Full Moon Mandala

Swallows on blue sky
yellow leaves upon green grass
white butterfly flits

For T's 65th!

Ahhh

Thirst drove me down
to the water,
where I drank
the moon's reflection.

Rumi

Sunday mantra

Cat waits for my lap,
impatiently, howlingly,
"sit, sit, sit" she yowls.

Lu Chi's the Joy of Writing

Writing is in itself a joy. 
Yet saints and sages have long since held it in awe.
For it is Being, created by tasking the Great Void,
And is sound rung out of Profound Silence.
In a sheet of paper is contained the Infinite,
And, evolved from an inch-sized heart, an endless panorama.
The words, as they expand, become all-evocative,
The thought sill further pursued, will run the deeper,
Till flowers in full blossom exhale all-pervading fragrance,
And tender boughs, their saps running, grow to a jungle of splendor.
Bright winds spread luminous wings,
quick breezes soar from the earth,
And nimbus-like above all these, rises the glory of the literary.

Loud Music

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round.
You see, I like the music loud, the speakers
throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether
Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so
each bass note is like a hand smacking the gut.
But my stepdaughter disagrees. She is four
and likes the music decorous, pitched below
her own voice—that tenuous projection of self.
With music blasting, she feels she disappears,
is lost within the blare, which in fact I like.
But at four what she wants is self-location
and uses her voice as a porpoise uses
its sonar: to find herself in all this space.
If she had a sort of box with a peephole
and looked inside, what she’d like to see would be
herself standing there in her red pants, jacket,
yellow plastic lunch box: a proper subject
for serious study. But me, if I raised
the same box to my eye, I would wish to find
the ocean on one of those days when wind
and thick cloud make the water gray and restless
as if some creature brooded underneath,
a rocky coast with a road along the shore
where someone like me was walking and has gone.
Loud music does this, it wipes out the ego,
leaving turbulent water and winding road,
a landscape stripped of people and language—
how clear the air becomes, how sharp the colors.
by Stephen Dobyns 

Mindful by Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Thoughts for the 10th month

➺“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
➺Watch your words, for they become actions.
➺Watch your actions, for they become habits.
➺Watch your habits, for they become character.
➺Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
.
.
– Octavio Paz

Pink to peach to pale,
As day is slowly dawning,
fresh, gentle, peaceful.

Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning

There are questions that I no longer ask
and others that I have not asked for a long time
that I return to and dust off and discover
that I’m smiling and the question
has always been me and that it is
no question at all but that it means
different things at the same time
yes I am old now and I am the child
I remember what are called the old days and there is
no one to ask how they became the old days
and if I ask myself there is no answer
so this is old and what I have become
and the answer is something I would come to
later when I was old but this morning
is not old and I am the morning
in which the autumn leaves have no question
as the breeze passes through them and is gone
by W. S. Merwin 

Sunday Mandala

The fall quilts are hung
gather in the family
as days grow closer.