• FLIGHT

    One thousand cranes take flight and there is a sudden silence as the cat stares up, bidding them farewell. We barely stop to notice, despite the rainbow of colors replacing the clouds, even the sun seeming to pause in wonder. Two thousand hands made this happen, one person, unrelenting, knowing anything less would be nothing…


  • RESOUNDING SILENCE*

    (*Be forewarned, this is a shift from the usual post. On December 14, 1992 there was a shooting on the campus of Simon’s Rock College of Bard. A professor and student died, four others (my son included) were seriously wounded. Twenty years to the day later, in Connecticut 26 people died in a shooting at…


  • OR NOT

    He screwed up his face into the scowl that fairly shouted to all, “Don’t Ask!”. She knew better but knew also that she had no choice, “What’s the matter now?” “It’s just,” he said, softening a bit, “that I so seldom get the weather I need, much less the weather I want, it’s never the…


  • CLOCKING IN

    Once upon a time is the oddest of expressions, for nothing is upon time, this one, or any other. And can we be certain what we think once was is committed to a memory, which is fallible in the best of times. or more precisely, in the best of time, for time cannot be plural,…


  • AN INKLING

      He says he has discovered that the best way for him to write is to ignore the pen totally, to just let it lie on the desk doing nothing. It should be in close proximity to paper, for pens need that to complete their existence or at least to give them purpose to go…


  • NOW?

      If the time is now how will we know it. And if we miss it how will we know what the consequences are? The better question is whether it matters for if we can be in each moment to the extent possible then nothing is missed and every moment is now and there is…


  • HELL, FAR LEFT CORNER

    I suspect that I am not alone in wondering if there is a corner of literary hell set aside for those who foist clichés on the world and at the head of that table should sit the fellow who first said “time marches on.” Even Einstein realized that time is relative, and as one who…


  • TOZAN’S GOING BEYOND BUDDHA

    The greatest speech is given only when the mouth falls shut. To talk of peace is to be at war with peace, to speak of war is to be at war. When listening disappears peace re-emerges, when peace emerges the listener appears. A relection on case 12 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)


  • NOTELESS

    He says, “I write songs without music, my head is a libretto warehouse.” She says, “You string words like random beads, no two strands the same.” He says, “Symmetry is for those with linear minds, who can’t see out of the tunnel.” She said, “Dysentery is a disease to be avoided particularly by poets.” He…


  • REFLECTING

    There was a time, once, when in the mirror I saw a young face, but the smile then is the same as that of the old man who greets me early every morning.