Lessons in Form and Emptiness

Every morning I write poetry, or try,

Not any great literary act,

But something to make sense of this world,

Well, that is not exactly it,

More for me just to be observant.

This small dog, who now lays next to me,

We don't really know where she came from,

But she so appreciates our kindness now,

Laying, resting quietly,

In her bed next to my chair.

A refugee seeking safety

And a place to call home,

Really, that is what we all want, isn't it?

I took refuge in the Buddha,

Had to leave my home to return home,

Now my "practice" is beyond form and emptiness,

 That is my home.

I think this little dog knows better than me,

about that!

I am humbled to be her student.

—Bruce Linton

Your Countenance

Today I changed

because you,

like some great

Zen teacher,

you showed no recognition

of me.

There was no

being seen

or taken in.

I found myself

a true refugee.

all that was left

 just the

mist on the mountain

—Bruce Linton

July Poem

Expressing oneself as an image or word

slips like a wet stone squeezed too tightly 

to depend on 1 over 0 cuts Growth with growth 

brewing within sprawling networks of concrete and narcissism

the boilerplate of Life is outside Infinity 

restricts Virginity as caused, conquered, and endured

—Hunter Priniski  

sifting through a bedridden orchestra

Clock in.

The day burst full of patients and reports, ripping bread and lunch meats, smashing bites between the teeth. The clouds 

outside distend, pregnant with a city’s sorrow

7,000 miles away.

We care for wounded soldiers 

They laugh about a sniper’s miss, 

the number of rumbles, a 50 caliber gun, 

such a heavy cross to bear.

Their lips part, they punch the air with sound, but all that’s flashing in our eyes are 

children sifting through the rubble for the place they once called home. 

Each breath births another child, 

A burned red tremble.

With bandaged stumps they climb upon our shoulders and press down. 

We look each dusted angel in the eye and hold out shaking hands for them to climb up high until it’s time.

Clock out

 We drive, hungry, numb, the weight of 8000 children on our backs. We drive to an orchestra and sit, bedridden in the pews. 

The Magic Flute clocks in.

 Our spirits rush the stage.

We tumble through musicians.

Honeyed fingers tickle strings.

We sit in trumpet’s lap. 

We sift through black tuxedos,

grab the sparkling gowns, 

gawk at each musician’s hands muscled by mistakes, by practice.

 Music from another time flows through us.

Mozart resurrects.

He speaks as a poppy’s petals flutter,

as the little legs of bumblebees struggle to the nectar.

 His sound

strikes loose the stones that dam a heart.

The symphony takes flight.

The clouds weep

The rain falls down.

Our cheeks get wet.

Brother Mozart speaks relief.

—Sol Frye

What Interests Me

what interests me in science is observation,

wistful watching,

languid and lethargic

like plumeria scented 

summer-warm evening air.

considering, with curiosity,

suns called stars

and their radiant offspring

teasing out identity in the dark

in a multitude of mythical 

concocted constellations.

I enjoy the confidential intimacy

of the delinquency of starlight.

knowing, in truth, the light’s a lie. 

that what I currently see

is light unveiled from eons ago 

marvelous spectral disciples 

that travel only outward

tiptoeing into infinity 

at three hundred million meters per second 

with such enviable tenacity 

in artful evasion of connection

to its luminous debut.

leaving me to see

this connect-the-dots celestial tapestry,

dust-embroidered myths 

of gods and goddesses,

objects and beliefs.

folly perhaps

or fairy tale wisdom

to align mythologies

to earthly agonies. 

my solace is to favor 

Joni’s notion from ’69 - 

to be golden, to be stardust

akin to billion-year-old carbon

crafting bargains

with angels or devils 

or whoever cares 

to listen to me grieve

that maybe we are 

just illusions of ecstasy

and what endures is
love, death, and other fantasies.

—Ed Sancious

How to shoo a bird out of a brewery

Find a finch, landed on the chair beside you

its panting signals its fear.

Resist the temptation to close your hands around its rumpled feathers.

You must allow it to fly to the light and bump against the glass.

Say a prayer that it will stay conscious through the hard knocks against the cold windows.

Wait for it to land, still panting on the ground.

Give it space. 

Then, slide forward.

Close off the path back into the darkness of the brewery.

Gently move the chairs, the pillows, out of the corner where the finch has flown to hide.

Reveal the little bird in all its perfect beauty,

still panting, still frantic to hide.

Open the doors to the outside.

Feel the gentle breeze on your skin.

Ask the bird to feel the rustle of air in its feathers.

Allow the bird to flutter against the glass again and again.

Be patient that the bird finds you frightening, when all you want to give it is love.

Place your hands by its side. 

When at last it’s too exhausted, it will let you guide it slowly to the door.

Feel the brush of its little feathers like the fingers of a toddler who grasps at your legs for balance.

Warn the others not to get too close, not to close their hands over the frightened creature.

