Courage

Ellen Palindro, C. Raydean Davis Professor of Poetry and Motorcycle Machinations at Cratchit State U, was in town last night for a poetry reading. She was followed as usual by her groupies, The Bikers for Buddha Motorccyle Gang, which started attending her readings because they assumed her title and their affection for Buddha [If you see the Buddha in the road, give him a lift.] was a natural junction of Robert M. Persig's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," not realizing that "maintenance" and "machinations" are not really the same, "machinations" being the more creative side of motorcycling.

Ellen doesn't ride motorcycles herself; she leaves that to Grace Butcher. She figures one motorcycle-riding poet is enough.

The Bikers for Buddha are also devotees of The Kabbalah, and so refer to koans as cohens, after Raydean's Jewish aunt, Onoma Topoeia-Cohen. They are especially fond of cohens such as "What is the sound of one hog backfiring?" and "If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

Ellen Palindro was quite surprised when Axel "Ace" High, the leader of Bikers for Buddha asked her to read Anne Sexton's poem, "Courage." But she did so:

It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it only with a hat
to cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you,
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love, love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a backrub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.