Wee Hours [Free Verse]

In the wee hours,
The city becomes a blur
Of color and motion,
But the moon
Is the moon
Is the moon.

Hills of Tranquility [Free Verse]

Stony hills
Blanketed in green;
Softened -
Yet still hard.
Silent -
Yet riotous
As wind buffets
My face when I
Speed past.

DAILY PHOTO: Mountain Near Sóc Hà

Image

PROMPT: Lesson

Daily writing prompt
Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

Few things in life matter as much as they feel they do. Almost nothing is perilous, while many things feel as though they are. Don’t let illusory feelings keep one from living boldly.

Or, as the Epicureans liked to say, “What is painful is easy to endure.”

DAILY PHOTO: Trúc Lâm Đại Giác Zen Monastery

PROMPT: Foods

Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite types of foods?

Those that are authentic to wherever I am at the moment. [Nothing fancy, but with nutritional value.]

PROMPT: Walk or Run

How often do you walk or run?

Daily. I don’t live in an aquarium (thus allowing swimming as the predominant mode of transport,) nor am I a potted plant that stays where I’m set. Also, flying is out of the question, except in an airplane.

DAILY PHOTO: Dragon’s Jaw

Dragonhead [Tanka]

dragonhead
rises up out of a cloud,
over the city.
how many see the cloud,
but not the dragon?

FIVE WISE LINES [September 2025]

The aim of introduction is to conceal a person’s identity.

George Mikes, How To Be an Alien

From the beginning our philosophers have tried to teach us how to die,
and our poets have taught us that to contemplate death
is to learn to live.

Jonathan weiner, Long for this world

Nothing is harder to see into than people’s natures.

Zhuge liang [a.k.a. Kongming], The WAy of the General

To know how to eat is to know how to live.

Auguste Escoffier

Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.

Mark twain