-

TEN FOLD PATH (PT. 1)
1. He takes a first step eyes scanning the path, the field the forest for the ox. There is no ox. 男は最初の一歩を踏み出し 道に、野原に、その先の森に目をやる 男の目は牛を探し求める だがどこにも牛の姿はない 2. Much time passes another step and there in the soft mud of spring a print of hoof, deep isolated unpaired. 長い時間が過ぎ 男はさらに歩を進める そして春のぬかるみの中にひとつ 人知れず埋もれた 蹄(ひずめ)の跡を見つける 3. A step in…
-

VILLAGE
The village of my grandfather still stands amid the fields adobe walls stained by soot from the fireplace birds nesting in the summer warmed chimney singing. The ancient scythe leans against the wall, its blade embedded in the crusted soil as the old tractor idles in the field. Armies have trod this ground ignoring the…
-

How Is It!
I can never fully comprehend iwhy they never seem able to see things from my perspective, it really isn’t the all that hard. After all, they claim to know me better than I know myself. Today they never ask if I liked what they chose to serve me, why I left the food, sometimes? Today…
-

STATUE
“You have to go all the way to Washington,” he said, “to find decent statuary.” “Oh, you can find one or two in almost every city. Its founder, some general or admiral, some animal that oddly represents a metropolis that has cast out its animals, or penned them up in zoos, put them on leashes.…
-

THIS VERY MIND
You are forever seeking the path, as though it will give you a sign. Seeking the Buddha is good but looking for him is ultimate futility for the eyes are incapable of looking within. A reflection on Case 30 of the Mumonkan (The Gateless Gate)
-

MOTHER
In so many mythologies earth is a woman, a mother, and we arise from within her. The pure and simple logic of this assumption cannot be assailed, for she is the crux of all nature, and as it seems in life, it is all too often the males that lay siege and wage wars that…
-

CHILD OF GHOSTS
I am a child of ghosts, my parents adopted and birth, all visit me, but only in my dreams, for ghosts prefer the reality that dreams allow. Some say that dreams are not real, but they live in the mind as do every other reality I experience each day, my senses merely inexact lenses for…
-

TRAVEL: TWO THOUGHTS
The packed suitcase sits on the futon but neither it nor I are in any hurry to depart. 4 AM in Chicago blanketed in snow is an orange neon painting.
-

A CALL
The thing about it is it is so damn quiet I can hear myself think but I can’t think anymore. And I’ll tell you this box is so cold it just leaks air and water has seeped in. Somehow I expected more it isn’t at all what was promised and the stone is not set…
-

SOMETHING
There is something gentle about her, a softness, as though she arrived on a gentle breeze, was present before you felt her on the back of your neck, a smile that cast your shadow on the snowy walk. She was often like this, as though knowing she might be an antidote to the harshness of…