— for Daishin an explosion of sparrowsinside your heart your heart insideevery sparrow
reflection
How Archimedes Proved Ideas
If all the pencils and pensin the world disappearedI would write your namein the ashes on the hearth.If all the paper burnedinto smoke and computerswent suddenly dark,I would scribble it in the bathin the suds of my oily skin.If the damp sands washed awaywith the tide, leaving the beach alone,I would go to the floor […]
Maybe a Strange Thing
Maybe a strange thing — a college townat the wrong time of year — the students are gonebut you’re still around,wandering through bookshops,empty art galleries — tired, sick of it,in a quiet cafe youlose your temper, get upand walk out,leaving yourself sitting over coffee.
Butterflies and Other People
For two years, I lived on the edge of woods, on the outskirts of Chattanooga, Tennessee, between a sewage plant, an American Indian burial ground, and the state mental hospital. Outside my house I saw a butterfly, the most radiant being I had ever seen — blue and black and ivory, incandescent. A friend later […]
Like a Bottle of 10 Year McKenna
Color in whiskymeans nothing It has no meaningother than pleasure Taste is everything
Birds of Prey
“Most people are onthe world, not in it” Muir said that so long ago but he was wrong Most people are outsidethe world, doubting they know how to be among it Riding under a hawk’s wingsthe air forgets what it means to be useless
Seven Haiku
winter morning —daylight arriveswithout a story snow plungesfrom tower block ledgeslike falling bodies duckling left behindpaddles to catch upwith mother and siblings children playing in ruins of millme 40 summers agowalking by today young woman pushing prambruise beneath her eyemorning rain zazen together, one breath4000 miles butno distance between us winter street —dog turd on […]