How to Monk the Morning
In younger days a longbeard told me the sun will rise without my help but every monkish praise and prayer followed the zodiac of
the Egyptian sky and even the milking-goats and hen-lays/leaven here and everywhere every
earthly cell makes the daily round from 21 to 28 hours and splits the difference, you get the sharps and flats
in the melody of days and the quarter-tone chants right the wobble, when the empty moon barren of
clouds and shadow shines the brightest the howling desert is filled with silent music stirring and swept,
ridden by single notes and simple songs, the out-breath of the fertile cosmos blows on our faces just the same. The mystics of the east
rise one morning at a time, boil the water for tea. The wisdom of the desert is no more no less than the here and the now. Make your own monks
or become one yourself: all that breathes and beats together/on each other follows the asceticism of hop-toads
the ways of widow skimmers and bacterial blooms heron struts and bobs bobcat
whiskers woodchuck whistles slow clams/marrows
and jams, bucksnorts gnatcatcher wheezes homewoods liturgies of whippoorwills (and like jackals/ruffian doves of the
Sahara) evening coos and coyotes. Give your palms to the dawn and fingertips to the moon and give a little push,
bend at the knees feel the springs in your hips, pogo your chakras and belly-up
the sun, wake with the dawn and the dawn with you.
Jack Phillips is a Lebanese American poet and founder of The Naturalist School, an organization devoted to intergalactic ecology and wild creativity. He has published numerous poems, articles and a few books on ecology and ecospirituality. He teaches ecopsychology and ecospirituality at Creighton University School of Medicine.
Amethyst Review 