Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

I see the craziness
of my anger,
also my desperate kindness.
Both attempts at sacrifice!
How do I rile or appease
the spirit of expansion?
Our solitude is
sometimes so small!
There isn't room
for much more than
this.
That damn buzzing fly
you cannot find?
Execute it in your mind.
It's an offering
to an open world that eludes you.
The gift to a stranger
of the last carton of milk?
It's generosity damaged by
regret.
These are the awkward acts
of the isolated.
This is the clumsiness
of the caged heart!
Days falling apart,
the river running colder
into the night sky.

One dirty old cat
lapped puddles, hid under a car.
Is she watching me?



too much death in spring



white tubular flowers
solomon's seal
(polygonatun odoratum)
gloxinia
Corydalis  triternata
Penstemon

Thursday, April 23, 2020

3.8 (late)

remember the clouds, the clouds, the clouds
a shrouding snow
as we
above them
see
cascade
cumuli tumuli, chute
below
light
illumined
falls
fog
cyclonic furrows
burrowing
into underneath
(green, sere, sea)

a horizon
ghost
lost cord of wind
the horizon
bluest burn
turning the wings
no
the wings are
melting into
air
there
surround
there
where
we
see
no longer
imagined
by
real
this
cloud
forest, plain, wild wave
scape
scraping
horizon
(lower, blind)
edge
(rising, shoal)
surrender
water land
wheel
gut
wheel
time
wheel
slowed stopped
circumference
the
horizon
an envelope
opened
in air
there
where we are

Mind precedes its objects. They are mind-governed and mind-made. To speak or act with a peaceful mind is to
draw happiness after oneself, like an inseparable shadow.
Dhammapada 1.2.


(ダンマパダ  your name in Pali ධම්මපදය )


fire moss in flower
grows unnoticed in a field -
also pandemic



 

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

another sleep night interrupted.
perhaps I want to stay more than go.
Even if one does not quote appropriate texts much, if one follows the principles of the Teaching by getting rid of greed, hatred and delusion, deep of insight and a mind free of attachment.. 
Dhammapada 1.20




She wished to be a partner of the whole.

She lived in the simple past, a step behind,
and that gave her pause.

And then

it happened. 

The present moment overwhelmed her,
took her breath away.

She sat down. Her mind sat with her.

Here, her mind said, stay with me a little while longer.

Everything that troubles you will be there tomorrow.

But you and I are here now.
  

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

When one knows no this shore, other shore, or both - such a one is free from anxiety, liberated...
Dhammapada 26.385


小野小町

花の色は
うつりにけりな
いたづらに


わが身世にふる
 ながめせしまに 



Semimaru

Kore ya kono
Yuku mo kaeru mo
Wakarete wa


Shiru mo shiranu mo
Osaka no seki 


 
Semimaru

Truly, this is where
Travelers who go or come
Over parting ways--

Friends or strangers--all must meet:
The gate of "Meeting Hill."
cold
though
temperature
shows
warmth


today
alone
make
classes



Monday, April 20, 2020



white clover
Shiro-tsumekusa
Trifolium repens

 

April's andromeda 
(アセビ) 馬酔木
or
Buffalobur
"...also called Bakanasu (バカナス), 
which means stupid eggplant"

Creeping Lettuce (ジシバリ)
yellow and dandelion like
(I have yet to see the japanese yellow and white dandelion) 

nemophilia  from my northern californian hills

pink lady’s tresses, Spiranthes sinensis (nejibana)
a small wild orchid

Karasu-noendo
Vicia angustifolia 
native vetch

Nagami-hinageshi
Papaver dubium

also called blindeyes

humble sumire, the violet

Sagigoke
Mazus miquelii

creeping mazus


Matsuba-unran
Linaria canadensis

Blue toadflax



Fire mossCeratodon purpureus - found even in Antarctica 

 



 



Sunday, April 19, 2020

Better than a thousand pointless verses is one stanza which upon hearing one finds peace.
Dhammapada 8.101



In Chiba
800,000 tulips beheaded
for their crimes



iris - abandoned school - higashiosaka


the origins of flowers
darwin's "abominable mystery"

a history of
aquilegia
lotus

the angiosperm's
turn
to rise 
old cicada shell
clinging to a cypress twig -
mornings of silence

Saturday, April 18, 2020

hana no mizuki (america)

ハナミズキ アメリカ

あなたに会った日、大きなカラスが私が提供した栗を拒否しました。
Anata ni atta hi, ōkina karasu ga watashi ga teikyō shita kuri o kyohi shimashita.
 
The day I met you, a big crow refused the chestnuts I provided.
 
 
Watching you, forced bulb
as sorrow dropped from the sky
like a wing-clipped bird.


Forced bulbs bloom
sorrow drops from the sky -
a wing clipped bird.


