Poetry to Make You Smile

Moment to Moment – poems of a mountain recluse, is a collection by David Budbill. Best read as a whole. These ones always make me smile.

1.
On the Road to Buddhahood

Ever plainer. Ever simpler.
Ever more ordinary

My goal is to become a simpleton

And from what everybody tells me
I am making real progress

2.
Ahimsa Next Time Maybe
or
The Taoist Mountain Recluse
Stands in His Summer Garden and
Says to the Deerfly About to Bite Him

Back to the undifferentiated Tao
you son of a bitch!

And he smashes the triangular fly
into the hairs on his dirty brown arm