a new england atlas

 He killed two in Rhode Island

One in Massachusetts 

Then himself in New Hampshire 

We had breakfast

In moody’s diner in Maine — 

That, at least, was something good

announcement from the high-rise

As Trump Puts His Brand on Washington, the Kennedy Center Gets a New Name

The board for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that it would now be named the Trump-Kennedy Center, although a formal change may have to be approved by Congress. — (nytimes, 18dec25)

Our new board and slaver recognizes Ντόναλντ Τραμπ. 

(donald trump) and has renamed The Basilica 

of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC

"The Trump Spectacular Regression" of DC, (and east coast.)

Mass this Sunday will consist of Big Macs, diet cola, and 

greasy fries for those who pay five hundred thousand

for their perpetual indulgence and free ticket to heaven. 

The Whitehouse press secretary says all catholics will now

be called magaholics and must be rebaptized in January at

the trump-baths just outside Orlando Florida. The ceremony 

will cost an additional five hundred thousand dollars and you

get to shake hands with the new pope, his excellency Wholly Farther

Trump-Epstein the Fecund, once removed, resurrected with honors.

(God, we love what is being done with the place!)

Anybody who can make it, should reserve a space for brunch.

Five hundred thousand dollars will get you ham and eggs, 

coffee, and pineapple cheese cake.

Lets make religion fun again!

Oh yeah, no pre-2026 christians are invited. We're starting a

new cleansing of that fake Jesus stuff. The new papal motto

will be: Ο Ντόναλντ θα το κάνει, (O Ntónalnt tha to kánei)

"Donald Will Do It."

[Note: this press release will go out at 2:30AM, 25December2025. Thank you for your detention within this madness.]

rte 220

 Two field-hands ride

Snowmobiles to pole-barn

Across from Morse’s Sauerkraut 

Walk across road

Get something to drink

dear laddie

Mornin’

I’m noticing that a lot of people die around my age and I suspect death, mine, will trundle down the mountain in due course.

Just wanted to say i love you, carry on, and try to be as happy as a weekday allows you to be.

I’m happy to have known you, loved you, and shared in your wit and wisdom,  What a weird time it has been  — as it is in this flawed and flatulent time of our current blowhard in the Whitehouse.

You are a lovely son, a lovely man, and a delight to have known.

Don’t bother about my ashes. Wherever they wind up is fine. The earth and sea will roll with my debris.

Enjoy things, enjoy friends, enjoy yourself.

Bite a bagel, think of me, throw away the bakery bag in a proper receptacle, and may your coffee stay hot enough for a generous time.

I love you.

Nothing more,

Cheers,

Dad

just the two of us

 One day

He will

Fall down

Dead

That blowhard

One day

I will

Fall down

Dead

This blowhard

respiciō

 Shhh

Quaker Friends

What is

There

(To be heard)

well now

I don’t know about religious holidays.

I do know December will end in fourteen days

And that the bitter cold has snapped

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.

--Wu-men (1183-1260)

Morning comes and daytime follows.

There’s nothing to do.

I read. I follow the news. The bedlam.

The stillness of this room.

The way everything is here, even if unseen.

I no longer know what to think about God.

It’s fine with me not to know what to so think.

Hannukah, Christmas -- have at it.

I take no refuge in these celebrations.

I greet the living, I sorrow the dead. Nothing more.

I bow to Buddha and cross, all things that remind me to observe.

The foolish kabuki dance of political posturing does not interest.

Mostly alone, I look around, seeing comforting friends.

Buson:

    中々にひとりあればぞ月を友

nakanaka ni hitori areba zo tsuki o tomo

well now,

if I am to be alone

I'll take the moon as a friend 

--Cheryl A. Crowley, Haikai Poet Yosa Buson

and the Bashō Revival (2006), 113

Dog wags tail in his sleep. 

insight (yes) imagination

Για την σκεπτόμενη ψυχή, οι εικόνες χρησιμεύουν σαν να ήταν περιεχόμενο της αντίληψης (και όταν ισχυρίζεται ή αρνείται ότι είναι καλές ή κακές, τις αποφεύγει ή τις επιδιώκει). Γι' αυτό η ψυχή δεν σκέφτεται ποτέ χωρίς εικόνα. 

