Luminescent Blue

I was recently in Portland Oregon"s delicately magnificent Japanese Garden where the blue japanese irises were in full bloom.If the soul was given a color it would be of blue.

Georgia O'Keefe said;"it was in the fall of 1915 that I decided not to use ant color until I couldn't get along without it and I believe it was June before I needed blue".


This in celebration of the gift of blue...

Seeing deeper...oneself

again,by ,Robert Frost;

For Once, Then, Something
by Robert Frost

Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

What we remember

one of my favorite poems , on this warm summer day;


Persimmons
BY LI-YOUNG LEE
In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down.
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.
Naked: I’ve forgotten.
Ni, wo: you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat
but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He’s so happy that I’ve come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.
Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

A scent of salt...our life

It was recently my birthday,another year has passed,another year older. I was thinking about the notion of "witnessing of my life ", the pondering of what is recorded, remembered,absorbed of our essence with the passing of infinite unfathomable time,what remains to be said of us, told of us,seen of us,felt of us, smelled us,touched of us with each year that passes or when we are physically no longer. I thought of the momentous, heartfelt ,miraculous moments of my life,those that I love and treasure,but we are all but fleeting specs of dust in the galaxy of time. I thought of the expansive sea and sky,the monumental mountains which I imagined for a moment witnesses all, but is evanescent as I am as well. This poem by Phillip Levine speaks to me, that
even that which we imagine witnesses all is but fleeting as well.



Our Valley,by Phillip Levine
We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Plenitude

again from the Writer's Almanac today;
The poet Stacie Cassarino wrote "Summer Solstice":

I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.
Then I remembered,
it's you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.
Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn't say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper's bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late.
by;
Stacie Cassarino , "Summer Solstice" from Zero at the Bone (2008), New Issues Press.

Empty Space

Finding Emptiness
Prompt for today's poem, "Empty Space" as in ancient Chinese Landscape , from work at Upaya Zen Contemplative Photography Workshop6/9-6/12/2011 with master teacher/ photographer/person; George de Wolfe

As I was driving in my car
On my usual daily route,
I could not help to gaze,
beyond this moment in everyday time
not recognizing this matter, object,subject,stuff
anymore.
Onto this expanse of urban spread, no longer focusing
on mundane ,molecular , particles
that do not matter, that only
obscure the path of my keener vision.
But ,to the space beyond,over, in between,
under,aside,on top of,
eventually, through,
to that of the impermanent, erratic
evanescent,ephemeral,escaping,
time.

What is there hiding beyond the
interstitial fissures of concrete caverns,
the empty realm of that which goes
not seen,not heard,
whispering,flickering, fading in
vaporous ether
of emptying space.
In the chinks of vacuousnes
do we find
the substance of possibility?
luminous light, undying sound, immeasurable wisdom
colors,shapes, tones of our once primordial discernment.

Perhaps in the incalculableness of infinite emptiness
there lies unfathomable resolution, restitution , a mirror
of infinite capacity where we may begin to see unfiltered
unbiased
with such first ever remarkable boundless
clarity, that has only begun its veritable orbit now,
Perhaps, that is what we reawaken
when we remember what we once knew
in our earlier state of reverential seeing.

I never liked the color red,Things a mother should never say to her daughter

Red is not my favorite color
I have told you this many times
Yet you buy me red clothes and make me wear red
as well as itchy stiff, poofy , crinolines, in the wet humid muggy heat of summer
You say you know me better, even than I know myself
Do you seriously mean what you just said?


Hot ,fury,lava ,burning ,consuming rage
Evaporating the substance of my marrow, my entrails,
You try to enter my bones, my blood vessels,the electric current
that pulses between my synapses
That make me, uniquely, me, other, different, differentiated, separate
Oceans, away, apart from you.

You , in your human mask , your mother human seeming attire,You
point your finger at the oil painting hanging on the wall,
Touch the young girl child of me with your pointed painted glistening
finger nail,
I, playing in the bucolic,the care free grassy field
Suddenly, evaporate,disappear
bucolic scene,Now
sans girl child
Forever.

Do you remember what you said
This morning,cell phone to cell phone
I said,do you know what you just said
You ,said
Let's not talk about it!
Can't we just move on, you say again.

How can I move on, to what , to where, when the heavy
dark cloud of your words hover ,hang,stagnate
In the face of your intrusions, your persistent efforts to engulf, consume
fix, rearrange,readjust, force your way in,suck my bone,my blood
I can not erase what you said this time.
You have tried to tear asunder,torch away, that which is sacred to me ,that which you can never obliterate
That which is the remnants of me and the only life that I live.

I run
Run for my life.
Run with my life.



The prompt for this poem is a scene from the movie,"the Witches"based on the book by Roald Dahl.Angelica Houston plays the leader Witch, she is dressed in disguise as a human woman.She walks past a painting of a little girl playing in a grassy field.She wipes her long witch nail along the girl child playing in the field disappears forever.I have been haunted by this scene for many a moon now.The conversation cell phone to cell phone really did occur today. I remembered this scene so well today after that conversation.


