"Government of Nature," winner of the prestigious Kingsley-Tufts award (2014) is the second book in the "Plum Flower Trilogy" series. The book is a narrative of healing explored through the lens of poetry, birthed from Weaver's own self-discovered newness, healing, and inner strength forged within the fires of faith, years of disciplined Daoist mediation, and study of the Tao de Jing. The book heralds his healing, body, soul, and spirit, from years of childhood abuse.
The Ten Thousand
The rain comes late, draws the afternoon into darkness,
no light where there should be light, no way to be but drenched
until it curves down over your lips. The taste of every living thing
is in the rain drop the way all things open their eyes inside
a single bloom in the garden that is now hushed in a robe.
Whatever you feel about it, whether you live for it or pray
for the rains to die, the water joins with all of us, tendon, bone,
artery, vein, saliva, everything that melts and goes hard, escapes
as air. The water brings a reunion for a moment with what we know
each time we breathe ourselves here or are forced to breathe.
If I write without color it is to obey the gray way rain brings
the past to us. The ten thousand are one giant palace with a room
for remembering, where you must stand alone, touch and believe
while it seems you are touching nothing and have gone all mad
in this life, this gift. We are sitting on a rock in the thick falling
of water, purple lilies are growing in the sun’s ocean shadow,
sheep with golden wool are flying in the trees, a patient monkey
is bandaging a wounded blade of grass, the garden is a mesa,
seeds are mountain caves, the moon has gone infinite, made
two of its own selves for each of our palms. Now we have faces.
Weigh
The ecstasy of being eaten is more than the fear
in the teased air between pine needles and red lilacs
where we take turns shooting through the thin circles
made on the edge of the hawk’s wings, the tiny space
it cannot come back to except to arc up again,
navigate, draw once more the line from her eye
to a place where we have no escape. It is the way
the heat pumps the whole mountain until it is drunk
with sun, so full of it that its stone heart melts
to make its own waters trickle down the slopes
to gather in the gullies, softening the ground
for the snakes who have lost their envy of dragons.
It is the teeth, sometimes the sweet juice of the mouth,
the belly flesh of the jaws, the eyes falling back
into themselves with relief from hunger. We think
ourselves invisible but still the lure of going in
is greater than the fear of never coming out, so we give
ourselves to the joy of change. Time always ignites
again, even from the great time of nothing that spat
the world from the long sleep, that too a hunger
like this way we ache to know desire lives in the eye.
"The taste of every living thing
is in the rain drop... "
Walking with Snakes
The snakes congregate near the garden.
It’s what everyone says, and sometimes I forget
when I see the red tree, the one that sits alone
near the vegetable sprouts, across from the pipe
network for the canopy that no longer hangs.
It is the sudden red and the way it changes
in the middle of all the fallen bamboo that now
makes the cracking sound of fallen bamboo.
I forget my walking stick for a moment,
but it does not forget me, always there, too early
a reminder of what help we need when we are older.
But I keep it to pound the ground as I walk
and let the snakes know that I am coming.
It is said that Omo Sango have snakes as their messengers,
but here in the throng of lilies on Buddha’s birthday
I should remind them to first ask me for the message.
It is said there is one snake here that will not run
when it hears monks walking, pounding the ground.
Curling, they speak a wire resistance to intruders.
Lost for a moment in the red tree, my walking
stick reminds me where I am, dry bamboo in my hands.
A Monk’s Ode to Guan Yin
If there is a cliff in the green of the mountains
take me there, tie me to the edge so I will always
know the gate to the truth. Dangle my feet in the air
so the ambitious worm can stand on its tail, tell me
again how the road goes in places where there are
no maps, no dashboard computers. Leave my food
on a down slope so the fruit and bread roll to me
just when hunger says it is time and there is water enough
to stop the thirst. My hands refuse to grieve.
When they should be palm to palm around a clump
of lilies, they go instead looking for hidden
circles in your waist, the uneven favorite note they know
when they count your accumulations, name the victories,
go sliding all over until there is no line between
palm and you, everything is one body. This side
of the ocean has let go of waves, lies there mimicking
the sky with blue paling away. Wetness is the name
of it, when all I can feel is the craving to feel until
A single car stalls at night, there is a tear in the grass,
and a hawk catches some lost thing rambling alone.
