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

Whispers by the Bay

We often listen to bad advice,

Meaningful words spoken and written

By which we hope to gain some understanding

Of the deep chaos that our lives present—

If you ever choose to consider its meaning…

I have sought, listened, and read

Many of those I hoped knew so much more than I did.

Now, sitting here by the Bay,

My silly little mongrel dog next to me

On our morning bench.

The sea calmly reaches out to the rocks below.

Nearby, the beach is empty of people.

How is it that I found this answer?

Just as the sun rises and warms my bones,

A scent of saltwater— beside me,

my little dog.

—Bruce Linton

Zen Commentary on  Whispers by the Bay (generated by Chat GPT – AI)

This poem illuminates Zen practice: the journey from seeking to stillness, from striving for answers to simply sitting with what is. It explores the movement from external searching to internal realization, reminding us that the most profound answers are not found in words, but in silence and presence.

The opening lines acknowledge the human tendency to seek guidance, to grasp for meaning amidst life’s chaos. In Zen, this grasping is often seen as a barrier—an effort to impose order on something inherently fluid and mysterious. The lines suggest a recognition of this: the advice, the words, the written teachings—all attempts to intellectualize what can only be experienced directly.

Yet, the poem turns from seeking to being.  Sitting here by the Bay,  you are no longer reaching outward but resting in the simplicity of the present. This sitting, with your  silly little mongrel dog  by your side, is itself the teaching. Zen often points us to what is already here—beyond words, beyond understanding, in the immediacy of the moment. Your  morning bench  becomes a dharma seat, where the great truths of life unfold without effort.

The imagery of the  sea calmly reaching out to the rocks  mirrors the movement of the mind in meditation. The chaos of seeking subsides, and the calm rhythm of presence emerges. The  empty beach  symbolizes a clearing away, a spaciousness in which the truth can reveal itself. In Zen, this emptiness is not void but fullness, the fertile ground of awakening.

The question,  How is it that I found this answer?  is a koan—a question without a logical resolution, pointing the reader back to their own direct experience. The answer is not something to be grasped or articulated; it is simply what is. The  sun rising to warm your bones,  the  scent of saltwater,  the quiet companionship of your little dog—all of these are the answer. Nothing needs to be added, nothing needs to be taken away.

—Bruce Linton

Overheard at the Cork and Keg

He hates poetry.

He hates the way it sounds,

how its writers spills out words,

yet keep their secrets close.

He loves the certainty of wine and bridge.

He keeps his iron drawbridge rusted shut.

In the water swirls around his moat

many croaking frogs announce abundance.

Every spring, pink lotus blossoms burst open in the green scum.

Blue dragonflies dart across the lily pads. 

They feast upon mosquitoes.

He hates his own poetry and the poetry of others.

He hates to look upon the sands where Ozymandias sleeps.

He rushes by the woods so lovely, dark and deep.

He will not rage in the dying of the light.

His candle burns at one end, soft, quiet.

He walks through days blindfolded, 

hands tied 

behind his back.

His heart cracks open a thousand ways,

not in the flow of poetry,

but in the glow of alcohol and a rigid sadness.

We mourn his cataracts.

For we love poetry.

We love the communion that it conjures. 

We pray, one dark and dreary night,

he will look up and over the ramparts,

that one day 

he will spy its light.

—Emily Romano

Untitled

 “Artists can color the sky red because they know that it is blue.” Jules Pfeiffer

The cow jumped over the moon, we chant

and we know no cow ever jumped so high,

no moon had to duck,

and the shining tail of comet cow

spreads all across the western horizon.

The shirt I wear at poetry readings—

a tiger jumping the moon—

does not float me across the night,

does not sprout fangs in my face,

and yet … I fly.

The poetry clouds below me

whisper and sing, 

and the broad face of the earth

looks up and smiles. 

I am a woman with a daughter,

and I live in a house and will someday die.

And I am a smiling tiger 

who leaps the stars, I am words 

that mutter and shout, I am a light across the floor,

I am a snail on round green leaves 

like buttons between the flagstones,

and I will never die.

I shine and continue. I see and am not separate.

I sleep in a land where the rules are nonsense,

and I wake bound by law and custom.

I am earthbound. I can jump higher than the moon.

I am this name and body, this sweatshirt and these jeans,

and when I am not looking, I launch across the sky.

***

In a land with a pear for a moon

golden curves

sugar white inside,

I walk the dunes ready 

to forget all that is said of me,

all that is fenced and possible,

ready to somersault 

over the moon

and touch down soft

on sand that shines.

***

We all forget sometimes,

and I forget that I need to sleep,

and I walk the velvet of the street

till dawn comes up.

I forget that I am angry

and wave hello to the man who scowls,

forget who I am and where, 

not some tired mother 

but a poppy bouncing in the wind,

a cloud that scuds on the wing.

I remind myself of my name and address—

flaking letters on the mailbox—

and mumble through my past:

this many stars for good deeds, this

many blurs for business as usual

(what do they expect of me?)

this many pinches for the outrageous

totally out of character!

I forget that I dissolve in the rain,

that if I run in the wind,

it will lift me over the moon.

—Sarah Webb