The bookmobile was 2300 lbs too heavy for us. We are too small for it. We need a gypsy wagon. We're mendicants.

Listen to me for a second about the effects
Of a certain medicine
The pill I'm talking about is called
Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha
Chew it well, chew it well
Won't you take my pill?
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

We watch a favorite film, Julia. It reminds about the ugliness of fascism, the oddness of social privilege, and the attendant dangers of a necessary resistance.

Not here, some say. Not fascism, not resistance. I'm reluctant. The rumblings of some political heavyweights seem to sidle up close to autocratic and dictatorial right wing preference. This country is not immune.

Trinity, on the other hand, reminds us of another vision. Source, expression, and inspiration. Truth is holy. 

The bending and doubleness of lies in slander and distortion becomes the art-form of sneering opportunism. The notion that some sectors in this country insidiously look forward to terrorist attacks so as to justify disgruntled lust for control -- this is the real terror.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders e yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content -- all the great things in life are done by discontented people.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.
(p.119, an excerpt from Mr Mifflin's notebook full of little jottings, in Parnassus On Wheels, by Christopher Morley, 1917) 

I'd like to learn with truth.

I'd like to earn and share.

I yearn for the liberating completion of our nature with the nature of God and the nature of the cosmos.

We must change our mind. We must change our life.

With

What is.

Real.

A good day in prison is attending your graduation ceremony with an Associate of Arts degree.

It is being in a circle of praise and celebration, recognition and community.

In the autumn of my sixty sixth year,
I've already lived a long time
The intense moonlight
Is bright upon my face.
There's no need to discuss
The principles of koan study;
Just listen carefully to the wind
Outside the pines and cedars.
- Ryonen (1646-1711)

Here's a koan: 'A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."'

Here's another: If a man commits a crime and admits his mistake, how much money does a mechanic charge to change a flat?

Don't ask!

Next koan?

Lemon Poppy cake and no substitutes at conversation tonight. Lingering with guest for good words.

Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.
- Mumon

Visit Carpenter's Boatshop. Good people.

There's nothing wrong nor right with being good.

Luckily Rokpa left the chickens alone.

In prison today we read Mary Oliver, Theodore Roethke, Derek Walcott, David Wagoner, and Vaclav Havel. Spirituality, we decide, has to do with what we do with our breath.

Within the waters is the entire world;
There is nothing in its depths
But reflections of mountains and rivers.
A fish breaks the surface
And then disappears again
What need is there to borrow
The wind and thunder?
- Ingen (1592-1673)

Sure it's not easy to break habits and patterns. Instead, let them go whole.

 Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you, and scripture says: Be holy, for I am holy.
(1 Peter 1:15-16)

The powerful stranger is Here.

That's what poets do for us.

That's what poets are for.

Something in the night looks this way.

I look to see what is next. I see what is now -- and this is just fine: cataloguing books, conversations and meditation at hermitage, conversations weekly at the prison, a class on spirituality for the substance abuse lifetime recovery inmates, hospitality times at hermitage. Then there's the question of a bookmobile. I can't help to wonder what is next.

Searching for words, hunting for phrases,
When will it end?
Esteeming knowledge and gathering information,
Only maddens the spirit.
Just entrust yourself to your own nature,
Empty and illuminating
Beyond this, I have nothing to teach.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

I forgot to mention teaching college courses once or twice a year. Nothing but learning.

Tomorrow the woman who teaches violin has surgery. The man who used to walk the roads gets hospice visits. Another, the hiker, looks thinner after his bout with cancer.

A young man cycling Maine's Route 1 will stop and stay a day or two.

We decided to use the Greek word, "monos" -- meaning alone or solitary. We use "hito" -- Japanese for mankind, or, bandit, and Spanish for landmark or milestone. Our designation: "mono" = monastics of no other; "hito" = hermits in the open.

But to what end? How are we being used?

In his Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope said: "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

The time arrives when the singular is not the isolate, but rather the whole replete with diversity; the solitary is not the recluse, but rather completely isomorphic with the myriad others.

We think there is no other. We think to live in the open is to live alone together. And we think that what we have called God is the inner and outer harmony of everything that seems disconnected -- God is the inner and outer sound and silence from which and through which everything is heard in the stillness of solitude, alone with others.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
(From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1980)

I have never been more alone in my life. A reverberation. Even with others. A participatory reverence.

