• LILACS

    They appear at the margins, peeking out. They are teasing, revealing just a bit, alluring, but we know they are holding back. It is a delicacy at which we marvel for we know it is a matter of days before they end this dance, drop their veils. Even the faintest hint of their perfume is…


  • REVEAL

    You will, or may see something today that may surprise you. It may reveal itself in a quiet moment, it may be nothing more than a fleeting thought or image, which you are at first uncertain. There won’t be Magi not even magic, though on reflection, it may seem somehow magical. It will happen openly,…


  • WORDS

    He is looking for words. There are no words. He feels he needs to say something. There are no words. He feels deep pain. There are no words for his deep pain. Many are speaking. There are no words to speak. Everyone is looking for words. There are no words. Everyone wants to say something.…


  • HUANGBO’S SINGLE STAFF

    All singularities are naked and it is only when we clothe them that they crumble away. You step into this river only once but it is this water which will wet your feet when you step in the next and the next. A reflection on Case 91 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)


  • THIRD EYE

    He’s all of three but stare into his eyes and they say I’m so much more, if you dare go there. Of course I do. As we enter the path to the rock garden his small hand in mine I point to the sign, say do you know what grows in a rock garden? He…


  • REVERY

    Seen from a great distance the rowboat is a speck on a lake which appears far more like an oversized pond. You are so far off you cannot see if there is a person in the boat or it is merely floating about free of its mooring, imagining itself a water-lily basking in the midday…


  • FUGUE

    The name on the door says Richard Strauss though the lack of music emanating from within the room suggests he may be napping or off doing something more important than entertaining those of us out in the hall of the nursing home. It’s no surprise, he’d be in a home now, more odd that he…


  • ISLAND

    He feels like a rock cast into a river partially rising above the water now forced to flow around him. It pulls at him, seems to say you belong in the sea, let us carry you there, but he can no longer move and knows he will meet the ocean in bits pulled off by…


  • CUSHION

    He sits on the cushion staring through hooded eyes at the wall in front of him. He expects exactly nothing to happen, expects there to be no sound within his mind, only what happens without, expects that time will cease for him, or will at least cease to matter. He is not disappointed. The bell…


  • A QUESTION

      What is there in a yawn that has time inexorably slow, flattening notes by some unknown but ever constant fraction of a tone so that each lingers painfully before proceeding? A moment is locked in place, frozen like Schroedinger’s cat before observation.