Great phrase”I’m feeling poorly”
Stay home from prison
Fresh breeze through window
More a hobo
Than a hermit
Kindness of others
If you want
To be at peace
Want nothing
Easier to find
Lighter to carry
An odd holiness
He was thirty five
On his own
Exile
And
Rejection
Because it is a rainy Sunday I look at Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon.
I’m interested in what-is behind the apparent cosmos and the intelligible sense of existence. One word for now:
λόγος , ὁ, verbal noun of λέγω (B), with senses corresponding to λέγω (B) II and III (on the various senses of the word v. Theo Sm.pp.72,73 H., An.Ox.4.327): common in all periods in Prose and Verse, exc. Epic, in which it is found in signf. derived from λέγω (B) 111, cf.infr. VI. 1 a:
Hermit monk
Looks at Buddha statue
Sees
Solitary fool
Looking at cross
Sees
what?
Have you ever
Seen the pain?
My brothers
Sisters
Help us
Look
For
You
Heather Cox Richardson today quotes judge J Michael Luttig on a way republicans might attempt to steal the November 2026 election results and refuse to seat Democrat winners.
Scary reading for Sunday morning.
Once I read scripture on this day. Now I read strictures to decency, history, and democracy.
And I wonder . . .
Will assassination and armed civil war become strategies of resistance to the intractable and pernicious single-sighted ambition of maga to finally enthrone the unwell and perverse megalomania of one disturbed man?
I’d prefer it not be so.
Then, again, my interests in the state of “not being” is a tortured investigation.
I do not own firearms or other lethal weapons other than a sturdy hiking stick and llbean folding knife, a water bottle and prayer.
I’ll be fine.
(Or is that fin?)
What is the opposite of history?
Where does it go when it ends?
What? No ‘Amens?’
I suppose
I have
always wanted
to do
nothing --
I suspect
the time
has come --
I have
nothing
to
speak of
hence
nothing
is being
done
cut grass on lawn chair
grackle taking wild cherries
branched over black Ridgeline --
whatever love is,
there’s nothing else like this
there is nowhere to go
I have never seen god
but I have seen speckled
sunshine on driveway gravel --
perhaps I have seen god
When I first began practicing zen, a cushion was a cushion and beads were beads.
Now, bald mountain is merely across the road, coffee milk and small streusel cinnamon squares are morning Eucharist.
I cannot recall when one was not the other and the invisible wholeness incarnated creation every second with holy breath.
The fuel in the tea brazier is burnt out,
So I collect pine needles,
The fields of medicinal plants are empty,
So I cut vegetable roots.
Naturally dull, I’ve forgotten Zen activities,
My gate is darkened at noon by
The shade of ancient trees.
White clouds impart a sense of peace
To my Zen meditation,
Green grasses suffice to make a rug for my guests.
What I have collected is a hundred years
Of emptiness.
—Isshi Bunshu (1608-1646)
I can’t seem to find any use for my decapacitating life any more. There are crows yapping out in trees and cars heading into town. My biggest choice these days is which not to buy, an electric bike, or an iPhone duo. Happily, after researching both, I choose neither and check to see if the president of the United States has been carted off yet or if Mitch McConnell has waved his moribundity from living room window.
Friends practice zen meditation or hold Quaker meetings regularly in recognizable format, and that cheers me. Sages from centuries ago leave etymological artifacts and footprints for my archeological digs to pore over.
Yesterday we forgot to check email telling us we had no prison access to education because of staffing and meetingbrook conversation would not be held. The lobby officer respectfully turned us away recommending the biscuits with sausage gravy at Moody’s in Waldoboro.
My zen practice has gone beyond idiorrhythmic and become singularly idiotic. Monks from China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and Manhattan show up at our gate and demand to inspect our credentials and certify orthodoxy, shake their heads with disappointment and book passage back to write their findings to send to mausoleum cabinets to be filed next to old school grades yellowed with impertinence.
No one visits anymore. Zazen in mossy green plastic Adirondack chair in dooryard looking toward treetops and mountain wall blue sky and white moving clouds with dog on ground and yellow leaves twirling down is my daily sesshin.
I am my uncle Jim in Brooklyn backyard with his white owl cigar and low singing sutras of show-tunes as I apprentice to his iconic shikantaza as a young boy.
And there I remained.
Someone is knocking on zendo floor.
Incense lazes through air.
Candle flame shivers in-place.
Airplane engine drones off west.
And you? My sangha mates?
You are always welcome.
Practice is always beginning.
Right where you are as you are.
Enter your heart.
Profound bow!
Gassho!
Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.
... ... ...
*This poem is dedicated to the victims of September 11 and to their survivors.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
... ... ...
Analysis (ai): The poem unfolds in free verse with a loose alphabetical progression, using the alphabet as a structural spine. Line lengths vary organically, mirroring the rhythm of thought rather than adhering to metrical patterns. Enjambment is frequent but unobtrusive, maintaining a quiet, meditative pace. The form avoids rigid symmetry, aligning with post-1950 American lyrical norms that prioritize conversational cadence.
Imagery and Setting: Rain, light, and natural elements frame the poem’s transitions from night to morning to evening. Names appear as physical inscriptions—in raindrops, petals, clouds, bark—blurring the boundary between the tangible and the ephemeral. Urban and rural images coexist: storefronts and warehouses sit alongside fields, lakes, and woods, suggesting a national scope.
Function of Names: Rather than memorialize individual lives, the poem uses names as units of presence, emphasizing sheer quantity and ubiquity. The alphabetical sequence resists hierarchy, treating all names with equal weight, reflecting democratic impulses common in late 20th-century American verse. The inclusion of ethnically diverse surnames subtly underscores the pluralism of the victims.
Temporal Movement: The poem spans a single day, from night to the following evening, structuring remembrance as a cyclical, daily practice. This quotidian framing contrasts with grand elegiac traditions, aligning with contemporary tendencies to ground mourning in routine rather than ritual.
Comparative Context: Unlike the surreal turns and humor in much of the author’s other work, this poem sustains a rare solemnity. It departs from his typical irony, yet retains his accessible diction and focus on ordinary moments. Compared to post-9/11 poems that invoke political or religious language, this one resists rhetoric, focusing instead on quiet accumulation.
Less-Discussed Angle: The emphasis on reading—names hidden in a puzzle, deciphered in bark—shifts the act of mourning from listening or speaking to interpreting. The reader becomes a participant in an ongoing search, suggesting remembrance as a cognitive task rather than an emotional release. This intellectualized approach is unusual in elegies of this period.
Place in the Author’s Oeuvre: Among his lesser-performed pieces, this stands out for its sustained focus and public subject matter. Most of his work avoids direct historical engagement, making this poem a conceptual outlier. Its dedication anchors it in a specific event, rare for a poet who typically resists topicality.
Contemporary Engagement: The poem responds to post-9/11 demands for collective memory while resisting monumentalization. By dispersing names across natural and urban landscapes, it critiques the impulse to centralize grief in physical memorials. This decentralization mirrors digital-age realities, where memory is distributed and persistent.
Use of Alphabet: The alphabet functions not as a child’s tool but as a containment strategy for overwhelming loss. The progression to Z—and the deferral of X—acknowledges the limits of systems in capturing human absence. The line “let X stand, if it can” introduces doubt into an otherwise orderly sequence.
Final Imagery: The closing image of names on a pinhead recalls Donne, but without metaphysical certainty. The reference is faint, underscoring absence rather than divine presence. The “warehouse of memory” suggests storage without access, resonating with contemporary anxieties about forgetting in an age of information overload. (ai)