Zen for Claire

I got this email from my friend Claire this morning:
"I was reading your poem game blog last night and saw that people other than Richie had requested poems from you, not necessarily for the poem game, but just for themselves. So... if and when you have time and inspiration, please may I have a poem about.....zen?"


Spring Break Chez Demeter

When she's here with me, I make her feel at home,
decorating to her taste of Laura Ashley
quilts and drapes, Ikea accent rugs
in polka dots of sunny yellow, green,
and blue, but when she leaves to go back to
the scuffed, stone halls--her life away from me,
I pack up all her floral, frilly things,
revert to minimalist hues of blank
white canvas, bare windows, and sculpted trees
with branches, stripped, that reach for Zen, not Zeus
because it's when she's gone that I'm at home.

Originally published in Mezzo Cammin, Volume 2, Issue 1