A Few Still Words
A retreat Chapbook Rohatsu, 2022 Ken Ireland Pilgrim's Progress In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline Why Did Bodhidharma Kick Up His Heels? In defense of really bad poetry This One Precious Human Life A Dream Drape All the Mirrors Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's) by Lucille Clifton; translation, Ken Ireland Outside My Window Pilgrim's Progress Will my heart ever warm to these foreign gods? No matter that we shaved our heads for a while. No matter that we wore socks that felt more like gloves than the fingerless mittens that mother stuffed our hands into when the pond froze over. There is still some mystery the heart cannot speak. Sometimes I feel as if I've been snowed into that one room school my grandpa talked of, huddled around the stove, a gang of kids jostling for attention like best grades, playing with tongue tangled words in a Sanskrit yeshiva, parsing phrases as cold as Tibetan snow. I aim for the precision of the shovel I used to dig out the fami