Work, by Peter Schireson

Dōgen watching the moon. Hōkyōji monastery, Fukui prefecture, circa 1250.

Work
 
"When you paint Spring, just paint Spring. Painting willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is painting willows, plums, peaches, or apricots. It is not yet painting Spring."  –Dogen
 
Evening lights began to blink,
still, day held light enough to paint
a man in a car parked on Hollywood Boulevard
eating his way through a bag of plums.
Later, at Zuma Beach washed up onto the sand,
a horseshoe crab, piercing tail intact.           
The man set a driftwood fire and burned
paper, brushes, paints.
When he waded in to cast
his work onto the sea,
Spring blew the ashes back.

​Peter Schireson

Peter Schireson’s poems have been published in Quiddity, Hotel Amerika, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pleiades, among others. His chapbook – “The Welter of Me & You” – won the Coal Hill 2013 Chapbook Prize. He’s an ordained Zen Buddhist priest and holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.