New Year's Eve

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour
of the new clarity.
– Rainier Maria Rilke

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Deck the walls and all

Solstice Wisdom

Ice mountain melted ages ago 
and made this ridge.
this place of changes

Now we are rooted in it,
we of the old ones,
we of the new ones from afar,
oatgrass meadow, douglas fir thicket,
we are rooted in the ridge of changes
in the time of changes.

The winds carry strange smells,
this is a day of change.

Great ones above and below, bless us!

O shining One above, feed us with your light!
O soft ones, sky darkeners, wash us with your raindrops!
O powers above, bless us with your gifts,
for we reach to you,
branching wood and sap.

O Earthmother from who we grow,
sandy gravel into whom our roots branch wood
and sap deep down,
bless us in our night-sleep, in our death and decay,.

Bless us, dark earth as we give back
that which we have received
as we make a forest of blessing a ridge of blessing
for the future to grow upon.
– Chinook Psalter

revisiting

A Blessing

By James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

James Wright, “A Blessing” from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

"When you explore thresholds, it’s about resting into mystery. Learn to live in the liminal space where the old is released but the new hasn’t come into being."

 -- Christine Valters Paintner, PhD The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

Happy Thanksgiving

So very much to be thankful for!
Here is what is on the walls today.

Wallace Stevens

There is the beauty of the moment
     and of the moment gone.
I do not know which to prefer,
     The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
     The blackbird whistling,
Or just after.

Basho

 Traveler ---
let be my name--
In this late autumn shower.

Lao Tzu

Life is -
natural and spontaneous change.
Resist and sorrow arises.
Allow the flow
to find the way.

Issa

A farmer pulling radishes
pointed the way
with a radish.

Hot Summer

On the walls

Hummingbird heaven

Summer quilts

By By

The American primitive painter Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) reported watching an inch-worm crawl up a twig and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach. “That’s me,” he said, “I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.”
- Robert Genn

Something soft and wild and free;
 something that whispered to the ear on the pillow,
 lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock,
 slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit…
into the wind, into the blue and gold,
 into the morning, into the morning!
- Willa Cather

Scent of privet blooms,
creep through my bedroom's window,
pausing with sweetness.

Hafiz: To Build a Swing

You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare-
Don’t mix them!

You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.

That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Sliver hammers,

Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!

- Hafiz

Let Me Be Beautiful Like Sea Glass

Let my edges that cut be stroked by sand and salt
Let my slick surfaces coarsen till it’s crushed to bits
Let my colors soften as they scrape the bottom
Let the waves love me in their rough way
Let me be changed by that love
Let me not forget that I held another
Yet fully inhabit the particularity
Let me be smooth enough to be rubbed by smooth fingers
and slipped inside a pocket or a bowl
Let me prove that beauty is born when something breaks.
 

- Gwynn O’Gara From Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community

Rain's patter on leaves,
a gray Sunday afternoon,
wren's call from the trees.

Sound of falling rain,
only yesterday so hot!
Today fifty-nine.

Eighty-six degrees,
dew point is seventy-three,
on first day of June.

No photo to share,
the trout lily colony,
is no longer there.

Spring in Eastern Washington

Blossoms shimmering,
ignoring mowers growling,
air a gentle haze.

It's that time of year again to remember

“i thank You God for most this amazing”

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 by e.e. cummings

Awoke to bird calls,
windows open all night long-
finally, it's spring!

Squirrel tense in spruce,
sparrows flocking on lilac,
I forgot the seed.

Grackle in the yard.
twitching tail shadow of the
squirrel on the branch.

3+8=1+1=2

Eostre's morning,
hyacinth bud opening -
awaiting fragrance.

第二章

天下皆知美之為美 斯惡已
皆知善之為善 斯不善已
故有無相生
難易相成
長短相形
高下相傾
音聲相和
前後相隨
是以聖人
處無為之事
行不言之教
萬物作焉而不辭
生而不有
為而不恃
功成而弗居
夫唯弗居
是以不去

Chapter 2
When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and non-being produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other
Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away

Crows cawing early,
Mourning doves call, "who, who, who"-
in the afternoon.

Derek Lin's translation, Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained published by SkyLight Paths.

第一章
道可道 非常道
名可名 非常名
無名天地之始
有名萬物之母
故常無欲 以觀其妙
常有欲 以觀其徼
此兩者 同出而異名
同謂之玄
玄之又玄 眾妙之門

Chapter 1
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
These two emerge together but differ in name
The unity is said to be the mystery
Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders

Conceptions let go, 
organizing after flood -
opportunity.

In like a lion,
out like a wolf in sheep's clothes,
March into April.

Snow slanting sideways,
spring equinox nor'easter,
all is whitening.

The mid-March storm blows
blossom petals or snowflakes -
swirling in the air?

Regulus rising,
yew bushes pollinating,
spring drawing nearer.

Two months past Christmas,
a fly lands on the railing -
standing in barefeet.

Rustling amid twigs -
a bunny in the backyard,
winter loosening.

“Patience Taught by Nature”

“O Dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards
Unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife
Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory. O thou God of old!
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;—
But so much patience, as a blade of grass
Grows by contented through the heat and cold.

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Public Domain

- Life is a dance... the dance goes on with us and without us. ... One dances for no reason, as the rose opens in the morning and is for no reason red.
- Osho

Homage to Van Gogh

Super Moon night of the Eclipse

Homage to Klee

Beginning color pencil experiment

I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for 3 days.
- Kabir

Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
- Edith Wharton

ahah- for T

“The Uses of Poetry”

I’ve fond anticipation of a day
O’erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,

Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat’s long sway.

For, lest o’ersaddened by such woes as spring
To rural peace from our meek onward trend,
What else more fit? We’ll draw the latch-string

And close the door of sense; then satiate wend,
On poesy’s transforming giant wing,
To worlds afar whose fruits all anguish mend.

– William Carlos Williams, Public Domain

February first,
I heard a mourning dove call -
harbinger of spring.

"And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been."

Rainer Maria Rilke