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