lest you one day ask, let me enlighten you as to why I
chose to live on an island in the middle of the Pacific
with nameless neighbors beyond the bamboo
within a studio nestled into the mountain which has received
no friends, no one for tea, high or low, nor a jam session
unending songs looping riffs and phrases
nor sangha sitting time between bells using the bronze bell
my mother gave me for my 34th birthday, catching wind
that her daughter whose only full time employment had been as a
karma yogi in the Guatemalan Highlands, years ago, who now
prefers silence, the silence which the refrigerator’s hum is the
greatest disturbance to, the daughter who liked small spaces
like the one next to the fridge in our apartment growing up
the space sealed off by a plank of fake wood, you know the kind,
a plank of pressed sawdust, held together by glue, pretend
wood blocking out a tiny cubby-hole she willingly dropped herself into
from the top of the fridge, armed with a screwdriver, to apply tool to
screw, and open up the dusty gap, making way for brooms—
that daughter, who in seventh grade hid in a trunk
during her book report on Houdini, to then leap forth
in a flash of enthusiasm: she-who-loves-small-spaces
she-who-loves-silence she-who-loves-privacy she-who-loves
the-ocean: turquoise and saturated blues, or covered with storms
muted lilacs and radiant gray-green expanding its heart
open to the infinite reaches of the planet she loves,
so she sequesters herself away to be able to see its
subtle shades, hear the delicate tones, the refined voices
of the sun-soaked and rustling bamboo, the incandescent peak
rising out of the sea, tickled by waters and whale song;
she-who-glows-with-love she-who-glows-with-glee
she-whose-roof-has-become-the-star-bright-sky
whose-floor-is-mountain-close-whose-walls-are
salt-rich-breath-she-who-she-who-she-who
