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.