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.