My mother said, “Honey, try not to think
about it.” In a tiny early poem
called “Cognitive Dissonance” I included
her advice, and ever since, I have hidden
away in my mind, my delicious mind,
my refuge, capable in her mind of just
letting something go. But if I try
to release myself from a fixation
on the opposite of arhant, one
deserving of humanness while the sting
of betrayal still hurts in longhand.
I rehearse distancing and finding mental dance
with the bodhisattva some golden
mean nowhere mean with embedded joy.
Sheila Murphy has been writing for a good deal of time and lives her poetry. She walks prolifically, just as she writes. She writes, “I will spare you the biographical details and emphasize that I’m a kind of jet propulsion engine filled with joie de vivre! :)”