photos by Emily Romano
The night we met
There was a time when I tried to separate my life from love.
But I could not. Even though I tried.
In the spring, in the old grove forest.
I witnessed a bodhisattva returning to the world.
Felt that warmth of a whole heartedness
in my bones.
Some 26 years ago, on March 15th, in Austin
on West street at 8pm,
in a candle lit zendo.
My life turned on a dime.
Not because I was seeking,
but I felt my Self found.
Breath of stardust shared the air.
Once refused drops of wisdom water
were tasted, were remembered.
I forgot, I was the butterfly and the dream.
Nothing was required
so love returned in me.
As I leaned on the staircase rails
and felt home.
Mythical home, the one they write stories about.
Home, was feeling awe.
Without elevating one thing over another.
Without naming something as sacred and something as not.
Without someone being allowed and someone not.
In the quietness of night
I danced with ancestors
who told me, this is what I meant to say
when I had words.
We have only touched the surface.
We are the fingerprint of trees.
Breathing one self fulfilling samadhi after another.
—Cassy Shoshin
A letter for the heart of the matter
A letter for the heart of the matter
number 61
What was written on a page.
What was written on my heart.
Stanzas of nature unfolding it’s dreams
like wild flowers in spring
remember to always plant two sunflowers
during the day they turn toward the sun
but at night they turn to each other.
Isn’t that the way with endarkenment and enlightenment
I wonder if the birds that plant them know.
Know that this the way.
Spring after winter after fall after summer.
While I walk a road with well worn signs
following a path that has led off the map.
I am a cardboard knight
whose lost the key to their heart.
So I keep it locked, keep it close,
more faithful to the lock than anything else.
Stepping off into the old grove tall trees
the softness of the carpeted forest floor
muffles all of my thoughts.
Light making it’s way through the leaves above
sparkle and shimmer like gold keys to many doors
When this letter finds you,
read it right away.
Trace the places that form each word,
let the ink run through your fingers
into a river around the rocks.
into the flow
—Cassy Shoshin
“with empty hands I pick up the hoe” ~ Mahasattva Fu
I sit in silence and take backward steps.
In silence I say something.
When staring into a blank wall,
sometimes I notice what is there.
And what I bring to the page…the paper I stand on is blank.
I notice my conditioning but am not lead by it.
To meet the ground and hoe
with my thoughts and beliefs set to the side
or laid down completely.
How else could I possibly meet you?
If I can only sense a reflection of myself.
Or create closed and permanent ideas about “other”
Because creating categories… a shelf of many boxes.
Categorizing is the root definition of prejudice.
Which may be comforting
in the vastness of space and time.
A process that might give me reference points
in order to draw a map.
But it is an illusion of grounded-ness.
Because it is formed outside myself.
Choose to go deep within
to touch the roots of bodhi tree
to find your roots.
The ones that connect all of us
then
float in the realm fragrances.
In silence I say something.
—Cassy Shoshin
Be Not Afraid
be not afraid
listen carefully
these are the rules
and yes, it is sometimes a game,
with eyes that won’t see perfection,
with questions easy to answer with language
that doesn’t need to be deciphered.
there are rules for gravity
and antidotes for rules through imagination,
like believing stars are crabs and bears and hunters
tattooed on night-black canvas.
every heartbeat carries stories
full with fears and joys
and epic tales of not knowing,
held with a Grace
that makes room
for simple awkward peace
to promise salvation
or the will to ask, “what’s next?”
there are flaws, when fixed,
that still don’t equal love—
but let cupid throw the dart anyway
and see what sticks.
lean in and listen close
the next thought will always come.
what accumulates between us
are castles made of sand,
achievements that borrow
from our dreams of love.
yet no season of doubt lasts forever.
for there is the audacity
that every cranium
holds wildness and wonder—
prompting me to opt to dance
and dodge a personal apocalypse.
ease into the vast relief
that time today is the beginning and the end
completely at ease with itself.
so be not afraid —
there are angels of mercy in abundance
who also double as doulas of death.
—Ed Sancious
Rio Grande
I’ve been to the border
I’m here to report back
I’ve brought you echoed calling canyon wrens,
the fragrance of wet clay and tacos cooking in a fire
across the Rio Grande by a Spanish-talking mother.
I gallop to you in a message of wild palominos
who strike a wall of spray under each hoof fall.
Make plans.
