David Keplinger - Man Leaves Zen Garden Untended

David Keplinger’s beautifully-desolate “Man Leaves Zen Garden Untended” is a masterclass in sacrifice and rewilding. As artifice falls to ruin and is reclaimed by nature, the setting of “Man Leaves Zen Garden Untended” reveals that all may be by design or intent. In death, there is life. In loss, there is discovery. In degradation and deterioration, there is rejuvenation … even rebirth.

Man Leaves Zen Garden Untended

The spaces he carved
—–are full of grass and volunteers;
rue that came here
of the air in rains of bird

shit; and then oaks, seeds
—–fallen in these trenches
as helmeted troops, now
tall enough and deep enough

to root up stone paths
—–around which lay the pond of koi,
who ate too much and walked
away into the world

rising from the water on their fins
—–like orange walruses, or lifted
by the eagle, and were eaten
by the eagle,

then became
—–the eagle. Home of scum
providing a lid for the stew: brown
toads who heard its flies

and stayed to live with them
—–and know how to wreck
and sack this Rome.
Cortege of lady bugs on their way

to distant roses; a Canterbury
—–whose road is full of stories,
out of order and out of hand
and sight and mind, even

for him who made this,
—–who put his effort into
this, and has since died for all
I know, for this.

David Keplinger

David Keplinger is the author of eight collections of poetry, recently Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023), six volumes of translations from the German and Danish, and he is the director of the MFA Program at American University, where he founded the Mindfulness Initiative at AU (MIAU) in 2022. Find out more at http://www.davidkeplingerpoetry.com/.