Poetry for Scientists
------------------------------- Journal Entry 8/14/2000 Distracted from writing a poem about Buddha's non-attachment, I look up the symbolic meaning of the deer just appearing in my yard: gentle and related to the image of the Buddha. I know. Detaching from the feeling I'm in a more special moment, I make tea and mindlessly dig out the coasters I was given months ago and never used...deer images. I know. But how can I not? ******* Warrior 8/14/00 There's a day that begins before you rise from your bed: the dawn of your consciousness awakening. It waits for us at the end of sleep, and stays till our last nod. If you were to follow your breath without defeat for every moment between these two points, you would conquer death in a day. ******* 8/23/13 Here comes the light. Can it come in pieces? The whole thing must be out there somewhere. What takes so long? ******* Prints 10/4/13 You've left your mark upon the world. On your blanket, your spoon. Prints upon walls and cups, trees and stones, pencils and pets; your trail. Your shoes, your mother, your mother's shoes. Touching, imprinting, scattering DNA. The Johnny Appleseeds of loops and lines. Fingertip to fingertip, print to print, leaving traces upon faces. Your clothes, the remote. Your personal signature and seal laying claim to all you touch; inside your glove, on those you love... Every thumb and forefinger of everyone whoever lived left behind a not so silent history of human contact, underground, in the air. Evidence of our grasp at meaning. ******* Dark Gravity 3/30/14 Not everyone you meet is human. There are the walking dead and vampires-- one would eat your brain, the other suck the lifeblood out of you. Black holes roaming our earth, ready to pull us in with all the dark gravity they embody. Avoid these analogies when possible. ******* 2/16/13 Swarming birds never bonk heads, neither do raindrops and snowflakes. ******* 2/16/13 Have you seen the new solar shoes? You can walk for miles with no effort at all. ******* Ever wonder what ants think when you flick them off? Is the world softer when you're smaller? ******* Diet Firefly 7/4/06 There's a man who eats fireflies, he truly does. He goes into the forest at night and waits. As fast as each tiny candle is lit he gobbles them up, smiling a wide sunny glow. Sometimes he collects a whole handful and eats them all at once. He jokes and crunches and opens his mouth showing his jack-o-lantern smile. He puts a few in his pocket for jam, though fresh is the best. He knows we think he's crazy, only because we 've never tasted fireflies before. They're quite civilized, he argues, dabbing the goldleaf corners of his mouth. The light keeps one agile you know. The dawn comes and he's no longer hungry. Leaving the forest, he belches out a golden cloud. ******* 2008 The burning sage resting upon the log resting upon the fire, spoke in words the oak could not understand. Up in smoke they both went, and there is where the conversation began. ******* |
Poems from the Heart
------------------------------- August 17, 2000 She sharpened the world's attention like a finely pointed pencil. A woman in redwood, turned and whittled down to one point by the earth's spinning. Here whirling at the top of the world, cosmos watching, love collected, and spun like cotton candy, and spun like a spider's web, and spun like a dervish. Charmed we hung like cocoons from your branches, strange lanterns whose lights can be seen for years and years. Remind us again about how we are love. ******* There is Always Love Right Now 7/1/09 You may arrive at any time. Love doesn't close down or roll up the carpet. Breathe here now. When love fills your heart, no further explanation is needed. Even at the farthest reaches of the universe is compassion. We can drift there and still make it home. . A finger beckons the way-- come and feel peace. Come trade years of travel for comfort and rest. The best of yourself is most vibrant there. Be with your best, arrive anytime. ******* Cups 4/15/07 Two cups, one empty, one full. Close by there is a fountain that breathes us into being. The empty cup can be filled here. We can only talk around what is inward, never getting there. All the universe is wrapped around the empty cup, and fills it as well. But we can only become quenched from the one that is full. ******* Making Love Happen 2/14/09 Magical Beings of Love. It rolls off the tongue. We don't care where you're from, or how you make it happen, just do it Magical Beings of Love. Look: MBL's