Iter, itirneris; Itinerary; quid est enim novi

There's no place else to go.

Besides, who is it that wishes to go anyplace else?

I look around. Everything there is here.

Turn this way or that way, walk in a straight or wobbly line in either direction, you'll probably find yourself returned right back here.

Like Loon hanging from hibiscus branch in midday warmth looking out over garden bench, I take my going slow, learning from stillness where I do not need to go.

 Quid est enim novi hominum mori, cujus tota vita nihil aliud quam ad mortem iter est? (Seneca)

(What new thing is it then for a man to die, whose whole life is nothing else but a journey to death?)

Ya Na; attending, another, alone, aware

 We need poets. We need mystics. We need monastics.

The world is too mean without these types. The temptation to loot, steal, murder, drug ourselves silly, become petty and pitiable, stay in illusion, perpetuate delusion, use people, claim "it's to protect family,"  dissociate and dissemble, and mostly -- to lose trust, genuine affection, and integrity -- these temptations are too powerful for 98% of human beings to resist. All, it seems, fall under the wheels of this impossible to resist train.

Today is the feast of Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot, Theologian, and Poet, 20 August 1153: 

Bernard, third son of a Burgundian nobleman, was born in 1090. His brothers were trained as soldiers, but Bernard from youth was destined for scholarship. One Christmas Eve as a child he had a dream about the infant Christ in the manger; and the memory of it, and consequent devotion to the mystery of the Word made flesh, remained with him throughout his life. 

Bernard had good prospects of success as a secular scholar, but he began to believe that he was called to the monastic life, and after a period of prayer for guidance, he decided at age 22 to enter the monastery of Citeaux (Latin Cistercium, appearing on modern maps as Corcelles-les-Citeaux, 47:10 N 5:05 E), an offshoot of the Benedictines which had adopted a much stricter rule than theirs, and became the founding house of the Cistercian (Trappist) order. (Actually, the Trappists are a reformed (i.e. stricter) offshoot of the Cistercians, who are a stricter offshoot of the Benedictines.) He persuaded four of his brothers, one uncle, and 26 other men to join him. They were the first novices that Citeaux had had for several years. After three years, the abbot ordered Bernard to take twelve monks and found a new house at La Ferte. The first year was one of great hardship. They had no stores and lived chiefly on roots and barley bread. Bernard imposed such severe discipline that his monks became discouraged, but he realized his error and became more lenient. The reputation of the monastery, known as Clairvaux (48:09 N 4:47 E), spread across Europe. Many new monks joined it, and many persons wrote letters or came in person to seek spiritual advice. By the time of his death, 60 new monasteries of the Cistercian order were established under his direction.

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/232.html

As a monastic of no other I attempt in ragtag dishevelment to follow the promptings of life to live it in a manner consistent and commensurate to the co-equal promptings of Benedict of Nursa, Francis of Assisi, Claire of Assisi. Dogen Zenji of Eihei, Basho, Han Shan, Hui Neng, Santoka Taneda, Pema Chodron, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Day,  Catherine de Hueck Doherty,  John O'Donohue, Mary Oliver, Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Seung Sahn, Gary Snyder, Naneo Sakaki, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Heidegger, Jean Gebser, Raimon Panikkar, Adam, Eve, Mary, as well as Siddhartha Gautama (called the Buddha) and Jesus of Nazareth (called the Christ.)

After a fashion, in erratic and chaotic manner, a daily life is lived under the guide-points of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. These also translate from poverty, chastity, and obedience into another triadic: watching, listening, silence.

Perhaps: idiorhythmic, idiosyncratic, idiomatic.

Bernard wrote:

• “There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is Curiosity.
  
  There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is Vanity.
  
  There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is Love.” 
  ― Bernard of Clairvaux

• “What we love we shall grow to resemble.” 
  ― Bernard of Clairvaux

• “What I know of the divine
  science and holy scripture,
  I learnt in the woods and fields.” 
  ― Bernard of Clairvaux

So, we are grateful for this man, for all the men and women who have touched and transmitted something of truth, love, peace, service, learning, and joy.

