Higher Still

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

If Zen means moving while yet standing still

Or standing still while moving, most of us

Have tried to hard to make the standing fill

It, make the sitting fill and thus concuss

The Mind.  The need is for the finding of

A way to turn the tiny, simple thing

To meaning in and of itself above

Its pure simplicity, an angel wing

Extracted from a skylark’s surging song,

For finding of a man or woman, friend,

An ikebana or a stone, not throng

Of doctrines but a path without dead end.

  The Japanese can find this in a pine.

    The poet seeks it in a jade-knife line.

~ Phillip Whidden