I no longer know what most people mean when they talk of God. Nor why in the face of evil we remain obtuse and indifferent. Men and women are capable of so much suffering. Sex slave trafficking, slave labor trafficking, money enslavement, remaining slaves to harmful habit.

I look around. Looking for a place to connect with that which is not disconnected. A simple stepping with all my brothers and sisters suffering in this world. To clearly fly instead of being felled upon.  

Toaster bell sounds. Water is poured. Faucet, heating coils, bread, cheese, and Ginger Snaps all practice mindful presence in this kitchen zendo.

June bugs at screen window to right of desk.

What is old and new steps through this room, this mind, meeting here.

A French plane is missing and presumed lost at sea. We mourn their loss.

A man who was a doctor and who performed abortions was assassinated by a man who believed he was killing a mass killer who was doing what is legal in this country. We mourn the loss of life.

It is June.

And I wept. When the sun was down, I went and dug a grave and buried him. My neighbours laughed and said, ‘See! He is not afraid any more.’ (You must remember that a price had been set on my head earlier for this very thing.) ‘The time before this he had to flee, yet here he is, beginning to bury the dead again.’
(--from Tobit 2:1-8)

There is much good that wants to be begun. A new coming of the Holy Spirit would be timely.

We'd have to make and take the time.

Four Kinds of Lilacs
by Leo Dangel

"Why don't you turn at the next corner,"
she said, "and take another road home.
Let's go past that farm with all the
different colored lilacs."

"That's seven miles out of the way,"
he said. "I wanted to plant the rest
of the corn before evening. We
can look at lilacs some other time."

"It'll take only a few minutes"
she said. "You know that lilacs
aren't in bloom for long—if we
don't go now, it will be too late."

"We drove past there last year,"
he said. "They're like any other lilacs
except for the different colors. The rest
of the year, they're all just bushes."

"They're lilac, purple, white, and pink,"
she said. "And today, with no breeze,
the scent will hang in the air—no flowers
smell as good as lilacs in the spring."

"I thought of planting lilacs once,"
he said, "for a windbreak in the grove.
The good smell lasts only a few days.
I suppose we can go, if we hurry."

"Now slow up," she said.
"Last year, you drove by so fast
we couldn't even get a good look.
It wouldn't hurt to take it easy."

"Well, there they are," he said,
"and looking pretty scraggly—past
full bloom already. You should
have thought of doing this sooner."
(Poem, "Four Kinds of Lilacs" by Leo Dangel, from Home from the Field: Collected Poems. Spoon River Poetry Press, 1997.)

The time will come when we will want to allow the spirit of truth though. The time will come when we will want the spirit of love and unity to show itself through our lives.

When that time comes, we'll wonder why we didn't think of doing so sooner.

These things are our natural state -- truth, love, unity, and kindness.

Really, they are.

Then, let them be shown.

We pray for their transparency -- as we pray for the losses of those who barricade with terror or fear the way through.

Pentecost today. What were you expecting? The end of the world as you know it?

Unity.

That's the Holy Spirit.

Unity.

No one left out. No judgment. Radical acceptance and forgiveness.

As if what we hold is held and what we let go is let go. We are the community of beings in this existence deciding who belongs and who doesn't. The Holy Spirit brings something new to the table, namely -- Everyone belongs!.

Light from the moon of clear mind
Drinks up everything in the world.
When mind and light disappear,
What…is…this…?
- Kyong Ho (1849-1912)

A doctor is murdered in church. Canon lawyers talk about pedophilia. Politicians call a Puerto Rican judge nominee a racist. The distraction of professional sports occupies airwaves. Black cat counts bats returning to barn.

Theater. It's all so much theater. We play the play, say the words, pull the trigger, and shout the silly speeches while passing out campaign donation envelopes.

Whitney: You said in one interview that "One way to mark the progress of the poem is that we leave these known coordinates and move off into some terra incognita, a place that is attracting our desire to get disoriented, to get lost." So getting lost but avoiding confusion—is that the game?

Collins: That's a better way to put it than I can think of. Because by clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out—if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later. So yes, I see the progress typical in some of my poems as starting with something simple and moving into something more demanding.
(--from "A Brisk Walk: Billy Collins in Conversation," by Joel Whitney and Billy Collins, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19796)

If this world is a poem, and existence a theater piece, then we want to know a little more about why we should care about the characters, and why those who harm and hurt do their harming and hurting. Who's writing the script?

