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PARADE
They strut across our lawn oblivious to our stares. The cat sits watching these large objects, birds perhaps she thinks, but nothing like those she once hunted for food when she was homeless and pregnant. She is content to sit and watch them, speaks a momentary hello, and realizing that they do not speak cat,…
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APPROACHING NIGHT
Arising into nightthe departing suntangos away with its cloud,memories soon forgotten. Other dancers take the stage,now a romance, nowa war dance, feathers raisedin prayer to unseen gods. Night will soon bringits curtain across this stage,the avian casts’ final bows takenthe theater will darken, awaitinganother performance,a new script tomorrow,but for this solitary momentof frozen grace, it…
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WEBBING
The giant spider in its black shroudsits irritated in the center of its webwishing it ever larger, demandingthat others enter, become enthralleduntil it defines the parametersof the universe the spider imagines. The giant spider silently seethesat the once gardener who, havingtasted the forbidden fruit,has closed the screened dooras he reluctantly departed the gardendiminishing the web’s…
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FIVE HAIKU
The dawn cedes slowlyto the impinging sunlightbirds greet the new day The great egret liftsher wings embracing the cloudthe winter sun smiles on the barren branchthe red-shouldered hawk awaitsher mate and the sun sandhill cranes wanderalong the shore of the lakelooking for nothing the moon is a cupwaiting for night to fill itvenus sits empty
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JOSHU’S DOG
My teacher once asked me“what do you haveto say for yourself,” and Ianswered “absolutely nothing,”or did I smile and remain silent? You assume the teacher wouldbe upset with the silent studentand in most cases you wouldbe perfectly correct. But if this occurredin a zendo, having nothingto say is a step toward no-selfand you can bein…
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MAGIC MIRROR ON THE WALL
The face in the mirror this morningwas not mine, perhaps it wasthat of my grandparents, allI never met, having onlyold and faded pictures that vaguelyresemble the mirror’s face. It might be my parents, bothdead before I found them onlyyearbook pictures and just possiblea vague similarity to the facethat i see in the mirror each day.…
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GET A ROOM
You feel like a voyeur, staringas the red-shouldered hawksmate in a tree mere yardsfrom where you are standing. Still, you cannot take your eyesaway from them, your cameratightly focussed, an avianpornographer perhaps, or maybe just a lucky soul given the chanceto witness a ritual denied to most,and you know with luck their offspringwill repeat the…
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DUSK
There is nothing like, nowords to adequately describe,that moment when a cloud-hazed sun lingers wishfullyjust above the horizon, graspingthe sky with brilliant talonsof light, fearing becominglost in a darkness that will,on this night of the new moon,engulf us all in its inky shroud. We know, or pray, the sunwill return in hours, justas the sun…
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DEGENERATION
I feel like I ought to beliving in Texas againfor everything, they say,is bigger in Texas, and youdon’t argue with a Texan. So much in my life is bigger now,a computer monitor that wouldpass for a moderate sized TV,with font so large a single pagefills the screen, and the tabletthe size of, but thank Godnot…
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TIME WHEN
There waa a time whennews wasn’t news, carriedby mouth, one personto another a game of telephonebefore that concept existed. Newspapers promised usthe news, but in the timeit took to write and print it,it was nearly news,or at worst slightly olds. Now the world is alwaysavailable instantly, but weknow or should, that halfof the time we…
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an old writer and his words 