PLUM VILLAGE, 40 YEARS

 

From the first seed planted by Sister Loc Uyen to each and every aligned step, it felt as though Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh himself was pulling one of his sparrows home, after ten years. The last time I was in Plum Village, Bordeaux, was for the 30th anniversary. Incredibly I ended up in the same bed, in the same gite in New Hamlet, Dieulivol, looking out on hay bales, far from the croaking of the lotus pond frogs, close to the moon and sunflower fields.

I traveled with friends, met up with the two young nuns I teach English to and made new friends. I wrote a single poem and kept two diaries for my twin nieces, who cried the night I left. ‘We’ll never see you again!’ I’ll cry too, I told them. At some point. And I did. My friend Anh said I had cried a cup full of tears by my last day. Why the tears? Because of the hot French sun, fatigue, the desire to keep up with a monastic schedule far beyond my body’s limits, gratitude to be taken care of by loving friends when I was sick, and gratitude to have a monastic sister guide me to leave early because covid cases were spreading. People had arrived from all over the world for this first in person opening up of Thây’s practise centre, so of course the virus came along for the ride.

On my last day, June 9th, I managed to attend the 40 years celebration in Upper Hamlet, got a calligraphic signature from Brother Phap Huu, the abbot who was Thây’s attendant for seventeen years, met my friend Shantum Seth after ten years, fan girled over the sculptor Paz Perlman, ate cake and generally arrived, at home, fully present. The next morning, I was driven to tiny Bergerac airport by Zoe, a friend who offered her car and company, and the next thing I was outside our front door, with the twins not quite believing I was really real… ‘but you didn’t even tell us you were coming home!!’ 

I am writing this at 11:30am. In France it is 12:30pm. The sangha of 800 lay and monastics, are going as a river in Lower Hamlet, led by Sister Chan Khong, spreading the last of Thây's ashes into the home he created for thousands. Refuge continued. In England, I visited Mary's grave, with flowers, for what would have been her 106th birthday. Death is just a game of hide and seek. 

WHEN BIRDS COME TO CALL

A broken bird feeder found its way to me last year.

I painted it in shades of country cream.

I filled a cup of water, and sprinkled a meal, 

fit, I thought, for any feathered queen.

No bird came. Months passed by,

and today, hurrah, a visit made.

Bib of blue, and frankly suspicious, she flitted 

and flirted, from lilac to magnolia, 

to her new wooden house,

unconscious of my joyful gaze.

Chaffinch and sparrow followed, drinking in the rain,

picking through the catkin carpet,

the willow leaves, 

the tall, unwieldy, unmowed grass. 

Meanwhile, the news. Meanwhile, the roll call of names 

we never knew, strangers perching gently on our hearts. 

You ask me if I believe in God.

I say, What is God? What is a poem? 

I say, I lost my friends one by one to time, 

but when the birds came to call,

I found I had lost not one of my friends, 

not one of them at all. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2020

Today, May 14th, was the birthday of both my Uncle Motu and my Aunty Saida. They weren’t twins. Aunty was five years older. They loved us kids equally. Growing up, we were showered with love when they visited our Bombay home, which had been their childhood home, and then when we moved to our shared new homeland of England, love continued, unperturbed by changed geographical boundaries. They are both gone now, into the other world ... but the memory of love remains.

(participating in Open Link Night for Dverse Poets)

WHAT MATTERS NOW

Sleep has always been a shy, mysterious, elusive sheep for me - rarely does she come when I call.

But lately, sleep is more fractured than ever.

I read in a piece by Mary Karr, poet and memoirist, that during this year's American election, doctors suddenly had a rush of patients ringing in or reporting as emergencies, cases of false tachycardia. My own persistent tachycardia this year may be rooted in more determinedly medical background, but now I wonder if I too am experiencing a world wide case of shared disturbance of the heart.

These are troubled times. More so than ever before? I think not, on our personal levels. But on a global level, I believe we may be experiencing a seismic shift in our comprehension of the state of things. 

A thing I think: human beings are extraordinarily clever at denial. In our bones, we know we must die. But we also know we must live in the face of such irrefutable knowing. To live as though you are not dying is the art and craft we develop innately, from our first squall. 

And yet, here I am, awake in the middle of the night; and yet, here we all are, anxious for what is to come. 

Buddha would say, 'What has come to be', meaning what has come, has come to be, because of all things past leading to this present. Not inevitability as fate, rather a collective gathering of historical human action and consequence has brought us to this pass. 'This is because that is'. We cannot unlink ourselves from each other. Frederick Douglass believed America to be wilfully blind in 1862 ('We have sought to bind the chains of slavery on the limbs of the black man, without thinking that at last we should find the other end of that hateful chain about our own necks.' from his speech 'The Reasons for our Troubles') and wilfully blind she continues to be. 

But here we are, on the eve of a new leadership, which will implicate us all, wide awake, hungry for comfort, with very little comfort to be had. 

Last evening before I fell asleep for a while, I attended a paper on Vietnamese-American writer lê thi diem thúy, author of the acclaimed novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For, and later went to a theatre performance of A Room with a View starring Felicity Kendal. While watching E. M. Forster's novel turned to play, I was making all sorts of connections between modernism and post war immigrant diaspora writings, until Kendal spoke this line: 'Novels aren't silly. Literature can influence things, sometimes.' She was speaking as Charlotte Bartlett, but it was Forster asserting himself, for all time, with that dictum.

It was a clear bell reminding me of the more recent affirmations of Toni Morrison and Atul Gawande, Mary Karr and Junot Diaz - the arts matter now more than ever. Our individual voices, thoughts, small decisions, matter. Resistance looks like protest marches, but true resistance begins with just one person choosing to think or behave in more awareness of themselves and one other. Look a little closer at the fellow human being beside you. Perhaps he is crouched outside the theatre, soaked in his black garments, because it rained while you were inside the warmth of the theatre, and he was outside making his sign (PLEASE HELP), awaiting the richest of the town folk to bring his coin collection up to the figure necessary to enable a night in the hostel. 

Perhaps you saw him and crouched down beside him and emptied your pockets of notes and coins. You put your hand on his shoulder and he said, 'God bless you.' Perhaps you walked by, not seeing him at all, heading to your car, your home, your family. Perhaps you saw and walked quickly past anyway. 

Be sure he saw it all.

Illustration by Nino Novellino via Read What Rosie Wrote

FADED PATCHWORK

(for Mary Haybittle)

Sometimes you have to catch
the light, just where it falls

beyond the line of blue iris and purple clematis
to where the oak tree stands boundary.

Shade comes too soon, and the blanket
wrapped around your knees reminds you
of the ages yet to come.

An old knit, still holding true
everywhere, except for two

black squares eaten away,
which remind you
the knitter is gone too.

@Shaista Tayabali, 2014

My Maya Angelou collection on the blanket my grandmother knitted.