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Archive for June, 2011

Quiet Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on June 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

After the house
has been emptied by blade,
by flame, by flood,
with such quiet feet
enters peace.

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In light of last night’s poem

Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

How do they know? Oh our children, our guides, our thorns, our lights.

This morning, Finn comes to me with this and says, “Mom, I drew this for you. It’s you, climbing the grand staircase to the stars, to the moon.”

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Still Life at Dusk

Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2011| 1 Comment »

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Curious About Unity

Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2011| 1 Comment »


The more connected we stay to everything larger than us, the less turbulent our time on Earth.
—Mark Nepo, “The Book of Awakening”

Perhaps it is like when you spin in the grass, and spin and spin and then fall down and stare at the still spinning sky,

or like when you’re taking out the trash in winter, and through the disappearing swirls of your breath, you see the stars in their stable constellations,

or like the time you cut your thumb and tasted the ocean in your blood,

or there was that morning when you stood at the edge of the cliff and knew that your days of knowing were over.

It is not that you don’t recognize the feeling, only that most of the time, you forget it so wholly that you don’t think to remember you’ve forgotten.

Which is to say maybe it’s like when you noticed that something else was breathing you, pulling the air into your belly and then pushing the air back out, and long after the feeling passed, you continued to breathe, the air so familiar rushing over your lips, into and out of your throat.

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But I Really Wanted to Make One

Posted in Uncategorized on June 18, 2011| 1 Comment »


In the garden
the new scarecrow
waits and smiles—
perhaps he knows there never
have been crows here.

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And Sweetening Nonetheless

Posted in Uncategorized on June 17, 2011| 1 Comment »

Come stand
in the cherries,

reddening but
not yet red,

and you might
recognize your own

ripening heart,
not yet sure

of its own
sweetness.

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Because We Never Know

Posted in Uncategorized on June 16, 2011| 1 Comment »


The mind asks,
Is it a cavern
or just a crack,
this gap
between us?

The heart says,
Hush Dear,
now leap.

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Still Life with Sky

Posted in Uncategorized on June 15, 2011| 1 Comment »

Surely you saw it, too, the sky.
It was there all day. Blue and bluer

and sometimes clouds, big clouds,
giant white ones that shifted

from horse to accordion to rocketship.
You saw different things, I am sure,

could label them anchor, racket, tree.
Things change seems to be the lesson,

or perhaps it was something about perspective,
though isn’t it just like the mind

to look for a lesson.

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Wild Rose in the Garden

Posted in Uncategorized on June 14, 2011| 2 Comments »

When you plant seeds in the garden, you don’t dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet. You simply water them and clear away the weeds; you know that the seeds will grow in time.
—Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, “Meditator’s Toolbox”

Wild Rose, she is in
no hurry. She plants
the roses from seed.

She doesn’t worry
about drought, nor
does she wake up

in the middle of the night
wondering if she
watered the seeds.

Wild Rose lets the wind
bring the rain. Wild Rose
never weeds. She thrills

when the blossoms
come, but she doesn’t
urge on the bud nor does

she wish the blooms
would open any wider than they are.
Her patience does not come

from reading herbal tea bags.
Watch her watching a blossom
unfold as it does. She does

not try to understand it.
She does not write poems
about it. Wild Rose, she

lets the sunlight fall on her hand.

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And We Think So Much

Posted in Uncategorized on June 13, 2011| 1 Comment »

Don’t say, don’t say there is no water to solace the dryness at our hearts.
—Denise Levertov, “The Fountain”

We stand outside
in the searing sun,

thirst, thirst,
and wonder why

our outstretched tongues
are dry.

Meanwhile, beside us,
the river floods—

water enough
to take out the road.

Oh the way is seldom
what we think.

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