Fly Away

Koan 53, Blue Cliff Record

Pai Chang’s Wild Ducks

Why did it take a twinge of pain to wake me up?

The pain was real

Or at least I feel it

Asleep so comfortably, 

Mixed with dreams of geese (I transposed)

Flying away

Or landing

Or swimming in the reflecting pool in front of the Jefferson Memorial (I am dreaming)

They flew off course

Attracting crowds and iPhones clicking

As if to confirm Thomas’s 

Republican dreams.

.

Or did the somnambulist bump into a door

realizing the traffic just beyond

Might be real danger

Even being totally alert does not guarantee that I will survive

I feel as if sometimes I dance with your answers,’Ma,

Was it a real question

Or just words, They are just words,

Sounds connected with a dream or twinge of pain

Master Ma talks as if there were a sequence of events

Let me correct him.

That has meaning.--flying, landing, then flying away

There is no causal sequence of events in dreams

They have no existence

Dream on.’

Listen to Keith Jarrett

He gets the dreaming sequence right

Mysteriously connected

Without pain.