Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, October 18th, 2024.

Today's poem is from a contemporary poet Billy Collins, and it's called Shoveling Snow with Buddha.

This poem is full of Collins' trademark sardonic voice that oscillates pretty imperceptively between

cynicism and reverence. But there are a few things that I really like about it. One is that

it shows a, it is serene and contemplative, but it really shows us a Buddha that is content outside of

Buddhism. As Collins will say in the opening lines, he is not the still and pensive Buddha

contemplating nirvana, but one who finds simple pleasures in material things and mundane physical activities. But more than that, Buddha is a kind of

stand-in for poetry, which can also tend to be in the wrong hands, esoteric and immaterial in its

ponderings, but is always best when it is grounded in the tangible day-to-day things,

which can then lead us to, point us to grant a mystical access to spiritual realities,

but they remain behind the veil.

Here is shoveling snow with Buddha.

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local walk, you would never see him doing such a thing,

tossing the dry snow over a mountain of his bare round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him. In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?

Is this not implied by his serene expression, that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waste of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway, one shovelful at a time.

We toss the light powder into the clear air.

We feel the cold mist on our faces, and with every heave we disappear and become lost to each other in these sudden clouds of our own making, these fountain bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church, I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.

This is the true religion, the religion of snow. And sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

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