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In honor of all Daughters who thought they have lost their Fathers

"Until he took the stiffness out of them"

Birches,by Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

The Majestic Milky Way Mountain

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

"Blue" in a "broken world"

Lullaby in Blue
by Betsy Sholl

The child takes her first journey
through the inner blue world of her mother's body,
blue veins, blue eyes, frail petal lids.

Beyond that unborn brackish world so deep
it will be felt forever as longing, a dream
of blue notes plucked from memory's guitar,

the wind blows indigo shadows under streetlights,
clouds crowd the moon and bear down on the limbs
of a blue spruce. The child's head appears—

midnight pond, weedy and glistening—
draws back, reluctant to leave that first home.
Blue catch in the mother's throat,

ferocious bruise of a growl, and out slides
the iridescent body—fish-slippery
in her father's hands, plucked from water

into such thin densities of air,
her arms and tiny hands stutter and flail,
till he places her on her mother's body,

then cuts the smoky cord, releasing her
into this world, its cold harbor below
where a blue caul of shrink-wrap covers

each boat gestating on the winter shore.
Child, the world comes in twos, above and below,
visible and unseen. Inside your mother's croon

there's the hum of an old man tapping his foot
on a porch floor, his instrument made from one
string nailed to a wall, as if anything

can be turned into song, always what is
and what is longed for. Against the window
the electric blue of cop lights signals

somebody's bad news, and a lone man walks
through the street, his guitar sealed in dark plush.
Child, from this world now you will draw your breath

and let out your moth flutter of blue sighs.
Now your mother will listen for each one,
alert enough to hear snow starting to flake

from the sky, bay water beginning to freeze.
Sleep now, little shadow, as your first world
still flickers across your face, that other side

where all was given and nothing desired.
Soon enough you'll want milk, want faces, hands,
heartbeats and voices singing in your ear.

Soon the world will amaze you, and you
will give back its bird-warble, its dove call,
singing that blue note which deepens the song,

that longing for what no one can recall,
your small night cry roused from the wholeness
you carry into this broken world.

"I counted on him"

Not Forgotten

by Sheila Packa

I learned to ride
the two wheel bicycle
with my father.
He oiled the chain
clothes-pinned playing cards
to the spokes, put on the basket
to carry my lunch.
By his side, I learned balance
and took on speed
centered behind the wide
handlebars, my hands
on the white grips
my feet pedaling.
One moment he was
holding me up
and the next moment
although I didn't know it
he had let go.
When I wobbled, suddenly
afraid, he yelled keep going—
keep going!
Beneath the trees in the driveway
the distance increasing between us
I eventually rode until he was out of sight.
I counted on him.

That he could hold me was a given
that he could release me was a gift.

"Not Forgotten" by Sheila Packa, from Cloud Birds. © Wildwood River Press, 2011. Reprinted with permission

Again from the Writer's Almanac.
I often write about why daughters ,as well as sons,(but ,I speak from being a daughter)need a dad. My dad did not stay around to raise me, however , I do remember rare occasions that he made a huge difference in my life and often wonder what potentials may have arisen in our relationship ,had I a dad who stayed around to raise me, have fun with and just be my dad. My dad did teach me to ride my bike. I think he did it really well,from what I remember. He took off the training wheels and took me to a grassy park and ran along side of me or from the behind ,holding on to the side or back end of my bike, little me, pedaling fast, with the wind blowing in my face,and then a sudden feeling of freedom ,not fear ,when he smoothly let go. I pedaled even faster and glided as if on air,and then would lose my balance as if the cloud of air beneath me blew away and I glided onto a soft velvety patch of grass. In my case, my mom would have been too anxious to gently let me go, let me fly on my own some and even let me fall,so that I would learn how to get up too,and could learn that falling needed not end up in tragedy ,but often times in growth and exploration. Sometimes ,I wish I had so much more of a dad that would have stayed around just long enough so that it would have been natural and expected ;
" that he could hold me was a given
that he could release me was a gift."
I would have been a very lucky daughter,that gift would last me a lifetime and then some....

