Saturday, September 14, 2019

quia per sanctam crucem tuam

The cross is where ego dies.

Christ on cross says not here not now not me.

Dies

Everything not itself not god-reality

Giving over

What is not it’s own

Life

sculling

      (a haiku for Sam)

abaft in dory,

Sam stands with light touch, sculling

untied, drifts from dock...

Friday, September 13, 2019

appetite for nothing

Theres not much to say after you say there’s not much to say.

God is silence surrounded by vast emptiness.

Most don’t want God. Rather noise and distraction.

Truth be told, there’s not much appetite for truth.

Rather distraction and noise.

The full harvest moon lifts itself over trees to a sky chilled with September.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

seen where we stand

No one goes very far from where one is.

It's hard to measure no-space, equally hard to tell no-time.
Little Elegy
Oh how he loved his cup 
and now he’s dirt 
under the pine trees 
 –Li Po
A moment of silence at Soup Kitchen
for our saint of the quick grip, faking
a side stitch to hide the bottle under his coat,
for his taped shoes and worm-eaten watch cap,
that clarifying fish pier scent, raw-grained
and terrifying smell of the skids,
how little it takes to wake up over a grate,
half-dissolved in shadow and mist–
half-dissolved, but still blissed out, bantering
with buddies, flailing on icy streets,
then catching hold of a lamppost and nodding
to it, to the sky, the glittery walk,
to a passing taillight, an old belief,
foolish or fearless, that everything’s sacred,
and now he’s gone. 
(--poem by Betsy Sholl “Little Elegy” is from Late Psalm (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004).
That grate is not far in the dream from which I wake shivering.

This old belief we live as though we were here and could be seen where we stand.

surrounded by green in september

delicate weeds grow up over wheels brakes seat fuel tank rear view mirror riderless

for two years the machine leans into huge cedar tree under wide branches hovering

dog goes around it does his business mower throws cut grass against disc brakes



she left it here when she left yurt to move into second floor room with winter

view to ski runways cut into northeast side of ragged mountain lighted trails

the motorcycle uncovered after first year weathers all seasons rain or sun, snow



waiting as each

one of us

is doing

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

las mirada

Remember

We are here

Then gone —

My heart

Still sorrows

That awful day

18 years ago

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

eternal, a haiku

Tomorrow morning,

Wednesday, the world again shakes —

Can you feel it...now

Monday, September 09, 2019

and we recognize -- words after 9/11

 As September 11 approaches, this:
For me, that there's something "out there" and that I'm here no longer meant anything, because every time I thought there was something out there, it turns into inevitably something opposed to me. Something I have to define myself against, whether that's God, or whether that's a Christian, or whether that's a Muslim, or whether that's a Buddhist. And that's not my experience.  
My genuine experience of life is that there is nothing "out there." This is all there is. And when you see the seamlessness of it all, that's what I mean by "God." Every tradition has that. Every morning, three times a day since I'm five or six years old, I've been saying, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." Right? It's one of our few creedal statements, the Shema. Three times a day, since I'm six years old.  
If you ask what 9/11 really did, it made me understand the truth of that. The truth of that, "Everything is one." Not that there's some guy hanging out there who has it all together, who we call "One," but that it is all one. We all know it deep down. We've all had those experiences. whether it's looking at our child in a crib or whether it's looking at our lover or looking at a mountaintop, or looking at a sunset. Right? We've all had those experiences. And we recognize, "Whoa. I'm much more connected here."  
That's what those firemen had. They recognized; they didn't have time to think about it, right? Because actually, if you think about it, you begin to create separations. They didn't think about it. All they knew is we're absolutely connected. We're absolutely connected to the 86th floor. Well, that's where God is. That's not where God is. God isn't anywhere. That's what we mean when we say God. ...
(--from, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, PBS interview, Rabbi Irwin Kula, winter 2002) 
Words take on so much more when they are deeply felt. 

no t here

Voice: remember,

Listener: remember what?

Voice: remember you know nothing and have nothing to teach.

[silence]

Voice: are you still there?

Listener: yes.

Voice: there’s the problem!

Listener: yes, of course.

Sunday, September 08, 2019

by any other name

 We are one phrase in the universe’s telling of itself.
Stones: Stones are very slow stories with secret memories of fire inside. If you just put a stone on a table it becomes an altar, and a temple appears around it. 
(—John Tarrant, in Meet the Blue Dragon, Lion’s Roar, 31july19)
Dont make anything out of it.

It will go away.