Walk the trail, in the (Prairie)wood and through the wild. Life it seems can sometimes be a stroll, a leap, or a plunge into the anthropocentric pool of our sense of the “unknown.” The result, if pondered, can be a creation of mind structures, complementary or contradictory, working to boil down what is oncoming and seize some sense of control. Often dramatic, cataclysmic and catastrophic. Over and over again, whether dealing with the next turn, person, tree, dog or experience. It fails. It fails. The core, the truth, this, and we only is and doesn’t change no matter the number of bites we choose to create and endure from this toothless dog. The one and the many, happily, are available to help shift this approach, however, as even a toothless dog will eventually hit bone in one lifetime or another. I offer the following for your review.
A Thousand Bites from a Toothless Dog
by Keith Knapp (Feb. 12, 2021)
Thought and thought, felt and hurt.
Time and time again. Hourly, daily, weekly.
Unrecognized story of this then that.
Scattered and focused, but not clear.
Reliving something not yet lived.
Feeling something not yet felt.
Hurting but not yet manifest.
Daily happenings, small and large, rarely reality.
A thousand bites from a toothless dog.
Fevered preparatory pitch of thought.
Worse than the one true incisor, or the many.
Continue or relent? The wearing down.
Or, recognize, allow, and embody?
Refuge in the Buddha & Christ, Dharma & Divinity, Sangha & Church.
Wisdom taught, reality touched, community of nobility recognized.
All because of a thousand bites from a toothless dog.
As able, gratefully acknowledged and embraced.
—Keith Knapp, friend of Prairiewoods