Why I Blog

When I began my blog about a year and a half ago,I wrote a small piece to reflect upon why I was compelled to finally put into action and words my latent and burgeoning desires to write a blog or more accurately, an on- line journal of sorts. I am now revising and revisiting this query as to why I engage in this process, in writing my blog and why it is of meaning and value to share my thoughts,feelings,musings and reflections.
I have longed admired the discipline and practice of a daily journal to recall and ponder upon the day's unfoldings,as well as the unfoldings of my inner sphere,my relationships,my conflicts,my hopes,my sorrows,my joys,what I see as beautiful or hear as mellifluous or surprising or penetrating or worthy of remembering and sharing with others.I, at one time in my life lived abroad for many years.I recall sitting in the foothills of Jerusalem seeing out to a vista of a haze of violet shaded mountains,with shepherds tending their sheep and goat at an arm's length.I would often choose a high seat and gaze in astonishment at the beauty and sacredness of these private lofts.I would often write long letters to family,friends of my experiences as I was growing up with vast questions about the miracles and mysteries of life.You can say , in some ways ,I fell in love with the art of letter writing,much like the poet, Rilke ,who I much admire.
This blog has arisen in part in remembering the mystery and profound explorations of those early days of my adolescence and young adult years.I, now, in my middle years still am an impassioned romantic at heart ,even with the bristling experiences that life sometimes sends our way.I write this blog in part to grasp the hopeful aspects of our existence and to share it with those that the notion of hope may be tenuous .I have called my blog Rhiannon's Kairos.Rhiannon is similar in sound to my birth name.It is the name of a Celtic queen.I l relish the way words sound and reverberate through our vocal cords like wind whirling ,whooshing inside of us,thus Rhiannon resonates ,with my sometimes airy nature.Kairos is a Greek word that first appeared in Homer's Iliad.It carries the meaning of "opportuned time,the right time".It connotes a spatial quality of time rather than linear time.Opportunity can be missed,bring forth pain, regret or vulnerability.Opportunity can be a time for growth,restitution, healing, the birth and alignment of opposing forces that fall into perfect harmony that help us reach something closer to the divine abiding within us.It can be those rare moments that our mere human existence transcends our corporeal nature and we see clearly for brief moments and we are then not bound by the confines of only what we define as now.In those opportuned moments we can be nearer to a clairvoyant state of knowing that which was previously obscure to us about ourselves and others.
The word ,"kairos" was introduced to me when I was in training to become a psychiatrist , by my beloved mentor ,Jarl Dyrud ,M.D.who would refer to the experience of kairos when he would supervise me regarding patients that I saw as I trained to become a child and adolescent psychiatrist.His supervising me was a gift of remarkable pearls of wisdom and insight to carry with me as I work with my patients today.He embodied a fluid ,poetic , sage like persona that influenced all interactions with him and as a by product and living example, how I aspired to interact with my patients. He explained to me that "kairos" happened when a constellation of experiences coalesced in a single moment so what was right, appropriate,novel, needed, longed for,suddenly had the possibility to come into fruition for only this moment.He spoke of Odysseus at perilous sea snared ,entrapped by forces beyond himself and his own internal conflicts,not knowing where or how to proceed,as he could not go forth, then suddenly something in the quality of a raging sea changes, the gods are appeased,Odysseus comes to a place of rest within himself,he was the brief state of clairvoyance .His keen attention is like a taught bow string from which an arrow is shot forth with clear piercing direction. The word kairos is later in time in ancient Greece used in reference to archery as a quality of opportuned strength,goal and direction as a well aimed arrow shot into the space of future and opportunity.Eric White in his work,"Karromania" describes kairos in its origins as follows," from the “opportunity” in archery for the archer to shoot the arrow down an imaginary tunnel, with not only accuracy but strength enough to penetrate the target; and the time when a weaver must pull yarn through a gap that briefly opens in the cloth being woven." He says, “Success depends… on adaptation to an always mutating situation” .
I ,too am on my own journeys with twists and turns and mutations. .I look for these openings in space and time to offer new opportunity and am constantly refining and retuning my senses and attention to see and seize these moments of new exploration.I look forward to those opportune moments ,where the sun shines through a crack in the clouds to illuminate all that is of of subtle magnificence such that I am astounded once again.My blog is to honor those moments of astonishment ,of tangible and metaphoric hopefulness and share it when I am able.In this blog, I share poems or prose that I write,inspirations that come forth when I practice yoga , exposing you to some of my favorite poems,prose,poets, writers that have added joy and inspiration to my daily life, music that lifts my soul, and photographs that I attempt to capture some of the "astonishing" that is here right now,wherever I am .This blog is to remember ,Jarl,my mentor, for kindness, his generosity,his wisdom and share it with you. I hope my blog will in some ways embody the words that Edna St. Vincent Millay spoke in this poem;

God's World
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.


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"No better tonic than the Moon"

I am reposting this poem because I love it so much;

The Moon

by Jaime Sabines

You can take the moon in spoonfuls
or in tablets once every two hours.
It works as a hypnotic and a sedative
and also provides relief
for those who have an overdose of philosophy.
A piece of moon in your pocket
is a better charm than a rabbit's paw:
it helps to find someone to love,
to be rich without anybody knowing
and keeps doctors and hospitals away.
You can give it as a dessert to children
when they can't get to sleep,
and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old
help to die well.
Put a tender moon leaf
under your pillow
and you will see what you would like to see
and always carry a little bottle of moon air
for when you feel you're suffocating
and give the moon's key
to prisoners, and the disenchanted.
For those sentenced to death
and those condemned to life
there is no better tonic than the moon
in precisely measured doses.

The perfect early May Tulip

To be that porous..

The Supple Deer by Jane Hirschfield

The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don't know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

What dreams are made of....

Excerpt from “The Tempest” Act 4, Scene 1

by William Shakespeare

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Excerpt from "The Tempest" Act 4, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare. Public domain
One of my favorite Shakespearean quotes

The imagined...