 
Recognising what is a fault as a fault, and what is not a fault as a not a fault..."
Dhammpada 22.319


I wanted to cry
as I was buying
soba and tofu
from two frightened students

She
petite
smiles as I pass -
an ancient tree
still graceful, lovely

even the crows
know
only the rain
hard against the glass
moves freely


 

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

soiled gladness

multiples of

scilla

dogwood
mutations

evergreens

unmasked



garden plots

defeat demagoguery




Tuesday, April 14, 2020

"I will bear criticism like an elephant in battle bears an arrow from a bow. Most people are bad behavior."
Dhammapada  22.320


Judgement kept pushing the truth away.


10% spoken isn't good enough.
You've too much dependence on a writing system,
she said.
 
I need to read poems as much as I need to breathe air.
Within written words
is an expansion I cannot find
in my mind when speaking.
  

Monday, April 13, 2020

During the last quarter of the moon, alone in the forest, she realizes the limits of her perceptions.




a priori 
this outside is different
I cannot say 
I know
though 
they told us the virus wants
air -
reason enough


a posteriori
found
on the ground
a blue piece of pot
not the blue
you expected
or want

  

Sunday, April 12, 2020

tucked into dirt
a shepherd's purse

common edible weeds

wild weeds sing ancient songs

tsukushi
water-loving horsetails gather in early spring
sort gifts and give them freely
to animal or us

bracken fern
(warabi)
forgives wrongs done to wild places

tara-no-me (angelica)
and kogomi (fiddlehead ferns)
know memories of Great lakes wetland and northern wood
should remain as secret loves

while renkon (lotus root)
dipped in soy
remembers a pond,
a green darner
facing forward,
and my first flower boy

These food dreams!
Wrapped in persimmon leaves
I'll eat them warm
with grace and gratitude.


cicada shell on cypress branch -
a hollow gold bowl
plunder stowed among the hedges
edging an abandoned home


passing a workshop
I recall the fall smell
of grandfather's shop
old wood and fabric laden
its tack and staple staccato insect like
drifting through opened shop walls







Saturday, April 11, 2020

" Those wise people, who are much given to mediation and find pleasure in a spiritual way way of life...."
Dhammapada 14.181



 

Thursday, April 9, 2020

" sacrificing a slight happiness to obtain a greater happiness..."
Dhammapada 21.290


Scilla Peruviana  begins to bloom
All fear violence, life is dear to all.  seeing the similarity to oneself, one should not use violence or have it used.
Dhammapada 10.130



My student said

"This moon 
is takoyaki
in the sea sky!"

She misses
Miyakojima -
her father's farm
and mangos.


 
 

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

the pink moon passed

I take minutes to sit in the wind and sun

have begun
to empathize with the guilty and foolish

you will stand alone
for not saying you are wiser than they

weigh your own life
and go on

Tuesday, April 7, 2020



tokiwa mansaku (マンサク)


Mother advised
witch hazel for wounds
and a clear complexion.

flowers

Clematis armandii ‘Snowdrift’ (クレマチス kuremachisu)
Loropetalum chinense rubrum


梅、桜、桃の花  
ume, sakura, momo no hana



kvæde (kFaell)



kvæde smell

loose

in the hus

omija

sweet pink 
full moon 
salt tears 
sea trout
bitter greens
sorrel wings

things such as
gosari-namul
memorised

surprised 
to find it here
nine years later among the
pink plums


 

Monday, April 6, 2020

Sunday, April 5, 2020

yesterday's walk

Be urgent in good; hold your thoughts off evil. - Dhammapada9.116 




wind
I turned east, west, north, south. 
The wind met me in all directions

日光  sunlight
Light is a substance that settles on the skin, 
begins to worm its way to the heart.


春の花 spring flowers
How much I have to learn from spring.
Bloom takes nothing slight, even radiant at night.


 




Saturday, April 4, 2020

an echo

Flowers: Seeing the foam-like nature of the body....
Dhammapada 4.46


the reflection of reflection
in a resounding eye
which when seen rings
repeatedly,
answers deliberately,
constructing
ideas, feelings
as an image of
one
in another, and so on,
duplications 
of the eye,
imperfect iterations
to be prized


no spitting image
instead a 
mirror washed wet,
an unwiped blur,
almost, almost
as close as
this sound, far off,
of a
common tree sparrow,
a large-billed crow

 

Thursday, April 2, 2020

1
One plane in days -
a lonely bird.

2
Grey,
I say,
please
bring sun.
One rhododendron blooms.

3
I walk home,
passing a woman,
facing east,
praying in her garden.

4
On this a street of old homes,
2 cats
lay among cherry blossoms.

5
The delivery man is afraid
to wait for signatures.

6
I have no thermometer, she laments.

7
This virus is a line that lengthens time, and heat, and air.

How will I measure interval,
warmth of sun and supplication,
or a cat's nap among spent flowers?

How do I pen fear, its rise and decline?