At the Shambhala Center

I took to the zafu knowing

I’d have to pee the entire hour,

my bladder, tight

as a fist,

acting up since the day before,

a sign I’d been fighting 

my son’s virus.

I was returning to my breath

like I’d trained myself to do, slipping

in and out of a voluptuous fugue,

more burned out than blissed out,

when I heard it:

through the thin wall we share

with the environmentalists,

the unmistakable plash

of piss hitting porcelain,

the flush an exhalation.

It was funny, or would have been,

but I still had forty-five minutes at least

till the bong of the singing bowl.

I kept sitting. Call it Right Effort, 

though in truth,

I would’ve taken a break

in a heartbeat 

if it didn’t mean defiling 

the silence to ask 

for the key.

No way, not after the time 

I was forced to take 

my coughing fit

out to the parking lot,

having succumbed to my son’s

last virus.

So, I kept sitting. A good Buddhist

would have let his attention rest

on the cold pressure in his crotch,

investigate it 

as pure sensation

till it dissolved 

of its own accord, but I

passed the time

in blessed distraction, 

roughing out this poem

in my head.