amnesiac unserving

 Police

Forget

Who they are

Why they are

Murdering

unchurch the open

 Not to go to church

Is not to not do something

But do what church does

Just attend ordinary

Minute by minute this life

gaining a gig

 Deleting emails from gmail to get back more room.

Would love to find the delete button for some of the stupidity bunching up  on twitter and the congressional representatives no longer making any sense, rhyme, or reason.

i hear what you are, saying

Dockline through hawse.

Boarding ramp fixed in place. 

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.       —Thomas Aquinas, (1225-1274)

No wake.

No plowed waves.

No foghorn heard.

Ghost ships never have to worry about exhausting fuel or getting anywhere.

The zen monk wanders over the distant horizon to 7,500 light year’s away Carina Nebula with one push of wooden oars on a snowy morning seeing, as it is, what is long gone but only now arriving.

bridge under water

 Last year our permanent bridge got washed away.

This morning our temporary bridge is under water.

God is good!

(So says the mountain sluice.)

laugh when you say that, brother-sister

 The love of truth is the love of disappearing separateness.

The delusion of antagonism fastens our feet outside the passageway into our true home.

If we love truth we step out from hardening cement shoes across our fears onto soft invitation.

One foot in front of another we circumambulate the altar of willing inclusion and devoted respect to the eponymous gathering of brothers and sisters, all our relations mirroring the great spirit of truth, love, and the good humor of our collective absurdity.

emergence

 She said it in 1970 in her 4th floor apartment, “Christ is emergence.”

Her words remain a koan.

They ask constantly, “What do you understand by this?”

fermare

 I tire of those

Who say “Jesus, Jesus” all

day long, as if…(look,

I’m sure he was a good guy,)

but, madonne, enough , stop

with the preaching — just sit down

cena

 Give me spaghetti

With Romano cheese, butter

Some seltzer, thank you

through droop trees on mountain slope

 So many emails -- 

buy this, read this, learn this -- hey!

hey! they say, look at

me, I'm here to help you, save 

you, hook you up -- wow --

I must be loved by 

these folks, going out of their

way to include me --

or -- have I become a mark, 

a marketing dart target

Do I still have choice

to be unseen, unconsumed   

to wander snow deep 

through droop trees on mountain slope

where only path is my steps

shed out of you

Whence, come words? 

 We consider bibles and religions divine —I do not say

they are not divine,

I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out
of you still,

It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life,

Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from
the earth, than they are shed out of you.

(--Walt Whitman, in Song for Occupations) 

Where, the divine? 

hey jude

 Old philosophy professor from 1968 on YouTube lectures on The Logic of Religion. 

He died in 2021. 

Found his work yesterday. 

I can’t resubmit my papers to him for reconsideration these fifty five years later. 

I find him; he’s dead. 

Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc. 

Have I learned nothing?

who’s that knocking at my door

 I have no classified documents in my hermitage.

I’m such a nobody.

Only psalms and sutras, philosophy articles, poems, and koans.

Please, come search the place. 

Take them away.

They confuse me.

you are well loved, nothing else matters

 Yes. It’s what we say 

when truth sits across from us

flanking both sides, sets

up behind us, sitting strong

enwrapping us with Itself

hermits laugh at their idiosyncrasies

 

Snowstorm

In Maine

Covers midcoast 

Conversation with

Friend in prison

Yields tee-shirt idea:

“Say hello 

and

Leave me alone”

For those of us

Like that

Or almost

Saskia prefers

“Sag hallo und

Sei still”

Perhaps a

Better

Invitation

dog and cat circle kitchen island

 Seasonal Affective Disorder saturates 

the coast of Maine. Snow. Ice. Cold. January.

We each affect one another 

Look at kitchen sink in morning, pots and dishes

Forks, knives, spatula and sodden sponge

Tell me o muse about the man

Looking at the mess with fresh coffee in hand