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

The Long Work

in the end there will be only one essential story

--Ire’ne lara Silva

It was a burning—the rind, the straw burnt away.

I hoed the garden, sweat down my eyes, 

and held on as cramps came,

in my legs, in my faith.

It was holding too long to the false,

the delusion of a perfect life, a perfect self.

They burned anyway, a house

that fell to ash and stone.

It was failing and failing.

So much I tried to keep to—

success and plan and doing right—

smolders now gray to the wind.

It was holding on and holding on, persisting,

long days on the cushion as I sat in the heat

and pain bent me and the mind roused—


but wasn’t that practice too a mechanism of self?

 

Even so, muscle and bone are strong.

They keep on walking, though I do not know the road.

I cannot do what I was called to do.

Yet it may still be done. 

It is love walking with me, 

brushing through grass.

Stems rise, wrong-headed and kindly,

love looking again and forgiving.

It is meals served and floors swept,

tears dried and tomatoes watered.

It is the truth spoken, sideways and straight.

It is asking and forgetting to ask.

It is an opening here in the heart

and something comes through.

Over and over that door opens.

It is greeting what comes.

—Sarah Webb

Things I love #2025

9 am in La Villita 

Mayans rinse the streets

Water flows from hoses

Above in trees the bird chatter

crackles the air, stuffs it with gossip,

a hit song you’ll never hear on a radio

amidst commercials for insurance and ice cream

Turn the corner in October

You’ll see

38.5 feet Catrinas 

Photo by Emily Romano

The woman skeleton on the left

Extends a butterflied finger

She towers on the shoulders of generations

the living and the dead 

It’s what makes the city bloom:

the birds, the butterflies, the water, the families

we all fall from the tightrope above

this city is the net that catches our fear,

bounces it back up into joy 

spanning borders, united in this moment

in this turning of the corner

in La Villita, on a crisp October day.

Photo by Emily Romano

—Emily Romano

The Daisies of Good and Bad

This spring, flowers sprang up in my front yard and grew fast, deep scalloped leaves and yellow petals. I knew them—cowpen daisies, wildflowers that appear in disturbed soil. I also knew that if I did not keep up with them, they would take over—appealing now, a shaggy, insect-ridden mess later. But life was full, and I neglected the task.

Photo by Sarah Webb

I was busy with the garden I’d planted inside the gate away from the deer and the road: peppers and cucumbers, pots and vines and sturdy plants. I enjoyed getting up early and watering the pots of green leaves, the swelling Bell peppers so green and sculptural. Small butterflies floated above my pots, lovely with black and white and a flame of orange and yellow down the wing.

One day, leaving the gate, I brushed against a daisy as tall as I was and crowded with black caterpillars. Ugh! Were they in my hair? Webbed and drying leaves made me shrink back. These would have to go! 

 

      

Photo by Amanda Webb

     

I came back with a shovel and extracted a few of the most infested plants, ones with whole branches laden with black crawlies, but the patch filled half the lawn and caterpillars were starting all through it. Were they going to migrate into the rose bushes? into my peppers? I walked the ones I’d dug up across the road to the brush where the deer slept and left them there to propagate or be eaten. I looked uneasily at the mass that remained.

That night I sat down at my computer, worried for my garden. Would I have to get those daisies out ASAP? Black caterpillars cowpen daisies were my search terms. A result popped up immediately: If you’re lucky enough to have cowpen daisies in Central Texas, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to host the Painted Lady butterflies that they host. Images followed: my lovely butterflies, the yellow of the daisies, the spiky black caterpillars I was so alarmed about. A circle of life! exclaimed the article. The daisies fed the caterpillars who turned into Painted Ladies and laid their eggs in the drying leaves. 

I went out to look, and sure enough, a hovering butterfly was a Painted Lady and the caterpillars on the elegant green leaves had stripes down their sides just like in the article. I had my own circle of life. 

Photo by Sarah Webb

Here is a photo of my lovely caterpillars on my lovely daisies, which I am leaving all across my lawn.

