"Hokusai Says," Roger Keyes

Hokusai says

Hokusai says... Look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing.

He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it,
repeat yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive -
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn't matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.

Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

"Elegance," Hafiz

It

Is not easy

To stop thinking ill

Of others.

Usually one must enter into a friendship

With a person

Who has accomplished that great feat himself.

Then

Something 

Might start to rub off on you

Of that

True

Elegance

"As the Plant That Never Blooms," Pablo Neruda

                    I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
                    or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
                    I love you as certain things are to be loved,
                    in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

                    I love you as the plant that never blooms,
                    but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
                    Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
                    risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

                    I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
                    I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or 
                         pride,
                    so I love you because I know no other way than this:
                    where "I" does not exist, nor "you,"
                    So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
                    So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.

"Washing the Elephant," Barbara Ras

Isn’t it always the heart that wants to wash

the elephant, begging the body to do it

with soap and water, a ladder, hands,

in tree shade big enough for the vast savannas

of your sadness, the strangler fig of your guilt,

the cratered full moon’s light fuelling

the windy spooling memory of elephant?

What if Father Quinn had said, “Of course you’ll recognize

your parents in Heaven,” instead of

“Being one with God will make your mother and father

pointless.” That was back when I was young enough

to love them absolutely though still fear for their place

in Heaven, imagining their souls like sponges full

of something resembling street water after rain.

Still my mother sent me every Saturday to confess,

to wring the sins out of my small baffled soul, and I made up lies

about lying, disobeying, chewing gum in church, to offer them

as carefully as I handed over the knotted handkerchief of coins

to the grocer when my mother sent me for a loaf of Wonder,

Land of Lakes, and two Camels.

If guilt is the damage of childhood, then eros is the fall of adolescence.

Or the fall begins there, and never ends, desire after desire parading

through a lifetime like the Ringling Brothers elephants

made to walk through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel

and down Thirty-fourth Street to the Garden.

So much of our desire like their bulky, shadowy walking

after midnight, exiled from the wild and destined

for a circus with its tawdry gaudiness, its unspoken

pathos.

It takes more than half a century to figure out who they were,

the few real loves-of-your-life, and how much of the rest—

the mad breaking-heart stickiness—falls away, slowly,

unnoticed, the way you lose your taste for things

like popsicles unthinkingly.

And though dailiness may have no place

for the ones who have etched themselves in the laugh lines

and frown lines on the face that’s harder and harder

to claim as your own, often one love-of-your-life

will appear in a dream, arriving

with the weight and certitude of an elephant,

and it’s always the heart that wants to go out and wash

the huge mysteriousness of what they meant, those memories

that have only memories to feed them, and only you to keep them clean.

"The Effect of Cause Despaired," William Bronk

      "Cause and Effect" from Olmo Ling Bon Buddhist Center

Wanting the significance that cause and effect

might have (we see it in little things where it is)

not seeing it in any place

important to us (it is in our lives but in ways

that deny each other) and the totality,

I suppose, is what I mean—it isn’t there—

we look around: the possibilities,

dreams and diversions, whatever else there is.

"Midsummer," William Bronk

                                                                                         "Guardare-ro" by Idhuna




                                          A green world, a scene of green deep
                                          with light blues, the greens made deep
                                          by those blues.  One thinks how
                                          in certain pictures, envied landscapes are seen
                                          (through a window, maybe) far behind the serene
                                          sitter's face, the serene pose, as though
                                          in some impossible mirror, face to back,
                                          human serenity gazed at a green world
                                          which gazed at this face.
                                                                                    And see now,
                                          here is that place, those greens
                                          are here, deep with those blues.  The air
                                          we breathe is freshly sweet, and warm, as though
                                          with berries.  We are here.  We are here.
                                          Set this down too, as much
                                          as if an atrocity had happened and been seen.
                                          The earth is beautiful beyond all change.

"Deepening the Wonder," Hafiz

Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of Form
Always makes the illuminated ones
Laugh and Sing.