popping out of mirrors everywhere! ******* Tracing Valentines 2/14/09 Recognize everything as though it were alive, treat that which is alive as though it were divine, and approach that which is divine as everything you see, and oh how wondrous the world will be. ******* Karma for Bad People 2/6/09 They come back, and in secret learn goodness, and live by a moral compass a compassionate life. This cultivation of the heart is ruled by a ruthless teacher, till all finally understand joy. ******* Big Bang, why Bang? Why not unfold, open, slide, slip, evolve, spring, spill, blossom, transcend? ******* The fertile field of emotion grows flowers whose fragrance unites us all. ******* Little Bang 10/25/07 Suppose God doesn't want to be everywhere? Know everything? A local God with local talents and interests. Small miracles, everyday creations. Low key, comes in unannounced. Comes in without a bang. ******* 8/4/08 Wash the Buddha, polish the stone, tend the fire. Caress the invisible, this is love you're breathing. ******* I choose the God of weaklings. The one you pray to to avoid a fight, to turn everyone's cheek. The God of conflict avoidance. The one that ends wars. A God of mercy. God of let's all just get along. ******* 8/4/08 You could not have eaten ice cream and believe that God doesn't exist. ******* 11/23/07 We live in the fear of dying and the fear of not having lived. ******* |
Observations
------------------------------- There are dreams way safer than reality. How much of the right kind of pain will buy forgiveness? In solitude is the reminder that the self is the location of the battle. A wake-up call to self medicate: take yourself. ******* Wag May 1995 Chippy lying in the road, ear to the ground listening to the universe calling. Did you graduate to two legs? Or stay on four-- a poodle on the eastside maybe? Have you been a bad chippy, doing nasty chipmunk things, thinking evil chipmunk thoughts, and right now becoming a lowly blade of grass? Your tail shifts, are you still with us? Or was it the wind going off with your little rodent soul? Tonight when I return, you'll be rolled-out-thin mammal dough on a black tar cookie sheet. My little chocolate chippy, it's your wagging tail that holds you in my rear view mirror, that holds me to this pen. ******* Again She rides a two thousand year old redwood arrow. Target, the heart of the sun. Pulled back tight, a bow could launch a forest. A special staff trued and trued again. Each morning the target approaches and it shoots forth. Nothing can deter the journey: arrow archer sun. ******* I'm absolutely sure you should beware of those who are absolutely sure. ******* It's a Long Story A man's wife left with his heart. A woman's husband left with her soul. Some leave with kids, even a horse. Lovers get exposed, childhoods are examined to death. Insides hang out. The bicycle left in the garden. The echoes of a distant scent in the empty closet. A man looks at negatives of his family, held up to the moonlight; all that he was, heaved into the corner of the room. A man's wife left with his savings. A woman's husband left with her identity, she even lost her name. She changes places with the image in the mirror now, believing walking backwards can mysteriously change the past. They place their hands inside their bellies to warm them. They all did what they could. ******* VGER The closed flower that awaits the certain sun, holds fast, hangs tough. protecting itself with petaled armor. Siphoning the rivers of the world, it draws up dross to become beauty. Silent strength and bravery is the flower's nature. When the sun comes up, the gloves come off. ******* Hands to Face Mother Nature was startled when she pirouetted past a mirror in the twentieth century. Pulling back, peering in, she adjusts her focus. Eyes wide, she smiles at her beauty and says, it is so. Delighted, she puffs up making faces, trying on all of herself. Ions of looking outward, barren moon, burning stars, the emptiness of black space. She relaxes into who she is: this is me as I am to others Bringing her hands to her gaze, she repeats, this is me. And we are the reflection in her self awareness. ******* Can You See Them October 2001 I'm trying to write those eyes that follow you across the room. Stalking black portals in dark haunting portraits, where the dead come alive. ******* December 12, 2001 They grew apart while together, and together while apart. ******* September 2001 For a sprout, the first lesson about the sun is to pay attention. ******* |