So true, what often happens ,between men and women...

Heroic acts and cup of chai latte....

Today on my way to work,I took a little detour.Whenever ,I choose to do detour,the rhythm of my daily routine shifts a little.I stopped for a chai latte at a small little vegetarian cafe that I like very much,but often don't have time to get there.For reasons,unclear to me,I felt I had lots of time ,which is unusual for me in a fast paced work day.I had come from a nice and deep felt yoga practice this morning.The cafe is known for its chai latte and also as a place to learn meditation.The young man at the counter knows me and greeted me affably.As I was waiting for my chai latte,a big fire truck parked in front of the cafe, in the middle of the street,an ambulance and a handful of paramedics.There was burly looking middle aged man crouched on the stairs at the entrance of the cafe with ,all intensely gathering around him.Inside,the cafe was quiet and serene,outside on the stoop was intensely quiet for what seemed to be an emergency.I asked the young man who was making my chai,what had happened.He said,the man on the stoop was doing some carpentry work upstairs and he sawed off one of his fingers.The scene of the paramedics,ambulance, blood on the sidewalk was noticeable,, but the quiet of the moment was more like a sacred moment than a life threatening emergency.The man's hand was carefully wrapped in a bandage,he then walked calmly into the ambulance.There was no hysteria, no crying,no state of shock.Once the man was in the ambulance,the paramedics huddled into the middle of the street and hugged and high fived with beaming smiles.It was a site,I shall not forget.
I left the cafe with my latte, in a hugely different state of awareness than when I walked in.I stopped in a plant store across the street and eyed a lovely cactus with elephant ear like leaves.I wanted something tangible to look at to remember what I saw.A man walked in to the plant store,I asked him ,did you see what just happened.He said yes,that man is by best friend of 35 years,we meditate together,he was doing work for me and screamed as his finger flew through the air.In a frenzy,I found it,put it on ice,and tied a an apron string tightly around his finger.He said, that is my friend,I will go meet him in the emergency room.....

New Petals

from "Poem a Day" ,today

The Level Path

Descend here along a shower of
             shallow steps past the potting shed with
                           its half-rotted ironbound door

to reach the level path. It winds
             northward, high hat, girdling
                           the waist of a limestone cliff

beyond earshot of the clamorous village below. The
             squeezed access bears us vaguely along
                           shifting digressions of the compass, past

eye-level seductions of violet, periwinkle, primrose, and petals
             like lisping yellow butterflies. Naked limbs
                           of beech, haggard liftings of pine,

a hairy upthrust of cedar beside a
             curving stone bench, all hint at eruptions
                           into Eros. Yet another seat displays

a cushion of undisturbed luxuriant moss around its clefts and
             edges. Thick harsh leaves
                           of holly, ivy, even of palmetto

thrust up, pathside, between tender new petals,
             while other friendly shrubs reach down
                           from overhead to fondle our faces.

There is no escape from the dreadful beauty of
             this narrow path. It leads nowhere
                           except to itself and
                           the black water below.

All that matters to me now

Staff Sgt. Metz by Dorianne Laux Metz is alive for now, standing in line at the airport Starbucks in his camo gear and buzz cut, his beautiful new camel-colored suede boots. His hands are thick-veined. The good blood still flows through, given an extra surge when he slurps his latte, a fleck of foam caught on his bottom lip. I can see into the canal in his right ear, a narrow darkness spiraling deep inside his head toward the place of dreaming and fractions, ponds of quiet thought. In the sixties my brother left for Vietnam, a war no one understood, and I hated him for it. When my boyfriend was drafted I made a vow to write a letter every day, and then broke it. I was a girl torn between love and the idea of love. I burned their letters in the metal trash bin behind the broken fence. It was the summer of love and I wore nothing under my cotton vest, my Mexican skirt. I see Metz later, outside baggage claim, hunched over a cigarette, mumbling into his cell phone. He's more real to me now than my brother was to me then, his big eyes darting from car to car as they pass. I watch him breathe into his hands. I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings, its oiled and moving parts, the whole of him standing up and raising one arm to hail a bus, his legs pulling him forward, all the muscle and sinew and living gristle, the countless bones of his foot trapped in his boot, stepping off the red curb. "Staff Sgt. Metz" by Dorianne Laux, from The Book of Men: Poems. © W.W. Norton, 2011. Reprinted with permission This today from the Writer's Almanac.Often,daily ,my feelings resonate with the poet's; I don't believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love. All that matters to me now is his life, the body so perfectly made, mysterious in its workings.... When one becomes a parent there is a serious psychological shift within,at least it is this way for me, that all convictions,beliefs,dogmas become somewhat useless,minuscule in comparison to the powerful desire for the well being of one's child,even as an adult child.

