36 Views of SF: 36+14. Tanabata Ache, Tanabata Joy

36 Views of SF: 36+14. Tanabata Ache, Tanabata Joy
July 23, 2018

For more on Tanabata, see the Wikipedia page.

old chrysanthemums
sometime smell worse
in my office after a week
than the corpse flower at the
Conservatory of Flowers,
which blooms once in seven years.
i line up anyway,
like it was my tanabata with death.
deon lim, the newscaster,
asks a boy, excited to smell this flower
whether he’s ever
smelled
a dead body before.
he hasn’t
but he looks like an 8-year old who might think
about death
once in a while
like me.
death blooms every day,
the smell of death is on everything
if you have the nose.
partings are sweet sorrows
because even belonging
feels transient, mortal.
when will we meet again?
perhaps never.
my med school classmate’s wife, amy,
died suddenly this weekend,
after long illness.
i last saw her two maybe three summers ago.
other friends have been taken by death also,
everyone has their struggles, physically, mentally,
emotionally, spiritually.
sometimes the struggles are so familiar to us
we think nothing of them.
more funerals than weddings these days
so every meeting becomes a celebration.
every moment shared, precious, never to bloom again.
still, few people seem to want to meet me, these days,
here in San Francisco.
we settle for unreturned emails and calls
and emoji warmth,
consolation for hugs.
tanabata lives in me, all the time.
a woman recently asked me what i’m addicted to.
america is an addicted country, i replied.
the pursuit of happiness is in our Constitution,
goading us to push away discomfort
by any means necessary.
as if that would give us eternal life, joy, escape.
i’m addicted to people.
i’m a Buddhist, supposedly detached,
and I cannot let go this aching flaw.
but people come and go.
friends are never present when I am alone,
there are moments I feel unfriended.
so poetry, music, movies become my friends.
“when do you most feel like yourself?”
when i’m with a person who accepts me,
when I’m helping,
when I’m creating,
when I’m present.
maybe belonging is just remembering to work at
creating presence and acceptance,
always helping myself and others
with friendliness.
you just have to keep giving belonging,
to get it,
even to people you meet on the street:
the family visiting from Maryland, in their shorts
on a windy fillmore day.
esther, 88, with three daughters, seven grandchildren
seven greatgrands, and daiso presents for all,
sitting with her matcha at café hana.
the couple from portland ordering takoyaki.
i may never see any of them again,
but we are now known
from memory.
maybe belonging is just
holding onto
tanabata joy
tanabata ache
all the days of the year
maybe belonging is just
remembering
i’m between kisses
between hugs
of life
most of the time
remembering my lover
invisible
weaves a milky way of stars
builds a bridge
between us
with
these
little
slices
of
now