It is a practice we gladly practice: attending, another, alone, aware.

It is a matter of conjoining "yes" and "no."

YA! NA!  -- You are not alone!

IAHWY: I am here with you.

May each of us be and become: bewithed and bewithing!

PRAYER 

O God, by whose grace your servant Bernard of Clairvaux, Kindled with the flame of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. (Ibid)

Cicadas

The mathematician conceives the name of god with numbers.

I eat ice cream.

Moon nears full.

republicans want to cut out the core

In New York Times:

E. D. Hirsch, an advocate of the Common Core whose Core Knowledge Foundation distributes a widely used curriculum, warned in an interview that if the standards were not carefully implemented, schools could still end up emphasizing “mindless test prep” over substance. 

“The Tea Party’s worried about the federal government,” he told me. “What they should be worried about is the education school professors and the so-called experts.” 

But — as with that other demonic federal plot, Obamacare — the Republicans aren’t interested in making reform work. They just want it dead. 

“Conservatives used to be in favor of holding students to high standards and an academic curriculum based on great works of Western civilization and the American republic,” two education scholars, Kathleen Porter-Magee and Sol Stern, wrote in National Review Online. “Aren’t they still?” 

Good question. 

(--from, OP-ED COLUMNIST, War on the Core, by Bill Keller, Published: August 18, 2013) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/opinion/keller-war-on-the-core.html?hp 

In response:

It's just a phase. Republicans will emerge into mature, caring, intelligent, useful contributors to the health and well-being of the citizenry and country.

(Glad I got that out while my mind is still alert! Back to my studies: Mexico is the capital of Italy; Clinton was president of Wyoming; The road to Heaven is paved with no intentions of helpful lobbyists; The old Soviet Union is currently hidden in a warehouse in the District of Columbia. 

Boy, is history fun! )

as we are is

Student reads philosophy paper about Wabi-Sabi on porch of cabin Saturday afternoon. 

Conversation stretches.

I write four phrases she is stitching:

• "This" is what I am realizing.
• "God" (or Father) is this saying: "I am here for you."
• "Jesus" was the is (incarnating) coming to be.
• "Spirit" is silent effortless energy moving through and between us becoming what is to be itself.

Ours is the ongoing, ever-present, origin revealing itself, moving through nothing we know, through the somethings we don't know, toward the "is" --  unconcealing, coming to be, from the nothing it was toward the nothing it already is.

Imperfect.

Impermanent.

Incomplete.

Unfinishing.

As is, we are.

As we are is!

When God disappeared, this occurred

Of course there is the question: What is this?

Walking mountain with Rokie and Cody comes four words to describe four noble truths:

1. Suffering

2. Desiring

3. Releasing

4. Realizing.

Suffering is from desiring; releasing is through realizing.

 

This is how we move. Into now. For now.

noise and smoke, Goethe said, obscuring heavenly light...

"I am here for you."

Or is it "with you?"

This is a realization and a koan worth contemplating.

...Is what names are.

dust cloth

Sunlight on green leaves in afternoon breeze!

Woman leaves St Vincent's medal in cabin. It hangs from window.

In prison this morning we read from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance":

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Afterwards we read a few poems by Naneo Sakaki (1923-2008)

This one for example:

In The Next Life I Will Be

Wiping the windowpanes of my humble shack,
a dirty dust cloth in my hand,
endless blue sky over my head.

At the forest edge
where narcissus are already in all their glory,
where wild boars bite off various trees' roots every so often,
where I stand, piss, and murmur.

In the next life I will be a dust cloth
lapis lazuli colored.

As a dust cloth, making myself dirty
I clean up windowpanes, kitchens and toilets,
and I also wipe out discrimination and wars.

If ever the world really exists
I start polishing it from my tiny corner.
If ever eternity really exists
I make it brilliant at every moment.

The more I work, the more I become
pure lapis lazuli color
just like today's sky.

Ten days after winter solstice
the mother sun is shining bright.

All of a sudden, a gust of north wind
blows the dead leaves from the trees.

Look, something coming down!
With our luminous star behind
red wings flutter.

