-
NANSEN AND THE LAND DEITY 鐵笛倒吹 十八
When you comeinto this townwe know you are coming,when you enterthis room weknow you will arrive.It is only whenwe cannot discernyour presencethat your spirithas truly arrived.Contemplate thisover a bowl of riceshared with mountainand wind. A reflection on Case 18 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)
-
HAUNTING
The ghosts of my birth parentsblow into my dreams asso many white sheets tornfrom the clotheslineby gale winds, fly over me,at once angels and vulturescarrying off memoriescreated from the clayof surmise and wishful thinking. I invite their visits, frailbranches to which to clingin the storms of growing age,beginnings tenuous anchorsto hold against time, knowingthe battle…
-
WISHFUL
“I will take it,”the aging poet saidto the ever more sparsecrowd at the weeklyopen mic,“as a recognitionis the growthin the qualityof my writingthat I continuebeing rejectedbut now by amuch higherquality ofliterary journals.”
-
ON THE SHELF
He found the cup by the curb one morning walking to the bus. He rarely notice things on his walk, thinking always about the day ahead. But this day he saw it, picked it up and put it in his messenger bag intending to clean it later, when he got home after work. He had…
-
WHEN
We are told that we cannotlive in the past, that would bea senseless waste of the present. But we cannot live withoutthe past for then there would beno true present in which to live. So we are left to hover betweenthe past and its absence,knowing the present will soon be the past, there or gone,caught…
-
CHEMICAL REACTION
Korean and Basque are orphan languagesalthough linguists prefer the termlanguage isolates, which soundsalmost chemical, as though somereaction resulted in a linguisticsediment, or distillate perhaps. If that is the proper term Isuppose I was a human isolate,which actually makes some sense,even after adoption, for I wouldlearn years later from mystep brother that I wasisolated from the…
-
GENSHA’S ONE BRIGHT PEARL
If you ask mewhat I can sayabout the wayI will tell youit is perfect peace.If tomorrow I ask youwhat you can sayabout the waywill you tell meit is perfect peace.We may bothbe fools, but youinhabit the darker cave. A reflection on Case 15 of the Shobogenzo Koans (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)
-
ZHAOZHOU’S “LOSING THE MIND IN CONFUSION”
Be forewarnedthe greatest wisdomis written on wateron a cloud –the sun reads it clearlyso why are youso blind to it? A blind man will notbe mislead by signsa deaf man cannotfall victimto the siren’s song. A reflection on Case 11 of the Shobogenzo Koans (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)
-
SORRY, CAN’T HEAR YOU
What I despise most about purchasing large dollar items is the factthat salesmen know onlyhow to speak in superlatives, orcaught short,comparatives. If it isn’t the bestthey will explainwhy it is, or at least betterthan anything I have now,although they haveno idea what I have. So I pretend to be deaf, and hope that theydo not know ASL,or the will seea miracle happenas…
-
HEY TEACH
She is long departed I imagine,and she would have had nomemory of me given the numberwho passed through her roomin the decades she stood impartingthe sort of knowledge that wassomehow tucked away, notforgotten, for it bubbled forthyears later, the aha moment. I could not forget her, whyperhaps she was a key to my passwords, the firstquestion…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 