Vistas & Byways Fall 2015

  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE
  • Welcome
  • Focus
  • Table of Contents
    • Fiction >
      • State Birds of the South
      • Two Characters in Search of an Exit
      • Selling Dreams
      • Pacific Standard Time
      • Sorrow’s Memory Is Sorrow Still
    • Nonfiction >
      • I Slept through 9-11
      • Passages
      • Detroit Welcome
      • On the Road
      • It's Been Forty Years
      • El Batey
      • Over the Rainbow
      • Motherhood
      • Not My War
      • Hidden Child
      • Nocturne
    • Poetry >
      • Death Gets a Makeover
      • Arachnophobia
      • Love Letter to a Poetess
      • Marilyn Monroe Syndrome
      • Or Maybe . . .
      • Dust to Dust
      • Morning Meditation
      • Next
      • Someone
      • A Dead Husband
      • Remembrances of the Second War
      • Lula Nunn’s Last Breath
      • White Hand Waving
      • Evening in Paris/Home in LA
    • Bay Area Stew >
      • Behind the Green Door
      • The Real San Francisco
      • Top Dog
      • At Home with the Homeless
      • Seeing Pacifica Beach
    • Inside OLLI >
      • An Interview with Sarah Broderick, Instructor
      • Star
      • Polar Bear Sighted on Golden Gate Bridge
      • Sister Theresa and the Evil Patrol
      • Wolfgang
      • The Making of a Flarf Poem
      • Ruminations on Rutabagas
    • V&B Forum
  • Contributors
  • Submissions
  • About Us
  • Staff and Contacts
  • LATEST V&B ISSUE

Morning Meditation
by Alan Brewer


In Memorium Philip Whalen
Morning meditation:
“It’s just another ding-dong day” (dreamed
a tidal wave swept over San Francisco, higher
than the Transamerica Pyramid,
I am riding a surfboard, hanging ten, singing,
“It’s just another ding-dong day.”)

One of those days.  Cat put out, mice long gone,
sit down to contemplate my navel,
end up picking lint,
scratching my stomach. 

So long enlightenment. 
Think of The Tibetan Book of the Dead
& pick up yesterday’s
newspaper to read “Dear Abby.” 

All day
stretches before me,
could be a vision of eternity
but appears blank,
just an endless to-do list. 

I contemplate
my next life
as a Bodhisattva.
Now
I embrace
my dirty laundry.  

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