Sangha Cafe
A Bed and Breakfast

"You will notice, as you flit through these reminiscences of mine, that from time to time the scene of action is laid in and around the city of New York; and it is just possible that this many occasion the puzzled look and the start surprise. 'What,' it is possible that you ask yourselves, 'is Bertram doing so far from his beloved native land.' – PG Wodehouse, from "The Artistic Career of Corky"





Much preparation still had to be done. A morning may begin slow like this, with a long look to the river to see if portions had frozen over or if it was still open at the mouth, and whether the ducks were flopping up against the sides of the crusted ice, perhaps a good fifteen minutes sitting to get rid of the electricity in the mind of worries and plans and all the little things that could, of course, go wrong; by the end of these two stages, enhanced by just enough coffee to keep him bright but not ecstatic, it now time to get ready for the daily kitchen and go through the reservation list and begin to match the menu to the wishes of the visitors. The Sangha Cafe was still in its prototype stage, there was really little doubt about that, although there had been many small successes, and so he gave himself the luxury of creating virtually every stage of the preparation as he went along, no real rules, just an inherent conscientiousness for what was to come; in how many places had he been in his lifetime in which the so called 'service' was either overbearing or negligent; the falsity of overwrought service would be one of the very quickest ways to ensure that he would never return to your diligent property; and yet, even recently, he had also been restaurants in which he might very well be completely forgotten at a table in the back corner despite an emphatic attempt at making eye contact with the lingering server. His would be, as he liked to call it, a service of perceived benevolence. He began to wash over what that would be exactly and concluded that would be quite similar to raising children well – there was always the inherent care, of course, otherwise why in the world get into such a racket (parenting or the bed and breakfast), and it would be present but not clingy. There would be offerings that were available but not forced. My god! Had he been overthinking already! He fingered through his notes on sweet appetizers that would sitting out onto the granite counter on arrival. There would be good coffee, decaf and regular, plus a quality cream; this was the first impression, was it not? The coffee and French cookie as the newcomers were able to just peer through the hallway through the dining room and out the living room windows to see that same very sight that he had just witnessed, a calm river moving past, and suddenly, the stressors of the drive they had just completed would hopefully flit away like a morning bird and then he would quickly show them to their rooms, assure all was well for the rest of the day, and then offer a tour of any number of options. Could he help himself, he thought, now as he had begun the flour, sugar and egg base for his madelines, that he was tickled to be conceiving of such a fine day! He was fifty now. It had taken him five decades on this very earth to get the physical space and the mental pace figured out. As he rolled out the flour and looked at the relatively blasé photo of what he was about to create, the simple French cookie, he looked up into the courtyard and the magic of the sun mural on the backside of the garage. And there, later, he would offer to lead a short session of Chinese poetry. Oh my oh my. The tickle. The sun. The home had risen and took off like a very pleasant ship and began to float down the river along the waves that felt like clouds and the rest of the world, it was true, floated away.

I wonder if anyone knows
how much I enjoy old age

"The Eighth Month in the mountains
the perennial fruits are at hand." – Stonehouse, 69














Snow so cold it has become stone
it litters every city terrace and alley
piles along the sidewalk turn to icy pillows
they tighten spaces to bedroom comfort
Some days I walk along the hallway
of these gifts of hours as if in a cloud of dreams
when I was young I felt the motion
of a wooded creek as silent poetry

Why Should I Cater to Gods

"Lunch in my mountain kitchen
the spring provides the perfect sauce...

but why should I cater to gods." – Stonehouse 67











2


We speak of mindfulness at Lakeside
Coffeehouse as the winter sun dims early
the world around us could dissipate
and march off by shadows the lake
It would not matter; inside the flute
plays from the old wooden walls
the espresso machine screams one last drink
our words like thoughts escape

I Always Go to Sea
as a Sailor

"With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."
 – Melville, from Moby Dick