Photo by Sarah Webb

—Sarah Webb

Untitled

Holding others despair while living my life :

I want to share in the magnitude of this global pain 

Particularly you Gaza

Despair for what you endure daily 

I stand with you in solidarity 

Letting you know through nameless energy 

That this what you face is wrong and evil 

As anything ever was, or is

And there’s been a lot of wrong and evil 

Perpetuated by us, this human race 

And yet not withstanding the horrors 

In my day to day life 

I am blown open to the sacredness of presence 

The many tasks of living ground me

The moments of deep connection 

The way nature splays, and splashes 

Unchecked 

Her abundance of light, color and life

I don’t know how to stand 

In the fullness of my life 

With it’s pain and plenty 

Without belying the agony of yours 

I don’t know how to uphold both

This upended world 

Along side nothing changing 

Just now in my daily life

—Jean Lopez

Fall

Within the thunder of the waterfall, I am the rocks within.

Victoria Falls, Seongo or Chongwe, “The Place of the Rainbow.”

Pummeled by liquid, pounded by gravity, 

I depend on rain, on the breeze, on the rush of a red-necked falcon’s wings.

Prisms of mist lift from great sheets of water jumping over the edge

5,600 feet down, look up to the decades rushing into the present.

Funny how something so soft dropped high enough, fast enough

batters a rock and like a paper bark tree I grow smooth and I bend.

I am pliant, like clay.

I learn everyday.

—Emily Romano

Bad

 

— Kim Mosley

Possibilities

Beneath the evening’s veil of hazy twilight

lies a world of contradictions,

yin and yang, in circling harmony,

constantly changing, rearranging

lives with hardly any notice.

It doesn’t take much to see it, only awareness,

awareness that anything is possible,

that there truly are blue birds with red breasts

and a yellow beak,

that fairies with small gossamer wings

dart from one flower to another,

replenishing each with sweet nectar

for the bees to make their honey,

for the hummingbirds to hum.

It’s not hard to see beneath the veil.

It only requires us to remember

the child within us when make-believe

was real, when truth be told was still relevant.

—Paul Causey

Stone Knows

stone

knows its place 

in dark, in sun

everywhere

still,

it lets things move

jackrabbit blurs

so fast, stone doesn't see him

men can join stone to stone

stack a wall, set a path

walls fall and paths tilt

but stone is willing

what does it matter 

this fleeting touch?

—Sarah Webb

Contemplation on Depth in Practice Reading

I love the description of Buddha fields in tonight’s reading, of each of us as the cultivator and cultivated, each as teacher and facilitator to the other.

I love the vision of Buddha fields that these reading holds, as both internal and external, as  both specific to one and at the same time expansive & indistinguishably interconnected with all buddha fields.

And how this reading is, as our practice is, a poetic reminder of the interwovenness of all things, all moments, all activity, be they our thoughts and actions or those happening around us.  And a further reminder of how the teachings, although limited by mere words, weave into our bodies, minds, and emotions, and soften our limited notions, much like a basket weaver softens grapevine and reshapes each part of the vine into a new creation with each part intersecting, overlapping, intertwined, and indiscernible as separate from all other parts. 

I so love how the teachings and our practice re-form us, much like the grapevine is reshaped, softening and inter-weaving us with the lives of others to co-create a life of less suffering for ourselves, for each other, for all.

—Nelda Adamson

It’s About the Journey

It’s about the journey, 

I get told, not the destination.

Three dogs later I wonder

which of the dogs is walking with me

and if it’s not about the destination

why do we have to climb up that hill

and not just sit and look into the valley?

My dog —Rex or Happy or Maggie—

pants beside me.

The smell of blackberries heating

in the sun on the bushes below

wafts up to us. Even I, 

with a twenty-thousandth of the olfactory power

of my doggy companion,

know that sweet-sour tang

that belongs only to blackberry.

Rex gets up, stiff legged, and looks at me.

All right, I say, let’s get some,

and we climb down.

Happy always loved blackberries.

He would cock his head

and eat them oh-so-carefully off the vine.

No thorns that way, Rex says. 

We wander on, 

full of the taste of blackberry.

—Sarah Webb

In the Middle

Inspired by “How I would paint happiness” by Lisel Mueller,

and “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself” by Emily Dickenson,

and “The start of something” by Stuart Dybek

I was born in the middle of something,

Something that had been going on long before me.

I am assuming that whatever it is

will continue long after me.

