by Richard Luftig
The cause of suffering: Craving, desire, attachment.
It’s been a month
since farmers have marked
off their fields for planting.
But it is like that here:
in March when the snow
falls for days, piles up
for weeks, the acreage
in some places dull
with the landscape
undulated and flat
as week-old beer,
and others shabby,
broken through
with wizened corn
stalks that appears
in furrows like stubbles
of a three- day beard.
And the tractors:
forced to wait
Zen-like in their barns,
holding tight their breaths
in anticipation of afternoons
that grow longer, temperatures
which rise with each succeeding
daybreak, their cold motors,
asleep in the humid dark,
waiting to turn over and catch.