Upstairs in Harbor Room Dana and Saskia set up new register for use. Schooner-bum Susan comes in with the mastered cd from her afternoon recording session. We play it. She can sing.

It's a hot afternoon. My heart is in a pine glade.

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622 – 1693)(dailyzen)

Or brown needles grounding shade through sanctuary walking path.

Just because a body is in prison, no need for mind to stay shut up.

Joe asked if we would cease to be human once we arrive at cosmotheandric awareness. Once we awaken a spirituality and consciousness that Raimon Panikkar names and toward which, he suggests, we are evolving.

We returned to Maine State Prison this morning after 5 months. That time was closed to volunteers due to the prison's move from Thomaston to Warren. Everyone had to be reorientated -- retraining prisoners, guards, and staff -- as well as lastly, volunteers.

For two hours 15 of us sat and read, conversed, laughed, spoke for heart and head, recited poetry -- and released the expression that cannot remain unfree.

No thinking, no reflecting-
Perfect emptiness:
Yet therein something moves,
Following its own course.
- Shinkage-ryu sword school (dailyzen)

Dick thought the human was chaos and mistake. Hyun felt that view didn't take into account the oscillating spirituality we'd wrestled with after the Capra/Bateson dialogue. Panikkar's 9 ways not to speak about God suggested alternate thinking about what discourse might fly.

Andre's insight that divinity will not be tainted by one who sees all things in simplicity -- and Kevin's experience that nature "just picks up" when attended to -- sparked thought about the relationship between complexity and consciousness.

Chris said that the ability to make a decision is where chaos begins. Deprived of that choice we remain infantilized. With choice and decision we court mistake and error.

Barbara Rhodes' Zen talk on the illusion and suffering of separation brought attention to the molecular exchange taking place in the midst of our gathering together, and however unaware we might be, there is profound interconnection.

Thor -- ("the image of you / you can't undo"), ("to know death / is to know the wind / that whispers through the trees") -- and Andre ("I wondered if I'm under a spell / you have to wonder") -- recited poems and lines from their poems.

It was a wonderful return. We'll have Meetingbrook Conversations in prison every other Friday morning. We'll put our bodies behind locked doors and barbed wire in exchange for the wonder and wind sweeping through our common exploration.

Water is scarce, says Skip Day -- town Manager at Lincolnville -- when we run by him our plans for Meetingbrook Farm. He thinks we'd be fine with what we wish to do. Of course we are like scarce water trying to seep deeper into ground.

However deep your
Knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming
Your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine. -
Tokusan (dailyzen)


Walking boundaries, house inspection, water tests, mortgage inquiry, questions and questions by those who come into the shop. E-mails of advice and wariness. Exclamations of hope and expectation! Always the unknown – where will money come from to support the purchase of farm and initiate the volunteer programs at Laura Common?


But we take one step at a time. Last night reading Plotinus by Hixon -- the ending paragraphs of the love and compassion the One processes forth with what one is -- a slinky extension rounding into itself, twisting to the shape of our dna and awareness.


One day we will see. That day there will be nothing special to note -- only birdsong, cloud cover, flowering bushes on roadway, and fragrance of something baking in the kitchen.


We are fortunate to even write these words.







Sunday, May 26, 2002

Source. Expression. Integration
This sacred three. Holy Trinity. Sei, in German, Be! Source of what is. Expression of what is. Integration of what is.

This cold night bamboos stir,
Their sound- now harsh, now soft—
Sweeps through the lattice window.
Though ear’s no match for mind,
What need, by lamplight,
Of a single Scripture leaf?
- Kido (dailyzen)


At the shop today good music. Coming Home from Dvorak's New World Symphony. Sam, Hugh, Virginia, and Saskia play, visitor sings words. Outside I tell Virginia to play that at my memorial service. Woman playing piano, Idona -- first time in since husband died. Man from Florida, Charles' brother Edson, first time in since wife died. Woman from Rockport -- first time in -- a respite from weariness showing in her eyes. Just that -- with coffee, soup, and rhubarb kuchen, strawberry kuchen, and fire in the fireplace. Just that, a fact of being.