I hope that I didn’t start this mess,

but maybe I can help to end it.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of a change in attitude,

a change in perspective.

Maybe, just maybe, I can be the difference

and be the beginning of something new,

something real and good.

But first, I must find myself,

lost in the darkness, I am,

but with you as my lantern, 

perhaps I can find my way again.

That would make me happy, 

like cherry blossoms in spring,

set loose by a sudden breeze,

each petal settling gently in

the palm of my hand.

And suddenly, there I was.

—Paul Causey

Poem for Bruce Linton and Appamada Friends

I take refuge in the sound.

Sounds that enter a fluid filled snail shell in our heads

pluck the nerves of our harp strings.

Sometimes, too much sound comes crashing in,

destroys the strings.

So, I take refuge in my strings that sing still.

I take refuge in the ducks palavering on muddied pond.

I take refuge in the bird calls welcoming a rest from sun.

I take refuge in the sigh of the runner stopping on the lane.

I take refuge in the songs of India emanating from the radio in the refugees’ hands.

I take refuge in the rush of water under the scurrying bellies of ducks,

in the gravel of the paths beneath our feet,

in the coded conversation of twin brothers walking by,

the leaves of trees whispering messages in the wind,

the roar of far-off traffic blaring by,

the laughter of the little girl throwing breadcrumbs to the chattering ducks,

the man’s hand patting the bark of the dying tree,

the creaks of my knees.

I take refuge that the ringing in my head is briefly veiled by the mist of outside sounds.

I take refuge in the heat in the spray of garden hose against our feet,

in the press of air against my skin,

in flapping of a cormorant’s wings.

I take refuge that none of this will last.

But it feels so good to be here, now, with you.

—Emily Romano

the start of something

the start of something always seems somehow

to only be new moments in perfect fit 

with everything already full grown,

softening belief that it is fate

which informs my life,

and the more I consider

such paths of inevitable destiny

the more I feel that fate 

makes plans only in my absence.

so thankfully I can say 

starting means continuing to make peace 

with this arguable dance of jurisprudence

that doesn’t offer freedom in any form.

which means I buckle up my dancing shoes 

on my feet of clay

upping the ante of being seen

dancing on water like a substitute savior,

and sinking,

realizing that nothing

not even the wet 

can be fully known

so no more starting 

but staying 

with the Zen master’s advice

that “when in doubt

turn to curiosity.”

enjoy the world that is a dream

and barely a description of a truth

that everything which will happen

happens today,

with all things arising

all at once

in an intimacy of essence.

—Ed Sancious

In the Silt

Inside there is a folded place.

It opens its wings

as the two sides of a shell,

a clam

or the bone white

angel shell, elegant

and ribbed.

Inside that place, hidden

dark in the silt of this beach,

a grief. 

It bubbles in the wash of my gaze:

a long-ago sadness,

a new one. 

Things were hard

and there was nothing to be done.

Things are still hard.

There is little to be done.

I let the bright-eyed mind

trace the old scar

and I feel the tremble.

Here you are, I say.

I am with you.

—Sarah Webb

Butterfly

As the butterfly discovers the ending is not like the 

beginning. We crawl towards our endings from 

place, friend, and dream. Did the butterfly miss 

his silk cocoon. Did it regret silence? The cramped 

space? After I left my Mother’s warmth, found 

betrayal like the butterfly who gains flight and loses 

silence my beginning safer lighter than light. 

—Joan Canby

“Chickadee”

Two swans perform a magic act 

behind a beaver dam.

Now you see them, now you don’t.

The glowing gold of sunset nestled to horizon.

Summer’s sweat chilled our necks, signaled time

walk back,

past the majestic white birch 

lounging like a Mata Hari against the elder elm. Glowing roots mixed dizzy into earth. 

Mom limped ahead, afraid of the coming night.

 I strayed behind and waited for a sign.

Then came the quiet flutter 

chickadee wings. 

One by one they leaped from seed to seed. 

Whatever one had missed the next one snapped 

like grape pickers in California fields. Except 

these chickadees picked seed for no one 

but themselves. 

Maybe because I stood still and quiet 

they paid me no mind. 

They leapt from the right, pod to pod,

 crossed the trail so close I could feel 

small wing’s wind on skin,

on to the pods to the left towards the water,

to the magic of the swans. 

