So you should view this fleeting world -- A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, A flash of lightening in a summer cloud, A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream. ~ The Diamond Sutra     Sunday afternoon I attended a celebration of life ceremony for a...

In 2001 Thanksgiving Day Steve and I drive East on 66.   I was nervous to meet Steve’s Aunts and uncle and cousins, and nieces and their close friends. So we drive down the road and listen to all of Alice’s restaurant on the radio first.   I carry my bowl of...

Holding a space for writing is similar to teaching choreography and improvisation. I have the luxury of no syllabus. I lie in bed the morning of the class and imagine each person. I think of their writing styles and desires. I think of what we have been working on,...

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                    ...

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...

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...

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...