My wife says I can’t help it becuz’
I know “too much” when actually
I know I don’t really know anything
the same way everything is changing
still, the Buddha got it right between
the eyes and I refer back to Vietnam
saint of Theravada Buddhism a monk
who instructs me on YouTube.com TV
about walking as meditation on breath
as simultaneously I hear on Free Speech
TV about study of of those taking a walk
in “nature” and how they then measured
a better effect for those (like me walking
in Dorchester Park immersed in trees and
insect sound) more regular heart, steady
even breathing with the breathing trees
compared to control group there on busy
street of crowd and smogging cars that I
have left behind in pandemic automatic
I have a human brain somehow made me
seek refuge winding through every green
winding park path and then down around
the river way circling that old Civil War
cemetery Cedar Grove next the tidal flats
beside the ambling basin of the Neponset.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.