The Bath Tub Is Optional Poem by Deborah DeNicola

when you visit the meditation mansion
run by two retired nuns. One tiny cell of a room
with one tiny bed and an oval window, but oh, beyond
the window—wind and white caps, lips of sand,
the lighthouse lording over the rocks.
Why would you want a bathtub when you could wash
yourself with the view? Clouds toweling the sunrise
emollient up to your elbows, between your thighs,
lavender light. And why would you want to bathe
the body you've trained as a transport for higher
beings to travel through? The busyness of quietude,
the eventually banished will, waftage of oxygen
pouring through pores, new atoms magnetized
till your chanting stills, though the spooks
warbling through your throat rewire you completely,
so you'll cry at nothing at all because everything matters