Saturday, January 07, 2023

on hearing of bobby’s (paco’s) death in car accident yesterday

The Snow Man  

                  BY WALLACE STEVENS
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

friday evening conversation finally settled into this

 Tina shared poem by John Guzlowski:


What My Father Believed


He didn't know about the Rock of Ages

or bringing in the sheaves or Jacob's ladder

or gathering at the beautiful river

that flows beneath the throne of God.

He'd never heard of the Baltimore Catechism

either, and didn't know the purpose of life

was to love and honor and serve God.


He'd been to the village church as a boy

in Poland, and knew he was Catholic

because his mother and father were buried

in a cemetery under wooden crosses.

His sister Catherine was buried there too.


The day their mother died Catherine took

to the kitchen corner where the stove sat,

and cried. She wouldn't eat or drink, just cried

until she died there, died of a broken heart.

She was three or four years old, he was five.


What he knew about the nature of God

and religion came from the sermons

the priests told at mass, and this got mixed up

with his own life. He knew living was hard,

and that even children are meant to suffer.

Sometimes, when he was drinking he'd ask,

"Didn't God send his own son here to suffer?"


My father believed we are here to lift logs

that can't be lifted, to hammer steel nails

so bent they crack when we hit them.

In the slave labor camps in Germany,

He'd seen men try the impossible and fail.


He believed life is hard, and we should

help each other. If you see someone

on a cross, his weight pulling him down

and breaking his muscles, you should try

to lift him, even if only for a minute,

even though you know lifting won't save him.


  Poem by John Guzlowski 

The poem is taken from his book about his dad and mom and their experiences in WWII, Echoes of Tattered Tongues

exchange of what holiness once was

 The story says angels, wise folks, and shepherds came and saw the child.

It’s a good story, told for two thousand years.

In Maine tonight bright moon on fresh snow.

There’s a sparkle about arising faith alongside diminishing belief.

Bald mountain knows only itself.

Friday, January 06, 2023

a feast of showing through — there’s nothing out there, not a thing in here

 The story changes

Poem says father sent son

To suffer. Maybe 

Jesus was born into this

Suffering world existence


The way snow alights

On mountain because it’s there

Sky, cloud and cold air

Purposeless facticity 

This, and as this is, itself


To suffer this is

To allow what is to be 

As fully engaged

With … with…not separate, with —

Presence intimately here


Forget puppet God,

Rather, come to understand

God as being-with

The whole of this existence

Nothing other, no outside


The inner life is

All of life seen through and through

Through and with and in 

Itself, beholding what is 

Allowing itself to be

silentio veritas

 I’d like to say this —

But “this” is unsayable.


So, that’s that.


But this —this resides well within itself. 


When Gibran’s prophet-protagonist is asked to address the matter of talking, he responds:


You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/11/21/kahlil-gibran-prophet-talking/

This thought is morning light come up over night slumber.

Silentio veritas 

(The silence of truth)

Where 

One

Says

Nothing

Thursday, January 05, 2023

0 / +

 Zero

     Plus

Circle

      Cross

Rounding

      Intersection

Empty

      Addition

kneading cat with sharp claws on me during “sed libera nos a malo” accompanies

 In Rome, at this time

Pope Francis at Vatican

Gives homily at funeral mass

For pope emeritus Benedict XVI

(Remaining in simple wooden casket)

As bare-headed Argentinian Jesuit 

Knows he, too, soon enough, 

Will follow in death, as we all do

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

stay home

 Healing heals itself

If you don’t make 

yourself other than

Healing itself

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

sounding what advances without an opposite

                (Waka on bye)

God is 

All in

Each


Listen to

Each, still

With all


In silence

Hear 

This


Let’s stop

Talking about

God


Each word

Is (truly)

Itself

Monday, January 02, 2023

it’s what our practice is

 Idiorrhythmic

or maybe it was meant for ensō dog

               (Waka sounding the three of us)

Chickadee on green

Feeder hanging from ridge pole

Above turned dinghy

Calls to me at barn door — Thanks

For seeds — good new year

Sunday, January 01, 2023

one is alone with another

 Who we are

Is who we are

With


Relationship is

When two are 

With each other


Until there is

No

Other


One plus one

Equals one

Nothing


Left over,

We are who

We are in


Relation to

Who we are 

With

this, as it is, is good

                     (a waka, at first light, new year’s morning, tanka you)

Fish go splash and splish

Off winter docks — changing tide

Boats are on the hard

Deer hooves track in mountain mud

Look close — I Am — passing through

Rockport Harbor, new year’s morning