Theravada

by Jefferson Hansen

during the good old days
in India Theravada
monks occasionally
sat before heaps of dead
human bodies
taking in the stench
seeing the rot
watching the bloat

facticity, impermanence

today in the parking
lot of my apartment I
encountered the squished
body of a goldfinch
being feasted upon by
a bevy of flies

it oozed, and seemed
to begin to merge
even
with the hard cement
upon which it lay

I looked and did
not grow enlightened

I thought, "bummer,"
then remembered Muddy
Waters: "Everyone's
gotta take sick and die
some of these days" sung
upbeat and gaily

I walked toward the gym:
the leaves rustled
as they did the day
before, before
I had seen the dead
goldfinch

nothing in my conscious-
ness had altered
except everything
simply because these
leaves were not those
leaves

_________________________


Muddy Waters, The Complete Plantation Recordings (MCA/Chess Records)

(The link is to Chicago's Jazz Mart, the only place to buy jazz & blues.)