The wood is stacked for winter.
One way out of the mind's limitations
is through other minds' contemplations.
The books are stacked for winter.

Yet even that cannot satisfy.
Failing to hold still for meditation
my teacher smiles, makes this observation:
The purpose of sitting's not to be satisfied

or satiated. Remain hungry,
cold, uncomfortable and counting enemies.
These, and fear, are our commonalities,
and the discipline of not hitting whenever angry.

You'll appreciate dying
quietly at home. Whichever season has been randomly selected will be
      beautiful as ever
as a molecule of water is to all matter.
"In my life there were always too many things."

If there is no time, only change
the linear becomes circular.
Do not say north or south. You're
within the winter range

of chickadee, hawk, owl and heron.
River grapes, rose hips, the cedar waxwings'
repast. Their talk is my reminding
there is change and endurance.

Zero.
By which nothing is divided.
No zero
no negative
no opposite
no hope
no Adam, no apple, no marriage, no morning.
No mirror
no knowledge
no God, no soul, no ear lobe, no Iliad, no Odyssey.
No universe
no black hole
no zodiac
no hero
no mission, no omission, no fission, no fusion.
No beanstalk
no tractor
no yellow
no 7:30, no wind, no window, no owl, no one.

In 773, at Al-Mansur's behest, translations were made of the Siddhantas, Indian astronomical treatises dating as far back as 425 B.C.; these versions may have been the vehicles through which the "Arabic" numerals and the zero were brought from India into China and then to the Islamic countries. In 813 the Persian mathematician Khwarizmi used the Hindu numerals in his astronomical tables; about 825 he issued a treatise known in its Latin form as Algoritmi de numero Indorum, Khwarizmi on Numerals of the Indians. After him, in 976, Muhammed ibn Ahmad in his "Keys to the Sciences," remarked that if in a calculation no number appears in the place of tens, a little circle should be used "to keep the rows." This circle the Arabs called sifr. That was the earliest mention of the name sifr that eventually became zero. Italian zefiro already meant "west wind" from Latin and Greek zephyrus. This may have influenced the spelling when transcribing Arabic sifr. The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170-1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system in Europe, used the term zephyrum. This became zefiro in Italian, which was contracted to zero in Venetian.  --Wikipedia

After my father's appointment by his homeland as a state official in the customs house of Bugia for the Pisan merchants who thronged to it, he took charge; and in view of its future usefulness and convenience, had me in my boyhood come to him and there wanted me to devote myself to and be instructed in the study of calculation for some days. There, following my introduction, as a consequence of marvelous instruction in the art, to the nine digits of the Hindus, the knowledge of the art very much appealed to me before all others, and for it I realized that all its aspects were studied in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, with their varying methods; and at these places thereafter, while on business, I pursued my study in depth and learned the give-and-take of disputation. But all this even, and the algorism, as well as the art of Pythagoras, I considered as almost a mistake in respect to the method of the Hindus (Modus Indorum). Therefore, embracing more stringently that method of the Hindus, and taking stricter pains in its study, while adding certain things from my own understanding and inserting also certain things from the niceties of Euclid's geometric art, I have striven to compose this book in its entirety as understandably as I could, dividing it into fifteen chapters. Almost everything which I have introduced I have displayed with exact proof, in order that those further seeking this knowledge, with its pre-eminent method, might be instructed, and further, in order that the Latin people might not be discovered to be without it, as they have been up to now. If I have perchance omitted anything more or less proper or necessary, I beg indulgence, since there is no one who is blameless and utterly provident in all things. The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 . . . any number may be written.   --Fibonacci, Leonardo of Pisa

Yogurt.
"I begin the day buying yogurt in a small favorite grocery store."
Not pizza, nor gatorade.

Bananas
although they are imported from afar and grown in monocultures.
Attract fruit flies in August.

Peaches
locally grown with rainwater. I ate all the farmer's peaches alone
stacking them by the railroad tracks.

Water --
rainwater, tap water, distilled water, carbonated water, spring water –--
deep gulps, infinite sips.

Nuts
in moderation, or not, unsalted, raw, replacing chips. His bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts quiet weekday mornings.

Edible plant parts --
roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruit, buds. In olive oil
or butter.

Potatoes --
look online how best to prepare. Baked or fried. With a little
fish or meat.

Tea and honey,
play and prayer. Swimming and running,
talking quietly.

Bread?
Bread's possible as the Bible. Each is liable
to bloat us.

Wine and dandelions.
Dandelion wine's Ray Bradbury's story. Cans in a pantry, books on a
      shelf
to the end of time.

Pasta
we used to call spaghetti, never noodles. I wonder if I can remember
      how to make
grandma's sauce.

Tomatoes --
cherry, grape. Grab God's eye
going by.

5th Ave. was shoulder to shoulder with
hungry lunch-seeking business men
and women. Ricardo unpacked
his horn nervously and a foot cymbal.
Spring, early street season, too cold
for most musicians but he needed money.
His lips kissed the cold metal mouthpiece.

Carrying the saw and the pulaski.
Cutting brush for a fire line high up,
where raptors and ravens fly. No sound
but wind if you could subtract the crew
working and *****, joking during lunch.
A good year it had been sitting in the soil
feeling Ricardo's body on the mountainside.
Mountains moving as good a feeling.