April in the Garden of Eden

Today was a beautiful spring day,the air crisp ,fresh, the true transition to touchable warmness, hazy blue skies,buds barely bursting,colors of the earth beginning to sing their songs, a day that
one has hints of the garden from whence we came. I heard this today on Krista Tippett's program,"On Being " on npr. It resonated with the glory of this day;
"Gardening in Paradise" by Vigen Guroian

There is an ancient Armenian tale about what happened to Adam and Eve when they were driven from the Garden of Eden:

After Adam and Eve were beguiled by the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree, God commanded his angels to remove them from the Garden, and to guard the paths to it with a fiery sword. And so Adam and his wife were banished from the Garden and its light and abundant life and entered a place of darkness and gloom. They remained there in misery for six days, without anything to eat and no shelter. They wept inconsolably over what they had lost and where they were sent.

But on the seventh day, God took pity on the couple. He sent an angel who removed them from the dark place and led them into this bright world. The messenger showed them trees from which they could eat and satisfy their hunger. And when Adam and Eve saw the light and felt the warmth of this world, they rejoiced with exceeding gladness, saying, "Even though this place cannot compare with the home we have lost and its light is not nearly as bright or its fruit half as sweet, nevertheless, we are no longer in the darkness and can go on living." So they were cheerful.
—adapted from The Armenian Apocryphal Adam Literatur

"A Lark Ascending" for Earth Day

A patch of springtime daffodils...

from Dorothy Wordsworth's (sister of poet William Wordsworth)journal. It is believed that William wrote his famous poem,"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" with inspiration he had with his sister on a walk on this spring day in 1802 near Ullswater Lake in England when they came upon a patch of daffodils.

Dorothy wrote in her journal: "It was a threatening misty morning — but mild. [...] The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows — people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again."

Why I practice Ashtanga Yoga...continued....revised..again ....for life

Today is grey ,rainy , cold....It is friday a primary series day,it had a good start,we practiced a led primary led by Sharath Jois,the grandson of Patabi Jois,rip, via webcam as Sharath taught in NYC today.It felt like a supportive community that we all are exploring a daily practice that somehow not only adds insight to our physical being ,but to our souls as well. Today's greyness gets me down, makes both my inner and outer layers feel sore.As I practiced today via the rhythm called out by Sharath's counting in the primary series, I was aware of a different kind of focus that was generated from outside of he calling out the breaths in the series.This ultimately created a rhythm that I could ride ,so to speak, so I was freer to move deeper inside of myself.Today , the room felt a little chilled,my body a little stiffer,I was aware as my muscles expanded and contracted places that energy got stuck, that scar tissue had hardened,albeit healed.I was aware of old injuries that healed imperfectly and new energetic pathway had been forged inside of me.I recently had a knee injury that made my practice feel tenuous. ,I was aware that it was healing, less tenuous, less perfect ,but moving ,breathing ,changing, moving forward.On the mat, I am acutely aware via the sensations in my body of the tangible infinitesimal glacial time like quality of change.During the acute part of an injury when I can not see past the immediate pain, I am blinded.Each time I arrive on my mat and the physical movement of my body is realized,I embody change, movement, the antedote to stagnation.We are enslaved in some ways to our physical beings,yet, we learn through our sensations.Yoga happens when our physical sensations lead us to discoveries that we are not conscious of in our physical beings.Yoga gives me hope that we are indeed spiritual beings ,in essence,we all have capacity for potential of quiet yet intense change if we give ourselves the chance to quietly see within ourselves and in others who, they too, intheir own path, in their own time deserve that inherent right as well.



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"the goal of living is to grow"

in time of daffodils
by E. E. Cummings
in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how
in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)
in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes
in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

"what beauty is for"

The Swan by Mary Oliver
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

T"is just the hour...

again for poetry month this aril 2011, what we may ponder as we the night descends upon us
"I’ll Come When Thou Art Saddest"
by Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
I'll come when thou art saddest
Laid alone in the darkened room
When the mad day's mirth has vanished
And the smile of joy is banished
From evening's chilly gloom

I'll come when the heart's [real] feeling
Has entire unbiased sway
And my influence o'er thee stealing
Grief deepening joy congealing
Shall bear thy soul away

Listen 'tis just the hour
The awful time for thee
Dost thou not feel upon thy soul
A flood of strange sensations roll
Forerunners of a sterner power
Heralds of me

Spring Buds

Colors of Spring,by me

The earth awakens in a cloak of vibrant colors;

aurulent-gold colored

albicant-whitish,becoming white

citreous-lemom colored,lemony

citrine-dark greenish yellow

eau-di-nil-pale green color

flavescent-yellowish, turning yellow

goldenrod-dark golden yellow

hyacinthine-of blue-purple

ianthine-of violet color

jessamy-yellow like a jasmine

luteolus-yellowish

luteous-golden yellow

lutescent-yellowish

meline-canary yellow

porraceous-leek geen

tilleul-yellowish green

violaceous-violet colored

virescent-becoming green

virid-green

vitellary-bright yellow

willowish-of the color of willow leaves

chloranthus-green flowered

estriatus-beautiful green color

galbinus-yellowish green

laetesvirens-bright vivid green

springtime.......