Someone has to say it plainly.

For us.

To understand.

What...is...this...? That's our question.

Is the wind picking up?

It makes a good story. Suddenly, the wind blows. Who knows from where? Who knows where to?

It comes. It goes. Look and look and look -- ghostly arrival, ghostly departure -- you see nothing.

Some of those it touches in passing, wake up.

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.
(--from Psalm 104)

The face of the earth is being created.

Take a look.

Do you see your face?

God help you!

There's nothing... now... you can do.

The poet Richard Hugo is right, "We're seldom better than weather."

None of the words have anything to say to him. He's losing his balance. That attracts his attention. He falls. No words stop that. He and his wife know something is happening. It doesn't make them happy.

You should not consider the mind to be that which reflects upon
visual forms, sounds, tastes, and tactile sensations. Many people think
that the mind is simply that which reflects upon what is seen and heard
and is able to distinguish between good, bad, and so forth. Thus they
regard the sixth sense, the intellect, to be the mind. But such views
are just delusive thinking. Before seeing, before feeling, and before
thinking: what is the mind? This alone is what you have to search for
and awaken to.
–Kusan Sunim, translated by Martine Batchelor, from The Way of Korean Zen (Weatherhill)

Sixteen of us sat in circle around wood burning stove this evening.

One dog and one cat makes eighteen.

We are more articulate when in community.

Holy, they say.

Spirit emerges.

Through word.

There's such a desperate desire to rid our world of mistakes. To eliminate disease. End suffering. Right wrongs.

Surely, we think, there's a pill. Or a program. Maybe torture. Or religion.

It is sometimes difficult to see and understand that changing conditions are not mistakes. They feel that way because we sometimes think that if we were only smart enough or careful enough, we could avoid all unpleasantness—that we wouldn’t fall ill or have misfortune. In fact, we usually haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just what happens. The Buddha talked of the eight great vicissitudes of life: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. These changes happen to everyone. It’s just what happens. One of the great laws of the Dharma that I find myself often rediscovering is, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
–Joseph Goldstein, from "One Dharma", (HarperSanFrancisco)

When we come to the end of a story, thank the storyteller. When the film ends, leave your seat. When the meditation bell rings, enter the dharma space. Be silent. Stay present.

The world might never be rid of wrong.

But what's right will be recognized with love.

Do that.

Ryan's paper evokes the thought that no matter what we choose to be or do, we are merely creating our notion of God. God will be what God will be. And we are the creators of what will be for us.

We are in
the process
of what is
being created
as is
God
(--wfh)

These days of sitting through, of moving across this place, are the stuff of transition.

In prison, fear is norm. Mistrust is the only constant. How, when, and why to even consider trust is cloaked in wariness.

I don't go out to wander around
I stay at home here in Miura
While time flows on through
The unbounded world
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers completely
Disappear.
The eye of delusion looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

I read final papers slowly. It's not like regular end of semester grading. These papers reveal a more profound search and hide, reveal and watch cautiously the reply. Some of these men have another 10, 20, 30, 40 years behind prison walls. More than a grade is at issue here. So I read slowly and with care the words and thoughts and experiences they share.

A Tendency To Shine
by Adyashanti

If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.
(--Poem, A Tendency To Shine, by Adyashanti, b.1962-)

Sometimes in their papers there's more than I'd want to know; sometimes more I'd like to know. Mostly it is the Heideggerian revealing and concealing function of the same phrase in the same sentence. Language might speak, but words conceal as much as they reveal.

There's a way of praying that does not use words. Only ears. Only eyes.

This is my prayer with these my fellow learners.

We arrive at Mountain Street as the Lincolnville Town Band on flatbed truck played passing us. The Memorial Day parade was arriving at its end.

I think of sandlot schoolyard boyhood friend Vinnie today as Taps played at Mountain View Cemetery. He died in Vietnam in 1968. We cannot escape from the truth of impermanence.

We visit Tommy. He says Gene is doing poorly. We see Sam and Susan at Camden town landing as they install cleat beside ramp near new restaurant on wharf.

In Rockport we tie new seat to frame of ceder strip canoe at harbor. We'd come back from walking far side of harbor with Rokie. We are grateful for being alive in Maine by the water this beautiful day. We paddle into the swirling wind hugging the coast in gusting embrace.

