Moments of Deep Enlightenment


At midnight there’s a
lady with a face of wings
standing in a field 

of blue snow, and the
moon resonates out across
the prairie like an

ancient temple bell
suddenly transforming this
random and one-time- 

only-occurrence
of stepping out on the back
porch to take a deep

and much-needed piss
off a deck, somewhere, in the
Heartland, U.S.A.,

into a moment
of deep enlightenment in
the courtyard of a

Zen monastery,
somewhere in the mountains of
Japan, maybe, and

for a few frozen
seconds, suspended there, in
the winter air, no

rush of wind through the
trees, no hooting of owls, no-
thing to disturb us.