H.E.R.O.N

 Today I swam, silent, behind my daughter

through cool water, the wind a touch,

riding low waves, green and silver,

following the signs she is teaching me

in my new deafness:  H.e.r.o.n.  D.o.c.k.  Come.

 

Her head bobbed, a dark seal, past Jean's dock

and submerged rocks, out onto the open lake

and the rougher waters of the drowned river channel,

Tim's pier then and the neighbors' past, and there, See.

A gray shape under the silver Xs of the pipes,

stilt-legged, slow. The heron.

 

And my daughter tracking him.

She turned to point and I bobbed my fist to say, Yes.

Yes, I see him. Yes, I see you. You have led me to a good place.

 

She raised her camera in its pouch,

head and camera blending in the bright of the water.

He stepped along the shore, and she followed.

Brown against brown, I saw her take her shot,

shadow stepping into light, the jab for fish,

then, tall against blue and cloud, head lifted,

iconic bird of water and rock and sky.

 

Heron and girl fixed in my gaze.

I saw her glide to the bird through the silver, close,

so close she looked up to see him and I marveled he did not take flight.

And I took my own picture, having no instrument but my heart

to say, Look and remember: here is the one I have loved in this life

learning to see, learning to live. 

—Sarah Webb

—Heron by Amanda Webb

Pondering plant viruses and self-knowledge

Stretching myself, scapula peeled back like the sky:

Knowing and not knowing, so not writing down

the nascent, subsoil milky specks at night

(and more twinkle out if you look longer).

To calm the rods in the eyes of the dandelions,

this I have learned by eating all the UV rays

and casting skin of my poems,

hiding convex in

curled-toe honeydews,

whether parasamgate pairs

     of aphids

     are to be spoken, their

velvet skin, the most unnatural neons, seeming like

garbhas of seaweed

and barnacled pupils lapping

     without dimension…

Is this what is to be learned?

Is this all that I have learned

in the past murky warp of a year?

      that I am too surrealistically snotty

and too wildly naturalistic to enjoy Hart Crane and T.S. Eliot anymore?

too obsessed with Taoist and Zen hermits to enjoy Shakespeare anymore?

      or is the real lesson the unwhispered waters of wonder,

that the sweetgum glow hazel

     in August on earth pure lands

with or without ontology,

     their seeds home to unimaginable Buddha lands,

capillaries pressed out

     in unpunctured volcanic dicots

returned to the unchanging inner monocot—

I’ve learned I’m too skiddish to be a contemplative for now,

my last name is Jennings, not Merton,

and maybe that’s a ton better for me,

nothingness being flowers, la mer, and nothingness—

inside the dead ladybug on my windowsill,

clouds beckon unswept revelations…

—Tom Jennings

The day I learned what “Sow” meant

 The day I learned what “Sow” meant 

After “Saint Francis and the Sow” by Galway Kinnell

Sow sat, ‘neath ferny vernal waterfall,

      sewing seeds of dispassioned 

compassionate awakening,

     the True Sow of No Title—

      hooves rooting and melting

into stationary sewn soil,

     its own clover solar flare,

chanting the nameless

     sewn threads of the

     thatchy tails of trees

     above, 

with milken dreamy love—

      In the modal darkness of dusky

tree bark, Sow sees the

      millipedal centipedes

nesting in unimpeded emptiness,

     sewing their own selfless blessings,--

        kissing the 

        violet waters of age—

Sow sees loamy mud, each divot

      a pew for mildew’s salvation,

tails of time tracked and milled by other

peregrine-sows,

pebbles in the mud

      blebbing stupas and surging granulites

rounding to starbathed coil

      of the sun’s ray-seeds

and the egg-seeds of beached

saintly horseshoe crabs on 

the innate shore of Sow,

bleached in Sow’s

     resoundingly silent stillness—

Sow, whose stomach acid

      is sulfurously placidly absolving,

wouldn’t even dissolve bone, fanning own

      borne molecules in liquid cremation

but nurture them into needlepoint-glowing

firefly bacterioles and 

       throw them back out, to love

into neatly monasteries of pig-pillow algae,

      hooved with the stardust

      of countless galaxies of

      Franciscan birds, opening their membranes to all,

         crying 

         and

         wanting nothing.

—Tom Jennings

“Essence” is a Phony Word

 Bodhisattvas in empty earth

       but never really—up past wormy holy

underworld—to mind without walls

       innate in

empty eggshell

      already hatched

and having nothing,

       solar cumulus columnar, wordlessness,

    immanence

of speechless symphonic grasses,

    their aquaporins precisely 

        minute:

    voidfabric, whole waterfall canyons

of watery veins

         ambivalent of apical self-natures

or idea outside of valent electrons

         pulsing the stillness of

froggy hollow waters, sky delicately wrapped

in the gaps of cells

        and so vesicles veritably gloved suchly,

a voyagerless return—

the drunken idiotboat

with harpsichord of splinters

lapping tongues underneath the

other shore—

and salamander sidles up to frog

in the hills of unchanging 

         untreaded tadpole evolutions and asks:

“why did the dinosaurs come from 

           the pangea west?”  and frog says:

“I will tell you”

           and before frog can say a word

           frog is eaten by swallowbird

and the eye of unfathomed essence

is consummated and 

        frog reappears—

and bodhisattva’s flowers are resplendored

and get stepped on by accident,

the sky still pervading everything,

clouds pointing at your own head

and the head of the knobby rhythmic 

knees of herons with tapestries

of lulling pine-smell forest history

within them, forgotten and unrealized,

taped with words and

extinguished by extant is-ness

      and its soft

unblown

     breath

—Tom Jennings

Dish

 

—Kim Mosley

Porous Line

Waiting at the

porous line

twixt night & day,

Silence

embraces me

with the ease

of a lover,

whispering

sweet truth,

“Enough, enough.”