Day 3


You would not have done well a whaleman, Ishmael of today.
Not well at all.
Sense of adventure, you say? Does that mean
staving off the robocalls even on a sunday night?
Apps, new and old, pulse some days
along the shorelines of the phone, that is for sure,
but the basement camaraderie
doesn't engender quick action of the human kind.
And anyway, a whale? There are documentaries, of course.
Your most recent, of two fellows who took a year away
to kayak from grizzly country north
down along river banks
across bulbous shores as the fog shrouds increasingly engulfed them.
That drama quickened.
It became modern because the two men formed moods.
Over time we witness ridiculousness of choosing our dangers.
See the difference?
You would have walked along the potholed streets of New Bedford
as wiseass. Had to of.
Mind a swarm of buzzing fears.
Those ladies, formal dress, bonnets up, severe eyes,
broom by hands, might have watched you
with pack over your shoulder
and wondered what you were up to.
Mother.
Adventure.
Starts somewhere else.
Far off lands, mornings when young forced to chores
wherein dreams of islands of appear.
The space between the shovel in your hand
and what to become in years is adventure, vast mist of that dream,
propels you as ocean current
into worlds.
Look away from the eyes of any whale.
Pinpoint your finger on the car dash.
Hope it didn't snow too much and that the roads are clear.

Onto Sedona

"Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the Persians hold the sea holy?" – Melville, from Moby Dick









Day 2


Toil of the traveler begins near first light, a few stretches as warm up, then out a strange
   door, as if a new ship to sea
and out along the backroads of Oak Village, the other side of the auditoriumnal ring
   of red rocks that make Sedona;
city, as always, no matter how far you get into the breast of this country, sea shore, or desert,
   will always play out by roads;
the thoroughfare that slices through the heart of the shopping malls, big trucks, wheels
   as high as my own hips,
straddle the roundabouts needing to get to some country roads with far more fervor
   than the driver of Prius;
into the backwaters of the city, long dry buildings as senior centers and held by clean
   clipped lawns, a cafe and Tarot shop
as every other side channel city.  You pass slowly at a traveler's pace. The red rock cliffs
    stand as if a wall of perfect bricks.
The city inside of you is the boy trapped inside the classroom, looking out a barricade
    of windows imagining departing ships.

One Blade of Grass

"Oh! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass–for a snuff at the fragrance of the loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there nothing green to be seen?" – Melville, from Typee











Day 1


City block, lodged here adjacent to more water than earth, along the man-cut river,
    which flows from lake to lake.
Here where the water had been impounded, shut-in, and the shores rose to disable
    the hundred old houses and sunk beaches.
Even in winter I walk along the very dry shores of the sidewalks, chalky now by cold,
    but not by snow yet
And wonder if these lines of houses are not but a stationary ships' windows overlooking
    these cold and separated lives
In which each holds the paraphanalia of a life without the growth of beautiful green:
    the white dog lying along register
A kitchen stocked by one-day old oranges, cords like thin white snakes at every surface,
    stairs and bathrooms erect
Bound to these strange and chained permanence, landlocked, still, as that part of the sea
    you pass forever without wind;
I want the foundations to lift up and heave, if comfortably, set off to a Polynesia,
    find a woman there, a blade of grass, relief.

But on the Earth

"At this hour I remember everything and everyone,
vigorously, sunkenly in
the regions that–sound and feather–
striking a little, exist
beyond the earth, but on the earth. Today
a new winter begins" – Neruda, from "Madrid (1937)








I read Abbey again and want nothing more than to be driving along a dusty trail passing the wind carved arches and wondering, there, could I get beyond my fears?

I read a Merton journal entry. Of January. It is cold at the Abbey. He observes men cutting wood and considers his mortality that morning as he sees new creases under his eyes, and suggests "a new hollowness" forming. He is tired of war and words.

I read something of eco criticism. Of post-humanism. What will we love as nature loses all of its facades. The arches have. The eye of the prophet has. I see the arches as woman? Can I?

Neruda's poem is a splash of language, dripping along the contours of Madrid, '37, much death to come, as Orwell said, a fresh militiaman, an odd new shadow had formed over the people of the city.

The first day we arrived in Sedona, jet-lagged, my eyes tight, lungs full of wrong air, we began walking over the mammoth lobes of Bell Rock outside of the village of Oak Creek. Ghosts upon ghosts, we walked over the clay colored rock, a dusting of sand over every crack. Parades of little cairns like still fires lined along the trail, or what we interpreted as such. We bent down to our knees in order to propel up onto the mantle of the rising rock. A new blue fire formed at the cracks of the split rock. The lobes had been planted below every perch had disappeared this high up. We looked over the highest crack. Nothing below. Stomach disappeared, as though it had dropped down through the body and onto the ground.

One desert jay in the distance
a flood of blue
beyond fear