We breathe, laugh, sing. We talk, greet, say goodbye. These trinitarian acts infused with source, expression, & integration -- this is a practice worth practicing. Thomas Berry (p.136) in Buddhism tells of the moment Dante in the Divine Comedy wrote -- after his vision of Divine Reality that he had seen therein -- "All the scattered leaves of the universe bound by love in one volume" (Par.xxxiii, p.85). Is this the Godhead, the Sacred Trinity celebrated today even by those of us who see only through another's words?


Moonlight on kitchen roof is not blown off by stiff winds.

We remember and pray for all those dead and deadened by war. It is Memorial Day Weekend.

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)(dailyzen)

In that darkness stumbles another priest, this time an Archbishop. A different kind of war. Not sexual -- as some would explain it. But a war between what we think -- and what we do.

The Church war is being lost. Thought and dogma clash with fact and act.
When the war ends the priesthood will not be recognizable. War is hell.

Earth turns and stars punctuate dark distances. What priests were for, they thought, was conveyance of the sacred to a world absent God. The sorrowful mistake is made by thought.

God is absent absence. Conveyer is without conveyance. Thought made other. Other is absent.
The world will have to adjust to what is devoid of what was thought of it. And it will.

Those who have forgotten God have forgotten earth and forgotten what they convey. We are here to convey sacred to sacred. Water conveys water. Fire conveys fire. We've forgotten that.

So many are dead and have deadened others in the name of what they thought life should be.
No thought, please. Let what is itself convey itself. Forget other. See yourself in all, as what is.

Find what is you. What is conveys what is. What you are conveys what you are.
See yourself as yourself. See each and all as each and all. Don’t make other. Don’t make dead.

Life is not thought. Life is life. Life is love without thought. And love without thought lives itself with forgiveness and compassion.

It is Memorial Day Weekend. We try to remember. We try forgiveness and compassion. We try life. What we are is what we do.

Life – ‘bright and clear in an unclouded sky.‘
Remember?

The ten Ox-herding pictures took us from searching to disappearing to showing up in the middle of the marketplace last evening. David and Jim sat on either side of Buddha statue newly placed upstairs in the harbor room. Saskia was flu prone on the futon. Delia arrived (as usual) in time for the finishing with contributing comment.

In the stillness by the empty window
I sit in formal meditation
Navel and nose in alignment,
Ears parallel with shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room;
The rain stops, but the eaves drip and drip.
Perfect this moment—
In the vast emptiness, my understanding deepens.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Tonight we close in on the final chapter of the Jim Marion book. At hour's end Tom sums up, "Whenever you hold onto another's thought as though it was the truth, you ain't."
Nancy started up the stairs but wisely withdrew keeping her silence at mêlée’s end.

Tide's high. Moon's nearing full. Ryokan's "Perfect this moment --" is at the window.
The window of opportunity, the great spiritual moment, says Richard Groves in The Sacred Art of Dying, is the moment of death.

Nothing is more important, says Blessed Fintan. Hospitality. Hospice. Presence.
Every instant, at the window. Soon enough, the window itself.

Pentecost Haiku

All together
body gone, body revealed
you are this one
breathing
(wfh)

Pentecost Haiku, Evening Edition

The fact itself,
the fact revealed,
the fact realized --
as I live and breathe!
(wfh)

What is the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Is it the realization of what is in fact true?

Paul wrote:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit. (1Cor.12:13)

The fact that we are one body, "so it is with Christ," remains a fact whether or not it is realized. Perhaps the coming of the Spirit is the realization of the fact.

The work of art is, indeed, the by-product of a state of high functioning. The state of spiritual exaltation is fundamental to creative activity, whole skills and measurements are secondary. It is the measurement of an ontological experience. The great painter Ku 'ai-chih (c. 344-406) points out that the purpose of painting is chu'an shen, or the revelation of the spirit. He says:

"Forms are used to reveal the spirit; when it is lost, one deviates from the principle of discarding the 'fishing net and the snare' and the purpose of painting is missing.... Even though there be light and shade in the painting, nothing is better than to communicate with its spirit when one gazes at it."

Wang Wei (fifth century critic) stresses the same idea: "When the spirit is not revealed in the form, what is carried by the form is not in action." What is in motion is revealed through form, but is itself not the form. When spirit is not in motion, it is the unrevealed reality in the form; when in motion, it vibrates in the vision of the beholder.
(in Creativity and Taoism, A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, pp.208-209)

Christ is revealed and realized in and with the Spirit. Jesus disappears so as not to be obstacle. Spirit reveals the transparency of that disappearance. That is -- the new dwelling place of Christ in the hearts and minds of those who love -- an incarnation that leaps from beloved children story in the Bible to felt experience resonating in the body.

Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs,
Yet not a mote of dust is stirred;
Moonbeams pierce to
The bottom of the pool,
Yet in the water not a trace remains.
- Zen Dust (dailyzen)

It is Eve of Pentecost. We border the realization.
We look with simplicity. We listen with silence. We act with service.

Some revelation is at hand. "It vibrates in the vision of the beholder."

Boats are lowered from Wayfarer's travel-lift at regular interval. Floats are in. Channel markers too. The harbor comes alive with brightwork, rattling, batten, and hull paint. Deckhands seize sail to mast-hoop as gaff-rigged schooners ready for season.

We have the farm under contract. This fact is equally disturbing and humbling. Karl, head shaved, says "calling" and continues eating Topfen Kuchen -- as though everything is said with that word. As though with each forkful raised to mouth the vocation of Meetingbrook is visible, the sound of it audible.

Every thing,
Every place is real,
Each particle makes
Up the Original Person.
Still, the absolutely real
Is voiceless,
The true body’s
Majestically out of sight.
- Chosha (9th century)(dailyzen)

So much to worry about and doubt.

I read the poet Randall Jarrell,
In a letter to his red-haired Viennese friend, Elisabeth Eisler, Randall prided himself on being "quite optimistic, mostly in order to save bother: I accept, dismiss and forget about bad things that happen as quickly and well as I can." I guess one of the great principles of my life is: 'O don't bother, forget about it...'"
Saving bother coupled with my own great commitment to William James's "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook" spared us many a squabble.
(Mary von Schrader Jarrell, in Introduction to Remembering Randall, A Memoir of Poet, Critic, and Teacher Randall Jarrell)

No bother. What takes place, takes place.

The elegant and large ketch Sumurun ties up at Willeys wharf.
Sam and Susan row by in their dory. Charlotte comes in under her large daisy hat and hangs flyer of the Wabanakis of Maine and the Maritime. Alan pours tea. A seagull inspects Waterfront Restaurant deck. It is warm.

James is right -- "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook."
The Original Person is what is only seen in silence and stillness. Transparence is her shape. Emptiness his sound.

Let's try wisdom. Let's listen to the voiceless.

Yesterday Isidore the Farmer looked over rolling acres and saw silence.
Today Ramana, the saint of primal awareness, smiles and remembers his name often pronounced in the Wednesday Evening Conversation reading from Lex Hixon's book.

Earlier Ignacio from Bolivia laughed and took pictures and talked about the United Nations stay he'd done for Franciscan International. Thirty-four years between conversations and I remember how sweet a fellow he is, and Francis our common bond.

There is much questioning about the farm negotiations. If they collapse, that would be fine. If they take root, also fine. But the most important incarnation is the Laura Common. That belongs to itself. We are caretakers of that belonging -- taking care to listen to it speak itself, taking care to watch it form itself.

Spirit, holy and true, inhabits the sound and form of what is Itself for and with others.

As the earth longs for the spirit of holiness and truth, so does the Spirit present Itself to any of us willing to dwell in that good company.

Come to earth! Dwell here in peace and good will!

Rain
Watering earth.
May mothering Spirit ground.

Liturgically we are between things. Between Ascension and Pentecost.

O monks, there is neither going or coming or standing still; neither is there duration or decline or growth; nothing is fixed and still, nothing moves nor has foundation. This is the end of suffering. (Early Buddhist text, quoted in Bruno Barnhart's Second Simplicity)

That which Barnhart the Camaldolese Benedictine points to -- pure ultimate unitive reality and to unitive contemplative experience, reawakening in the Christian tradition by the encounter with Buddhism today -- is rainfall today. Everywhere everything is watered.

Veni Creator Spiritus, Come Creator Spirit.
Being between mothering -- our unknowing birth.

Terence on life support Friday afternoon allowed my hand on his head, on his hand. Water, holy and wet, forgave him if ever he'd forgotten he too was water. Two women cried by his bed. Water remembering he was water as he died.


