6/22/08: In the key of ... N?
A Poem
Channeled from Charlie McCarthy -
(To Be Hummed in the Key of “N”)
By TIMOTHY PETTET
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”
traditional koan
Stain
of a recent incarnation
blossoms on a Kansas portion
of US Highway 50.
Prayer flags adorn
the passing caravan,
flap
in the wind of locomotion.
Radio antennae
bend,
pull in
a Christian station.
Roosting spots for hawks,
cottonwood and oak,
bow in slow-motion
to the circle, sun.
The waxing half-moon,
like a bald, happy man,
peeks through a rip
in daylit sky
at the wizard and the kid
who dance
along a white line breaking
in the middle of the road,
humming nose-hymns to carbon
holding hands with oxygen,
waiting for hydrogen
to arrive
at a bus stop
half-way across America,
where Carl Jung bought the Buddha
a bad cup of coffee
and told him the one
about the rabbi and the nun.
and laughed so hard
he died
to be reborn
in a book about the odds
of meeting an Asian fat man
who knows everything
about nothing, the mind
of Mother Theresa,
and the voices
of Edgar Bergen.
