Friday, April 22, 2016

recuerdo

Wisconsin daffodils can teach us a thing or two about perseverance in the face of adversity. 

Mine have survived 2 hail storms and clumsy sleepy woodchucks.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

4 lines, 4 days



Abeunt studia in mores       pursuits become habits

Communis est linea            everyday a line

Doceret the                         It is oneself who is hard to teach.  12.159 Dhammapada


___________________

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Bhikku says abandon anger,
give up pride.

What is it, this, you?

Come away from doubt alive.


Bhikku says the rain cannot break into the mind
made meditative.
Desire remains
It always remains.


Anyone who has not been caught in a downpour is a liar.


Let the rain come.
Let us learn compassion for
even ourselves.


Not to do before doing is done a gift.


Saturday, April 16, 2016

rooms and rooms and rooms
I want 2
one for sharing with self and others
one for art


Thursday, April 14, 2016

it's nine o'clock. the world is walking and so am i.


I woke up keening for the fear of it.

Realignment.

I will make a barrow holding a lifetime of things underneath.
(including you, my love, a modest Tutankhamen)

I am the rising toward pilgrimage, adrift between three continents.






brown creeper

a sneeze or spiral of

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

moon
first quarter

man feeds oats to hissing goose

an apology

Monday, April 11, 2016

Spring whispers from a brighter world.
expressed from delicate protuberances
canals of thin air
clouded cataracts rinsing the deep edges of

winter
(ends)

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Thursday, April 7, 2016

if the particular isn't particular what is it?

the pain of (endings)



A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.


- Dogen





In the darkness before an April dawn, a male robin sings first one note, then another - descant, diminuendo, ascent. The sound so clearly signals light. It is a sound of light.

Thrush is the birdsong  familiar. It is also the common infection of throat and mouth, white over rosy-fingered, a yeasty crust. Cries! The subject sound is introduced by one to the other, a linked awareness of lift and pain. Joy and suffering met will be met, made as we are, endlessly.

What else endlessly to end and begin? How many languages, species, stars?

Death suffers life and life suffers death. What seems particular is hardly so. Mother Seen running  after headless dinner in the garden. Grandfather Swore in bed, bumped his head, and didn’t get up in the morning. Grandmother Asphyxia left a twin snail trail of bloodied knees. The comatose dims into the vegetative, even the strongest bodies are twigged and broken. 

I once found a motorcyclist’s foot, severed at ankle like an oxtail, still in its boot. 

We all fall down the chimney. Children know it so well.

Duck, duck, goose. Ring around the rosy. 

Ashes, ashes.

We fuel the liminal fire, inexhaustible. 


You, left in light filled rooms, are next, will always be next.


RSVP. 


Mysteries ineffable. Why do friends we love leave, or we them?

Suffering. Stay with it, listen. Kindness is strength, and faultless. 


Can we  grow a life and readily dig into it?

Or baptised return to water, residual powder?

Confluences.

Under the earth is more earth, every sea a boneyard. 

the pain of (endings)
a cappella

(to an ear equivalent to)

moktok

108 cold notes

rising

with the sun.













B o s t o n

You called me kind tonight.
How much and secretly I needed to hear those words!

Prodigal son,
I leave you tenderness.

Do or don't remember me.

I will love you.

Your
suffering

causes pain.

Scorn me
and I, torn,
remain convinced,
compassionate.

Fold further into suffering.

Facing desolation.

Open. Free.




















Sunday, April 3, 2016

it is so quiet and beautiful here
birds
the wind around cars
far boat
bridge
my breath
the key taps
the clock

a cough outside


dhamma says live free from hatred
live free


medicine
3 dreams after the fall (singh)

 medicin(e)
drifting off to the scent of almonds
slept, awaking weeping, slept again til dawn


one dream
undersea, a wounded deer
survives riptide
swimming parallel to shore

two
3 stones
in my mouth
humming, drumming with storm

three
the dhamma listing in the sunlit sea
I read death will come
(someone has died, someone is always dying)