Ordinary life fits the absolute as a box and its lid. The absolute works together with the relative like two arrows meeting in mid-air. *    Sandokai Harmony of Difference and Sameness                                       by Shitou Xiqian                     Jake’s...

When you make a poem, you become an active soul, not a victim. ~ Gregory Orr     Driving up the thin dirt road above Jamestown to Jo and Glenn’s house I hug the land side. And then I can’t really hug the land side as my tires fit into tracks. Part of the road gives...

Sometimes I am sitting in a chair with my mouth open, and someone I barely know is yanking at my tooth.   Sometimes I move freely about the kitchen, watching almond milk move in small heaps and bubbles.   I cut lilacs from the neighbor’s yard.   I tell a small group...

When I was in high school, I went to an outdoor concert in Concord, Mass that lasted all night. It’s so crowded I can’t get in to the porta-potties so I pee under a pine tree about a foot from someone’s blanket. The scene is all free feeling, music, boys. I wander...

The Yoga Workshop is closing. Thirty years old. Elizabeth invites a bunch of us to practice one last sun-salutation, Surya Namaskar. I keep thinking about it, but don’t write back. Cindy writes: “I wouldn’t know what to do.”  I spent all the 1990’s there, well into...

Some people move money around. Others launder their money. I move laundry around. I hang my wet clothes on the line remember them a little later and its already snowing a few inches. I go out, shake them off, bring clothes in, open closet doors an inch, toss a sheet...

Today the frost clings on all the branches equally like how fire clings to a log. ~ I sit here in the studio. I miss Gay, my dear friend. She’s in Berkley still, and we’ve been out of touch. We met at University of Colorado as choreography students. Our lockers were...

This morning, right after the sun, I scraped ice off windshield and drove East, past black cows, brown horses, corn and oil fields, into the small town of Mead. A huge decoration says, Peace on Earth. Deflated plastic Santa and reindeer lie on the ground. We lie on...