What I Know About Waiting

Do not mistake stillness for ending.

Seeds spend whole seasons

hidden beneath the earth.

The tide retreats

without explaining itself.

The moon disappears

without asking permission.

Not every unanswered question

is a closed door.

Not every pause

is a loss.

Still—

there are mornings

when the silence feels heavier

than certainty.

Mornings when the map ends

and nothing arrives to replace it.

When the body asks for rest,

is it wisdom?

Or fear?

When the future remains hidden,

is it protecting something,

or withholding it?

Some journeys move

in visible miles.

Others move

in roots.

But how do you recognize growth

when nothing appears to change?

How long do you trust

what is happening beneath the surface?

And what, exactly,

are you waiting for?

And if the door remains closed,

for a month,

a year,

longer—

what part of you

continues planting seeds

anyway?

—Malwina Buldys

A Few Rules, More or Less

when wet, get dry

when cold, get warm

when tired, rest

when the wind blows, bend

when hyper, calm down

when happy, be happy

when sad, be sad

when loving, just love

when hating, see above

when being, just be

always, just be

—Paul Causey

Love is Deathless

I think the trees are exchanging information again.

Not through roots 

but through hesitation.

Every branch holding still

a fraction too long

before surrendering to wind.

This morning the world appeared slightly misaligned:

steam rising sideways from my tea,

a gull circling the parking garage

like it had forgotten the existence of oceans,

my own reflection arriving late

in the dark glass of a storefront.

Maybe love survives this way.

Not dramatically.

Not as monument.

But as a repetition so precise

the universe keeps mistaking it

for one of its physical laws.

The moon pulls water.

Heat bends metal.

Somewhere inside the chest,

something continues

despite every ending placed before it.

Even after the hand releases the hand.

Like the way birds continue singing

during the five seconds after thunder,

as if they hear a door reopening

the rest of us mistake for noise.

Even now,

the flowers on my balcony

close themselves carefully at dusk,

as though darkness

were only another form of listening.

—Malwina Buldys

North of I

Three eagle feathers

crossed oceans before they reached my hands.

One large

two smaller beside it,

like a constellation still remembering

the shape of its own becoming.

Found in Alaska,

carried first toward Hawai‘i,

toward volcanic earth and salt air,

toward the island that once taught me

how to walk barefoot into uncertainty

without losing myself.

But that year

my body became another geography.

Another climate to survive.

And so the feathers waited for me

between worlds—

crossing the Pacific,

crossing absence,

crossing the long interior distance

between who I had been

and who I was becoming.

From Hawai‘i to New York City

they traveled sealed in darkness,

yet arrived carrying sky.

North of I—

there is a place where direction

stops being a map

and becomes listening.

Where the medicine wheel turns inward.

Where east and west dissolve

inside the chambers of the heart.

Where the gravitational hymn

that holds the earth beside the sun

is the same unseen force

that breathes us through grief,

through waiting,

through return.

I think of the eagle

riding invisible currents

it does not question.

I think of how light

sometimes survives by hiding itself

inside the dark.

And I wonder

if these feathers were never meant

to symbolize flight at all,

but trust.

Three quiet witnesses

laid across my palms

one for the body,

one for the spirit,

one for the part of me

still learning

how to navigate

without leaving itself behind.

North of I

there is no arrival.

Only the great inward turning

the moment the soul remembers

it has always been held

by the same forces

that spin galaxies,

lift wings,

and keep even the broken-hearted

in perfect orbit.

—Malwina Buldys

Photo by Emily Romano

Ivory folds of youth

speckle and yellow and bow.

One more drop to earth.

.

.

.

Back again next spring.

—Emily Romano 

Avowals

I thought that if I ran fast enough

at dusk, barefoot

I could escape this plane of existence.

Sometimes consciousness

is a sand burr in your flip-flop,

a bee in your bonnet.

I wanted to meet smart people

who spoke as cleverly as books.

I fell in love with different

versions of myself

teased out by different folks.

I wanted to try out every story

for a minute.

Sometimes a moccasin mile is too far,

let alone a whole incarnated life.

I loved like someone with their hair on fire

behind soundproof glass.

I loved outside the lines

in the coloring book:

in all directions

with too much pressure.

Some days I taste sadness

in a little well

below my collarbone

where I keep my rejection slips

and broken promises,

my dashed hopes

and lost darlings,

but the taste doesn’t make it

to my tongue, my lips.

Laughter burbles up first,

all the quiet miracles to be grateful for.

Why, just yesterday, hundreds of bugs

were crawling over my windows

you can’t imagine the horror,

but I swept them up 

with a song in my heart

because the sun was shining.

It all ends the same

and I’ve been told that’s ok

at the deepest level

from a high enough vantage point.

No half-empty glass

no half-full glass

no glass

only water’s reflection

in the dark that is light.

—Kai Cooley

“Sometimes, the sky drops down to say hello”

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