Acrobatic little balls of fluff, sometimes upright bouncing on the tightrope of a stem, 

sometimes upside down,

snatching sweetest treats of a pod bowing down back to the earth from where it first sprung.

I stood in twilight’s breeze, listened 

to the distant stories: 

birds settling down for the night, 

the mixing of the water, 

the trills of frogs, 

winged hum of bugs, and, in between, 

soft landings of the chickedees leap to 

leap in line. 

It’s all you give for priceless thrill:

wait in stillness and silence,

the earth knows what to do.

—Emily Romano

Looking At Wild Cherry Trees

not that words will always fail,

but why does the tongue insist

that language with syllables and consonants

is able and willing to test

what should only be known as divine?

this fullness of emptiness

is normal 

at best

when just short of understanding.

not teasing time

to query the essence of source,

but holding wonder

at the shape of creation’s outcomes.

so I hold this as ambition…

to be a partner in silence

to treasure this alibi of form.

—Ed Sancious

Smile!

— Kim Mosley 

Time Changes Everything

Time changes everything,

and it also stays the same -

in crystalline perfection.

But grand hands hold the

infinite crystal,

between massive, imaginary,

and endlessly delicate, illusory

fingers …

slowly turning the crystal

playfully,

examining the view from

different combinations of the

clusters and varieties of

facets … turning, turning, turning

… with continued interest in

the variety of views.

This crystal was birthed from

nothing, in illusory time, so

despite the inevitable return to

the empty state, the

evolution, the progress,

that continues, aids

the observer, turning

the stone.

And when energy settles

and boredom sets in,

shifts occur,

changing every facet …

like endless math,

and play,

and joy …

an amusing experience,

like a ride … or a show

on a screen, with the

observer riding the waves,

each like a new soundtrack,

a new book …

on and on

Variety, coexistent with

unity … possibly due to

the variety of dimensions

coexisting but appearing

separate due to varieties

in conscious perception …

Isn’t it grand.

—Lucy Lenoir

Untitled

Right now,

sitting by the Bay,

the

 tide whispers my contentment.

Noodle hunts for smells in the grasses

and the succulents that

grow above the breakwater.

Stones, like Buddhas, piled up

to meet the oncoming tide.

I swear, one vertical stone

looks like Bodhidharma!

And here I am—

sun on my face,

the sea-salt wind coming

off the Bay,

indulging myself in a delicious

cup of coffee,

writing these words.

How did I end up

approaching 75 years

living in

this floating world?

—Bruce Linton

“Bird”

“I’ll slit your throat while you sleep, son”

So prophesized the whiskey-clouded beast.

So spun the wheels 

in the attic of the 5-year-old boy.

Eyes shuttered shut, he wraps moth-feasted sheets 

tight around his sweaty neck, the sweetest noose.

He doesn’t know what else to do.

He isolates in the space that follows the stumbling tread on creaky stairs.

Sincere efforts work to counteract this doom.

A Chicago winter in December, 1949

flutters her snowflaked tresses through the walls, blankets the boy in numb.

While in New York, in 1945, Charlie Parker’s fingers raced along a saxophone,

such that now, in 1949,

a Be-Bop blanket of sound bounces from a radio, flies through the air.

This, too,

armors the shivering boy,

such that when the beast (finally) dies,

the boy becomes a man, thawed from the freeze, ready for flight.

—Emily Romano

Bare Into the World

The things I think I know  

are old and tired, mostly.  

Sneakers battered by long days,  

soles splitting, collapsing sides.

The once-white long since  

draggled through the filth  

of urban concrete and  

wetly muddened fields.  

Still, I grapple them on.  

I make them my feet.  

They shape the ways I wobble  

in the world. Lurch. Leave my  

staggered indentations, prints  

declaring, “I have touched this place.”  

Yet, like the shapes they press  

into my paths, they are askew.

How long has it been since I  

squished my arches into the  

spring of moss, tickle of fronds,  

earth ionized by rain?  

Since I went bare into the world?  

Sending my inner heart to  

my soles and closing  

eyes, connecting,  

as with roots,  

to a single  

moment of evanescence  

and arising, decomposition  

and the revelations of tiny birds?

—Geneve Gil