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ESQUIRE
Even as a young child I imagined being a lawyer was a noble profession, spent Sunday evenings in front of the old Motorola TV watching Perry Mason stride up to the rail, stare into the witness’ eyes, with Paul Drake smiling in the first row. I tried to make my younger brother play Paul but…
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THE WEIGHT
There is a heaviness to the sky a weightiness belied by the gray of the clouds, even the departing sun seems to whisper that it will be replaced by rain in short order. You feel the weight bearing down, as the heat of the day dissipates, and although the first drops have not yet fallen,…
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DAIJI’S INNER CULTURE
Eyes can look within and discover a boundless universe but the tongue alone can speak only sounds that go false as they dance away unseen. The silence of zazen speaks the dharma, the teisho is offered mutely. The space between eye and tongue is but three inches or an unbridgeable void. A reflection on Case…
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A PEELING
She says if you could only peel back the photograph, you could read the entire story that lies beneath. Is deeper than the image below which it lies trapped, and the wider, imbued with a meeting the image could not capture, just as, she says frowning, there are no words for parts of the picture,…
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FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
We kept them together to protect them, he said, though we did make the men wear the red And yellow badge. You must understand, this was for their good. We didn’t want them corrupted by our Catholicism, so we had to ensure we would not mingle with and debase them. There were our bankers, without…
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PLATFORM
They said it was essential for a writer to have a substantial platform, one built high enough to be easily seen by those passersby who might just give a passing glance, even if it was a typo landed them here, updated, regularly changing with time, tide, and fashion always ready, always accommodating. It must be…
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CRYPTIC (an acrostic)
God, it was a long night, unending needs unsated, brought to the edge man is a cruel beast, half master as pleading supplicant, half slave much the child, begging, wanting as if food or thought would give man humanity, elevated above needs, existing outside, independent a God, ruler of illusion and fantasy. First Appeared in…
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IN VINO
The vines cling to the hillside, the small buds soon yielding fruit but now simply soaking up the spring sun. You dream the grapes are fat, the deep purple orbs holding in their Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, and you only wish it would wash down the hillside and stain the sometime fetid River. The boats flow…
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BEHOLDER’S EYE
It was sunrise, he was on the banks of the river, and he knew, in that moment that he would remember the scene, if not the name of the river, or where on its banks he was, that was of no consequence at all, only the beauty. When asked about it, he would say that…
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SOZAN’S FOUR DON’TS 鐵笛倒吹 九十二
You may seek to follow the path of the dove a fool know many roads. You may wrap yourself in fine linen, an infant wears only his skin and knows this moment is already gone. Think long before you speak of how to walk along the path, of where it leads. The baby says nothing,…
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an old writer and his words 