Metta Meditation

Penn Kemp
From:   On Our Own Spoke. CD-ROM. Toronto: Pendas Productions, 2000.

The woman beside me
stifles a chortle,
the woman across
constantly sniffs.
The cougher starts
a chorus of symp-
pathetic sneezes.
I of course am completely
still except for the pen
scratching the page.

Metta is Pali for loving kindness

*

Let the cougher indulge
in his coughing,
coughing completely
the way we are taught
to sit, to breathe, to
be, with full attention
he has mine.

Just hearing.
The cough explodes
the silence just
before we could have
been Enlightened.

T.B. or to be
Realized.

Emphysema
Empathy
Emptiness
    (of lung, of mind)

"Rest in the Silence"
And sometimes I just
have a nice little nap

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5

Penn Kemp's works copyright © to the author.