What is that? Hawk? Flying goblin? UFO?
Wow! On the palm of my hand
I catch the monster -
a withered red leaf of oak.

Living in the flower garden of the sun's red corona
biting off the rainbow's roots forever
someone murmurs

In the next life I will be....
Jan 2, 1998/ Izu Peninsula, Japan
Nanao Sakaki

Deano thought that if everything is itself, then the dead will also share in awakening whenever anyone awakens. The movement, he thought, is the movement of what we call God between us.

The substance abuse counselor joined the conversation at end and dropped a novelty pile of dogshit next to his chair with which he got my attention and silent pledge of payback.

Rokie, of course, was not fooled.

Some sorrows...

Like bird, dead on stone outside door, somber beginning to morning.

Our cats are indoor cats.

Something else must be looked at.

Adios, compañero!

dear friend

It is all story.

And when a part of story ends, it is best to let it go.

Once.

A time.

Upon. . .

Is gone.

The 15th of August

A world of subjects. Of intimacy; no secrets.

Taken up.

Found ground.

Where is the separation in wholeness?

Who is identified as included or not included?

MU!

Everything, heaven and earth, not two not one.

temporary consideration; at this point

Eric Holder and the Justice Department are talking about drug-related prison sentencing reform. Say "Good!" quickly. Then consider the long sorrow.

I think of all the poor saps behind bars for insignificant drug infractions, then I think of all the criminals in lucrative private and public service servicing greed and self-interest, and I am saddened.

The thing that burdens most is everyone knows the unequal treatment and inequitable standards when considering who should populate our prisons, who is of little worth, not to be missed, chum for big fish to devour.

The history of the "drug war" like all "wars" is diversionary.

Until a more balanced, equitable, and civilized standard of human expectation and communal behavior is arrived at --namely-- the rich and powerful dealt the same surveillance and indictment efficiency as the poor and powerless, we will continue to pantomime and pretend a just society while perpetuating a decadent one.

Absent a transformation of human heart and mind, equitable treatment might be all we could hope for at this point.

bad is not opposite of good; each is itself, as is . . .

It is irrelevant whether you call something good or bad. These terms are not fixed and final in place. In fact, it is disturbing to contemplate that these terms are masks for intentions remaining undisclosed and facts without verification. The world is full of illegal, immoral, criminal, and perfectly respectable rascals who double as good, moral, upstanding, and perfectly duplicitous individuals.

What then is to be done?

Tea, chai, with raw milk, helps.

A piece of chocolate. Ginger cookies. 

Something to read.

A story perhaps.

Trust, also, helps.

Walking earlier, fingering beads, I pray for all my brothers and sisters, that they get free from bondage.

That they become happy. Safe. Free.

And come to dwell in their true home.

No need to try to right wrong.

Keep it simple.

Rather, try to be what you are. 

What you really are.

Owls Head

Fog comes in.

Fog horn and border collie sound at same

time.

Big ship sounds single blow out in deep fog.

taking notice

I've begun to notice people are not living forever. They're dying. At all ages.

Obituaries, New York Times: 

• Eydie Gorme, Voice of Sophisticated Pop, Dies at 84 

• William P. Clark, Influential Adviser in Reagan White House, is Dead at 81 

• John Reilly, 74, a Champion of Documentary, Dies

It suggests to me that I will do the same.

At any time.

"my son, my son," dented engraving says

Too many words.

The Gate of Not-Okay

The only thing that can make us uncomfortable with being alone is not liking who we are. That’s what we do when we face the wall: we face who we are. Being okay with however that arises is the most compassion and the most honesty you can ever offer yourself—to just accept yourself as you are. Even if you don’t like it, that’s okay, because not-okay is always a practice gate. We can always include what we don’t like in ourselves. But letting go of worrying about having to become perfect: that’s a gift that we give to ourselves.

- Merle Kodo Boyd, "Okay As It Is, Okay As You Are." Tricycle

Perfect.

Just make your way through yourself.

In dark dooryard on wood Adirondeck chair in front of bookshed under spreading universe of faint light last night round midnight looking up seeing nothing other than what was there as what is there in soundless watch.