In the realm of True Purity
there is no such thing as
“I” or “he” or “she”
nor can “friend” and “foe”
be found.
The slightest confusion of mind
and innumerable differences
and complications arise.
- Muso (1275-1351)

This morning canoe ride in harbor after sunrise and Eucharist at 7:30 service, I bought ground coffee, muffins, and New York Times at French and Brawn. On Bayview Street sidewalk a still and stiff bird with blood splattered on neck similar to Terence’s. On one knee I pick it up placing on bed of flower against tree in front of ice cream shop. Like water under paddle earlier and wine on lips at altar rail the flow of life and breath, rising and falling, dispensation and death interspersing each other as coffee poured through filtered grounds to air pot.

Prayer touched Terence's head and hands in final hours. And prayer knelt to move bird to funeral bier. At Sunday Evening Practice we laughed at Cheryl's talking to a piece of cake, saying she was talking to her mother -- laughing -- when words couldn't do what words often can't.

We mother with our love whatever we attend.
Happy Mother's Day -- all of us-- who've ever let their heart attend life!

Ascension Thursday was our decision time:

We have decided: 1) to obtain a lovely farm to live a quiet, contemplative, and engaged service life that can invite others to do the same in their own communities and homes. We have one picked out and are making an offer. 2) We will retain the bookshop/bakery on Camden’s Bayview Street with its retreat room above it on the harbor – it will be supported by membership subscription.

So it is.

"Here's the hardest part," says the man struggling.

The container is not what it contains. The institution that has conveyed within it a core essence is only a conveying shell, not the essence itself. The essence, he says, is that which belongs to everyone. Water may be conveyed by brook, pail, bottle or cupped hands. But water is the essence.

When you’re settled in Zen,
Your mind is serene,
Unaffected by worldly distractions.
You enter the realm of enlightenment,
And transcend the ordinary world,
Leaving the worldly while
In the midst of society.
- Fenyang

Right in the middle of society, right in the center of the conveyance -- right there within your heart, right here looking out from our eyes.

Gratitude for the carrying forward. Now, go home!

Light Dancing From Water to Brown Wood Planks and Beams
(A Thursday poem after 40 days)

It is where the heart is.
The sun rises warm on right shoulder.

Harbor surface calm with small ripples rubbed by breeze.
It is Ascension Day!

If Christ were to disappear from our eyes,
Would it matter to the heart?

It is the heart that sees what the eyes cannot.
The very next person I look at, the very next awareness of my heart,

There...
Here...

Christ has returned home. Christ is seeing what you are
Seeing.

Here it is again.

A Proposal for Intentional Community:
Meetingbrook Hermitage -- A Laura Common
Maine USA, and dwelling places elsewhere

Meetingbrook proposes a Laura of Hermits, an intentional community, a loosely knit association of individuals seeking what might be called Zen Contemplative Ecology. A “hermit” is one longing to dwell with simplicity, silence, & service -- deepening their life alone or with others. “Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone, Stepping aside to make room for another.” Hermits are those longing to dwell in their true home and in true community.

For the purpose of Meetingbrook’s proposal, “laura” means the pathways and waterways connecting us on our journey. A laura is:
1. a gathering of individuals living their own lives in their own dwellings;
2. peripheral to a central location shared for communal use;
3. building community with distinct yet similar shared intention to deepen one’s life;
4. each engaged in idiorhythmic practice (i.e. according to one’s own rhythms and schedule) -- whether prayer, meditation, contemplation, energy work, healing unease, encouraging physical, intellectual, spiritual health & balance;
5. with periodic sharing of each person’s conversation & practice in community;
6. devoted to the common intent of cultivating peace, compassion, engaged service, merciful reconciliation, and lovingkindness;
7. welcoming hospitality and generosity of spirit within and toward others.
8. A Zen Contemplative Ecology is, for this proposal, the practice of seeing directly & clearly -- now, safe, & whole -- interrelationships of individuals in community, sentient beings in nourishing environments, and a cosmotheandric awareness (of earth & nature itself, divine presence, and human family) that caringly and carefully makes room for each other.

