Winter Saturday afternoon, February

Fallen branch leans against cabin porch screen.

In yurt, empty roundness with silent furnishings.

Bookshed, barn, house, and mountain settle before coming heavy snow tonight.

Orange ball is center of universe,

The stillness.

Standing trees.

Prayer flags in distance.

The intimacy of it all!

Tell me: Have you heard that freedom means coming home to where no one else lives?

Home?

Yes. Where no other person lives.

And that is freedom?

I don't know. I've heard as much.

You tell me.

Hello? Anyone there?

the eve it is

Ambient light from night skiing at Snow Bowl lets us walk Hosmer Pond and Ragged Mountain in driving snow, our snowshoes topping fresh several inches with measured gate.

A Ghost 

erodes the line between being and place becomes the place of being time and so

the house turns in the snow is why a ghost always has the architecture of a storm

The architect tore down room after room until the sound stopped. A ghost is one

among the ages at the edge of a cliff empty sails on the bay even when a ship

or the house moves off in fog asks you out loud to let the stranger in

(Poem by Cole Swensen, b.1955, from Gravesend, c.2012)

Storms let us wander aimless through troughs and tendrils of northeast blow, free of memory, no worn trail but the steps we make surrounded by laden branches and open edges off-ice where houselights shoulder through wet flakes swirling.

If you think, ‘I love this,’ it is ok, it being the eve it is.

7:58am

Morning watch.

His human companion away.

Not seeing, yourself

How desolate it would be.

“How empty it is, a mirror in which I am absent!” (Estelle, in Huis Clos, {No Exit} by Jean-Paul Sartre)

Living without reflection.

Mirrors need not apply!

unseen apple-body

I read the background this morning:

In July 2012, Shabani and the four others arrested with him were sentenced to death on charges of Moharebeh (“waging war on God”), sowing corruption on earth, acting against national security, and spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic. (--Wikipedia)

Then the news:

An Arab-Iranian poet and human rights activist, Hashem Shaabani, has been executed for being an "enemy of God" and threatening national security, according to local human rights groups.Shaabani and a man named Hadi Rashedi were hanged in unidentified prison on January 27, rights groups have said. (--Aljazeera)

...   ...   ...

An email arrives this morning: “It is with great sadness that I share the news that Cynthia Seefahrt died yesterday.” She was, (when) well, known, to us at meetingbrook.

I hear these two pieces of news.

As dull thuds.

  Falling: The Code                

             (--by Li-Young Lee) 

1. 

Through the night    

the apples 

outside my window    

one by one let go    

their branches and    

drop to the lawn. 

I can’t see, but hear 

the stem-snap, the plummet 

through leaves, then 

the final thump against the ground.  

Sometimes two    

at once, or one    

right after another. 

During long moments of silence 

I waitand wonder about the bruised bodies,    

the terror of diving through air, and    

think I’ll go tomorrow 

to find the newly fallen, but they 

all look alike lying there 

dewsoaked, disappearing before me.  

2. 

I lie beneath my window listening    

to the sound of apples dropping in  

the yard, a syncopated code I long to know, 

which continues even as I sleep, and dream I know 

the meaning of what I hear, each dull    

thud of unseen apple-  

body, the earth  

falling to earth 

once and forever, over    

and over. 

(Poem by Li-Young Lee, “Falling: The Code” from Rose.)

Morning readiness

After practice; after sleep --

Workplace.

You don't talk to me; you talk with light in darkness and I am surrounding sight

First reading

Isaiah 58:7-10 

Thus says the Lord: 

Share your bread with the hungry 

and shelter the homeless poor,

clothe the man you see to be naked

and do not turn from your own kin.

Then will your light shine like the dawn

and your wound be quickly healed over. 

Your integrity will go before you

and the glory of the Lord behind you. 

Cry, and the Lord will answer;

call, and he will say, ‘I am here.’ 

If you do away with the yoke,

the clenched fist, the wicked word,

if you give your bread to the hungry,

and relief to the oppressed,

your light will rise in the darkness,

and your shadows become like noon.