Diets, mantras, bedtimes,
doses, meditations —
happiness has been forecasted.
A million rules later
one unruly mind, one quarrelsome heart
refuse to be coaxed from orbit.
After all,
what can overpower their chemical dance?
Well, a sunny day, a groaning violin,
or a tender smile.A million rules laterand I’m still on trackto surrender to the twisting winds.
“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were a only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”
From Swann’s Way
Rainbows and sunsets
always sulk behind the lens.
So does the shine
stretched across your eyes,
so does the tilt
of your bottom lip.
It’s no wonder we
look washed out.
Pass me the last one.
We work hard at night.
How could we share
the hours, layers
of icy breath
lifting toward
winking stars?
My caffeine heart
is a tantrum-throwing
child in a grocery store. One minute she’s
white teeth and glittery eyes –
the next she’s
kicking her feet against my eardrums. I swear
I give her plenty of air
but on she wails about
Yesterday’s paper cuts,
Tomorrow’s steely clouds,
Today’s loose grip on time.
This girl likes her poison.
I keep it coming.
She keeps it flowing to thoughts
thirsty to live –
thoughts long
overdue to die.
Does your tongue dare
try to share
watery scenes from your dreams?
Details emerge, blunted,
soggy, half-blind beneath this morning’s
heavy traffic – thoughts stretching, streaming
out from wherever they sleep.
Dreams pay a heavy price when
words catch up – latch on – smudge
the elusive dream language.
Don’t dreams just taste better
safe in the solitude
of your heart’s cradle,
sleeping undisturbed?
Without warning the familiar pull
to speak and smile in perfect harmony
lends me the grace to dip my tongue
into the silvery pool of conversational talk.
It ends the same. Two voices deliver
the harvest of their minds, thoughts unraveling,
into a heap. The conspicuous
absence of beginning and end. I wish
to bend and twist with other branches,
but out I stick, taut, serious, too much my own.
Peace comes when that pull to combine with
the others passes – I am again centered
between ground and sky, calm and contained
inside these four quiet walls.
This was inspired by the poem reproduced below from Cold Mountain Poems, the Zen Poems of Han Shan, Shih Te, and Wang Fan-Chih. The bitter taste of an unfulfilling interaction is familiar.
XX
I’m used to living in some hidden, shaded,
mountain place,
but once in a while I walk straight into the
Kuo-Ch’ing Temple,
and sometimes I pay a call on old Feng Kan,
or go to see that honorable sir, Shih Te, the
foundling.
But then I come home, alone, to my cold cliff.
No one’s talk makes perfect harmony with mine.
I search a stream that has no source.
The spring dried up, but the stream water’s still
flowing.
Have you one person
knocking at your heart?
She has grown too big
for the space you cleared out
years ago.
You feel her nudge
on winter mornings;
across the mountains
her body rests
warm and safe in bed.
But her dreaming eyes
soak up secrets leaking
through her dreams –
she is being chased –
she is trapped at the very top –
she is lost – she is slipping –
Is that you chasing her?
You just wish her thoughts
spun soft,
light as the tapering snow.
Beneath the blanket
she grips hot sheets
with sweating hands.
“When we feel cut adrift, it is often because our unacknowledged wishes are crying for our attention and we are turning a deaf ear. At such times we need to take pen to the page and listen to the voices within us that want further expression in our lives. We must make our unconscious conscious. We must allow these voices to help us grid our growth or we will grow helter-skelter and not in directions that give us the soul satisfaction that we crave.”
~Julia Cameron, from The Sound of Paper
Symptoms include sputtering breath
and high winds behind the eyes.
Possibility of sudden dizziness
and eyes blurring at the sight of memories.
High risk of forgetting the graceful sheet
of stars and moon above the clouds.
May coincide with severe boredom
and perceived inability to move the limbs.
Treatment consists of forgetting yourself
and tending to the rest of the garden.
Common side effects involve a flip flopping heart
and the desire to fold back into oneself.
For help please solicit the love of everyone
needed to calibrate the mind.
The trees have grown naked quickly this fall. But still there are splashes of bright reds and oranges that glow warmly beneath the evening sun.
There is a peaceful stirring energy in the woods as dusk sets in, when bats begin to swoop and owls blink the sleep from their eyes.
As nightfall arrives sooner and sooner, we have the chance to squeeze more out of fewer hours, bundling up and moving through the vital air, letting go of the tension in our minds. 
If you will welcome in the clean air, the woods will gladly merge living space with living space.
The Well 