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RESEARCH
She is a small woman dressed in white, save for black platform slingback pumps and cherry red eyeglass frames. She hunches forward in her seat seeming as though she might collapse, pouring over tables and graphs – biochemical research papers. You measure the depth of her attention by the frequency with which she pulls single…
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WHEN THE BELL SOUNDS
Does coyote come down the mountain, or does the mountain rise up under coyote? Do either hear the sound of the Temple bell? Pull on the robe against the heat, tie tight the obi to be freed of the leash. A reflection on case 16 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate)
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GET A ROOM
In the park the ginkgoes, male and female, separated by the path, are putting on their leaves. Soon the squirrels, eternal voyeurs, will gather on their branches to watch them mating.
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EDGY
It is a precarious balance, really, more an exercise in tottering and teetering than and standing still. Some prefer stasis, others, I included, find it leads inevitably to a loss of energy, to an entropy from which it is difficult to escape. I don’t walk along the edge of the precipice, but I do peer…
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PHYSICS
She is seven, going on some much larger number. She believes in the tooth fairy. She believes in the scientific method. She believes in vegetarianism and ecology. She believes in helping her parents and was doing so when she found her baby teeth in a small bag in their dresser. She no longer believes in…
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WALKING
Like the Anasazi’s sudden departure from his cliff dwelling I too snuck away, with hardly any trace from a life no longer in clear recollection, only faint images survive, of hours in the City Lights Bookstore reading Corso, Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, then buying the slim volume “Gasoline” not because it was my greatest desire, but…
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OH, NOAH
It has rained for uncounted days on end and we half expect one of our neighbors to begin building an ark, so we look through the falling drops for pets to line up in double file ranks, seeking selection for a journey they know must be coming. Overhead, the dove sits in the maple knowing…
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RINZAI PLANTS A PINE
If you have a seed in your pocket what will you do with it? Even a small seed planted carefully in the middle of a forest may take hold and grow. Tamp the soil with your toe three times, three times again secure in knowing this tree will never provide you shade. A reflection on…
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MARC MY WORDS
You were born 128 years ago, not a long time in the history of the planet and a blink in the life of the universe but two good lifetimes on the day you came into the world, not knowing what would become your place in it. We celebrate you today, as we celebrated you during…
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In any half respectable pub in Galway, and in Ireland the county of place hardly matters, when enough pints have been passed, and night grows thick, even such as I, claiming to be part Irish, claiming two left feet, can feel the ceili deep within, and step out on the floor to do what I…
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