I inadvertently topple the vase,
the water more pouring than dripping
from counter to floor,
and I think of Isan, the lowly cook
in the koan. As the story goes,
the Zen master fills a vase
with water, then asks his disciples,
“Who can tell me what this is
without naming it?”
The senior disciple says,
“No one can call it a wooden shoe.”
But Isan, he walks over
to the vase and kicks it
so that it falls over and the contents spill.
The master smiles.
Standing now, with the sponge
in my hand, I know I am too practical
to have done what Isan did.
I wouldn’t want to clean it up,
nor would I want anyone else
to have to clean up my mess.
I wonder, if, without having
knocked over my own vase,
I would have ever considered
my own answer to the master:
I would walk to the garden
and return with a small bouquet
of calendula, salvia, cosmos and thyme,
then arrange the cut flowers
in the water in the vase.
Perhaps they are gifts,
these mistakes—this knocking over
of things and cleaning them up—
how it makes the old lessons
come home. Isn’t it like me
to want to keep things beautiful and clean?
How I honor old Isan, his understanding
that the truth cannot be held.
I honor the spilling, the infinite spilling,
even now as I finish wiping up the spill,
then rearranging in my own small vase,
now refilled, the scattered calendula,
salvia, cosmos and thyme.