We’ll meet inside a canyon 457 meters grand,
where cactus cling and lechugilla daggers reach
their spiny hands and sneaky winds whistle songs
through giant reeds of grass of Mexico, America.
We’ll soak in American hot spring boil.
Fleshy white of legs burns red like soil.
When we’re done, the timer’s off,
we’ll waddle, flinching over river pebbles
into Mexico, in cooling river flow.
Occasionally, the world will visit
in halts of English from a couple from Japan
in songs of men from Belgium
and over here a delicious bit of elder Russian.
It all comes to visit in these waters
Rest and mingle
in an endless flow of water.
Once refreshed, we all return to where we came from,
muddied, cut and sweating.
Or maybe we cross to new beginnings.
It’s what Rio wants to show us
in a 30-foot span across a Rio Grande,
where roadrunners steal a sip of water,
where flies grow fat and drunk
on mesquite honeyed sap,
where the cruel sun warms then burns you,
where the shade and wind offers generous relief.
These are the things I had to tell you.
These are the things I had to bring you.
Before you took another breath today.
—Emily Romano
This is What It Sounds Like
Footsteps crunch down winter’s dead, gray grass
Mourning dove wings whistle flight, alarm
These grey-necked birds with blushing breasts
balance on a rickety fence, turn one black eye.
Invaders advance, take what has died, kill what still lives.
The doves take flight.
There is something in that crunch they know,
a sound that slams all doors and hearts.
It hammers hard.
They’ve spent the day in flight, these doves
from tree to tree, house to house.
They’ve sat in nests, they’ve hunted specks of bugs and seeds.
Wobble in a maze of city streets and long, tall grasses.
They watch and wait.
A freeze descends,
a freeze that grins and rips the chest wide open.
This is a chill that loves a feast,
a chill that nibbles first then hacks its arms,
then chokes and vomits on its tail.
This chew, this gnaw,
these sounds hiss, hurry away.
The boot-stepped weight that crushes leaves and blades,
the howl of dog, the wheels that groan along cement,
the distant pops of guns,
the clink and hiss, the metal canisters of gas.
Since start of light, a dove must stay alive.
From dinosaur claw, to small ball of fluff,
egg to egg,
sun to sun
dusk to dusk.
Alarm’s vocabulary assembled
in push of suns, in waxing, waning moons.
Today its time.
We lurch our eyes to monster’s ram on door, tackled body to a ground.
A gentle dove must pull the air and sing with wings
an honest song: I am afraid, I don’t want to die, I have to flee.
A calculus of centuries fires circuits in a brain.
A dove does, what doves do.
Its fluttering flights sing a little while it flees.
A Prince once sang
This is what it sounds like when the doves cry
He could have sang about the color of his skin,
about the badge and guns on fat men’s hips.
But no, he sang about the sound,
the stirring wings, the cooing songs,
a world that’s so cold,
the sound of fear,
the wretched flight.
To that Prince I raise a glass
I hear the clinking swirl of ice
I swallow the bitter liquid
I place the frosted cup down
I move with the crowd towards the light.
—Emily Romano, AuD
Holding Hands
This morning I joined my nephew and our neighbor Dee on the grass between our houses. We were glad to be outside in the sunshine after the ice storms. Dee told me what had been happening—my nephew already knew, but all I’d heard was a cryptic note my daughter read me from Facebook: “Back from the hospital, waiting test results.” While the rest of us had hunkered down inside our houses, grateful that the electricity had held, Dee and Tom had been negotiating the highway from Cedar Park and our long country road over packed sleet and then packed ice.
Bad weather was predicted, but it hadn’t hit yet when it all started. Tom felt odd after a game of pickleball at the Y and sat down on a bench. He said, “Call 9901” just before the alert system in his heart shocked him and a moment later shocked him again and he lost consciousness. The ambulance took him straight to the hospital in Cedar Park and tests and retests and arguments between doctors. How much could his kidneys take if they did this procedure? What about that one? Then it was back and forth for more testing over the ice between hospital and hotel.
The man minding the hospital parking lot explained to Dee at length about driving on ice, protective and grandfatherly, but he cared, was doing what he could for people already stressed and low on sleep and worried. He gave them the same overprotective advice the next night when they left for home, but she didn’t mind. And perhaps it was needed—as they stopped at the light at 281 and 29 in Burnet a big pickup blew past them through the red light and fishtailed half a block before speeding on.