—Αριστοτέλης, περί ψυχής, 11l, 7

To the thinking soul images serve as if they were contents of perception (and when it asserts or denies them to be good or bad it avoids or pursues them). That is why the soul never thinks without an image.

—Aristotle, de anima, lll, 7

Imagination

Thinks

Itself 

In 

What is

Seen

In 

The

Mind

In 

The 

World

(Where,

As we 

Know)

There is

Only

Mind

(Imagine that

Imagining

This!)

Berdyaev said

The 

World

Is created

By

Imagination

sending dog scurrying

 This ending of year

Leaves us like the great 

Swooping horned owl

Landing on bench

Ten feet near last night —

Wondering what’s next

rozzo e sgradevolex

 Crude and unpleasant

It’s just the way he is

Our president

He doesn’t know better

A decipherer, a flawed

Text of character, garbled soul —

Here we are, unsure whether

To pray for him or punch him

In his face, turn, walk away

Sadder and no wiser about fate

His, ours, all of it, a brokenness into

Fragmented pieces, our dignity

what do we think we are killing

 A sadness arrives. 

Murders, ignorant leaders, 

more murders, 

an ignorant president, 

saddens.

At least, in prison this morning

conversation about space, the space

between us, how we fill it with what

we put there from what is within us

suspecting we create the world

Reflecting on Hitchen’s question

if Jesus cured the blind man, why

not cure blindness? Why is it only

Lazarus that is raised from the dead?

Is love really a verb? Because, if so,

to say “I love you” means I participate

in your co-creation. “You” are brought

through the movement of love into

apparent existence where stark relationality

is what love is bringing about. I, you, no other.

We kill each other in misguided attempt to

accomplish no-other, to find ourselves in the

wholeness of holiness without exception. But --

our mistake is trying to eliminate the physical

rather than embody the spiritual in vibrant form.

We kill the other -- a misguided belief

that there is another to kill. We misunderstand

the word “another.” It means no-other. There is

no-other. What we are killing is ourselves. One 

by one we destroy ourselves destroying no-other.

It is a sad time.

Our ignorance waterboards us.

We sputter and choke and feel ourselves drowning.

We take up knife and gun and missile and invective.

We are thick students in the face of hard learning.

If ever peace

then inner love

seeking out into

the space between us

a new creating, a new seeing 

a total eclipse

 Someone wants to give you a piece of their mind. Dont take is. Even if only a figure of speech, it is easy to be deceived and think you are being given something, some thing, you deserve, are owed, need.

The real understanding is there is no mind. No-mind, (wu-shin) is there. The best reception, the best engagement is with no-other. There are only a few who can effectively share what is not there.

What-is not-there.

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn’t appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.

Hui-hai (8th c.)

Mind murders. Mind splits. Mind is a terrible thing to waste.

True mind sees no-other and loves what-is seen.

True mind is willing to be inside Itself and outside Itself at the same (proverbial) time.

True mind knows heart is a lonely hunter and so accompanies it with invisible presence and encouraging nearness, a felt and objectless support.

Mind knows no-limits and resides there like a destitute hermit on perpetual pilgrimage encircling emptiness with joy and good will.

Feel the space you pass through.

Be there as another (i.e. no-other) arrives, resides, departs — imprinting space like an unseen footprint in melted snow..

Instead, it is the peace of one’s mind that makes for a true world with liberated hearts and loving eyes seeing everything as Itself.

strana strano

 Murders

Here, there,

Everywhere

It seems

An odd

Odd world

what is looked for

"Liberation depends upon yourself.” (--Khyentse Rinpoche)

The outer projection of an inner meditation, he said, is what is looked for.

So, we look at the world today. Is that our outer projection? Yes it is. Oh dear!

How, then, does the world change?

Rather ask -- What is my meditation?

Complete or right meditation is the re-creation of the external world.

It is no surprise that people shoot and kill shoot and wound other people from academic university to Australian Hanukkah celebration, to men in boats carrying drugs.

Their inner meditation is unsightly and urgent to eliminate that which is unwanted by them. 

In order to love the world that is becoming itself through creative wholeness and accepting accommodation we have first to find that inner capacity to accept, forgive, and love what we find within ourselves.

A better world is no secret.

But the manifestation of worse world is well kept secret. Only project your inner turmoil, greed, anger, and delusion out into the observable world.

If it is important not to dwell in a deteriorating and ugly world, begin to dwell in a rehabilitative healing and constructive inner world.