I surrender, willing

to be satisfied.

—Martha Koock Ward

When I Rise

When I rise in the morning

the world is dark.

I fall, seeing the darkness,

thinking dark is the day.

When light edges in timid

in mist in the east

I fall timid to meet the day.

I fall timid, reaching for this to do

thinking, oh no, avoid, refrain--

do and refrain, gain this, lose that.

I fall into dark before the day rises

fall into the small confine of my body

and the day not begun.

When I rise in the morning

the floor cold on my feet

water cold in my mouth

and my mind still caught in the cool of dream

and the day glimmers through the blinds,

I turn from the room where I cannot see,

to the day that is turning to morning

to a junco on the wire of the feeder

to steam from the kettle under the stove lamp

and I do not say, this is what to do

this what I expect, what I expect of you.

Then the day rises with me and around me

and the sun appears over the hill.

—Sarah Webb

No Time to Spare

“How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn.

Billionaires, all of us.” - Ursula LeGuin

No Time to Spare

Each day hundreds of intersections

breached. Whether to stop, pause or

gun through are my pivotal choices.

More & more these bisections are

dissections of lives in debris.

Through layers of life lived, choices made,

paths never explored, diversions,

loss & pain devour the remains of this

and that person before my very eyes.

No time to spare. Where is the dollar tucked,

the bag of snacks, clean socks, and such to

share, to say I see you there? And, yet where

am I going, so urgently? How am I going

down the road to my inevitable demise?

Aren’t I and this beleaguered road side

guy on the same side of the time lane?

Sometimes delayed by factors of construction

or a jam, I come upon a scene of destruction

crash site, injured soul, chaos of crisis,

bodies to dispose. Here in thought, I pause

reckon with whatever cause to which I’m

rushing, and I give thanks to this person gone,

who likely took my place, as I move on,

with no time to spare

—Martha Koock Ward

Imperfection

—Kim Mosley

KINTSUGI

KINTSUGI

the Japanese art

of golden repair

“If the ice cracks

And no one is there

to hear it,

does it make

a sound?”

If a friend is having

a birthday

and you are sheltered

in at home

and the world is chaotic

and you can’t celebrate,

is it really a birthday?

If your husband

drops the coffee pot

into the sink to clean it

and breaks your

last little juice cup

of your favorite set,

then fusses at you

for leaving it

where it does not belong

after a million demands

not to do so,

If the gold glitter

glue you bought

months ago

and left sitting on

the kitchen counter

among vitamin bottles

seems to suddenly

call out with possibilities

and obviously there

is no coincidence

because a few

years ago

you read about Kintsugi

and thought you might try it

and that’s why the glue

was there in the first place

for accomplishing

the art of embracing flaws

and imperfections and

making everything

more beautiful

and really that

is what everyone

needs the most of right now—

more and more beauty

---the golden repair of

Kintsugi,

the essence of resilience,

something we all

can use as we age,

believe me I know——

So here, your own Kintsugi,

my personal expression

of gratitude

for you, my friend,

on this, your day--

Wabi Sabi,

the beauty of

the imperfect

made perfect

especially for you!

Happy Birthday!

—Judy B. Myers

A Bag of Grateful Bones

—Kim Mosley

Walking with Ollie

He stopped us at the park looking for the orange ball we played with two days ago,
the ball I picked up, carried home and left on the front porch,
the ball we stepped over to walk down the steps,
the ball that was ideal for his small mouth.
Maybe he thought another one would magically appear
just as the first one did.
It's hard to know the mind of a dog.

I met a neighbor and fellow teacher
who talked about her hair falling out in patches due to stress
And I talked about my gray roots.
What can you do during a pandemic?
Somehow hair just doesn't seem that important.
en if the beauty shops are starting to open.

We walked down Burnet Road, the road dividing the two jewelry stores
that were robbed last week.
Everything looks normal now, but it doesn't feel normal yet.
Random violence leaves its mark no matter if one is directly involved or not.
It reminds you that anything can happen at any time.
I guess that is not so bad a thing to remember.

At last we returned home to see two very sunny day lilies
Smiling, beckoning us to draw near as they swayed in the breeze.
As we approached, Ollie was oblivious
Or more likely, he was aware of something imperceptible to me
A smell intriguing only to a dog perhaps.

I, however, quickly narrowed in the motionless change in color: See both photos.

— Laurie Winnette

Turning Toward

I reach out to touch their hands,
my beloved grandchildren
I cannot reach their palms
or feel their touches now—

I am so near at times,
yet far away
we walk together
mindful not to
touch,

six feet away—the rule,
you are too close.
we want you to stay well.

days, now weeks
of distancing,
no touching

sometimes my mind
says, “do as you please,
you are 80,
no one can tell you
what to do,"

then I remember
what has taken
all these years to learn,
it’s not about me,
nothing is or ever was

now in the spaces
between us
moon lilies sprout
from the swamp of silence
with unexpected beauty.

—Judybmyers