Her meditation
is her bathtub waterworld;
steam, slosh, soaped and rinsed.

Meditation tub:
wrinkled pages, soggy like
wet-noodle muscles.

---

As the sun goes down on Port-au-Patois, she relishes the silence. She can hear a few things, but she has cut out the blather of the television and there is no music playing. On the road to tolerating even the idea of zazen, she will start this way: sitting at the table, contemplating a bath and a book, listening to the subliminal hum of the refrigerator, the fleck, fleck of a cat quietly licking a paw. She will notice a seagull dropping a clam to the beach to break it open. She has started a song for him, a song that came to her in the car. She has faith that she will write this song. She will refuse to listen to the voice that says can't.