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.
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
About 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 California Institute of Integral Studies and lives in Los Altos, Calif.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Brynn Saito. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