Ananda wept saying he was only a beginner as the Buddha was dying. Separation is the law of life. "Keep trying," the Buddha said to Ananda.

We come back to the hermitage. Someone had been here and left us cut apple tree branches. We don't need a special teacher. We're given everything that we need. Joan Halifax is telling the story of the Buddha's death. I'm listening.

So many die in war. Some of these wars are waged in the quiet fields of our human hearts. So many die away from home. So many think it is not the right time to die. Still, everyone dies. Everybody is somebody. In my myth I am nobody. This myth is right and not right at the same time. In Buddhist emptiness I am part of the inseparate whole. (These are not Joan's words. They're the wind blowing through this hermitage window.) Rather, Roshi Joan Halifax reads a Milosz poem:

Late Ripeness

by Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
Like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying -- that we are all children of
the King.

For where we come from there is no division
Into Yes and No, into is, was, and it will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago --
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

The earth is quiet underfoot. Ragged Mountain takes sun behind her to the west. So many birds!

In the silence, the wind. Gusts of sound. The gate is closed. The dog is safe from the speeding cars coming down long mountain pass from Hope.

When his young daughter died, the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) wrote the following poem:

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew --

A world of dew it is indeed,

And yet, and yet . . .

Remembering those dead and deadened, today by war...each of us on one of these days.

We grieve.

Some tears.

One by one disappearing.

And yet...

Until we are able to update our primary website, here's the Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook placed on Google site: 

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

How can you see what is not there?

No one has ever seen God;
but as long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us.
(--from 1John 4:11-16)

Be here.

God is not there.

God is where you are.

With God, nobody knows what they are talking about.

Be with God.

Dale and David in Protective Custody think it might better read:

From Thee
through me
to we

or:

Through Thee
from me
to we

This is the cost and benefit of community. Theology demands communal kerygma. Dale says it was the crucifixion that rivets Christianity. I suspect the suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming of the Spirit are of a piece -- one event that we apportion to particular distinctive multi-events so as to allow the mind a contemplative sequence. And yet, if the sequencing were true, these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost are the bereft days. Jesus is gone. There remains only the experience and the teachings -- but no insight, no inspiration, no awakened mind and heart of those left bereft.

If you wish to bring the two matters of birth and death to conclusion, and pass directly beyond the Triple-world, you must penetrate the koan “This very mind is Buddha." Tell me: What is its principle? How is it that this very mind is Buddha? And "this very mind" just what is it like? Investigate it coming. Investigate it going. Investigate it thoroughly and exhaustively. All you have to do is keep this koan constantly in your thoughts.
- Daito (1282-1334)

The "triple world" (triloka) is a common Buddhist term for "universe." The three worlds are "the world of desire"--(kâmaloka), "the world of bodily form" (rûpaloka), and "the immaterial world" (arûpaloka).
(--from Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, [Zen For Americans], by Soyen Shaku, translated by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, 1906)

A variant might read: "This very mind is Christ." This, then, is a time of investigation. What happened? Who was he? What am I?

Not until I exhaust myself investigating do I let go, bereaving and bereft, into what is wholly-there beyond me. "From me."

That which is Wholly-there is the complete-Reality, which we have named "I Am Here and There, Where and When." This Holistic Inseparability, nicknamed "God", is what we must pass through, is what we are passing through, once we let go of our fragmented separative notion of small, isolated, disconnected self. "Through Thee."

This penetrative, permeative presencing of each in each, all in each, and each in all -- this integrative investigation and indwelling incarnative awakening -- this descent/ascent of the Spirit of Wholeness/Holiness -- is our arrival at the costly beneficial advent of community. Of sangha. Of church. Of circle. Of who and what we truly are --One/Another. No other.

Each as each. Each as all. All as each. All as all.

"To we."

Dale and David and Saskia and I, in that prison pod yesterday morning, investigating this mind beyond the triple worlds, enter a moment of peace.

We read Wendell Berry:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(— Poem by Wendell Berry)

We remember times canoeing rivers in turns that become still waters.

We remember these times. Their quiet. Their peace. Their grace. 

An ascension to what we are.

To what each "I Am" is.

We.

Alone/Together.

Free.

