Living Zen Life

Old now, youngish old perhaps, but...
in retreat my age advances.
Not wishing to let it take me unawares
I sit with it in meditation
yet no amount of stillness
can prepare me for the unknown.

Mountain hermits 
having left cities towns farms
of the Yangtze and Yellow river plains
wrote sadness for those living 
in the "dust of the world"
whether they understood 
who they were where they were going?
Sadness more than judgment
those for whom poverty
was as much mind as body -
sorrow to trudge along
past being able to choose
other than one's lot.

The ancients I read chose lives away
leaving monastic forms and rituals
abandoning communal life
to sit quiet live simply
with others, like them, who stepped away.

It is presumption to think 
I have anything to do with these
our worlds could not be different
yet...
my muse may come from distant lands and times
as she may come from around the next corner.
She comes when and where she comes 
when she does, insistent and clear,
I try to follow where she leads.