• DEPARTING

    We now live in a strange world where nothing is as it was mere weeks ago. I am blessed to live on a small nature preserve and have been spending my afternoons with camera in hand. So if you want something other than words (which follow) you are welcome to visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/98342503@N00/, my Flickr site,…


  • ELEGY FOR A POET

    (for Allen Ginsburg) You died quietly in your bed friends gathered around the cars and buses of the city clattering out a Kaddish to a God you had long ago dismissed as irrelevant. We would have expected your to howl, to decry the unfairness of it all, but you merely said it is time, and…


  • LEAVING

    The trees seem to know that we are leaving, why else would they shed their leaves so early, the only tears they are allowed to cry. It cannot be a blight, or so we think it, just our departure that has caused this premature pining for a winter we all know will arrive too soon…


  • KEGON RETURNS TO DELUSIONS 鐵笛倒吹 語十二

    If a gentle flower falls from its branch do you mourn its departure. The fool attempts to place it back in the tree, the wise one waits for another flower to appear. Each is the same flower but how will the fool become wise. A reflection on case 52 of the Iron Flute Koans.


  • IN TRANSIT

    We have decided to skip the viewing to say our farewells in thought without needing to see her face frozen in the morticians best attempt at placidity, erasing the anger, the fear, the frustration, the pain that made leaving easier for her than remaining. We will say the prayers, most of them, she with fervent…


  • ADIEU, SOL

    The sun is preparing still another departure. He moves with a ponderousness that you wouldn’t expect of him, he who should be all passion consuming the sky, painting clouds. We expect his return by morning, he has never yet disappointed but Luna, lingering at the horizon, a diva making her slow entry, shines fully as…


  • NEVER BOATS

    “Trains are present,” she said,” and somewhat the buses, but airplanes are mostly absent.” I understand what she meant, and didn’t need her to cover hands over her ears to cement the point. On a train, most sit back, some with ear buds but many simply stare out the window at towns and villages and…


  • RECALL NOTICE

    It wasn’t so much that it slipped away this morning, I’ve come to expect that, and I know there is absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. It wasn’t even that I couldn’t recall what it was precisely that was gone, for that is the nature of departure and longing. It was more that…


  • ARRIVAL

    He arrived this afternoon, but she stayed only briefly and then departed silently. I did not see her arrive, did not sense his stay but am certain he was there, just as I am certain he has never been here. When she is here, you cannot see her, when she is gone, your memory is…


  • OF DREAMS

    In our small world night and day are separated by dreams that escape just beyond our consciousness. We search for deeper meaning even as we are certain they will leave us as they have long before we could remember. That is the trouble with margins, they ebb and flow without warning, their arrivals and departures…