Then, comes morning.

Going nowhere; moving through this and that no more

Disappear into act. Where being becomes act. Stillness is act within itself.

Meditation becomes reengagement as what is itself. This is the task: to become what one is, the act of moving, unmoving act, nowhere to go, no one to be.

To become what one is is allowing each arising thought and errant wish to fall away without clinging to them as they go.

What remains?

What remains is what is becoming itself.

Never other. Merely itself. No additions nor subtraction.

Excuse me?

No, excuse is not necessary.

No excuse is necessary.

Go on.

Disappear.

Not to have a relationship; but to disappear into a relationship

Clare to Francis: I am here.

Counting Umwelt

One trillion stars, count them, one trillion stars are said to be within our closest galaxy neighbor, Andromeda. One trillion!

There are, say astrophysicists, at least 100 billion galaxies. Or 176 billion. (Perhaps, some speculate, nearing one trillion galaxies.)   

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/10/10/how-many-galaxies-are-there-in-the-universe-the-redder-we-look-the-more-we-see/#.Ugd3u8u9KSM

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” –Joseph Campbell

This new portrait of the Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, was taken with the Subaru Telescope's new high-resolution imaging camera, the Hyper-Suprime Cam (HSC). 

Credit: HSC Project/NAOJ.  http://www.space.com/22177-andromeda-galaxy-photo-hsc.html

And yet...it is all as close and intimate to us as the coffee beans dancing in grinder, person sitting beside you, green grass underfoot, sunshine on hand. As near as god, as near as truth, as near as mere simple 'hello, good morning' to visitors in wohnkuche. We are terribly close to and intimate with all of existence all of Being all of raisin English muffins, organic, this holy instant.

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the Andromeda constellation. Also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, it is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. Wikipedia Distance to Earth: 2,538,000 light years, Age: 9 billion years, Stars: 1 trillion Constellation: Andromeda, Apparent mass: ~1,230 billion M☉ Coordinates: RA 0h 42m 44s | Dec 41° 16.152'

It is estimated the universe is 93 billion light years across large. And that there are one septillion stars in the universe -- ( that's 1 to the 24th, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)

http://www.universetoday.com/102630/how-many-stars-are-there-in-the-universe/

It is Sunday morning. Birds on branches and rolling tires on Barnestown Road sound the space surrounding this spate of light.

Man who will be getting out of prison finished quiche and salad at Janet's table yesterday. His 20+ earth ordinary years in prison wouldn't measure that far even in our Milky Way galaxy. Nor would the man sitting one space of chair away from him who blew out torte-cake candles on his entering 70th year look back and see much behind him.

We stumble into the abyss and stumble out of the abyss -- Campbell was right. It is what we see and what we hear, what we feel and what we are capable of learning, this that we find makes up one more world, one more galaxy of perception too minuscule to be measured -- yet, ours.

Count that.

Umwelt.

It counts.

As you, count.

Milky Way Galaxy, NASA

Night

Dark writes own story

It's one that's hard to see.

Take me, home

I doubt it.

Regarding Doubt
We feel that if we have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should really have unquestioning faith. Now in certain religions, unquestioning faith is considered a desirable quality. But in the Buddha-dharma, this is not necessarily so. Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, 'ehi passiko,' which means 'come and see,' or 'come and investigate,' not 'come and believe.'
- Ani Tenzin Palmo, “Necessary Doubt"

I am at home in doubt.

It is a variant homelessness.

Śhruti (Sanskrit: श्रुति)

Reading Spira in prison.

Zen sitting with white border collie 

following blue handball 

around room. 

One by one men 

stop by to consult MU 

with black spot 

on middle of back.

Thunder

As Nisargardatta says, high tides of suffering are coming along.

Right there, in dooryard, tide splashes against barn roof.

Nagasaki bombing washes onto cut grass along stone-pressed tire ruts up from road between two mountains in midcoast Maine.

Thunder is reverberation of 68 years rolling sorrow across Pacific cutting through trenched america painted red on one side blue on another its face blanched white with unknowing certainty having no kinship with wisdom.

