Week I:  Text-only version

The temple bell stops— but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers.          Basho

Walking the World: On Water in Flowing Movement
Rushing energy fills the air!  Being careful not to get wet, boots step
from stone to stone like a child just learning to play the piano, trying hard
to hit the right notes in a sea of possible errors. The joy of a world of self-
made bridges, used then forgotten, leaving no trace. On the other side, water
bottle filled, I move on up a steep slope.

From above, the whole of the stream seems so utterly constant, a silver thread
shimmering, weaving, feeling its way down the mountain.It is this movement
which gives shape to the form, and it is the structure of the bed of the stream,
cut deep into the granite rock, which gives order to the movement. A necessary
unity, it seems.

The water in my pack which quenches my thirst is not the stream. I can take
the water with me but I can't get hold of the movement. There is something
beautiful in that. At best, I can try to point at it, but the pointing itself is not
the movement which is the stream, although I admit that I frequently confuse
the two. And it is this movement which one leaves behind as oneself, too,
moves on.

Leys of Love

Metaphor?  A
movement of
resonance, perhaps -- a rhyming
not of sounds or words, but
of meaning.

Do you not
know

this light
and quick movement
of energy
as two separate thoughts touch wings
and fly off into the distance

   together?

 

On the Wayside

            for Owenuma Blue Sky

What's a weed but the
unwanted noise of another
man's music. But beyond
the margin, that little strip of
uncultivated life to the

side of a
well-traveled road, rank
growth is my splendor.

Everything needs a
place to be, and here, even the
weeds feels at
home, a free space where the trouble-
some have gathered together, un-

folding their own songs,
f l o w e r i n g
in peace.

The Farming Life

If you want to be a poet,
call yourself a farmer;

If you want to be a farmer,
call yourself a religious man or woman;

If you want to be a person of religion,
call yourself a teacher.

   The first student is always yourself.

Timberline

(1)

: the point at which the alpine forest gradually gives way to snow
and cold, a tree grows about as fast as water wears down a rock
and a year's growth is measured by the width of a whisper.

(2)

At the meeting place of low gnarled trees and the leathery-leaved ericas
of the open tundra, a solitary butterfly lights upon a rock. Resting I suppose,
filling its wings with the warmth of the afternoon sun. So striking, this harmony
of mirror symmetry, of the pixel-like sprays of bright orange and white dots
on a flat earthy brown.

A cloud passes by and the butterfly changes itself instantly from figure
into ground. Wings tightly closed, the brilliance of a moment ago is now hushed
in the stillness of granite gray and lichen black, all but invisible to even
the most sharp sighted bird.

Such masters of transformation, of perfect balance. Wings open, a delicate song
with all the lightness of a late summer breeze; wings closed, and the movement
folds into that other, more shadowy realm of the quiet and unseen.

Mountain Path

As two learn to walk
together as one,

one of their most primal of fears
is that they might somehow,

by some accident, be separated --
perhaps irreversibly.

     That is why love seeks to protect
     every step freedom makes.

Neon Graffiti: Y₂K

The mechanical butterflies
flap their wings, it's raining
confetti, pop the cork
Dr. D,

       light the candles...

by the atomic clock, in
perfect asynchrony with
everything whole,

"No real finger on
the button, Mr. C -- oh, oh, o h ,
that Strangelovian Rag....."

     launch on warning...

its so predictable,

its so de///  //    /        /              /                 ?

The High Moor and
the 13 Phases of the Solar Moon
(13)

Deep, fluffy, snowshoe snow, falling day
after day. No wind, the ground slowly rising,
covering color, rocks, small trees,

smoothing out the many
variegated accents and differences
of the summer moor into long, white,
sweeping, elegant, legato lines
suspended in time like clouds
to be walked upon.

         If you could see it, the moon would be
         close enough to poke a pole at it.

No path, even the grouse don't seem to be about, and
the pond has vanished without a trace.

They say, there are places so powerfully peaceful and
quiet, that, if we were to play a properly tuned, long
wooden alpine horn in the right direction,
at the right moment,

       the sound of the higher partials would carry
       over every visible peak
       and beyond,

      and in some deeply forested,
      remote valleys,

             not be heard for
             more than a million years.