A Meetingbrook Laura Common -- welcomes individuals, couples, & families. Members of any or no religion are welcome. Members of sanghas, orders, followers of specific teachers, are welcome. Those on any particular spiritual path, those willing to allow others to practice their own religious and spiritual path, are welcome. Inclusive, autonomous, & generous hearted people, are welcome. Those who appreciate diversity and a plurality of seeking, those realizing and embodying what is natural, sacred, and human – the immeasurable gift of existence and life beyond compare -- are welcome.

The mere prospect of connecting what already touches us is attractive. Identifying, consciously and intentionally, as part of Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits, deepens the affection and mystery of living life alone with others. Whether you prefer: to live alone on one’s own; live with others; or live alone together – we will explore how to dwell engaging solitude and community – a dedicating of life and love -- with God, each other, oneself.

If interested, come join us for some exploratory conversations toward the creation invited by a Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits. If nothing else, it might provide some thoughtful considerations, laughter, & a spate of belonging!
If interested in such an exploration, please email or call 236-4346, leave name and #.

Thanks, Bill Halpin and Saskia Huising 25Feb2002 - 6May2002 laura@meetingbrook.org

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Proposed Engaged Service Projects for Meetingbrook:
1. Conversations in Prison
2. Community Bakery Volunteer Connections and Recipe Ethnography for those in Good Health and Healing Recuperation
3. Practice and Study of Inter-Religious Peace, Understanding, & Tolerance.
4. A Laura Common – A Practicing Zen Contemplative Ecology Community.
5. Respite Community Resource -- Time Apart for Those Suffering Alone or With Others.
………………………………………….

Theme -- Meetingbrook Hermitage: As and In A Laura Common

Writing this on 5May2002 I remember my mother who died this date 1981. It is also four days until the Christian feast of the Ascension. On that day we will have chosen the way Meetingbrook will go on. It might have been an arbitrary choice of date for decision – but it’s ours.

Ascension, however else it has been conceived and celebrated, is the feast of Christ returning home to dwell as and in Father/Mother, Spirit & Truth. That Jesus opened himself completely to this Christ Reality is the joy of his followers.

Ascension is the return to one’s true reality. Some have called it one’s true self, others the absolute, divine self, ultimate, nirvana, liberation, or the ground of our being.

It might entail disappearing into undifferentiated suchness, as Buddhists speak of it. It might entail giving up our attachment to separateness and embracing unity. Or perhaps it entails a final tiring of fear and a corresponding surrendering to love

Ascension is coming home.

In Jesus’ Ascension it appeared he was leaving those who loved him. They were wary of his assurance he’d be with them always. Always! They might have been consoling words, but their eyes saw him no more. He was gone. No longer out there to see.

Here – that’s the promise Jesus tried to assure them – I am here. Here with you. See me, he said, and you see the Father, and the Paraclete (a supportive comforter – like sangha, community) will come. And all will be well with each and all.

(As I write this I break to dash to kitchen stove every five minutes to spray and bake bread.)

Still uncertain but open to what Ascension means for Meetingbrook, we listen and watch, both in silence and conversation. We don’t know. What we trust is our “yes” to the call to contemplate, converse, and correspond with all that is taking place.

If you want to be no
Different from the buddhas
And Zen masters,
Just don’t seek externally.
The pure light of a
Moment of awareness
Is the Buddha’s essence within you.
- Linji (d.867) (dailyzen)

At the end of his Gospel account, Matthew has Jesus saying as he ascended,
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, until the end of the age. (Mt.28:19-20)

“To observe all,” – what a lovely teaching and learning to dwell with one another in common!

Here is what we propose: To engage the lovely teaching and learning – the sacred reality that observes all dwelling with one another in common.

In trusting appreciation, we go on.

At end of Lectio, Kristen prays us out with her words, "O Christ, may we move with ease into your bountiful emptiness."

Is the truth the world does not understand this -- that the one before us is the whole of the Father, Son, Spirit -- that the core reality is right there, right here? The "commandments" Jesus speaks of -- that if we follow them all will know we are disciples -- are these commandments the affirming yes of acceptance of the core reality of this existence?

If we love Jesus (or anyone) we become a way of being that does not make what we love other. Therefore, there are things we will not do -- not to, because of -- the one we love. Affirming whole present reality -- seeing as one seeing one -- we abandon the illusory othering view. There is no other to do wrong to. There is no wrong to be done -- not, at least, if we abandon ourselves into love.

