“Death steals everything except our stories.”
Jim Harrison
No one is more in the moment
than the laughing rummies of
Lark Street. Like Zen acolytes
with a pint stuffed in their sagging
jeans back pocket, they stroll in a
kind of single file, content in their
confusion, embracing chaos, time
meaningless in the void where thought
should be. Walking, theirs is a kind
of death march, draughts of liquid
courage maintains, sustaining rigid
smiles on their cracked lips, the high
color of their waterlogged skin almost
purple, all of them covered in a layer
of grime and dirt from sleeping raw
in the park under benches and picnic
tables and, later, after the daily, nocturnal
rousting, in cul de sac alleys between turn-
of-some-century brownstone buildings.
The Roshi among them drinks Olde English
40’s from brown paper bags, cracking wise
to his fellow travelers when he is able to
speak. Every one of them carries a Zen
Death haiku in a leather pouch tied to a
belt loop at their waist for when they go.
Alan Catlin has two new poetry books scheduled for 2023: How Will the Heart Endure (Kelsay Books) referencing the life and work of Diane Arbus and Listening to the Moonlight Sonata (Impspired Press, UK) unvarnished personal narratives from an often-chaotic life.