a soft drought-ending rain
falls overnight
and into the morning
one lives
within the moment
only
when one understands
there is nothing
to stand under
and lets the rain
without metaphor
wash over you
(December 8, 2025)
Category: zen
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rain
by
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Silence is silent.
Except it is not,
just ask John Cage.
He’ll look at you
for four minutes
and 33 seconds.
In VermontI met a man
from Boston.
He could not sleep;
the forest was loud
compared to the city.
In zen, the goalis to still the mind
into silence:
to be aware
to such an extent
to become extant.
In an anechoicchamber, one hears
one’s bones,
and the thrum
of one’s blood
beneath the skin.
(November 14, 2025)
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I fear I’m dying,
but that is nothing special—
I still have to shit.
(April 27, 2025)
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“way leads onto way”
Robert Frost
I was reading a poem
about how hard it is
to attend to the world
with all its distractions,
and; I lose that poem
to my thoughts of the poem.
Even now, as I writethis poem about losing
the poem I read,
I lose the thoughts
in my head, and the poem
I meant to write instead.
(February 27, 2025)
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if I understood I would not
need to write this moment
i’d simply let the breeze washacross my skin without metaphor
like morning sunlight strikesthe strings of a silent guitar
(December 18, 2024)
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At least 25 years ago, I read The Road Home by Jim Harrison. I read it again for the second time slowly over the last month. The Road Home was the first novel by Harrison I read. I had read his short book of poetry “After Ikkyu,” which is still one of my favorite books of poetry. I have since read pretty much everything he wrote. The Road Home is the sequel to Dalva, which I read after The Road Home. The Road Home had an enormous emotional impact as I finished it the first time, and now again 25 years later. It wrestles with themes of history, family, place (as in location), nature, art, and love, and how all of these interact in one’s life for good and ill. Harrison’s prose style (poetry too) creates the illusion of someone talking directly to you, going on short and longish tangents and asides as the story is told. All the while adding nothing that is not necessary as the story unfolds. Here are some quotes from The Road Home:
“The mind by itself must discipline itself to open wide enough to allow the soul to clap its hands and sing.”
“..as if we were all undertakers for our past.”
“If it all was based so resolutely on chance it seemed by far the best course to seize what chances were offered.”
“Obsessions don’t seem extraordinary if it’s just the way you are.”
“I wondered at the time and still do why they allow people to teach who don’t read.”
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the shadows of the crepe myrtle
outside the window I sit next to
sway across the page of my book
like an old couple decades in love
slow dance to music only they hear
(November 6, 2024)
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Sun and shadow dapple the ivy
as it unfurls slowly up the wall.
Just a few days after the solstice,
the summer’s long heat rises early
from the damp coolish darkness beneath
the foliage in the garden bed.
Two cardinal couples flit between
the long branches of the chinquapin
twittering love songs through the morning,
while the dogs stalk lizards through the yard.
(June 29,2024)
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new vision
by
between grandchildren’s fingers
and the dogs’ happy tongues
my glasses are often smudged
leaving little difference
in wearing them or lying
forgotten on the bedside table
(February 6, 2024)
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On the concrete bridge
crossing Gilleland creek
near the playscape
in the park, a box
turtle pulls tightly
into its mottled shell
and waits for the dog,
and me, to pass.
(January 12, 2024)
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1- Tao
once
there were two
which begat a third
then sprunga myriad
to flourish the world
2- Patience
finally
i become
the contours
of the changemy life has
left me to
desert windthrough rocks
as rain upon
old gravestonesgrinds time back
to nothing
(December 19, 2023)
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