-
PASSING
He has been gone over a year and they need to erect the headstone before the first hard freeze, but it has rained for several days and the ground is too soft. Although I can still hear his cackling laugh he lingers less and his smell is slowly fading from the old bomber jacket. First…
-
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…
-
SLAINTE
It is just that sort of summer day when the sparse clouds crawl ever more slowly across the city, peering down, as if wishing they could end their journey, knowing this won’t happen. On the fields of Falkirk and Culloden Moor stained with the blood of ancestors who, only now, claim me as one of…
-
THE REAL WAY 碧巌録 二
Heed Joshu’s words the real way is not difficult look within the mind come across words, thoughts and cast them over the edge into the abyss. Continue searching until no words or thoughts remain and you are left with mu. Then carry mu to the precipice and cast it, too, into the abyss make your…
-
THE BLINK
In the elemental scheme of things we humans are, at best, middling. We are minute in the scale of the universe, our time not even a glimmer, and as we age, time contracts, but only in the shortening forward direction. But pity the poor hydrogen-7 isotope whose life is likely over in 30 yactoseconds, absorbing…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
QUARTET
An evening summer retreating in the face of autumn, two garnacha, a piano, bass, drums, her voice lifts the weight of the sky and we float up on a melody, unchained. In heaven George and Ira smile and we, here, smile with them.
-
WALKING
Today was downright exhausting, and my hour long walk along the river left me dripping and drooping. It wasn’t different than most days, same time, same place, and the usual 756 miles, according to my old friend Orion, who was watching from his usual perch, unseen, as he prefers it by day. When I was…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