Fear bombs.

Only love diffuses fear, it's wire and detonator, shrapnel and blast -- only love.

 The unfortunates wander in numb shock. The unstable rage against their own names. The demented point finger at own noses with blade readied to slice.

Big dog barks at sound of rain carrying distant thunder.

This one breath I take is exhalation of one person 68 years seeing blinding flash and saying "Itadakimasu."

As do we all.

Inventory, taken

The 8th comes and goes.

Day from night back into night.

We can and do pray that our stupidity does not sink a rudderless country in an uncharted sea.

More positively, these land masses are still above water.

That's something . . . Right?

Expect nothing

Two ways of getting through any situation in life:

1. Ask, "What is this?" And, "Why might someone be doing this?"
2. Take nothing personally. It's seldom, rarely, about you.

But then, this comes from a contemplative hermit.

What would you expect?

Two sayings

each, one

Murder is murder, no matter how we try to soft-soap it.

Today is a day to consider notions of rebound, karma, and chickens coming home to roost.

We might also wish to reconsider as a "Christian nation" just what "Christ" might signify.

August 6 marks 68 years since the United States committed what is arguably the single gravest act of terrorism that the world has ever known. Terrorism means the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, and targeted they were, with the cutely named “Little Boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at a location and time of day when, as the Strategic Bombing Survey commissioned by President Harry Truman conceded, “nearly all the school children ... were at work in the open,” a perfect opportunity for mass incineration. 

"That fateful summer, 8:15," the mayor of Hiroshima recalled at a memorial service in 2007, "the roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. ... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies. Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead. Within the year, 140,000 had died.” 

(--from The Nation, A Statement of Peace, or an Epitaph, by Robert Scheer) August 6, 2013 http://www.thenation.com/article/175620/statement-peace-or-epitaph#axzz2bDMJyO4j

No justification, no explanation. Al Qaeda, no doubt, has their particular rationalization of 9/11.

"Chain Reaction," by Paul Conrad, Santa Monica CA

Instead, let there be sorrow and outrage that someone with means and opportunity could plan and execute such mass murder in the name of "this is good for us and our side."

And here we might think about Christ, this being the feast of Transfiguration.

What are we doing to the "son of man?"

"Son of Man" has been a debated phrase in Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, "the son of man" invariably used as "ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου", which might be rendered more literally "the son of the human being". The singular Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם i.e. ben-'adam) also appears over a hundred times in theHebrew Bible.^[2] In thirty two cases the phrase appears in intermediate plural form "sons of men", i.e. human beings.^[2]The expression "the Son of man" appears 81 times in the Koine Greek of the four Gospels: thirty times in Matthew, 14 times in Mark, twenty five times in Luke and 12 times in John.^[8][1] However, the use of the definite article in "the Son of man" is novel, and before its use in the Canonical gospels, there are no records of its use in any of the surviving Greek documents of antiquity.^[1]Geza Vermes has stated that "the son of man" in the New Testament is unrelated to Hebrew Bible usages. Vermes begins with the observation that there is no example of "the" son of man in Hebrew sources and suggests that the term originates in Aramaic — ברנש - bar nash/bar nasha.^[3]He concludes that in these sources "Son of man" is a regular expression for man in general and often serves as an indefinite pronoun and in none of the extant texts does "son of man" figure as a title.^[3]The occurrences of Son of man in the Synoptic gospels are generally categorized into three groups: those that refer to his "coming" (as an exaltation), those that refer to "suffering" and those that refer to "now at work", i.e. referring to the earthly life.^[8][4][9]The presentation of Son of man in the Gospel of John is somewhat different from the Synoptics and in John 1:51 he is presented as contact with God through "angelic instrumentality", in John 6:26 and 6:53 he provides life through his death and in John 5:27 he holds the power to judge men.^[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_man_(Christianity)

What if the "Christ" that so many argue about and teach were to be reconsidered as this family of sentient beings occupying the earth?

Does this consideration change the way we look at one another? Humans, animals, plant, insects, fish, and birds?

Is Christ the saving aspect of life on earth?

