Jonathan Douglas Dowdle’s most recent poem to appear here was “If It Would Stop Raining” (December 2019).

We All Live a Koan
By Jonathan Douglas Dowdle

“What is the sound of one hand, clapping?”
A smack against your own head
Might be the answer, sudden realization,
Or against the arm, the chest, matching
The thrum-thrum-thrum of the heart,
A slap against a cheek,
The sudden sting,
Tapping a rhythm against your legs,
Against pipes, walls,
Like the shuffle of your feet
As you walk down an avenue
And watch all the world Caught in its dance.

I think about the paradox of possibility,
How all things
Might exist in one word,
How: Love is the hurt to dare to share with each other,
And yet, its absence is the hurt
We force on each other.
How I am marching toward death,
Toward my own destruction,
In the flipping pages of a calender,
And yet, leaving (I pray),
The seeds of creation
Behind me.

Even these words
Are not my own, are not your own,
These words will change
As they remain the same.
They are only
A house for meaning,
And meaning’s absence.
These words belong to everyone,
Belong to k(no)w one.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
The silence before.
The silence after,
Or the silence
That is not silence
At all?