Today's poem is Meditation on Wintering by Deborah Pfeffer. It is read by Samaa Abdurraqib.
Meditation on Wintering
Winter mornings
I search blankets of snow
for the tip of the
Buddha's topknot.
Admirable,
the way he keeps
his head above it all
for so long.
Blasts of raging wind and ice
bury him in drifts
even he could not endure
and so, he disappears.
I saw it coming
from my preferred view
to the back garden,
where he sat content.
Storm after storm,
snow cover for his hands
held in meditation mudra,
his face erased,
topknot last to go.
He vanishes
along with winding paths,
flowerbeds, stones,
ways familiar.
Disappearance
lives in me as both
terror and longing,
an edge of awareness,
watching the self sit,
utter emptiness hovering.
I step back, away from
becoming wind
to return here, to this garden,
bare maple awareness,
dog on the doormat,
the hand-woven life
of the unenlightened.