an old writer and his words

  • HOPI DREAMING

    Look to the East stare at the sky and feel the winds carry away the snow which paints our lands and shrouds our ancestors in a mantle of white. Look to the South see the waters of the river flowing gently to the horizon bringer of the fish spirits, its azure waters washing away to…

    Lou Faber

  • THOUGHT HARBOR

    I harbored the thought one day becoming a monk, and not only because saffron robes would be well within my usual color choices. I knew it was a pipe dream, I love, too deeply, to disavow, life and I’m sure my past lives wouldn’t take all that long to catch up with me, karma can…

    Lou Faber

  • AT THE BORDER

    Out at the edge of the universe, time has no beginning and stretches endlessly, as a stone dropped, its ripples spreading outward across a shoreless lake. There is no time here at the margin, no space consumed by all space. I would touch the edge and press it outward disrupting balance until it all draws…

    Lou Faber

  • OCTOBER

    There is an infinite space inside an atom, a massive void into which universes tumble and stars and planets are born. Outside, the maple leaves burning flame and crimson spiral to the lawn, which waits to receive them. Autumn is the season when the earth prepares to die and it is left to us to…

    Lou Faber

  • MORE MUSIC OF THE FLUTE

    SANSHO MEETS A STUDENT                               鐵笛倒吹 十二 One goes to the gate to welcome the new student and with a broad smile turns his back in silence, offering nothing. Another will not leave the Zendo, sitting in stillness at the sound…

    Lou Faber

  • PROPRIETY OF MORNING

    There is a propriety of morning that appears denied to the rest of day, escaping Luna’s grasp the sun can sing in a voice deep in prayer and yet at play. The lives that quietly left in the night are balanced by the days measure of births but at dawn when the sun throws off…

    Lou Faber

  • SENBAZURU

    A thousand cranes take flight hanging from the ceiling under the watchful eye the old Japanese man framed on my wall and the Buddha staring down from my dresser.

    Lou Faber

  • TWO JOURNEYS THROUGH THE GATE

    Tosotsu’s Three Barriers          無門關 四十七 Before you sit Tosotsu’s three mountains how will you traverse them, legless on your zafu? Look within your mind, search diligently, for when you find nothing, all is laid out before you. Confuse life and death for one is the other, the other the one. Search…

    Lou Faber

  • THIEF

    The sea steals the edge of the shore, replacing it with something familiar and yet different. It is much the same with the waves of sleep that eat away at dreams leaving fractured memories and holes left to fill with desire and imagination. Walking along the shore of dawn and awakening, I feel time creep…

    Lou Faber

  • A CONVERSATION

    She said, “You’re breaking my heart,” as though it was a small twig which, stepped upon, splinters with a small pop, pieces flying in opposition, lost on the forest floor, waiting patiently for the next errant step to further subdivide until the bits are indistinguishable and slowly rot into the soil. I said, “My emotions…

    Lou Faber