"In your compassion," the psalm says, "blot out my offenses."

There's something new occurring. Christ, the essence of creation, has entered, sown through life and death, and ascending (as, with, and through) us, crosses the bridge from time to eternity, there to dwell in proleptic prescient presence with who we really are in the Eternal Now as we, until and always, dwell in this open wholeness with him, them, one another, we, ourselves, no other.

Ascension Friday

From me
Through Thee
To we
(--wfh)

Birds with early light sing this song. Horse from Draper's stable neighs in affirmation. Cars down Barnestown Road pass east to where water rises and falls in dawning dance.

Nobody in sight on the empty mountain
but human voices are heard far off.
Low sun slips deep in the forest
and lights the green hanging moss.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

It is Friday morning. Off to prison.

Warm coffee, a continuation, retasting last evening's conversation.

This weekend we remember all those dead and deadened by war.

Delia Mae walked sidewalk of Court Street with vases of flowers in both hands. Her flowered skirt. Her processional gate for Ascension Thursday. With quintessential devotion she stops to join three hermits in front of St Francis Church in Belfast Maine. They collate and converse about the day, the hard winter, their tiredness, and the feast.

She reads from book taken from shoulder bag. She said the Bodhisattva returned from the Radiant Realm and from mid-air said:

"With conscious, with unconscious, too,

Dwell, sorrow. Either ill eschew.

Pure bliss, from all corruption free

Springs but from Insight's ecstasy."

(from As The Sun Moves Northward, by Mabel Collins)

As quilters arrive and pass them by, the glow of sprig-green sunshines through trees astride shifting feet. What grounded witnesses they were! What did they see? Were they finished with looking up? Is there a new spirituality of shy hermits encircling the scurrying ants near curb?

In becoming a person of merit,
Though you perform no lofty deeds
If you are able to shake off worldly mindedness,
You will become one of the
Renowned for that alone.
In pursuing studies,
Though you make no increase in ingenuity,
If you are able to decrease
The externals that afflict the heart,
You will cross over to the land
Of the sages for that alone. - Hung Ying-ming

If God became human so that humanity become divine, why the fear? If Jesus died, rose, and ascended into the divine realm of not-other, why will we not follow? If the Spirit of Holiness permeates and inspires all who would be open to this new reality, why remain in hiding citing fears one by one?

As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight. They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.’
(from Acts 1:1-11)

(See that last enumeration: Acts one, one - oneone).

In prison yesterday, on the writing board: "If I am here, where are you?"

We decide we are peripatetic itinerant mendicants stopping on a sidewalk speaking of Ascension and looking at and through one another.

The weaving hermit heads back to her yurt. The processional hermit continues her pilgrimage. The hermits from Ragged/Bald wandering in the open drive off to hug Kristen at Chases Daily who serves them coffee and tea, and selects the muffins for their boatyard consumption.

It is a solemn day with solemn acts -- each one of us.

The Ascension says: I am here, you are here! There is a new here and a new we.

No mere heaven and earth, no mere human and divine, no mere nature and spirit, no mere mind and matter.

No.

Merely us. Only we here -- with no exception, no exclusion, no excuse.

No wonder the Ascension is such a small, unnoticed, yet glorious feast!

We are gathered.

"We" gathers.

Where are we not?

Candle blown out. Compline ends.

Cut in thirds, split in half,
How can truth be expressed?
Can one see beyond white clouds
With the naked eye?
The monks still have not come
Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.
The leaves of the sutra
Merely stir a sad wind.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Bell sounds three times.

Truth itself.

Retires.

Brandon chose not to answer question four. It asked that the student develop his own theory of aesthetics. He did however tell me what it would have been. "Awareness."

Mountain home sleeping
No dreams of dust.
Three robes are plenty;
Who says I'm poor?
One for my pillow,
One to serve as a mat,
And at the thunder of my snoring
Heaven and Earth disappear.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

No awareness, no beauty.

With awareness, everything is beautiful. Even the ugly. Even the truth.

In prison, Peter said, everyone is a scared little boy.

Eight more conferences tomorrow.

On another matter, I sent the following to the Beloit Poetry Journal family at the death of Marion Stocking:

Final Submission
"She had a strong desire to get back to the woods," Fred Stocking said.

She took
no words
with her

where
we watch
this breath

only
parsing passing
silence

I'm aware how a poet dies.