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DREAMING MAUI
I found it on a map this morning. I had been there once before but wasn’t looking, so I missed it I suppose. It is a place where poetry is born, where it wells up out of the earth, seeping across the landscape, casting an enticing light. It is a magical place to which few…
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TEN-FOLD PATH (十幅の道): Part 2
6. Ox and man walk the dusty path to the small hut sit along the fence and look deeply into the bottomless night sky as they have for the endless journey 埃だらけの道をたどって 男と牛は小屋をめざす 塀にもたれて腰かけ 果てのない夜空を見つめる 終わりのない旅路で いつもそうしてきたように 7. Each morning the man senses the ox is in the pen, the ox smells the man in…
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TEN-FOLD PATH (十幅の道): Part 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…
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COMPARISONS
It was Henry Miller who said that the principal difference between a sage and a preacher is one thing: gaiety, and I suppose the same could be said of the difference between the monk and the wealthy man. It was in a small temple nestled in a courtyard of three office towers in the heart of…
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THE MESA, MIDNIGHT
The coyotes come down from the Sandia Hills onto the mesa. They are not spirits. They are not totems. They are not tricksters. They are hungry: for a jackrabbit, for a bird, for a small dog wandering too far from a half-lit earthship. They smell the sage, its faint odor carried on the night breeze. …
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DHAMMAPADA
A foolish man sits at the edge of the pond, his feet perfectly still in the water. He stares into the mirrored surface and sees a fool, smiles as a ginkgo leaf floats like a sail on a morning breeze onto the pool, ripples radiate out, touching his toes and he smiles, and the fool…
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A SMALL GARDEN (HAIKU)
sitting, time biding leaf floats down from branch trampled under foot road salt crusts over etched into a chrome bumper the heron returns pine needles a bed for the deer and the hunter tall pines cry leaden tears tangled broken branch dangling from a barren oak awaiting spring rain giant cranes…
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MISSING PERSONS
I enter the station house and walk up to the neck high desk. I would like to report a missing person. I have been gone more than twenty-four hours. I can’t give a very good description, my eyes see in the mirror a still young man sitting in a park in Salt Lake City in…
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PIANO LESSONS
Mrs. Schwarting was my piano teacher. At 12, my parents gave me a choice of lessons: piano or dance. I had two left feet. I chose piano. It did not move. My mother smiled at my choice. She knew what my decision would be before she asked. My mother was like that. Mrs. Schwarting was…
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SENBAZURU
The crane stands placidly staring through the window as we earnestly attempt to imitate him, hoping he will honor the effort and not the result. The Master is graceful and we far less so, and out of the corner of my eye I see what could be smile, but could be derision as well, and…
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an old writer and his words 