Waterlily Pond Vignettes * Scented bowls of light; Each brimming with hymms On wings humming gratitude. * Subtly, one by one, Like fingers counting down, She furls each of her violet sleeves Towards her heart. The gloaming is hers for the keeping Sans foraging buzz, Sans burden of glamour and dazzle. * Green-veined plates Served […]

Air All that moves is the air that quivers between us All that moves is the air that quivers between All that moves is the air that quivers All that moves is the air All that moves is All that moves All that All All that All that moves All that moves is All that […]

New Year’s Eve For a friend who died, a friend who used to love me and a friend who taught me something about silence. People don’t talk about death. She’d wanted to come on that walk. Keep changing the subject when it’s suggested again and again. This is a stage of silence, its edges chipping […]

Beatitudes of January Blessed is the staying in bed cold winter darkness. Blessed is the booming and breaking river ice. Blessed is the speeding street scraping snow plow. Blessed is the punctual growl of the newspaper man’s broken muffler. Blessed is the dutiful bark of the neighbor’s dog. Blessed is the biting and whistling north […]

Spin Out Kabir said, “Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world I hold to, and keep spinning out!” The mystic poet curls inside the cup of lotus blossom tea. The steam, his breath, clouds my breath. (Persia kisses my mouth) His bones, a mist that fogs my spectacles In a dervish […]

ICHTHYS ‘…so go down to the lake and throw in a line. Open the mouth of the first fish you catch, and you will find a large silver coin.’ Matthew 17:27 Words are like a human body, meaning that they are the outer skin of one’s potential. The constitution of words wait heavily pregnant with […]

Dancing the Wheel I was meek as I picked up river stones, deep gray, some quite large, others quite small. These millennia old stones, smoothed and polished by chilled water for thousands of years, each one, heavy in my hand. I danced the wheel without jade for wisdom, without amber for strength, no peridot for […]

In my understanding, how writing and the sacred are connected I can speak with hindsight only in relation to my own pilgrimage and companionship, as one won over by the gospel witness statements to Jesus of Nazareth. He himself of course was highly critical of the interpretation, exclusivity and practise of his own tradition by […]

Constancy It happened again this year on the shortest day when the temperature rose above freezing and the adhering snow made everything Christmas: Two pussy willow catkins slipped through their husks. But there were just those teasing few. The next weeks saw glimpses of more light – and by March, enough, until finally this evening, […]

The Meaning of New Year’s Eve: the last clouds burning down behind South Mountain; traffic on the freeway already slowing toward midnight and a neighbor asks about meaning at the end of a year with low crimes in high places. Time to reflect on a night in Agrigento, when Alfonso, a local man with bad […]