Does Christ suffer, die, and resurrect every day in the suffering, dying, and continuing on of all beings?

And is murder always and only murder when we decide and decimate fellow beings out of fear, fanaticism, or fabrication of hierarchy?

Today, 6th August, is one of those days we need to hold holy. A terrible thing happened 68 years ago. No explanation, no justification, no rationalization can suffice to ameliorate the sacrilege committed and the blaspheme following.

Candle burns all day at hermitage.

That we might return to our senses.

Learn to see.

Each...one.

Eve of destruction

Always a meditation that crosses mythology with ugly military decision -- Hiroshima devastation, and feast of transfiguration in catholic calendar.

August 6 intersects these two things.

I will wake in morning wondering at the meaning of such corresponding processes.

A deep sadness.

An unbelief.

Reveals.

The going in is the coming out: the perpendicular wormhole absentspace/time

Dead people visit in dreams. Aunt Claire hugs me in kitchen. I am surprised at this. Usually it was her daughter I was looking to see around touching lips to cheek arriving with verve. The unusual hug in the dream is hieroglyph of semiotic sphere my consciousness does not yet intuit.

Denis B. also visits. My old administrator at the children's home. He is making coffee. He has come from the first dream where he tried to close windows in his car as rain poured. In this dream there is a clock and radio with long stringy wires I am trying to get work. It is an indoor/outdoor space with small lawn and kitchen counter where toast and coffee darken.

A woman wearing a blue Burka smiles in the first dream. It could be anyone but it seems to be someone I know and I wonder why the garb.

The dead and the deranged pass through my memory without recourse. I have been similarly deranged and moribund in unconscious and unkind deportment. In the dream I am naive accompaniment to ordinary occasions.

In prison Friday Armin gave wonderfully articulate elucidation of singularity, black holes, string theory, and perception. Saskia was with Rokie who was playing soccer with inmates in gym moving basketball length of floor like Pele across field in World Cup. 

The existence we move through is a combination and compilation of dimensional possibilities broken into partialized probabilities not unlike the situational selves we proffer in circumstances arising and dissolving as aggregates in Buddhist philosophy. There might not be a solid distinctive self. 

The five aggregates: matter or form (Rupa); feeling or sensation (Vedana); perception (Samjna); mental formation or volition (Samskara); consciousness (Vijnana).

What is true view?

Let me see . . .

What about coffee, or tea?

I have no argument with God.

     THE ARGUMENT
                    By Jane Kenyon

On the way to the village store   

I drive through a down-draft   

from the neighbor’s chimney.   

Woodsmoke tumbles from the eaves   

backlit by sun, reminding me

of the fire and sulfur of Grandmother’s   

vengeful God, the one who disapproves

of jeans and shorts for girls,

dancing, strong waters, and adultery.

A moment later the smoke enters

the car, although the windows are tight,   

insinuating that I might, like Judas,

and the foolish virgins, and the rich

young man, have been made for unquenchable   

fire. God will need something to burn

if the fire is to be unquenchable.

“All things work together for the good   

for those who love God,” she said

to comfort me at Uncle Hazen’s funeral,   

where Father held me up to see

the maroon gladiolus that trembled

as we approached the bier, the elaborate   

shirred satin, brass fittings, anything,

oh, anything but Uncle’s squelched   

and made-up face.

“No! NO! How is it good to be dead?”

I cried afterward, wild-eyed and flushed.   

“God’s ways are not our ways,”

she said then out of pity

and the wish to forestall the argument.

           (Poem by Jane Kenyon, “The Argument” from Collected Poems. © 2005)

Nor do I know the good of being dead. 

Will there be peanut butter or rye bread toast?

gingham and lace

That mourning dove finishing its morning meditative chant moves off into quiet elsewhere.

In churches up and down coast they come to praise Jesus.

In this room having witnessed invisible panoply departure of suppliant calling into silence I also withdraw.

Sunday devotional idiorhythmy.

In the dream walking through various lifetimes without restriction to any.

This empty form forming emptiness into images and story enough for now.

Suddenly dove picks up recitative . . .