Inside the sacred fence
Before which I bow
There must be a pond
Filled with clear water;
As my mind-moon becomes bright
I see its shadow reflected in the water.
- Daito Kokushi (1213-1279)(dailyzen)

Five days to the 9th. Monday we view a farm with friends.

The pond with clear water is in the viewing with friends -- the truth the world cannot see. Viewing with the one before us, looking back at the one viewing us.

The view, the viewing itself, the one viewing, the viewing with one another – this is the interview with Christ, this is the interview with Bodhisattva.

Those who would master Zen fully engage and embody this interview.

Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Jesus stood silent before him. Pilate didn't get it.

Enlightenment is no big thing. It is dropping into the one, into the viewing, interviewing the reality right before us. Seeing truth as it is.

What is that? And what is this?

O Christ, may we move with ease into your bountiful emptiness!

Cisco wags tail greeting at door of shop. Sando, the veteran, snoozes by bakery case.

To be resolute in the way means
from the beginning never to
lose sight of it, whether in a
place of calm or in a place of strife;
to not cling to quiet places nor
shun places where there is disturbance.
- Daikaku (1213-1279) (dailyzen)

A little boy named William wearing yellow and wine red is carried in by his mom after Buddhist Studies, He grabs on to ribbon of bell over counter. He rings and rings. His father's sister is in India with the Tibetans,

Gary Snyder's words say we don't change reality but we can transform ourselves.
With that, an elevating of awareness, a deepening of consciousness.

Mini is curled for the night on chair by desk in 2nd floor room at hermitage.

War is one of those realities. We cannot live as war. We must be peace.
Sorrow for one. Pray for the other.

I wouldn't want to live in a world where no one winced when a cat was killed -- even in a Zen story. Relationality is the human story. We are not the moral of a teaching story. We are the story.

Dirk wondered if (a phenomenological example) my comment on observing a body, a bat, and blood on the floor, one concludes something wrong had occurred -- was absolute or relative. "It was felt," I said. And if the whole is to be whole, it is a related whole.

Paul and Jim worked on the birchwood floor of cabin this weekend. In kitchen with coffee we spoke of clay feet and those in religion. Community begins when each one realizes the commonality of their ordinariness. Intention to live a particular kind of life only points to the way you wish to travel. Those who travel with or near are community to you. We all have clay feet. It is our earthy steps that give us the grace of each other -- not our lofty aspirations.

All the holy ones have turned within and sought the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the 24 hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place that cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and the true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know the truth of the heart.
- Daikaku (1213-1279) (dailyzen)

When we pray we pray earthbound for all alongside moving as we move. Deliberate with each other, there is much to say and listen to on our way.

Fear might be the need to cut, stack, and burn wood; but ash is how we are transformed into love.

Poetry is what remains
when words dive into fire.
Poetry is ash seen
transformed back to lumber,
ahead to tomatoes.
(wfh)

Pulling Mark Strand's book of poems Darker (1970), the following:

The One Song

I prefer to sit all day
like a sack in a chair
and to lie all night
like a stone in my bed.

When food comes
I open my mouth.
When sleep comes
I close my eyes.

My body sings
only one song;
the wind turns
gray in my arms.

Flowers bloom.
Flowers die.
More is less.
I long for more.
(Strand, p.30)

At Friday Evening Poetry Annie reads poem about bus ride Boston to Rockland shared with young Korean carrying belongings wrapped by mother in paper with strings looped and tied. We see in words she left out her own finger placed on the bow being tied on what this young man carries in his journey. She is mother to him departing at Union Street. Of course, the poem and destination is left without sentimentality at Union.

Sando on one bench with me, Cisco on other bench with Saskia, Annie alongside logs glowing with fire in hearth.
Cisco is a border collie who will stay with us. He arrived Friday morning. His mistress leaves Maine for Florida and asks us to be home for Cisco. Black and white, over 10 years old, Cisco acclimates to hermitage and shop. He is sweet. He stares at Mini the cat, which has become meditation object for Cisco. Everyone is learning their space, sniffing proximity, and giving room for each other. It goes well!

There are three things I must do before dying:
1. wash dishes;
2. walk meditation path;
3. scratch cat passing to window;
Now I am ready. Now I die.
(wfh)

Poetry helps make an ash of ourselves. That's the more and less of it!