Thich Nhat Hanh – a poem by Charles Weld

Thich Nhat Hanh 

As my wife removed a tick from the inside of my wrist, 
I joked that I’d name my brand of deep woods, bug dope
Tick Not On for the monk I’ve read often with the hope
of becoming a more settled person. He doesn’t insist,
but in an understated way suggests that trying to resist
the world’s pain is impossible—not effective strategy.
I like the idea that sitting quietly could itself be remedy,
nothing more being needed to transform fear 
into curiosity. Marriage and work have worked for me,
helping me expand my constricted sphere 
of comfort slowly. It’s taken decades. No quick awakening 
but shifts by small degree in modus operandi 
from shirking to deliberate activity. A mantra I still enlist—
get over yourself—is what reality asks of everything,
work that in the end none of us gets out of doing.



Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004) and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.) A full-length collection, Seringo, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. A retired administrator for an agency serving youth with mental health challenges, Charles Weld lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.