Stay away for a while if necessary. Allow darkness to cover you. Become penitent. Pray for all to be well and true and transfixed by loveliness.

There is beauty in that which is coming to itself.

Itself, alone, is liberation.

Become alone with the Alone! 

two words about guns and shootings

 Two words and 

one comma

Most of us

Want no comma

“No

More”

Republicans seem

To want to keep it

“No,

More”

The heartbreak of

Gun shootings!

my head hurts

 This hurts my head. 

Maybe it’s the 4AM belief I could read and understand such a piece.

Americans might be used to hearing conservatives blame postmodernism and critical race theory for social problems. Dr. Weaver, who died in 1963, took aim at a philosophical concept called nominalism, the rise of which he traced to early modernity. (Think of philosophers like Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.) Nominalism involves the rejection of universal concepts and absolute truths — including transcendental moral truths. Nominalists believe that truth is embedded in the particulars of the world around us. There is no universal objective moral reality as Plato and other philosophers believed and it does not exist as an expression of the divine.

Dr. Weaver insisted that nominalism was not merely wrongheaded; it was the source of all our woes. In his introduction to “Ideas Have Consequences,” he called the shift to nominalism evil and likened it to Macbeth’s seduction by “the witches on the heath.” Like Macbeth, Dr. Weaver wrote, “Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions.” By challenging the idea of universal objective moral reality, modern man had succumbed to individualism, relativism, materialism, historicism and politics as will to power.

 In my research on the MAGA New Right and in the countless hours I’ve spent in conservative academic circles, I’ve heard this Weaver-esque refrain again and again. It is hard to think of a single significant thinker of the MAGA New Right who would disagree with his assessment of the ways in which modern thought is inherently corrosive or who would dissent from his insistence that we must restore some kind of transcendental moral orthodoxy to our politics.

But conservative ideas have consequences, too. When Dr. Weaver argued that modern ideas are evil, he helped legitimate the repression of anyone who thinks about truth differently. When the thinkers of MAGA New Right suggest that only conservatives — or as some put it, heritage Americans — have access to America’s founding principles or that America is a Christian nation, they are providing a justification for authoritarian actions on the part of the government.

(—in, The 77-Year-Old Book That Helps Explain the MAGA New Right, by Laura Field, nytimes, dec.13, 2025)

I’m going to take two aspirins.

Don't call me in the morning. 

it will not disappear

 Is this what you are trying to say?

You cannot describe it or draw it,

You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.

No place can be found in which

To put the Original Face;

It will not disappear even

When the universe is destroyed.

--Mumon (13th c.)

Yes, it might be.

as we shoot each other, vigiling

 the cultural videos stream past

grift, killings on high seas, 

murders in Syria, ICE cruelty,

Brown University; Queen singing “just 

killed a man” as man in White House shovels 

money into offshore accounts with his family

it comes Christmas, we pretend to believe

a prince of peace will unseat a king of power

while the echo of God fades off into dusk

I can no longer believe in any of it, belief

has cooled in outdoor pit with snow and frost

we are left with the sorrow of unexplained loss;

When everything fell away I was beyond hope

and felt ok about it, hope was a borrowed belief

not mine, what was mine was stark appearance

the undeniable. That is where truth takes us -- to

the undeniable. And leaves us sitting in a chair.

We listen to the rants of the insane. Making things up.

None of it, none of it can be believed. So we sit, sit

and wait for the ranting noise to break and dim

leaving us in a new silence of dissolution and 

disillusionment. None of it is true. None worth

our valuable consideration. It is a dark time, one

writes. Will there be a new renaissance? Will there --

Some vague memory reaches back to imaging

such a thing, a reprieve, a new birthing of honor and 

respect, a new fairness and justice, melodies, bells --

a man I once knew died outside his house-fire down

an off-grid road, his guitars burnt up, his music 

gone off into winter sky followed by his soul, swirling --

we did not get along. Still, I prayed for him these days

later. What matter who gets along with whom? Silliness.

The house burned down. He fell to ground. And died.

