Category Archives: Poetry

Five Wise Lines (March 2024)

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We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world, in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or someone’s intention.

Daniel kahneman; Thinking, Fast and slow

If you win, do not boast of your victory; if you lose, do not be discouraged. When it is safe, do not become careless; when it is dangerous, do not fear. Simply continue down the path ahead.

Kanō Jigorō; Founder of Jūdō

A writer makes new life in the void, knocks on silence to make a sound, binds space and time on a sheet of silk and pours out a river from an inch-sized heart.

Lu Ji; Wen Fu (261 – 303)

The worst kind of Virtue never stops striving for Virtue, and so never achieves Virtue.

Laozi

Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon. // How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.

Rumi

Bristling [Haiku]

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leaves have dropped;
 reflected sun viewed twixt
  bristled seedpod clusters.

Hanshan 131 [w/ Audio]

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During thirty years since my birth
 I've hiked thousands of miles,
 seen green grass converging with a river
 and red dust rising at the frontiers,
 searched in vain for immortals and elixirs,
 studying books and histories.
 Today I've returned to Cold Mountain.
 I lie back in a stream, washing out my ears.

Translation: Barnstone, Tony and Ping, Chou. 2005. The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary. New York: Anchor Books.

Mind Storm [Free Verse]

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A loose shard of thought
   Flips and twists about in
     My brain,
 Poking sensitive tissue,
    And sending firestorms
     Riffling through my circuitry.
 I can't really say I feel each 
    Prickle or pierce, but they 
     Do make me wince, sometimes.

A Feather in Flow [Free Verse]

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How do I roll like a
   feather in flow?

The one that can't be
   pulled from the pool.
 It slips around the 
   lifted hand,
 Retreating back into 
   the water that it never
     really left.

It's like sleight of hand
   one plays upon oneself:
     at once magician & mark.

The faster one snatches at it, 
   the greater the miss.
 The slower one moves,
   the more frustratingly
     one sees one's failure. 

How to roll like a feather in flow?

“A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.” by Amy Lowell [w/ Audio]

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They have watered the street,
 It shines in the glare of lamps,
 Cold, white lamps,
 And lies
 Like a slow-moving river,
 Barred with silver and black.
 Cabs go down it,
 One,
 And then another.
 Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
 Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
 Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
 The city is squalid and sinister,
 With the silver-barred street in the midst,
 Slow-moving,
 A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
 The moon cuts,
 Clear and round,
 Through the plum-colored night.
 She cannot light the city;
 It is too bright.
 It has white lamps,
 And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the moon.
 She is thin and lustreless,
 But I love her.
 I know the moon,
 And this is an alien city.

Red [Haiku]

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the turning leaves
 catch the morning sunlight
  to show depths of red.

Ripe Grass [Haiku]

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heavy-headed grass sways:
  the clockwork counting down
    the days of Autumn.

“The Builders” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

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All are architects of Fate,
   Working in these walls of Time,
 Some with massive deeds and great,
   Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;
   Each thing in its place is best;
 And what seems but idle show
   Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
   Time is with materials filled;
 Our to-days and yesterdays
   Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;
   Leave no yawning gaps between;
 Think not, because no man sees,
   Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,
   Builders wrought with greatest care
 Each minute and unseen part;
   For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
   Both the unseen and the seen;
 Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
   Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete,
   Standing in these walls of Time,
 Broken stairways, where the feet
   Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
   With a firm and ample base;
 And ascending and secure
   Shall tomorrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain
   To those turrets where the eye
 Sees the world as one vast plain,
   And one boundless reach of sky.

Duck Drift [Haiku]

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ducks drift lazily
 on water that sparkles
  with winter sunlight.