How to Prepare the Mind for Lightning by Brynn Saito

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 2, 2016   How to Prepare the Mind for Lightning   Brynn Saito

In the recesses of the woman’s mind             there is a warehouse. The warehouse                          is covered with wisteria. The wisteria wonders   what it is doing in the mind of the woman.             The woman wonders too.                          The river is raw tonight. The river is a calling   aching with want. The woman walks towards it             her arms unimpaired and coated                          with moonlight. The wisteria wants the river.   It also wants the warehouse in the mind             of the woman, wants to remain in the ruins                          though water is another kind of original ruin   determined in its structure and unpredictable.             The woman unlaces the light across her body.                          She wades through the river while the twining                                         wisteria   bleeds from her mouth, her eyes, her wrist-veins,             her heart valve, her heart. The garden again                          overgrows the body—called by the water   and carried by the woman to the wanting river.             When she bleeds the wisteria, the warehouse                          in her mind is free and empty and the source   of all emptiness. It is free to house the night sky.             It is free like the woman to hold nothing                          but the boundless, empty, unimaginable dark.            Copyright © 2016 Brynn Saito. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I was reading Suzuki Roshi and enticed by the idea of boundless, generative emptiness. Here’s Suzuki Roshi: ‘Sometimes a flash will come through a dark sky...The sky is never surprised when all of a sudden a thunderbolt breaks through. And when lightning does flash, a wonderful sight may be seen. When we have emptiness, we are always prepared for watching the flashing.’” —Brynn Saito   Brynn Saito is the author of Power Made Us Swoon (Red Hen Press, 2016). She teaches at the University of San Francisco and the California Institute of Integral Studies and lives in Los Altos, California.   Photo credit: Whitney Frank Poetry by Saito   Power Made Us Swoon  (Red Hen Press, 2016) "Our Bodies Break Light" by Traci Brimhall "Words and the Diminution of All Things" by Charles Wright "Apparition" by Sherwin Bitsui Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038