What we do is hear stories of what is taking place. No

opinion about the goings-on matters. What matters is

trying to remember our humanity, the feel of it, the small

sense of the miracle that we have had anything to do with 

any one-another at some point in time in some place -- the fact

of it; and the uselessness of opinion or hurt feelings.

the cultural videos stream past, we watch a while, then

turn to tidy dishes, listen to night mutter into its sleeve

return to what once was called prayer, inviting silent God

to sit a while in quiet room, a candle flame separating

darkness for a little while, not knowing anything to say

not saying anything, the way God doesn’t, the breath of it

counting, short time, long timers

Nothing before

Nothing after

This life this moment

When I’m in prison

I’m in prison

No intention intervenes

When listening, listen

When speaking, speak

No other agenda

Because there is

No other, no

Other anything

Hugging friend

Saying “yo bodhidharma!”

He’s put on weight

No paper in

No paper out

Open mouth, flashlight

Thirty plus years

In and through steel doors

Out and hand back man-down

Been through six seven wardens

Eight nine education staff

Ten eleven lobby officers

I figure I was incarcerated

In 1672 for stealing chickens

A plucking innocence ignored

But seriously, week after week

We go through security, detectors

As suspects carefully watched

Not bringing drugs in

Not taking drugs out

But for poetry and wisdom

Philosophy of ordinariness

Theology of present moment

Existentialism if being-there

These things are undetectable 

No machine is set off

Nobody exclaims “you dirty rat”

We do our time

Keep heads down

Hardly count at all

today

We’re 

in this

Together

This

Is who

And where

We

Are

difficulty of dwelling unhidden

 In prison today talk about trust and truth. New fella, three weeks in. He spoke about the dual difficulties trusting the guy coming to you with a scheme and the guy showing up all sincere and friendly. The mistrust evoked about both.

As it was we’d sent in Emily Dickinson’s  poem:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

Which poem entered the conversation with ease and familiarity.

Our conversations have no agenda but for open conversation.The men begin it. We never know where it will go.

We always send in a poem, just to have.

There’s an unhiddenness about the morning.

Which is what “truth” in Greek translates as — 

ἀλήθεια, alḗtheia, 'truth'. Unhidden!

Afterwards we saw two friends, longtimrrs, not seen in a while.

A good morning!

it was the character turning onto elm street from washington street that caught my attention

I started to write a novel today. I wrote the first sentence: “Phoebe wore her blue parka that afternoon.”

I thought it was well begun.

But then I couldn’t imagine where she was going. I didn’t want harm to come to her. I didn’t want her to be a cop. Nor have children.

I drank some Oakhurst Coffee Whole Milk. The dog lay down at my feet. The dishes were washed and stacked to dry.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I didn’t want to write the novel.

I stared at laundry hanging on porch. The yellow-gold tee-shirt. The black one.

I was happy my literary career was over.

I’ll probably think of Phoebe from time to time.

She was that kind of gal.

I hope things go well for her.

frag nicht, sonst müsste ich es dir erzählen

Body in bed, mind off into unrecognizable locations, spirit dwelling in different bodies.

You cannot convince me that I reside in a single place with one identity, or that you do, in one particular piece of geography, one linear time, one psychic narrative.

We are ubiquitous stories unraveling in multiple geographic arisings fashioned by innumerable longings and spiritual revelations.

Night sitting

The hermit doesn’t sleep at night:

In love with the blue of the vacant moon.

The cool of the breeze

That rustles the trees

Rustles him too.

Ching An (1841–1920)

if you ask me who I am I will tell you the truth.

I have only one request: 

Don't ask! 

each year on 10 december, anniversary of thomas merton’s death, we renew

Three promises: 

Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence.
...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).

Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity.

It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.

It is attentive presence.

Conversation  is the promise of integrity.

It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.

It is root silence. 

Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement. 

It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.

It is transparent service. 

…………………………………………………………………

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. 

May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one. 

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 

1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (Anonymous)

3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)     

5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)

...   ...   ...

(First pronounced 10december1998) 

thus come, thus gone

It seems like I get

confused sometimes

these days leading 

up to Christmas/nativity

are not different from days

leading up to Good Friday/Easter 

to be born is to die

to die is to be born

Христос воскрес!

Воистину воскрес!

Χριστός ανέστη!

Αληθώς ανέστη!

(Christ is risen!

He is truly risen!)

Ιδού, σας φέρνω χαρμόσυνα νέα. 

Σήμερα γεννήθηκε για εσάς ένας σωτήρας.

Behold, I bring you good news: 

Today a Savior has been born to you.

