I've been wearing the same wool shirt
every day
for eight straight weeks.
A Pendleton that belonged to my father,
it's tiny holes are from moths or closet critters,
not from wear and tear.

Dad was more of a sweater guy.

The plaid protects me from winter winds,
katabatic,
that flow down the valley
to this path I walk in the park.

Next to me flows a river,
its icy water unsure of what it wants to be.
Part of it is flowing,
some freezing to the sides.
A fraction of it is slushy,
transitioning, like me,
from one state
to another.

These words are like that slush in the river
aiming to be something they are not,
phasing in an out,
able to convey only some semblance of
an un-graspable truth.

A frigid, honest wind blows in my face,
but it is not the wind that brings these tears.
They flow beneath squinted eyelids
above the glistening river
because
this moment is perfect.
All moments are perfect.

They flow because my father's wool shirt
could have never imagined it would find itself here,
along the banks of the Yellowstone,
where sparkling God-light
reflects blindingly atop ripples.

But why do I even try to write this?
What is the point in attempting to share?
Will anybody get it?
Will anybody care?

After all, poetry is just words,
and words,
even at their best,
cannot touch the Tao.

Words are but a moth-eaten
hand-me-down
failing
to be here now.

- Kirk Merlin