your path is always behind you





weeds in the garden flourish
unconcerned
their days are numbered





Sitting in the garden, drinking China tea,
smoking a favorite cigar,
I speak aloud lines from worry free poets,
finding myself the same.

February sun recedes into shade –
simple pleasures, simple life, simpler man.





too much money denies the pleasure of a simple life





with life not turning out
as wanted, expected, hoped –
why this gratitude?





old wooden Budai
laughs in the garden,
blue jay pecking at his feet





From the side, an entire range;
from the end a single peak;
far, near, high, low,
no two parts alike.

The true face of Mount Lu
I cannot comprehend –
gazing upon it,
I myself am in the mountain.

[Su Tung-p'o (1084) adapted from translations by Burton Watson and Beata Grant]





what good fortune:
stopping,
the smell of roses





Each day death takes lives beyond counting,
yet none who live think –

this day
death
can come to me.

(Adapted from William Buck’s translation of the Mahabharata)





true enough: we cannot be happy in the future,
we can only be happy now, in the present

the same is true for unhappy

go figure





not distinguishing pain from suffering is itself suffering





the experience of free will is neither proof of nor
an explanation for it





to be utterly without hope is also to be utterly without despair





past and future exist only in the conversations we have about them




shoulds

11/04/2009 · 0 comments

in human living


each moment is as it is;
to say that it “should” be some other way
only burdens the one who says “should”





Earlier I wrote — “the peace that passeth understanding can’t be understood.”
What’s worse, it can’t be experienced.
Then what, we may ask, is it good for?
And, of course, the answer is — it’s good for Nothing.





the one free extension is almost done,
taxes are due in three more days,
I have no IRS approved excuse for delaying any longer;
I could do them now,
but there’s still three days

instead I write thes lines;
absent a true emergency
they’ll be filed on time,
they always are

I used to worry and call myself a procrastinator,
now I worry not and just call me me





gratitude arises along with the preference for what is





what turns you on is what turns you on . . . and sometimes it surprises you





in America one speaks not of the attendant sorrows of aging lest one be thought old





a critical distinction in living an examined life: your experience and your explanation of your experience





what once was unimaginable
has this day come to pass –
sixty-five





you discover your own path at the end, if there is one





when does the past become the present and the present, the future?





the illusion of certainty is just that, an illusion





low over the valley,
honking geese,
blossoms of fall





Granted a shattering glimpse of crystalline quiet early,
I came to understand it late.

Finding no one to explain the Unexplainable,
I kept a different kind of quiet;
drifted along some usual ways –
school, jobs, career, a run in public life.

Now and then, in a seeming desert wander, would peace descend –
alleviating for a while the dis-satisfaction of dis-ease.

These days I dwell inside my cottage in a large and fertile plain.
Through my doors a river runs. I do not interfere.

Without reason I study poetic lines revealing Way;
living unfolding within a gift of ease.

(with thanks to Wang Wei)





hopping from the arbor up the roof
grape thief jay
flies prize away





so simple, yet so seeming hard to accept:
there is nothing that is not It





mortality appears
when the obituaries
could be yours





suffering includes the vain hope that right now things can be other than they are





having the “truth” won’t set you free, but it will blind the hell out of you





living always occurs, only occurs, in the present





the denial of aging is the denial of death





neither the flypaper
nor my hand
keeps the fly
from its appointed buzz





never too old –
college town shop girl
smites heart with smile