Who can separate these proclaiming words?

What knife can slice them apart?

That’s my confusion. 

The attempt to cut one into two

The way misogynists and racists

push and pull and tear and sever

that which is whole and unified

complete and of a piece

I stop calling one thing something else

I look out over this grey afternoon

at what is born and dead, gone and come

a Tathāgata, thus come, thus gone

A Christos preceding existence or 

manifestation -- the energy of eternal return

ultimate affirmation, yes and yes and yes

with every no a returning yes, MU! --things

as they are, being as it is, life and death

appearing and disappearing, a baby cries, we are

touched, a friend dies, we are touched --

rise up! don’t give up the ship! if you are

tired take a nap, if you are a dreaming dog

wag your tail, if it snows let it snow, 

Нам дано быть в этом мире.

(Nam dano byt' v etom mire.)

(We are given the opportunity 

to be in this world.)

hickory hill road, pennsylvania

 I watch the birds

They come and go

Night snow on the feeder

I read Jo’s letter

31 years ago, it falls from box

She’d her first bone marrow transplant

It is found prose poetry, she combs

Daughter’s hair, who combs hers

Husband reads paper by fireplace

Then-child now lives down south

Jo and David are gone 

Coffee cup down, kitchen empty

semi-ecstasy and aridity

 “The life of a monk is a semi-ecstasy and forty years of aridity.” (Thomas Merton)

 

Road-plow goes by

Easting toward town

Thomas Merton died

Fifty-seven years ago

Twenty-seven years

To the day he was received

Into novitiate of Trappists;

A mysterious death in Bangkok —

Anyone who knows God is threat

To country and church

Our absent brother

Prayed for and to

All this time

As nothing passing

thirteen minutes

 Zazen before bed

Just in case

Sleep is not enough

just the cold

  leaving apple peals

no deer prints

 in day-old snow

no practice is no enlightenment & vice versa

 there are two footbridges

two brooks ten pet graves

as I walk incline of Ragged Mtn

it is so cold

fingers in gloves hurt

not even winter yet

I used to practice meditation

now I just sit just walk

just make coffee just write this

yes, yes i will, yes

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”    (James Joyce, Ulysses)

 I’ll bite —

To answer your question

I don’t know

You asked

Where did he go?

I don’t know

You want me to

Tell you what I know

I don’t know

Do the dead

Carry on unburdened

I don’t know

Or a life within god

Or without god, alone

Here’s what I know

I don’t! —

G’wan, take a hike, 

Leave me be, intimately

one step at a time

 For now

Those of us

Alive go on

And we do

For now

Go on

blow out the candle

 happy bodhi-day to you

happy...

    (birthday?)

no, bodhi-day

    (wass-at?)

sigh,

let me enlighten you

mo chara aisteach

 he left socks behind

and a hammer

he was buried today

near his ma and da

a candle burns

Bí i do shuaimhneas, a chara

when immaculate means unobstructed reposition, 8 december

 Girl begins as no barrier

As open as open could be

Then filled with

No boundary itself

Wechsel zum Austausch mit der Leere

(Change to exchange with the void)

Mary

Mary

Mary

Conceived as the

Within

Without

family

 Red apple peals

On white snow deer trail

Othe side of green fence

if you see god, give your best

 I’m not going to Wash.DC, not me

Nope, not on your life, no way —

I’d rather stay home and wait

For news

Of demise

Or some other terminal celebration

I’ll just stay home

Immaculately concieved

Tathagata’s Bodhi-day

Departure of duplicity

Everyday mysticism

"تمويه" "tamwihi"

 I'll read what is at hand

for instance, The Paris Review

"Camouflage", by Adania Shibli

translated from the Arabic

by Max Weiss. We wear disguises

It is during the pauses

between reading numbers 

for the auditor at her desk

I open the tidy issue, Winter 2025

because it sits on cardboard box

next to chair, non-assiduously like

a lethargic cat you stroke because there

it gets dark early as days still shorten

the cold grips walls of old house

deer look to bed down on old leaves

dog on bed makes snoring sounds

the kufiyya on dashboard, then hiding

it from checkpoint soldiers, then waving 

it at young boys throwing stones at car 

his uncamouflaged head in a dangerous land

streetwise

 the buddhists in Augusta cancel 

zoom practice this morning

I logged on three times

figured they’d thrown me out

the way buddhists do when mad,

gave me wrong link, frowned on me

turns out there was illness, said email

after I watched myself and cat

in front room chair by large window

I like buddhists

they stay well within themselves

even when in public, no soliciting

in fact, they’re hard to pick out

in a crowd, unless one is playing

shakuhachi on sidewalk behind coin cup

bright night, red apple gone

 I scratch my head

This itchy time

Very full moon

ceart go leor

    “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.”  (Aristotle) 

