Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84s, emergence on July 14, 2011| 1 Comment »
Once upon a now
our story is being told
urgency and creativity
were not just
for 13.7 billion years ago
Every moment,
wordless poems spiral out
of each living and more than living thing
even silence
sings
And how does it end?
Ask the cricket,
the priest, the night
the only answer:
I don’t know
How exciting!
*Emergence is a universal power that acknowledges how the universe is not just a place, it’s a story–irreversible and ongoing.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 13, 2011| 1 Comment »
We should be intent on cleansing and polishing our hearts so that they can gain release from their worries and preoccupations, the source of pain and discontent.
—Ajaan Lee, “Sowing the Seeds of Freedom”
In the desert,
three crows
were circling
as the lightning storm
came blustering—
stiff buffet of wind,
sharp slash of rain—
and all around
was being polished,
eroded, worn down,
even the woman
beneath the crows
by the Morrison layer
above the road.
The polishing happens
so slow, so slow,
and our hearts
so full, so full.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84, allurement on July 12, 2011| 2 Comments »
although it’s fact
that the forces
of the universe’s birth
permeate our all
let’s take it
personally
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged tanka on July 11, 2011| 1 Comment »
All night I put up barriers.
Just hours ago,
in the gulley
the mud-heavy water
flowed right through my shadow.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 11, 2011| 4 Comments »
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon transcended
the circle momentarily complete
—Lenore Kandel
Step out onto the road
when the car can no longer
drive forward. The scent
of rain and mud hits the whole
of you like an olfactory prayer
in which you are the rain,
the gray mud, the washed out road
the road beyond the wash
the prayer and the one praying.
If you don’t think about
where you are going,
there is infinite pleasure
in the here of it all, the water
surging, the darkened sky,
the rising feeling that everything
is deeply connected, the urge
to whisper love into every cactus,
snakebrush, stone and ditch,
the urge to weep, the urge to laugh,
and the gurgle that happens inside us
when all of these urges collide.
How alive we are, my god,
how alive, how thin the veils
between us and heaven.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 9, 2011| 1 Comment »
The orchard floor
is moldering proof—
things don’t simply
fall away,
it’s that
they’re
attracted
to
+
and what
of all the detritus
that gathers
around the soul—
as we shed
layers
of habit,
where do
they go?
*Allurement is another guiding power of the universe that looks at how the universe holds itself together. For instance, gravity keeps galaxies in place. The attractive force of electromagnetism holds together the atoms and molecules of our body.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 8, 2011| 2 Comments »
Write poems. Pick fruit. Love what is in front of you.
—Jack Mueller
They are no longer beautiful,
the apricots, when they
are ready for jam.
Soft. Near bruised.
Sunken in on themselves.
The flesh has already
begun to give way
to nectar. The knife
slices through
the sun-ruddy skin
and sweetness
pours out on the board.
Of course it is beautiful,
the gold heap of mush,
in a heap-ish mush sort of way.
The knife does its
sharp, quick work.
Pots on the stovetop
boil and steam,
and the empty jars
are full of waiting.
There is bliss
in moving through
familiar steps: pectin,
heat, honey, stir.
Fill the jars. Wipe
the rims. Place the lids.
Screw the tops.
And lower the jars
in the hot water bath.
The hours
do their work—
erase all
but the urgent
sweetness
of now
and leave
jars of sunshine
on the shelf.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84 on July 7, 2011| 1 Comment »
The disappearing world longs for you to touch it.
—Jim Moore
All winter, cherries,
I waited for you.
Already the orchard
nears empty,
my lips
not yet red enough.
Posted in Uncategorized on July 6, 2011| 1 Comment »
“Be nothing,”
says Rumi,
and I say,
“But …”
I am thinning
the carrots,
crowded in the row,
and I wonder
who will thin them
if I am nothing.
“I did not say
do nothing,”
he says. “Be nothing.”
“But …” I say.
The ground
is damp and
the carrots pull
easily from the soil,
their bright orange
roots already thick
enough to eat.
They are sweet,
and I offer
one to Rumi
who eats it
dirt and all.
“Be a spot of ground
where nothing
is growing,” he says,
“where something
might be planted,
perhaps a seed
from the absolute.”
He tosses the greens
to the ground.
I look between
my hands
to the nothing
beneath the greens
and perhaps
for a moment
I feel what he means,
but too soon
a thought
of knowing comes in
and there I go
being
something again.
*Rumi quotes adapted from “The Absolute Works with Nothing” translated by Coleman Barks.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 84 on July 6, 2011| 1 Comment »
After seven years
my body remembers
how to run—
not to,
not from,
but for
the wing
in my smile
when I run.