Beyond beyond.
To the other shore.
Let the people roll in,
Roll out.
Gather the sheet,
Tie it around your body,
Carry it away.
Carry it away.
Peacocks
When I think of peacocks
I think of you and
There are so many peacocks
Here. Their colors are
Everywhere. You are
Everywhere. Teal, turquoise, and
Azure surround me as
The color of you. Your eyes,
Electric blue, Blue –
The eyes on a feather,
Royal, The color of Sky and
Oceans of blue,
Sapphires of blue,
Everything your eyes see
Makes everything I see
Iridesce with, flash with
You, Now
Everything reminds me of peacocks.
When I think of peacocks
I think of you.
Letter of Resignation
Letter of Resignation
(On my third reading of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse)
Vasudeva,
Is it really necessary
We live in this hut together?
Isn’t it enough
I gave you my clothes
For the privilege of tending oar?
Can I only find myself
In the eternal now of the river
Always flowing, but never the same?
Must I sit under that tree
For an entire week to find myself?
After a week, I should have found my navel by now.
Must I sit there to
Defeat my demons? Afterall, they are
At my heels no matter where I happen to be.
The lotus
Grows from mud, I know,
But I want a bath and clean soft towels.
Why can’t I find myself
In a club somewhere,
Meditating in the beat and the groove?
What about the
Constant flow of people and machines,
The never-ending now of the ever-changing traffic?
Why can’t I
Subdue my demons
Over a great meal or between olive thighs?
I resign.
Besides, Vasudeva,
You snore horribly.
Metric
If I had been brought up with the metric system
I could hold an orange in my hand
And tell you how much it weighs in kilograms.
But I was taught with pounds and feet
And I can tell you how much a whole bag of oranges weighs,
Just about,
Or look at a board and give you the measure of it.
But how many meters it is?
How much the orange weighs in kilograms?
I’m lost. Dumb.
Right in front of me,
Any guess as good as another.
Love, I think—
Love is measured in metrics,
Or some other unit.
I can look at it,
Heft it.
No matter.
Ask me how much I love you:
I cannot say.
I can only look at you,
Sigh,
And trust it can also be measured
In those sighs and desires, and hope
You do not ask.
In Response to William James and “The Will to Believe”
Sometimes one leaf
Will wave, oscillate.
A perfect repetition
again and again.
A dancing leaf machine,
Just the right shape,
Weight, tilt and wind—
Bent back by breeze,
Pulled forward by the
Spring of the stem
Twisted tight,
Bent back by breeze,
Twisted tight again—
Leaf and breeze in
Harmonious twist
And spring, twist
And spring, twist
And spring.
That can go on
As long as the breeze
Remains constant.
External forces,
Internal reactions,
Cause and effect.
Sometimes just one,
One leaf in an entire tree,
Waves. I imagine
It looks at the others
hanging still, and wonders
Why it is the only one
That has chosen to dance.
Halfway Through March
When I woke this morning, I was afraid I could not write. I felt it was gone. It, whatever that is, felt absent. But during the day’s discussion, in the three minutes between classes, in moments during planning, the topic of poets came up. I found the poem “We Bring Democracy To The Fish,” by Donald Hall. Don’t blame me for the way the title is capitalized – blame Donald. Anyway, he was Laureate until that poem was published. Then he was Poet Non Grata. He and the Dixie Chicks hung out together looking for work.
Distressed Haiku had this line: “I finished with April/halfway through March.” His wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, had died in the month of April, 1995. That line. That one line. I have said that myself, nearly word for word. And I was writing again. But would I ever write of anything else?
I ask that, yet I have. I have. But, time and time again, I return to it. Why? Because one doesn’t go on. One doesn’t heal. One continues, with the wound. With the weight. One may be happy, one may be loved, and one may be content, one may have a wonderful life. I certainly do. But that is still there, because it is part of our lives. For those in this “club we’re in that I wouldn’t wish anyone to belong to,” as a friend of mine put it, one doesn’t go back to the old way of being, but creates a new normal around the space.
Everything is made of space. So, I guess, I’m still writing about everything. I guess.
Halfway Through March
It is second period.
I have been discussing
Poetry with Mr. Wolf.
Poets, appreciated but
Never paid well,
Never paid attention to,
Paid heed, respected,
Honored, yes: the Poets Laureate
Paid, at first, in wine.
Chaucer paid in
Gallons of wine.
Name bridges after them,
Put up markers roadside,
Have them inaugurate
The president, but don’t
Pay them enough to
Leave their teaching posts
So they can develop
Their craft without
Daily worries of bills due.
The discussion moved to
Donald Hall. One year only
He held his post.
He published
“We Bring Democracy To The Fish.”
So long and thanks for all that.
But now it is period three,
Donald Hall is in my brain,
So I am reading.
Students working,
Teacher reading, because
I can barely think
Anything else.
I didn’t know
He lost his wife.
Twenty-six years,
Cancer comes and
She goes.
I had always pictured him
Alone. Solitary, New Hampshire
Snow. Writing.
But he wrote of
Her leaving and
What was left,
He wondered if he
Would ever write of
Anything else.
Here, listen to his
Distressed Haiku:
“Will Hall ever write
lines that do anything
but whine and complain?”
Here is the Universal.
Here is the experience
Of the creative. Of those
Who take everything
Of their lives, of their
Surroundings,
Turn it into something
To understand.
Make the internal life
External, visible, palpable.
Make something with
No hands reach out,
Shake you, shock you,
Leave you thinking,
Understanding what you
Did not understand before.
Make the solitary
The common experience.
Remind me
I’m not the only one.
Win a Copy of my Newest Book : Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin
Want to win a copy of my newest book? Of course you do. Goodreads is holding a give-away for ten copies. Just click on this link.
From the back-matter:
“Whatever ‘the Jewish experience’ might mean to the modern reader, Adam Byrn Tritt’s approach is uniquely his own. He is ‘observant’ in the sense that he carefully observes, as you would expect of a man who is, at essence, a poet. As a self-described ‘Jewitarian Buddhaversalist,’ he is aware that each tradition illuminates the other. This collection of essays and poems provides us with good talk. Conversation is the highest artform, and Mr. Tritt invites us in most kindly, with insight, erudition, humor, and compassion.”
—Wayne McNeill, author of Songbook for Haunted Boys and Girls
Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin explores—in essays, poems, and creative nonfiction—the tension between cultural heritage and contemporary society, between religion and spirituality, between the family you inherit and the family you create. From early-morning wrestlings with God to portraits of three remarkably different family funerals, from Kabbalist chants at a pagan bookstore to the humorous “What Do Jews Do on Christmas?,” Tritt’s writing taps into themes nearly universal in today’s world in ways that will resonate with readers of all backgrounds and faiths—or no faith at all.
Adam Byrn Tritt 