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LUDWIG
When I was twelve, I think, maybe in the last days of eleven, and in my third year of piano lessons my teacher, Mrs. Schwarting, she of no first name, and a steady hand that could squeeze the muscle of my shoulder, a taloned metronome, gave me a small plastic bust of Beethoven, told me…
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TIME OUT
You could feel the tears embedded in the email “We didn’t know she had only three years.” She is 84 and failing in so many small ways that the prognosis comes with great pain, but barely shock save for its delivery. So we cherish the remaining days and cast the estimate aside.
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ON AGING
Ensconced on the couch, the cat hears a bird singing outside the window. Once, she would have pressed her face against the screen, imagining a great chase. Now she listens, content to let the birds sing into the fading sun.
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GIVE US THIS DAY
The old bus shelter has spray painted walls and a broken metal bench. Each morning he shuffles up the hill, a battered leatherette briefcase clutched tightly in his right hand, a copy of the Seattle Times “Nixon in China” in the other. He sits calmly on the bench case between his knees and waits patiently…
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TO A POET, TO THE WEST
Richard Wilbur lives in Massachusetts and in Key West, Florida according to his dust jackets. If you set sail westward from San Diego you may find your dream of China, of the endless wall which draws the stares and wonder more foreboding more forbidden even than the city, which you visit to sate yourself of…
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TOKUSAN SPEAKS OF TEACHERS 鐵笛倒吹 二十
Why do you seek old Masters, they have no special gift. Your lineage is the surface of the sea never still, all waves. Your teacher has no answers, his silence instructs close your ears and listen, is that his breath you hear or only your own? In is out, out is in depending on where…
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COCOON
She imagines life is much like a cocoon in which she must remain or risk instant death. She does not recall coming here but know she must have done so in the not too distant past. That is the problem with cocoons, there is no memory prior to finding yourself within, but she doesn’t mind…
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THERE
She walks with a deliberateness that bespeaks years of always knowing what the destination is. Getting to the destination, she knows is far less important than having one. On occasion she would arrive at her destination and would then have no option but to immediately select her next destination, for being on one place too…
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WHAT IS IT NOW, PILGRIM?
It is far past time that I went on a pilgrimage. I’m not at all sure just what sort of a pilgrim I’d likely be. As a now Buddhist child of the late 60’s, the Plymouth Colony model clearly isn’t workable. And in my own late 60’s, now with a fused spine and creaky knees…
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VLADIMIR
Krevchinsky froze his ass off on the Siberian plain. The gray concrete box was traded for concrete gray skies, the whistle of the truncheon gives way to winter’s blasts. It was in many ways easier when the beatings came neatly marking the days dividing days between pain and exhaustion, all under the watchful eye of…
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an old writer and his words 