Gnostics on Trial
by Linda Gregg

Let us make the test. Say God wants you
to be unhappy. That there is no good.
That there are horrors in store for us
if we do manage to move toward Him.
Say you keep Art in its place, not too high.
And that everything, even eternity, is measurable.
Look at the photographs of the dead,
both natural (one by one) and unnatural
in masses. All tangled. You know about that.
And can put Beauty in its place. Not too high,
and passing. Make love our search for unhappiness,
which is His plan to help us.
Disregard that afternoon breeze from the Aegean
on a body almost asleep in the shuttered room.
Ignore melons, and talking with friends.
Try to keep from rejoicing. Try
to keep from happiness. Just try.
"Gnostics on Trial" by Linda Gregg, from Too Bright To See and Alma. © Graywolf Press, 2001.
This again from "the Writer's Almanac"
The poet reminds me of what I think about much of time these days, how foolish and wasteful of me to disregard , ignore the smallest, most nuanced pleasures,beauty goodness that is always in my reach if I choose but to see and reach out to what may be in front if me, with me, right now......


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Yoga and the continued shedding of my arrogant shell

I have not posted something about me and my practice of yoga for a little while.This morning I was looking through my archives of this blog of posts around this time last year.I will repost one of the blogs later as it is symbolic to me of the birth of spring.It seems that spring came a tad earlier and warmer last April and the daffodils and tulips were more in full bloom by now last year.It seems that ,I too was in a more verdant blooming state.This year feels more subdued,that spring is more tentatively becoming, that I am more tentative,reflective and subdued.
A few weeks ago as I was practicing dwi pada shirshasana , I was practicing less thoughtfully and less attentively.As I lifted my left knee behind my shoulder, I heard a cracking,tearing sound in my left knee.I had not been warming up ,that weaker left side as I assumed greater mastery than really existed.I was not listening or paying attention as I usually do.Luckily,it is a minor I jury that is healing, but I have backed off now from going further than dwi pada for the past month. Initially , I was angry as I felt I had ,"worked so hard to get where I was, that I deserved to continue because of so much effort and dedication".I had practiced with regrets and loss for a few weeks that were not nourishing to my soul and only fueled hostility.
For the past few weeks,I am practicing with a new group of people, a new teacher as the place I had practiced no longer has mysore practice everyday. That too was a great loss of the comfort of a teacher, friends and a shala that sustained me for many years.
For the past two weeks,my new teacher has instructed me to back off, in effect, "took away" from me what I considered were my "hard earned poses".I was initially hurt and humiliated , but obliged to the wisdom of my teacher.My practice seems deeper now, more wholesome, less rushed.The reflection and quiet is returning.Somehow, less is truly more and surrender to what abides in me seems as it should be, just okay, nothing glorious, nothing sublime,just nice old okay.
I reflect now on the "things " that I hold onto, that I claim are mine because of" my effort, my dedication,my hard work, my desires".I am humbled by the absurdity of the notion of holding onto the permanence of anything other than the hope to take note and fully attend to when things are just okay and to celebrate when life is okay......



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"Singing to the Earth"

So my body went on growing, by night,
went on pleading & singing to the earth
I was born to be woven back into Love,
let me see if I can’t sink my roots
deeper into you, your minerals & water,
your leaf rot & gold, your telling & un-
telling of the oldest tales inscribed
on wind-carved rocks, silt & grass,
your songs & prayers, your oaths & myths,
your nights & days in one unending lament,
your luminous swarm of wet kisses
& stings, your spleen & mind,
yur outrageous forgetting & remembrance,
your ghosts & rebirths, your thunderstones
& mushrooms, & your kind loss of memory.


Yusef Komunyakaa, “Nighttime Begins with a Line by Pablo Neruda”

Honor thy Sabbath

Wellfleet Shabbat ,by Marge Piercy

The hawk eye of the sun slowly shuts.
The breast of the bay is softly feathered
dove grey. The sky is barred like the sand
when the tide trickles out.

The great doors of Shabbat are swinging
open over the ocean, loosing the moon
floating up slow distorted vast, a copper
balloon just sailing free.

The wind slides over the waves, patting
them with its giant hand, and the sea
stretches its muscles in the deep,
purrs and rolls over.

The sweet beeswax candles flicker
and sigh, standing between the phlox
and the roast chicken. The wine shines
its red lantern of joy.

Here on this piney sandspit, the Shekinah
comes on the short strong wings of the seaside
sparrow raising her song and bringing
down the fresh clean night.

The Search for Lost Lives : Sometimes we just need to be found...

The Search for Lost Lives : Poetry Everywhere : Video

The Search for Lost Lives
BY JAMES TATE
I was chasing this blue butterfly down
the road when a car came by and clipped me.
It was nothing serious, but it angered me and
I turned around and cursed the driver who didn't
even slow down to see if I was hurt. Then I
returned my attention to the butterfly which
was nowhere to be seen. One of the Doubleday
girls came running up the street with her toy
poodle toward me. I stopped her and asked,
"Have you seen a blue butterfly around here?"
"It's down near that birch tree near Grandpa's,"
she said. "Thanks," I said, and walked briskly
toward the tree. It was fluttering from flower
to flower in Mr. Doubleday's extensive garden,
a celestial blueness to soothe the weary heart.
I didn't know what I was doing there. I certain-
ly didn't want to capture it. It was like
something I had known in another life, even if
it was only in a dream, I wanted to confirm it.
I was a blind beggar on the streets of Cordoba
when I first saw it, and now, again it was here.

