Two Poems
Peter Waldor 


 Tree Clearing 

Once when Master Vicious
was clearing trees for
the Punk Monastery
he got hoisted
into the branches
of a hung-up tree
and broke his leg.
Master Turito tried
to cut the boot
off Vicious’ leg
so he could lower
him safely but Vicious
waved him off
and painfully unlaced
the boot while hanging
from the broken leg.
Master Turito caught him
and after recovering
he wore those boots
for eight more years.
The novitiates wanted
to put the boots
on a pedestal but Vicious,
preaching anti-hagiography,
forbid it and said he would
rather burn the boots.
Finally he agreed that if
people spit on the boots
as they passed it would
be ok.  The novitiates
didn’t know of the time
Vicious met a hermit
who asked him
to spit in his ear.
Vicious, frightened,
shrank away without
cooperating and has been
guilty about it ever since.




Wild and Tough



A legend says Master Vicious
once got turned around
in the wild and spent five days
with no provisions before
finding the monastery
he climbed ten mountains
legend says he didn’t ask for
food or drink upon his return
just for a scroll brush and ink
and he wrote and painted
for another whole day
before eating and sleeping
all the scrolls are lost
but there is one reproduction
of one of the lost scrolls
it is of a giant cleft
with blue flowers
petals never before seen
for generations monks
have been looking for
the cleft in fact now the search
is a part of novitiate training
no one has yet found the cleft
and flowers which is the desire
of the new masters
Vicious’ words in
the reproduced painting go
stopped for five minutes
to rest and woke up
five hundred years later
all the people were new
and no one with my family
name I think I may make
a new friend or two
with sleeping habits like that
could Vicious be alive today
make sure you get every
strangers story just in case
 





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About the Author: Peter Waldor is the author of 6 books of poetry and lives in Telluride, Colorado.

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