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DREAM WALKING
Tonight I will again walk through my dream scrapbook re-creating you. For a bit longer, at least, I have full creative expression knowing now that you died six years ago, never married. I will search from the carefully or inadvertently dropped clue, your obituary, bits and facts that could never have come from the adoption…
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ART
As you walk through this particular space will you see a small child perched on a stool, crayons in hand, a small rectangle of paper on the top of the desk laughing, creating a world you could never hope to understand, or an older woman, leaning on her walker, staring into the canvas, struggling to…
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TEACHING AND NOT TEACHING
We walk forwards to try to see where we are going, always wanting but never seeing where we have been. Is it better to walk backward seeing clearly where we will not go without idea of a destination. Look down and decide. A reflection on Case 92 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)
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DISTANT SONG
I thought I heard a woman singing somewhere in the distance, an ethereal song whose melody floated over me, dropping momentarily into my consciousness then as quickly flitting away. I walked off the carefully tended path stepped into the clutching brush, the smell of Juniper filled the air. Pushing through a thicket I thought I…
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WINTER TOKYO
A skeletal tree stands too many winters bones grown brittle, crackling ashen gun-metal gray, Tokyo Bay at evening’s onset a bird perches, staring at a last leaf clinging knowing frozen earth awaits. It is winter, sap pools in roots seeking earth’s dying warmth. We warm our hands by the fire, as bones of other trees…
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EXPECTATIONS
You say you appreciate occasional gifts of symbols of love. You expect me to bring you a rose it’s satin petals gently curling back at the edges, always threatening to suddenly unfold, alluring, drawing in the eye promising warmth and release. I bring you an onion, wrapped tightly, it’s papered skin, the luminescence threatening to…
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MARCH APPROACHING (HAIKU)
Winter dies slowly under the jay’s watchful eye harbinger of spring. The ghosts of winter hide behind the Sun, the hawk hears them. Frail pink petals fall onto slowly warming earth the winter concedes.
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CHORUS
The man sits, waiting patiently for the wolf to arrive. It has been far too long, this wait, as the Wolf has his lair in the distant mountain, and has little use for the people in the city, in the place where the man sits waiting. The man is sure they met once, although he…
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UNLOCKING
There are two keys to it, really the first, and easier, is to make a well with your hands, that would need be not all that deep, just enough to hold your thoughts as you work. The second is to add just the right amount, too little and it is dry and doesn’t hold together,…
