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.
