Meditation

First salute the sun for hitting your face with enough rigor
remember it is just about cleaning, the utmost point of silence where you bow
letting your face touch soft earth, a cold veranda, the mat placed
carefully with odor and soft smoke not colored but smelling of oddly familiar cedars
you grew up playing under, tapping with your hand the bark
without screaming for near ancestry. After that turn your head
to the direction of where the sounds are, not simulated through a headphone
or a speaker but natural, this array of every living thing looking
for a space to be. Cells, cicadas, soft brushing of trees shedding their burdens
hear silence for it has its own sound and calling
careful enough to move the heart forward, by letting it lean backward
this is the state of meditation, the way you make still what moves you
restart to salute the sun, turning right and left
each time it gets cloudy and dark above your head.