PRESSED: A Revision

In my Nebraska kitchen, feet on cold vinyl,
slopping whiskey in my late night coffee cup
makes me think of balance,
Zen medication charred oak casks,
a Kentucky koan, bourbon Buddha
sort of question, about my original face
before my mother and father were born.

Yin and yang coffee cream swirl blossoms,
Oneness, a fluid still eye of Emptiness staring at me,
cup handle eyebrow raised
as if waiting for an answer.
Insomniac’s inquiry, burning sepia anointing oils
and incensed by my own nerve to write …

Midnight, my writer's church, rises
from my prairie thoughts, the flatlands
of all those bad decisions that led me
from the lush Northwest to barren February
fields that winter of '92.
It was a hard winter, brimming with bruises
and hunger, with nothing much in my larder.

Leaving him was like uprooting a tree -
you never know how deep the roots go
until you pull. But I settled here,
in this place of grassland and humidity,
cecada chirp and unrelenting winter chill.
I stayed, I rooted
for a sense of home, belonging.

Standing in my Nebraska kitchen,
looking at a stack of books and papers,
feeling the burn of whiskey
and a little ghostly shame,
I realize I pioneered backwards,
heading East instead of West,
a traverse of reversed ruts
leading home.

Unbalanced, without lotus truth floating
in my reflection, no Right or Noble Path -
just this burning sense warming my palm
as I raise a potter’s cup to my lips.
I’d better come up with something,
let the words sing in their Tibetan bowls

or at very least embrace October’s chilling blade wind
slicing through the window screen, the impatient
tapping as moths seek sanctuary at the sill,
the heartbeat of symphonic humming
as crickets rub their violin legs –
and dark roast night rolls over my tongue.

Sipping, warmed, I decide my original face
was paper white. Unwritten.
And my midnight church the only home I need.