Friend to Friend

Arrogance—yours or mine no difference—

always misguided, rarely instructive of anything

other than itself, and often simply meanness

cloaked in good intentions,

like building character, in someone else.

Though at the lake that day, it clouded

crystalline waters so, what might have been

rebuke, instead glowed with the clarity

of genuine kindness, a flash amongst shadows,

not so much unexpected, as from one unfamiliar,

now known from the inside, out—a gift.

**

We cannot know for certain,

but the effort, beyond all reason,

the effort so fruitless reveals nonetheless

continuous, even uncalled for delight

and richness—reason enough then,

reason enough.

**

Take your teacher by the throat

and listen—it’s the gurgle

that’s most important.

**

We think

as we live, the promises

we make ourselves, vows,

intentions, grand plans, sweeping vistas,

like so many heart-felt leaves blown

to tremor, even before their saying is done—

bud to spread to color to mulch,

all returned to the earth sustained

and richened within the blanket embrace

of the myriad workings of the sun in its sky.

**

Place specific, local,

as in heart beat—how the universe conspires

continuations of each and all throughout their time,

questions of purpose, intention, of direction,

value added, or allowed, all implode

right here—seamless, seem-less wholeness,

each complete in place and time, rightful roles

forever fulfilled—inevitable—amen.

**

They say, just before death arrives, life

sometimes surges, energies push the furthest

reach, new horizons replace the old, space awakens,

shadows fall, imagination stretches to follow the light

to the other side...

**

In the steadied silence of a Sunday morning

begun before the promise of a spoken sun, the roses

on the altar slump, and the two of them, cloaked in clouds

of circling smoke of incense burned to dust,

take their turn to cry—for Buddhas forever gone

and for those about to come.

**

The way it is

There are times when, despite myself, I raise my voice,

when the thrust of my heart pushes through the words and past,

leaves them limp on the empty air, only to fall

to the floor, ill-spent.

And I know, it’s the breath

that words ride that makes them all they are

and its absence that undoes them.

I know.

**

On trust and praise

It’s the urge to engage through syllable and sound

the shadowy horizons of awareness

not simply our own.

It’s the desire to use all that we have

and all that we cannot hold, to articulate the wish

that we cannot speak.

It’s the depths of our need, though not so clearly seen,

to affirm the connections, to return as community,

as is already given.

**

Thresholds of sorts, arise

as we identify what is no longer essential.

Letting that go, of itself lightens

the next step and wherever it may lead.

**

As the chest rises and falls

almost imperceptibly, we conceive

the body alive with the flow of breath—

Buddha’s Name as utterance

makes real the potency of language

as a vehicle of awakening…

NamuAmidaButsu

**

The desire to make something happen

will make

something happen—while all the while,

the world

inevitably delivers

the inevitable, 

making us wonder,

perhaps,

which end of the effort

we’re really on.

**

The ancients speak

of clear and certain vision

amidst that most certain ambiguity

that is the foundational reality of our humanity.

How to live unruffled in a ruffled universe?

Allow each answer its flutter

before letting go…

**

Morning fog rolls in over the ocean

that lies west of here,

shoulders inland hills,

then tips and pours toward the bay,

leading puffs tinted pink.