Our stories....would we beg for it again?

The Boxers

by Cathy Smith Bowers

When my father, after twenty years, came home
to die, circling, circling, like an animal
we believed extinct, it was my crazy aunt
who took him in, who told later
how the taxi had dumped him
bleached and whimpering on her porch.
And she who had not lived with him
thought his sons and daughters cruel
not to come when he began to call our names.

He died, and soon after, a package in brown wrapping
arrived at my address. My sister, who did not
attend the funeral, kept urging me to open it
and I kept saying I would, soon. Every day
when I came home from work, there it was
sitting at my back door, the remnants
of my father's life—years in the mill
spinning and doffing, then drinking into morning
as he railed at the walls, the cotton
still clinging to his fists. Weeks had passed

when finally my sister and I, after two stiff bourbons,
began to rip the paper, slowly in strips
like archaeologists unclothing a mummy.
And all that was there were a few plaid flannels,
the jacket to a leisure suit, and a pair of boxers,

white and baggy, Rorschached in urine—a smaller size,
my sister said, than the way she remembered him.
Then she offered to drop the things at the Salvation Army
store she passed on her way home. In July

we went shopping for swim suits and I could
see her in the curtained stall across from mine.
She was pulling her slip over her head when I saw
she was wearing them, her thighs like the pale stems
of mushrooms emerging from the boxers' billowy
legs, whiter, softer now, washed clean. I still

can't say why my sister, that day in the Salvation
Army store, glanced up, as I've imagined,
to see if anyone was watching
before she slipped those boxers from the soiled heap
of our father's clothes. Nor why
I took so long to open that package, both wanting
and fearing whatever lay inside. Like a child
huddled by the campfire who cries out in terror
at the story someone just told
and, still weeping, begs for it again.

"The Boxers" by Cathy Smith Bowers, from The Love that Ended Yesterday in Texas. © Texas Tech University Press, 1992

This again from today's Writer's Almanac

Life is  strange. I recently was telling someone that I had just met,who does not know
me,really,nor do I know them something about my life. I was struck as I told a brief synopsis of a small part of the history of my life and that of my ancestors, by the fact that I could account some tangible content by memory as it was told to me or as I remember having witnessed parts of the story. But the weaving of the story with the interconnections of adjective,adverbs, the intonation of my voice was really my personal narrative, really reflecting my vision of how things were and how they may be. I realized that those ineffable nuanced tones made this story uniquely mine and although the facts may be the same for a few of us in my family that lived or heard the same experiences,we each have a unique story that is based on what have personally imbued into our lives,that the story has been colored by all that I have lived.
This poem reminds me of this sentiment of somehow knowing something about the act of creating the stories that make up my life."Like a child
huddled by the campfire who cries out in terror
at the story someone just told
and, still weeping, begs for it again."

Such stories make up the fabric of who we are,would we trade the identities that we so arduously chiseled from bare untested stone to become the human form of who we are. When all is said and done, would we give up even the painful stories that have created us of any reason ,would we not, "beg for it again", because that "it" in a large part has formed us into the us that we are.....

Love or Fear?what motivates you?

Breath,breathing,all of us....To begin this Poetry Month

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or in the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being.

Bach at its best

from what I heard this morning on the radio ,

A poem on how things begin...

On The Origins Of Things
by Troy Jollimore
Everyone knows that the moon started out as a renegade fragment of the sun, a solar flare that fled that hellish furnace and congealed into a flat frozen pond suspended between the planets. But did you know that anger began as music, played too often and too loudly by drunken performers at weddings and garden parties? Or that turtles evolved from knuckles, ice from tears, and darkness from misunderstanding? As for the dominant thesis regarding the origin of love, I abstain from comment, nor will I allow myself to address the idea that dance began as a kiss, that happiness was an accidental import from Spain, that the ancient game of jump-the-fire gave rise to politics. But I will confess that I began as an astronomer—a liking for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things, a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit— and that my longing for you has not taken me very far from that original desire to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars. I always thought that darkness evolved from misunderstandings and that a dance began as a kiss a and if you really like a person very much or even love them that it is good "to inscribe a comet's orbit around the walls of a city "

A great talent that is missed

over the weekend, i heard a radio show in memory of Nick Drake,who is greatly missed

A herd of deer,dusk,early Spring

In fondest memory of poet ,Robert Frost,Today his birthday

Oscar Piazzolla's Celebration of Spring

For the ecstatic and graceful spring!

Today,Bach's Birthday

On this first day of Spring ,what a better way to begin,Bach and Yo Yo Ma

Ahhh,The hopefulness of the first Snowdrops and Crocuses of Spring

Does time, as it passes, really destroy?
Part Two, Sonnet XXVII,by Rainer Mara Pilke

Does Time, as it passes, really destroy?
It may rip the fortress from its rock;
but can this heart, that belongs to God,
be torn from Him by circumstance?

