In the first hushed moments
when the soft electric sizzle begins and
the television fades from cold dust gray
to brilliant black to luminescent blue,
and no image has yet appeared on the screen,
I wait like a saint for revelation.
I do not recall what channel
was playing from the time before.
Weather might appear,
or news from hard places,
or a pleasant woman enticing me to buy a car.
In that instant before a density of dots
turns into something or somebody,
I understand what the Buddha taught,
that beneath and before all forms
there is Nothing,
the blur of Being,
pure potential,
potently possible,
erupting continuously
in a million pixels of configuration
my brain perceives as real.
Suddenly an illusionist flares onto the screen,
David Blaine,
or David Copperfield,
or Brahma,
and I am caught once more
in the magic of the world.
2013