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TOO SOON
NOTE: My new book is here at last. It has been 16 years in the making, nine of which I have spent producing this blog. Since you have been following and reading my work which I appreciate, if you would like a copy Free of the Shadow for $10 (shipping included) rather than its list…
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TODAI-JI
On the steps of the Templethe unexpected morning snowwhich cast a threadbare blanketover the gates and lanternsrecedes slowly like a supplicantwhose prayers have been offered.The candle flames shiverin the strong February windwhile the Buddha sits, implacable.In the park below a dragon kitetakes the wind and swoops and dartshigher and higher, staring downat the Temple and…
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SHADORMA FOR THE LADY IN THE HARBOR
She walked in,lit a small candlethen she leftand we watchedas the light grew still strongerlighting freedom’s path.
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IN MOURNING
I will soon enough bein mourning for literatureand philosophy for the momentis approaching when theywill be lost, or I supposesimply subsumed, swallowedup in a cloud appearingmomentarily then gone. The day is rapidly approachingand if you doubt itfor even a moment, goto your local library, ifit has not closed, and notethe diminishing numberof books, replacedby computers,…
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LIGHTS
For eight days each Decemberthey call out to me as the flameof the candles flickers out,“Remember me” they say in unison,“remember me”, in the voice of the child,an old woman, in Yiddish,in Polish, German, Czech, Latt.I want to remember but I cannot seea face reduced to ash, blendedinto the earth of a farm field outside…
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FLAME
He watched as the flame licked at the lip of the candle, the wax slowly conceding and falling in, forming the cradle on which the flame danced. He wondered how something as simple as a wax cylinder could have an inherent knowledge of beauty and simplicity and yet he stared at it certain the knowledge…
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GOD HAS COME, OR NOT
It is the wet season when the rains wash the village carrying off the detritus of poverty. On the adobe wall of the ancient town hall some villagers say a face appeared one morning. To some it was the face of Christ to others that of an old man a former mayor, perhaps, to most…
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OPTION ONE
Some, mostly of us, said we were the chosen people, as if wandering the desert for 40 years was the grand prize, okay of Sodom got the runners-up gift. I didn’t buy it then, don’t now, even after I sold my membership as the price of final freedom. No, we were, still are, the people…
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an old writer and his words 