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ISAN’S SUMMONS 鐵笛倒吹 三十一
When the master calls for a novice do you answer? When the inkin bell is struck do you begin or end zazen? As you follow your breath when do you leave your body, and who returns when you next inhale? Search instead for an answer that has no question. Who is the novice now? A…
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STATELESS
I suppose it is oddly fitting that I was born in the continental U.S. but can claim no state as home. I was a Federal child, and that meant nothing at all to me, a child who left town at two after a father’s death, a sister reclaimed by the government, which was no State,…
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BASHO, REDUX
This poem was recently published in the first issue of a new journal, Punt Volat. You can find it here: https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019 If Basho were here today, in this America, at this time, stop briefly and consider what he might write, how he would describe the faces of parents mourning children gunned down in random urban…
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NATURALIA NON SUNT TURPIA
When did we stop being of the soil and begin to fear it, to tell our children not to touch the ground, it is dirty where once it was only dirt, and we put in our mouths, from time to time if only to drive our mothers crazy. She says if you are going to…
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FINDING
Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father. the father I had never seen, never known. Was the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took…
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As a young child I recall my mother justifying all manner of disasters based on miscommunication, mostly hers, by saying, “Does Macy’s talk to Bloomingdale’s?” I didn’t care, no one did and the excuse never worked as far as I can tell, and I now know from experience, that of course they talked to each…
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METASTASIS
She could barely move her head the cancer climbed her spine reaching upward, clutching vertebrae reaching out, tendrils grasping tearing fragile organs. She would cry, but that would be an admission of defeat, a welcome to death. I cried out for her, entreated our God for compassion that she might stand by her sons when…
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CLARITY
There are those occasional moments of clarity that appear without warning and are, as quickly, gone. We expect them less as we age and they oblige us by staying away. Children assume them, and are rarely surprised, as though they see them coming, need no warning and have no expectation anything will come of them.…
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PUEBLO CHRISTMAS
The night is that bitter cold that slices easily through nylon and Polartec, makes child’s play of fleece and denim. The small rooms glow in the dim radiance of propane lights and heaters as the silver is carefully packed away in plastic tool boxes. The pinyon wood is neatly stacked in forty pyres, some little…
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GAME, SET, MATCH
As a child, a Jewish child no less, December was always a bit difficult. We had Channukah, which no Jew would dare claim grew solely to compete with Christmas, although we all knew that was precisely what had happened. The problem was Christmas, but had nothing to do with Jesus, or the church or even…
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an old writer and his words 