Alone in his town, most neighbors at work,
housecleaning done, Ricardo settled down
with pen to write and ate lunch.
People = chickadees.
Clutch size, substrate, territory, gestation period.
Mating rituals. Use of alcohol and hallucinogens.
Forms of cancer, heart disease. Burial rites, memories.
Creation myths, beliefs for which there is no evidence.
Range: tundra to tropics.

Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
committee meetings, board meetings.
Facing death was how they knew they were alive
or was it more about allocating resources
like yr Dad said.
It's hard to step outside what yr DNA tells you to do.
Nice ****.
Family farm, fight club. It's all one yet distinctions are
what separates the librarian, reflective man, from the road and bridge
      crew.
That's a class statement. Us guys love
our children and will, circumstances dictating, fight for you.

                                 --------------------------------------

Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
is more important to me than my wife. But there is no one left to fight
and no one knows me and I know no one well. That's good,
there is more space between people than I'd ever dared to hope.
I'm confused.
Meditator or gunfighter. Either could come to know himself,
flat abs, clear sight
with patience and discipline.
What's this:
know yourself?
Once yr knee or neck is smashed there's no getting up to fight.

                                 --------------------------------------

Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
will grow old alone once I'm in the ground. He will live
with the question what was our purpose? He was managed by
the molecules we're made of, proteins, enzymes, amino acids, DNA.
******* DNA.
I'd rather be a rock.
But the rock is subject to
its elements. Thus, the periodic table and particle physics,
meiosis and mitosis and yes, democracy and self-governance,
all the colors of anthropology and ecology, windmills and sundials,
fission and fusion for evil and light
and the devil who exists to carry the load when we misbehave and
      fight
among ourselves.

                                 --------------------------------------

Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
is how I know who I am.
Because the truth is always changing, depending on the meeting.
What's good.
Service to others is a safe bet. That service
may take many forms: fighting, meeting, teaching, making.
The fighting may be part of holding community together. Limited
      scope, defensive posture.
How broadly we define community says everything. So,
we come to Mexico, a violent border and an unhappy history.
Or Gaza and Israel. Or Russia and just about everybody.
How can a people become a nation without resorting to violence or
      incurring violent reaction?
Does it matter? Accept violence like any EMT and devote yourself
      to
what, beauty?
Why do I write about violence, I've almost never
had to fight.

                                 --------------------------------------

Anyone who wants to fight me all the time
is nothing compared to the ocean which can take your children any
      time.
The Nazis or janjaweed.
In peace we have our meetings.
When violence comes to the neighborhood the hierarchy of
      communicants will hold or fold
it is then the peace work proves relevant.
Hold your clod of land.
Give way to the waves.
All I do not know.
I admire the writer who penetrates the unknown by describing that
      which
is not himself.
His enemy,
anyone who wants to fight him all the time
helps him live outside himself.

RNA or DNA polymerase, an enzyme, protein, attracted to
promoter molecules in the polypeptide chain causing a zipper
motion and transcription of the code, a duplication of codons,
introns and exons, and so it goes, sharing and unsharing electrons.

These attractions and repulsions, coming near and going far
in nanounits or light years, fail to explain things permanently
but make possible the technology to live long and well, with
      personality.
It is a form of governance, the governance of elements, elements are
      now

apparently our gods. Learn all you can about their laws, their names,
their needs, read their poems. Only the mentally unusually sound
      would,
given this knowledge, agree to the process of mitosis and fertilization.
      However,
organisms go round then senseless via involuntary respiration.
      Therefore, Pilot Oh Pilot Me.

I like immigrants, immigration. Legal immigration,
Jane passionately corrects. Actually my goal is a borderless world.
That's a new idea to her.
Gathering the neighborhood like family.
The men discuss sterilizing welfare mothers. I say You're working
      around the edges,
humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet,
even those with jobs. And spouses. And houses.
Yet it's an idyll of an early summer evening, new cut grass,
two baseball teams of children playing in it. Safe from Pakistan.
News photos of Muslim refugees, women in blue robes, biblically
carrying children away from holocaust. The fundamentalist army
not far behind, beheading sinners, sure in its righteousness
as the Holy Roman Empire.

Somehow Joel Osteen the evangelist comes up
while talking about how the Catholic Church is irrelevant in North
      America,
even Latin America and Africa are going evangelical.
Izzi likes Osteen, awesome extemporaneous speaker, no teleprompter,
up from bootstraps message. My wife says he's probably Jewish.
No one wants to go there.
Fortunately no one claims the Holocaust never happened or slavery
      was voluntary.
What is the carrying capacity of the planet? Two children
have replacement value. In China is it each couple or each adult that gets
one offspring? As life expectancy and standards rise,
family size diminishes. We draw together into greener, tighter cities
surrounded by farms surrounded by forests.
The children of three monotheistic religions, atheists and agnostics
play in city streets, work farm fields, explore forests, deserts,
      grasslands, space.

Two ancient female poets: Enheduanna and Sappho
are a revelation. The clarity of their complaints:
lost lover, lost city.