Let the bird find its way outside,

To the light, to the air, to the wind that lifts it up into the sky,

To the sun that warms our hearts.

Let the bird find its own form of freedom.

That is where your freedom flies.

—Emily Romano

Tulip

A dark orb

opens its closed,

stilled fist of a heart

into a thrum and beat.

Blinded by pressing

darkness and relentlessly in solitude,

tender with translucence

of newborn skin,

it pushes through

coarse, dense earth,

which has held it both safe

and captive,

in ceaseless

pursuit of a sun it knows—

with no proof, and beyond all reason—

is.

Breaking embraces

of constraint and dormancy,

it unfurls itself—

an audacious, wild-green spear

of declaration!—

into the creamy blue,

and, kissed by breezes,

begins to dance.

—Genève Gil

everything I see or want to say

everything I see or want to say is not,
per se, 
a lie.
though vision
is the best for me
to act as language 
on which I rely
to be generous 
in sharing what I witness
as peculiar feats of nature.
like gravity staunchly excluding trees from spinning into sky 
and adamantly, repeatedly 
assigning fog to hug the earth.
and giving answers 
as to what am I to do 
with the slimness of my earthly days 
indulging my curiosities on being,
as this grace of physics is what 
remains for me, 
unquestionably,
a meaning of love.

—Ed Sancious

Untitled

 

 — Kim Mosley 

Portrait of A Self

Here, inside myself,

though never quite alone,

I’m waiting to be met,

to be ordinary,

to be other

than imaginary.

To be a story of becoming

where there’s context 

within faith

and all things make sense

with no chronicles of unbecoming.

Here the act of survival 

is dreaming of walking into, 

then under, 

water.

How is surviving better?

—Ed Sancious

Tide

I was with the tide this eve:  

crash on crash on cliff and shoal

thundered up as foam and drop,  

violence and vibrance one.  

Ocean broken into  

pearls, weightless,

for a moment’s grace,  

incandescent from within…

then cascading back to source,  

low into the undertow,  

down into the deep, deep, deep—

always dancing with the moon,  

whose luminance shimmers

between dark and dark.  




—Genève Gil

Pictures of Life and Everything

I know the feeling of desperately wanting to take a picture. Pictures to tell a story, pictures to save a moment in time, pictures to show how I see the world.

My dad, when I was young, loved to take pictures of me, of my mom, of my siblings. He even put me in one of his commercials, for a playpen. Then when I was about ten, he stopped. Was film too expensive? Did it annoy my mom? Did his muse leave? I don’t know. Maybe his muse came to me. I love taking pictures.

I have a memory of watching film being developed. This memory might actually be of a television show or documentary. Dipping paper in chemicals, moving it to another chemical tray, and one more, each time more of the picture would emerge. Then wait and the page was filled, the memory there for all to see. Magic.

Saving holidays, birthdays, vacations, daily life. One snapshot in time brings back so many memories. For instance, the picture of my birthday party, where I am blowing out candles on a cake. We are having so much fun, laughing, anticipating eating cake. But what isn’t shown is that this is the fourth take, we are laughing because my dad made us set this scene up over and over until he got just the right shot. There is a picture of me standing on a bridge across the San Antonio River (many years later I would take a picture of my kids on that bridge), I don’t know if because the sun was so bright or if I moved or my dad did, but I look like a ghost standing there surrounded by sunlight. I liked to make up stories about that little girl ghost. Maybe my dad did too because he is the one who kept that photo.

My dad loved to set up takes so they would be just so. He rarely just took a picture. I am the exact opposite. I wait for a moment to happen and then snap. I love action shots, especially of my kids playing. Soccer or Monopoly; climbing trees or reading a book. I always kept my camera at the ready. A good bit of the time they didn’t even know I had taken a picture until we picked up the prints at the store. Now with my grandchildren and a cell phone it is even easier to capture them.

Pictures are memories, moments in time, moments that may never come again except in our minds. The memories demand sharing to complete the process of the moment. I love seeing my family sitting snuggled on the couch looking at an album. They are saying remember this. And then that happened. Yes, I often take a picture.

—Melissa Tolliver

In the Trees at Evening

“and you too have come / into the world to do this, / to go easy, 

to be filled with light / and to shine.” 

from “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

In the Trees at Evening

You too have come

into this world to touch

the hands of someone you love,

to look into the leaves

and be glad.

And, yes, there is pain,

pain so bright it is almost fire.

It burns into light.

Sometimes when all around us

is shards of glass,

broken walls, 

it is hard to remember

that this world is our home,

that hands still touch.

The sky at evening 

fills with a rose

that comes from burning,

a tender flush

that comes through sorrow

to reach us.

Someone says, isn’t it your duty

to be sad, to lament

all that is lost,

to rise up in anger?

Perhaps that is the work of the day

but now evening has come

to find its way through the branches,

and I look up

and am glad of the light.

—Sarah Webb