A few hours after our conversation, my nephew came over and fixed my faucet leaks. While he was struggling with the plumbing I baked cookies that I’d saved in the freezer. He beamed. A wrench and some cookies and grandfatherly advice, none of it can change the realities of change and loss, but we don’t have to face them alone.
—Sarah Webb
In-between
In-between
to Padraig O Tuama, “in-between the sun and moon”
It’s a fog the wind blows
tatters that stream through my fingers
nameless, gray.
It’s an absence
when I reach for a word
not the Great Forgetting but a small.
It’s a fear when I open the door
A fear grown pale—the man is dead
under the door only a wind.
It’s a shame that comes sharp
but all of us are gone—the girl I was
the people I loved, the people I harmed.
It’s blue sky where there were clouds
clouds where there was sun
clouds that shift from elephant to fish.
It’s asking who was to blame
and it’s everyone and no one
lizard on the pavement and the pavement.
It’s saying I should have done better
I should be doing better
and clouds are floating by the window.
It’s my mother in the nursing ward
Are you my daughter?
Was she my mother?
It’s wind, wind over the water
something coming and I can’t say what
something that slackens and comes again full.
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao.
Did Confucius say that
let those words be written down?
Did I write those words here
handed memory to memory
millennia-long mistake?
People are dying—people, a world
and I fear for them, reach for them
but we stream nameless onto the wind.
—Sarah Webb
The song of pencil and paper
Photo by Cassy Shoshin
The song of pencil and paper
dancing with another person’s language
where do words arrive from?
deep in the night lying beside
mountain wisdom
what brought us here to this moment
beguiled me
we, beside each other
was it love
or was it longing
maybe boredom
the texture and sound of a soft pencil’s lead
caressing a page, lifting then
softly returning to the next line.
Forming each letter with the intention
of art blended with love
connecting thoughts with form
and returning to emptiness
Slow movements not demanding something more
or something faster
but with a request
to be here now
how free would I be without expectation?
what else would I do without judgment?
who would I be without thinking about who I am?
only returning
return to a / my /our natural state.
a curious moment
that isn’t impatient to all ready know
curiosity births connection
reaches out it’s hand to discover
liquid smooth lead dust
between my fingers
a left behind reminder
of creations
pencil and paper becoming
the depth of meaning
oh shit !
this is lofty
not messy
like reality.
I don’t want to idealize
what happens between you and me
ships that bump in the night
sometimes fight
wanting the right of way
it’s the whole of the Way
that defines connection
what am I longing for
so much longing
ear to ground
who is listening?
to the song of pencil and paper
that satisfies the itch by scratching across a page
and lives in the deep breath of
the sound of you sigh
—Cassy ShoShin
Barn Lost, Mountain Found
You know the Japanese poem
about his barn, burnt down
now
allowing Masahide
to see the moon?
Here is me saying
when I could not get enough air
into my lungs
inside a building,
I shivered outside beneath a sky
salted with stars.
I drank the Milky Way
and hitched my hopes to meteor
before the steady countenance of a mountain.
Even as I suffered
my spirit bowed down in wonder
at beauty vast—
that I came from that
and have eyes to see.
—Kai Cooley
Prompt : Are we living inside a poem?
Photo by Cassy ShoShin
Most assuredly yes,
but only when I take time…make time..
claim time.
Experience a moment,
hold it in my hand
like a single grain of sand in an undisguisable shore.
How far does the road of Practice go?
I feel the invitation of distance lands
from within
and with you.
I never imagined being here,
in the spaces between stanzas
in a pause between the rhythm of breath.
The first candlelit night I met a teacher of zen,
no I encountered untethered presence.
with a “What is that exclamation !”
Loud in a quiet place.
26 years and I am still loud in a quiet place
but there is a lot more space now.
Space for others
Space for understanding self and what moves in us.
Space understanding an other
Space until I don’t know the difference between us.
Space to take up the dance of words
with aspen leaves from the valley of cloud mountain.
Catching light
Flickering back moments
Sparkling champagne bubbles
To hold your hand as we feel the two four rhythm of nature’s waltz
when one song ends and when another song begins.
soft echo
loud bell
—Cassy ShoShin
On Solstice 2025
I Am Here Now
I am here now
breathing a little slower
listening
for something older
than memory —
patient in the waiting
to be
beyond remembering,
to be
original again.
I am here now
but sleeping,
folded inside this ancient knowing
waiting
to be waking
softly
as morning light on still water
to finally be
only gentleness
—Ed Sancious
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