A figure emerged
from the clouds
as an ocean
of allowing.
He could be anyone.
But he wasn't.
What mattered most
was: only in
the quiet
of his quieting mind,
rivered in wisps
and thinning mists,
could a rose even think
to think to grow.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Thursday, April 10, 2025
ROCKS IN THE MAIL
I mail apologies
to places I’ve been
where I was
a bad-mannered tourist
or a thief
in sheep’s clothing.
Rocks are what I send.
They are my emissaries
because they know more
than I ever will
and their silence is
genuinely convincing.
But really it’s their sentience
I am sending.
They have a presence
I could never muster.
My dentist will tell you:
this guy is just
one big cavity
waiting to happened.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Thursday, March 13, 2025
I hope to see you at my poetry workshop
this Sunday, March 16,
at 2pm PST.
There is limited space, so register soon.
For more information on the workshop,
please visit this page.
WHERE TO PUT IT?
As an exercise to ward off the worry
that can gather in the mind
one might imaginatively
decide to put all that mental mayhem
into an enormous
shipping container
and send it out to sea.
Relocate it to a far away place
to be free of
the relentless cacophony.
Others might put their worry
in different rooms
in a high rise hotel.
Like the Ritz-Carlton
or The Hyatt Regency.
Or, rent out rooms in
Rumi’s Guest House.
I on the other hand
would likely take
the opposite approach
because I fancy trying to fit
the biggest of things
into the smallest of places.
That’s just what I do.
Yeah, so I’d probably take
all my tornados of distress
and stuff them back into
the arabesque genie’s bottle.
And cork in it.
The rantings and ravings now
nothing more than
a tinny whimper.
No… that’s not it.
The lamp, the lantern
is not small enough.
A grain of sand...
that’s the ticket.
William Blake, I think,
would be in favor this poetic choice.
Yes, I’d put all my anxious agonizing
in that infinitesimal speck of shoreline
and then tuck it inside an oyster
and then place that little purse
at bottom of the deepest ocean
for safe keeping.
I’d let it lie there
under the weight
of all that water
and then I’d wait
and wait
and wait
for the day
when the collective irritant
of my worry
had fashioned itself
into something
quite spectacular and perfect:
the world’s most precious pearl.
Yep, that’s what I’d do
with all my worry, if my imagination
was up to the task.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Hello All,
I am hosting my first online
poetry workshop for non-poets.
It is called
COME TO YOUR SENSES.
It will be offered monthly
beginning Sunday, Mar. 16, at 2pm PST.
There is limited space, so register earlier!
For more information, please visit this page.
I hope you can join us!
THE ASSIGNMENT*
The Zen teacher
gave out twigs,
pebbles and flowers.
His students were to
draw each of them
one at a time
but not progress
from one to the next
until the drawing
was identical to
the item they had placed
on the page
before them. The only
instruction was: Draw
what you see, not
what you don’t see.
The teacher went around
the room examining
the student work. Mostly
what he saw was
what the students
hadn’t seen but drew
anyway. These students
had to start over. Later
in the day the teacher
came upon a young woman.
There was only the white lily lying
on the blank page.
She hadn’t drawn anything.
She was crying.
Why are you crying,
the teacher asked:
The flower is dying, she said.
The flower is dying!
She, unlike the other students,
did not have to start over.
She was her drawing.
She was the flower dying.
*Inspired by a story told by James Finely
in his podcast, Turning to the Mystics (31;57)
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