October 18th and 27th 2015

The Mother Tongue  October 18th, & 27th, 2015

Would that I speak with the tongue of Nature
That washes down the kits and calves
That sends the red leaves down
Gold and green and red leaves down
And whispers lovely nothings
Into the ear of God.

The other night
The wind blew through the heavy cedars
And the looming angel maples
Next morning
My curling street was carpeted with gold

Tree gold has the odor of incense
I've noticed it before
Filling my lungs with the air of prayer,
Walking through
The trees

Bed Time Story. Jan 8th 2019

                                                            Bed Time Story      1/8/2019

Pretend you went to sleep and you fell into the Void
Where all things are possible but nothing is manifest.

You fell deeply asleep there and disappeared
(silly I know because the whole time you were in your bed
Weren't you?)

Pretend you woke up with the Void inside you
And you became Deep Space.  Great stars and planets.  Constellations.
The Milky Way
Huge and empty and populated, You carry the Void within like a seed
All things possible, nothing manifest, You travel Deep Space
With stars trailing off your fingers and toes.

Pretend you are That Child, sitting on a wooden chair,
Streaming through the Deep,
Filled with all possibility yet sitting absorbed in silent awe
You could be anywhere.

Pretend you are standing at the sink
Looking through the window filled with all possibility
at yourself and everything is manifest but you don't move
You
Just look at yourself and see it all.

You are so real.  It's very clear.

The Void within is exerting pressure on the possibility of
Manifestation
And you taste that.
It turns out to be Love.

How I Clean House

Hmm.  I'm not sure about this cleaning woman.  Look, she's talking to herself.
She's wandering all over the house.  What on earth is she doing??

She's having a two way private conversation.

Whaaa??  It's all NONSENSE!

Don't listen to what she's saying.  Watch what she DOES.

What's she doing then?

Everything, man.

Heavy Mist Aug 2 2018

                                                Heavy Mist Aug 2 2018

The long golden grass is so beautiful under the comforted sky

Golden grass and green green trees
Who have dug their toes down deep
And woven a basket there to hold the water
Under the ground;

Who catch the sun with their leaves to spin into sugar

And when the air marries the cloud
They drink the wine from the sky.

The heat of the great sun these last weeks created a sky blue and bright
As bald as a skull and clear as glass

But today as I travel up the mountain
I'm in the cloud of the presence
Where the water marries the air
And the grass is golden
And the trees are brilliant with life.

For the Common Good

Most people see politics as a war on all fronts, with the right people winning and the wrong people losing.   This is a paradigm of human nature, especially now, because at least in the United States of America, we are so overstimulated.

Politics is a part of human life - inevitable - and human nature is such that there are people hungry for power.  Hungry ghosts, as it were.  It is a tragedy when they win.

I see politics as an engagement on all fronts, with mutual benefit for all parties.  This is the evidence of a successful ecosystem.  It's a big circle that feeds itself.

If we join hands, we too can make a circle.  Win-win.

No Reservations

It looked like an alternative
And Lord knows, you needed one.
You travelled so far and saw so much
And in the end there was no place to rest your head.

Everywhere we are
Hounded, lured out, banished, enticed..
There is an illness over the world
An insatiable hunger that ends in extinction.
So the wreckage of the past
Is the landscape of our future
And we spring off the mark into our suicidal marathon.

We dream of home, though,
Of escaping the lie of it and
Of running into the arms of it, both.
Regretting what we left behind
Longing for what we hope to find
Some kind of sanctuary
If you cannot rest where you are,
This is tragedy.

You were a bard of our time
Travelling eternally and telling stories to send to home
Received in Everytown, yet rarely home.
So, is it that you travelled so far, so fast, so much
Or that you ran for your life until your heart burst?

Migration has been a factor in human.
Through long centuries
We have swirled across the lands
Knocking over boundaries
Flooding into new territory
And moving the earth.
But we are here and gone.

So, you had to go.
It wounded us, but you will stay in my heart
As long as I can hold your memory.

You connected us with other people
Through the communion of the table
There is no higher calling.

You had to leave, again,
For good or ill.
It wounded us, but I will hold your memory
I will care for Home and the Land of it
Awaiting the re-union.  How long?  Until I rest it in.

You were cold, someone said
As if every day were buried under a little more snow.
Shock, brother, it looks like shock.

If only you could have stopped!
There is a garden.


For Anthony Bourdain.