 

did I tell you my name

you did

ok

do you remember what it is,

my name, 

do you

no

ok

well, guess i'll be leaving

bye

thanks for

the coffee --

ok

ceart go leor

ok

rearranging my dusty room

 Finding sweatshirts from years ago, dress shirts from long long ago, ties from decades ago. Two hundred socks, some that match.

Discouraging accumulation of a recluse.

I’ve forgotten why these things inhabit my room. I wear a different dress shirt every day. I don’t go anywhere, just downstairs, walk the narrow trail up Ragged Mtn. I can go a month and not repeat. They’re themselves ragged, wrinkled, worn out, and perfect for these days of haphazard memory. 

I used to think I was a christian. I used to think I was a buddhist. Now I don’t think and find myself a buddhist christian without belief. I pray, I meditate, but without reference to anything other than the prayer and meditation.

Odd, isn’t it? Form has no function.

Dementia Is a New Way to Be Buddhist

                Kelli Russell Agodon

Today my mum said she doesn’t remember

arriving at my house with a dishcloth,

doesn’t remember me telling her

my kitten stayed overnight at the vet,

that I’d be coming over to help with bills.

What she remembers is now.

She knows her memory is a ship

leaving port without permission,

her memory is a cloud she can’t hold.

When she asks, Why is everything so hard?

I say, I don’t think you’re the only one

asking that. When I say, I have trouble 

with loss, she says, We are all leaving.

She adds: I know I won’t be around

much longer. So I ask her 

what she’ll come back as? A pig, she says, 

then laughs. I tell her I can’t imagine 

seeing a pig and having to say, 

Oh, there’s my mom! She smiles 

and says, Then maybe I’ll return 

as a hummingbird. Another conversation 

in the present. Another conversation 

I will remember alone.

Copyright © 2025 by Kelli Russell Agodon.

Never thought of myself as a cowboy. I aint, really. 

But these days the lyrics of the country western song sound familiar, and feel even more familiar:

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

'Cause they'll never stay home and they're always alone

Even with someone they love

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/waylonjennings/mammasdontletyourbabiesgrowuptobecowboys.html 

Growing up with “Gunsmoke” in the afternoons on the small tv in Brooklyn house I felt I lived just off the Main Street of Dodge. My gunbelt and sixshooter cap gun, stetson and boots, kept my solitude from varmints and outlaws wandering the sidewalks of Bensonhurst where horses were tied to railing out front.

Now I live between two mountains. Barn has horse stalls broken down with ancient strands of straw nuzzled between floor and wall. 

Always alone.

What a curious idea!

Being alone.

As if even remotely possible.

bedankt sinterklaas

 young deer with limp

wanders close to speeding white pickup

stares up and down road

walks into driveway and dooryard

nibbles on yew branches outside kitchen

old apple placed outside barn door by rowboat

attraverso l'oscurità

 I don’t want to hear it.

       Hear what?

That the default position

Is sin and evil.

        And if it is?

That lies are the norm

That self-interest the fallback.

       What would you prefer?

Tell me about goodness.

       What about it?

Is God good?

        Sure, God is good.

And?

       We are not God.

Is God in this world?

        Yes, God is in this world.

Where, when, how?

        Only when God is through with you.

Through with me?

         Breaking through with you

        Into the world

        As it is, attraverso l'oscurità

        Through the darkness

         Seeing through here 

         e adesso (and now)

mio padre mia madre, così com'è

 I practice

Death

Falling asleep

At night

Napping during

Day

What dreams

May come

Heaven, the

As it is

Earth

Given

This, così com'è  

Bread of quotidiá

Each breath, 

Each moment a

Deliverance

From (through) 

Yes, (even this)

evil

If we would

Have it

Be, (being, 

been)

So …

(Ah, man!)

crossing prison lobby

 “Old school!”

He says in greeting —

Long time known face