Sometimes there’s no other way to capture a moment–a way of seeing or being in the world–than through poetry.

So while I prefer writing prose (I know I’m no poet), I find myself returning again and again to certain poems I have written, as if they were traces in the sand leading me back to the very time and place where something singular and significant rose briefly to mind.

I think of these as my Zen moments.  A sudden clear perception of something so extraordinary and subtle, it can only be experienced in faint, fleeting whiffs.

But the scent of it lingers in mind long afterwards, as if waiting to be re-released, like rosemary or thyme planted along a garden path waits to be crushed underfoot.

It’s like the story of a student begging his master to explain the meaning of Zen. But the master, cruelly it seems, keeps putting him off…