life is but a dream
but whose dream is it anyway
but if not, what then
—Paul Causey
A Lullabied Dragon
I am humming a lullaby
hoping my ego will fall asleep
sensing how tired she must be
Not just nap time,
but a long, wary sleep
breathing heat but no flames
I’ll check on her with regularity
for we are bound by birth
I have an unreserved love
for my companion -
feeling if she is able to rest
I, too, will be at peace
Of course, she may be startled
awake by the world knocking about
but by now I’ve learned which
lullabies may soothe her
—Kathleen Burke
A poem in response to: A Day So Happy by Czelaw Milosz and The god of good taste by Ingrid Fetell Lee
Because although I did meet the god of good taste
He felt hollow to me
I saw others around me bowing and scraping to him
And even when I believed,
I was wrong not to participate
In the ritualistic offerings of my authentic self,
In order to survive and thrive in my environment
At the risk of being crushed
The quirky awkward parts of me didn't assent and,
Their embedded smoldering coals,
Held tightly my joy and life force.
And now having emerged
And I say this boldly, while holding my breath,
As it's so new and fragile
That there is no thing on the earth I want to possess.
And no one worth envying.
Just delighting in.
—Jean Lopez
You Look at me and Wonder
Painted Rocks by Paul Causey
What am I. Is this art? What am I supposed to see?
You could tell all kinds of stories about me.
You could say how my sharp edges have been worn down
through the years by wind and rain,
how my rough skin was worn smooth by the proximity of others like me,
others of my kind seeking to find a place of last repose.
Or you could simply say that I am a rock and that is enough.
I need to do nothing, to be nothing other than what I am.
What you make of me is not my concern.
I am what I am.
If I could form words, have lips, a mouth to speak,
that is what I would say.
But since I have none of those things,
have not that capability,
then you must figure it out for yourself.
You can look at me and wonder.
Or not.
—Paul Causey
Inspired by “Reading John Cage on Sound” by Sarah Webb
Reading John Cage on Sound
Rocks by Sarah Webb
John Cage says, sound doesn’t have to
mean anything.
I say, a rock
may be heavy in the hand
may grit against the fingers.
We don’t have to write on it Stone
though I have a stack of four
on my railing for just that purpose–
to write stone in black ink on the flatter side
to write a haiku about time compressed into layers
to tell the rock to be archetype, meaning
but maybe it’s enough just to be rock
and maybe that’s why
the rocks in that stack have sat
through ten summers of heat and rain and the step of doves
and I’ve never written on any of them.
—Sarah Webb
What is a poem?
The writing group dissolved.
I stopped writing
for 15 years.
I became a doctor of sorts
and conducted a business of helping others hear.
I would not hear my own heart calling.
I pushed down my stories, slammed the door shut
tossed the key in the weeds.
When the tidal wave of COVID hit the main land,
I found the Zen writing group.
I lifted a rusted key to a long-locked door to an infinite corridor,
where pickled songs and fairytales lived.
Some tumbled out, eager to see the light and taste the air again.
Some turned their owl eyes away from the darkness,
blinked in the glare of the opening,
uncertain if others would entertain their ugly splendor.
Other songs remain in cobwebs,
buried deep among the bricks,
waiting for a time before death to be revealed.
Some may stay silent.
Some stay afraid
The songs that tumble out, they take our hands.
They guide us to the poems that live on the earth:
to the little green grasshoppers that spring away from our footsteps,
in the long stripes of Bermuda grass that defy Texas drought,
to the striped spiders the size of a silver dollar sidestepping the drip of the watering cans.
There is a poem in the slide of horsehair across the violin strings,
in the furrowed foreheads of symphony players,
determined to boil the perfect spell of sound.
There is a poem in the scream of the child who has no words yet,
in their parents who frown, and sweat and embrace their uncertainty, their fear and their rage,
in the silence of the audio booth that holds them together
There is a poem in the paper wasp that licks a small castle
from nothing to something
in the space of 10 days
There is a poem in the chair painted pistachio.
Despite all its bumps and its scratches in its moving and time,
it resists a collapse,
stays upright and strong.
—Emily Romano
Response to Birdsong, from the Terezin Concentration Camp
If the tears obscure your way,
try to open up your heart to beauty.
Weave a wreath of memories.
The blind man listening in the woods
sees as much as the sighted man,
knows what the birds know
and where (in the world) he stands.
He cannot see the yellow wood sorrel
but he can sense the timbre and tremolo
and knows things about the birds
you haven’t dared to learn.
The birds he hears are free
but we make prisoners of humans.
Children kept in cages.
Here or there, what does it matter?
Separated from their parents.
Then or now, what does it matter?
Across the centuries
the birds observe
the anguish and the misery
and still, the birds sing.
Oblivious to their song, in childhood
I wove a crown of vines in dappled shade
and wore it like a badge o’er my brain
in shadows like the camouflage my cousin wore
when he was shot at
when his innocence was slaughtered
along with his friends.
In my grandfather’s time,
he lied for the privilege to go to war.
In my father’s time,
he had to be drafted.
In my cousin’s time,
the military was his last good option.
In my children’s time,
can war cease?
In their children’s time,
which birds will remain
to sing?
— Erin Taylor
Untitled
bird sings in the trees
leaves sway in the high branches
the world sleeps in peace
—Paul Causey
In Secret
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret.” — Pablo Neruda Sonnet XVII
One night I put God away,
packed Him—Her, perhaps it was—
away like an old toy, a childhood journal.
Not the right path I said, and it was true—is true
that God is too small, a cutout painted,
the edges jagged from scissors that tore the cardboard.
But I packed something else away that night
a love, some slant of light on the sparrow at the bench,
from a face on the street.
Not gone entirely, some scrap
of song, a darkness on the wind
coming round about, not at the front door
but a leak through the sash of the window
no longer nameable.
Maybe this had to be—
to stop pinning and naming, being good,
to stop doing the work
and let the work lead on its secret way.
But, oh, I have lost—the honey
green of leaves in childhood,
a light like milk falling from a basement window.
Throw it on the fire my teacher said.
If it’s true, it will not burn.
And I, childlike, threw it in—
God and all the sacraments, the voice
that whispered to me, the desire
for light and sweetness falling from the air.
And so a long, slow burning
a prayer like a coal in the mind.
So many years, all the world burning
and I do not know where I stand
in a land sacred despite me.
Me still wanting to love—but what?
a glow in the night sky?
Me still wanting to throw it all on the fire—
myself, God, Zen, the boxes and doors and names,
still wanting to stand in the rain and be nothing but rain
still hearing a sound chink chink
bird call, whistle tone
voice asking, do you love me?
and my child voice answering, Yes.
Yes, I love you.
If you tell me to, I will do it again.
—Sarah Webb
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