This morning, while the toaster was counting the number of ticks to make a ding, I wrote an ode to its zen nature, the way the line between bread and toast is as indiscernible as the division between sound-making and sound-listening.
A magic trick in time lapse, the way the toaster licks the bread with heat successively, as the owl to the tootsie roll pop, contemplatively, until there’s enough zen already, and it comes out crunch. And there we were, toast and girl and pen, morning conundrums I stuffed in my pocket, intending to transcribe them into something concrete, no crumbs.
But zen is the dog who barks an aria then comes in to pee on the rug. And it would have only been one piece of a poem, an unopened koan, if not for the conclusion, when I blithely cleaned the poem with the rest of the day’s crumbs into the trash can, and put the can out, like an abandoned car with a doll in it, to be swept away.