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RISHO’S POEM
Have you been here – who will know? The sun and moon record your journey. What you release gathers joyously around you, what you cling to flies off on the slightest breeze, mountain and cloud enfold each other. Will you join them? A reflection on case 35 of the Iron Flute Koans.
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UNTO TARSHISH
In this place there is a fatted, sacrificial silence. It is the large Jewish Cemetery nestling the road where Maryland and the District are loosely stitched together. It is a small plot goldenrod dirt outskirting Lisbon. This ground is sacred not for the blessing of one who has taken the tallit of holiness. The sanctity…
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MY REFLECTIONS
Each morning I stare into the mirror and see the same white hair and wonder who I will be today and what I was on all of those other mornings. I ask the mirror what life has in store for me this day but it only smirks, never answers as if it knows something I…
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DACHAIGH
Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto, looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father, the one I had never seen, never known. the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took me…
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OBITS
You read the obituaries every day not only for the confirmation that you are not listed among them. The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, but you also valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, and you didn’t say goodbye, that you…
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BASHO DOES NOT TEACH 鐵笛倒吹 八十
There is a woman who asks no questions, who fears neither birth nor death. What can you teach her? The wise man offers no lesson but observes closely and gains great wisdom. What can you teach one who already knows. What can you learn with a fully open mind. In a clockless world there is…
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REFLECTION
He’s mostly bald and generally something of a grouch. When he enters a room, the key is to nod in recognition but not in invitation. You know, regardless of the topic at hand, he will have something to say and it, no matter how you perfume it, will nevertheless have that air of negativity he…
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TEN FOLD PATH (PT. 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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How Is It!
I can never fully comprehend iwhy they never seem able to see things from my perspective, it really isn’t the all that hard. After all, they claim to know me better than I know myself. Today they never ask if I liked what they chose to serve me, why I left the food, sometimes? Today…
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an old writer and his words 