Are we as fearfully fragile
as fate would have us believe?
Can we ever be severed
from childhood's deep promise?

Ah, the knowledge of impermanence
that haunts our days
is their very fragrance.

We in our striving think we should last forever,
but could we be used by the Divine
if we were not ephemeral?

In honor of Spring

Spring

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. What is all this juice and all this joy?   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

The lushness of the language of Dylan Thomas for the Vernal Equinox 2011

REV. ELI JENKINS

Dear Gwalia! I know there are
Towns lovelier than ours,
And fairer hills and loftier far,
And groves more full of flowers,

And boskier woods more blithe with spring
And bright with birds' adorning,
And sweeter bards than I to sing
Their praise this beauteous morning.

By Cader Idris, tempest-torn,
Or Moel yr Wyddfa's glory,
Carnedd Llewelyn beauty born,
Plinlimmon old in story,

By mountains where King Arthur dreams,
By Penmaenmawr defiant,
Llaregyb Hill a molehill seems,
A pygmy to a giant.

By Sawdde, Senny, Dovey, Dee,
Edw, Eden, Aled, all,
Taff and Towy broad and free,
Llyfhant with its waterfall,

Claerwen, Cleddau, Dulais, Daw,
Ely, Gwili, Ogwr, Nedd,
Small is our River Dewi, Lord,
A baby on a rushy bed.

By Carreg Cennen, King of time,
Our Heron Head is only
A bit of stone with seaweed spread
Where gulls come to be lonely.


So lush, these words, for spring as it erupts forth in all its glory..."Boskier woods more blithe wit spring"

Fiddle and Dance

In honor of St. Paddy's Day

A wish for a daughter in the party ....of life

May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven't written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.

May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can't see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.

May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.

May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.

May they be themselves, long after we've stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn't bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.

"Prayer for Our Daughters" by Mark Jarman, from Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2011. Reprinted with permission.
This poem was posted on the Writer's Almanac yesterday.I am a daughter,am the mother of a daughter.One of our great fears in life for our daughters is that they "should not be alone at parties", those real parties that are social events or marathons or the grand yet complex party we call our lives.I especially like the part that says" if our daughters forget themselves ,may it be in music".I would add to that ,may our daughters sometimes forget themselves and the burdens they carry with themselves,so music,gardens and enchantment is plentiful and in their reach.
and the deepest wish of any parent for their child at all times in life,"And
may they find themselves,as we have found them,Complete at each stage of their live".
today and all days,this is my deepest wish for my daughter and all daughters.I thank the poet for expressing these heartfelt wishes.

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On the subject of inconsistency....me and my yoga practice

Of late, my world ,the world we live in feels so ungrounded. I seem to feel this way every spring as the churning and rebirth of living things abound in spring.This year, with even more reason, I am fretful,with forceful tsunamis,earthquakes, extreme bravery of fellow human beings,sometimes at the cost of human life  for  the sake of human rights,freedom from tyranny etc.On the bottom of this heap of turmoil ,my inconsequential world of yoga. I say inconsequential,but yoga gives me grounding,supports me through all sorts of turbulence in my daily trivial strivings. For months now, the usual place that I practice yoga with a good group of people,seems to be coming apart at the seams literally ,with fellow students moving on in different directions,leaving me sometimes practicing solo with a dedicated teacher.I recently was on a mini retreat of ashtanga yoga, mysore style with two wise,thoughtful,compassionate and seasoned teachers. The community of individuals I practiced with seemed  grounded and present in their practice. After a week of immersion of this feeling calm,groundedness,I come home and feel that nothing is stable,that all is in a constant state of flux.After a long period of feeling semi complacent in my practice,all feels like I am riding a stormy sea with crashing waves. I think,I have deluded myself in believing that somehow my practice of yoga would shield me from the natural phenomena of life's inevitable unpredictability, that somehow yoga would teach me greater secrets about being resilient,perhaps unflappable even..If anything of late, I am humbled, that my practice is only a mirror image of my human state of being and is only as stable and sustaining as I am. It is as impermanent,fleeting,and at times as undependable as I am....more lessons in humility.

A dying star lives on in his poetry

LITTLE COSMIC DUST POEM (1983)

 John Haines


   Out of the debris of dying stars,
   this rain of particles
   that waters the waste with brightness...

   The sea-wave of atoms hurrying home,
   collapse of the giant,
   unstable guest who cannot stay...

   The sun's heart reddens and expands,
   his mighty aspiration is lasting,
   as the shell of his substanace
   one day will be white with frost.

   In the radiant field of Orion
   great hordes of stars are forming,
   just as we see every night,
   fiery and faithful to the end.

   Out of the cold and fleeing dust
   that is never and always,
   the silence and waste to come...

   This arm, this hand,
   my voice, your face, this love.

In memory of the poet and homesteader of the Alaskan wilderness who passed on this week.