There

is nothing

between you

and God

so many years late

Allen Iverson today.

Not seeing it before.

His cross over.

When in doubt, sit

Still

Doing nothing.

precipitation

birds sing mourning

trees prone across ground

wet faces

                   (--wfh, nunc ipsum)

fallen trees; fruitless commerce

Snow Bowl Recreation Area fells large trees. Many, many, huge grandmother trees. Saskia grieves.

“The trees block the snow from falling on the ski run,” the man at the place says.

She looks at him. Twenty years of walking in the snow under the trees perplexes her.

I’d like to think he is really kidding, goofing her, toying with her, trying to be funny.

But he’s a man with salary and a job to do.

Our dogs mark their territory.

He marks his.

letting fall what is seeking ground

Drip...drip...drip...

Just as being truly compassionate doesn’t mean always being sweet and nice (sometimes it means being cold, harsh), being truly honest doesn’t mean speaking your thoughts and feelings as they arise. Other awarenesses and intention must be at work—and a recognition that the truth is not solid.   (—Susan Piver Browne, “Right Speech")

Leaky faucet --

truth

drops

over

everything.

“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” (-- Dalai Lama XIV)

In it, the room, a hospital bed, with green striped sheet, a lanky teenager, periodic sound of pump sending pain medication to do its work, goldfish circumundulates round bowl, mother holding water cup, spoon with mashed chicken potato bean under his unseeing eyes recently dimmed by concealing circumambulating cancer its own blind pathway through mysterious brain where what we know we don’t know all at same time.

It is monday afternoon. I sit in chair by window near lake only recently released from long winter’s icy hold.

Some call it hospice.

Unscripted presence.

LIVING ROOM 

I’ve heard him coughing hard since four. 

Sometime later he’s dragged his chair 

across the floor to sit and watch 

the sunrise, a half-filled cup of pitch- 

thick coffee steadied on his thigh. 

He doesn’t say the light is gathering 

in the eyes of children not yet born, 

that dawn’s the time to call the Lord, 

before the whole world wants to. I’ve heard 

both before. In the space he makes 

for me against his chest I drift away 

for what seems like years to me. I wake 

into the life another day brings 

and the heartbeat in my ears is deafening. 

(Poem by Christian Wiman)

Screen door returns from transplant operation at route 90 surgical where white parrot outside cage gave perspective to huge block and tackle its three wheels setting above sturdy hook like old-timer in country store waiting to be asked the work he’s done.

All work is work until it ends.

Architecture and therapeutic massage give way to tender turning of offspring towards less discomfort in quiet afternoon room.

In that one act all thought abandons its history and arrives in love for son whose diploma and yearbook, cap and tassel rest like accomplishments without comment on table at edge of mantel where Dalai Lama’s words carry signature smile to smoothing wrinkles of rearranged bedding as time goes by.

We don't have a schedule, said mother to son as hospice visitor listened

Morning with inmates at prison discussing Adam’s Kaballah difficulty solving koan “MU” by choosing handy nearest separate Shekinah instead of the whole contemplation of all emanations of Divine Psyche mulled in Karen Armstrong’s chapter 6 of The Bible, A Biography chapter on Lectio Divina.

Afternoon with dying high school graduating lad in and out of sleep.

Thinking of young woman after spine fusion in Maryland.

Spy series this evening after rice and vegetables with tamari sauce.

A single candle burns in dark chapel/zendo for all in throes of living-through faith.

Living-through.

Is faith.

Enough...

without what? where?

 This is beginning to sound true.

Wanting nothing with all your heart, stop the stream
When the world dissolves everything becomes clear.
Go beyond this way or that way,
To the farthest shore where the world dissolves,
And everything becomes clear.
Beyond this shore and the farthest shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go.  

(-- Buddha, from the Dhammapada)

And that is good enough for me for now.

comes june haiku

no, you, may
not