Twig on a tree through my window
knows sign language, I’m sure.
Branch fingers waving
to his lover across the road.

He bobs and bends in the breeze.
It’s a mystery to me,
why this waxy green tree,
with love in his leaves,
doesn’t leave his roots
and **** soil
from the same straw as his lover
across the road.

One day she’ll grow old,
wilt, then timber.
Will he remember
his failure to uproot,
to shoot a vine across a power line,
just to intertwine
for one moment
in time?

Once cannot teach
Because One is still a student,
This is because we are always learning.

One cannot study
Because One is still a teacher,
This is because we are always guiding.

Developing,
Like three rivers which join & fork -
Only to re-join in course.

We are always trying & changing,
Doing & reaching.

In the pursuit of understanding,
Truth is achieving
And knowledge is victory.

Compassion & patience -
The keys to all things.

We drank coffee and smoked cigarettes as the sun rose.
We spoke in philosophical rhymes, unaware of the passage of time.
I realize now that the love we had is lost.
You reach for me, but I am a phantom. Long ago, I stopped reaching back.
Still, what we had—the raw and unearthly attraction, the bond forged between our two souls—is unlike anything I’ve ever known.
I will be alone until love strikes my heart like it once did.
I want a love that burns me to ash and then resurrects itself from the remnants.
I want a love that bleeds, gives, and never makes me question my worth.
If I can’t have that, I am content with nothing at all.

-Rhia Clay

Have found immediacy, empty
touching mantra enchanting
positioning paleo lingual

pings asking attention, empty
mind state, concentrating
mental energy outward,
externalities inward,

who first?

Browning - visiting
ancient Etruscan

Faesulae, conquered
by Romans.

In Roman antiquity,
the seat, we see
of a famous school
of augurs and, every year,
twelve young men
were sent there
from Rome
to study the art of divination.

"Who listened
to the Legate's talk last week,
"And just as much they used
    to say
       in France...
"At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!"

How familiar are the settings,
put forth in dramatic monologue,
easy
feels familiar,
least among giants, seeing,
believing all available science,
in the time
of Raphael 'n'em,
who can yet recall
“Andrea del Sarto” though,
Browning gave him space,
to firm aspirations,
to make good,
be good producers,
selling life's sizzle,

most all sales trainers
   use one line, alone…
    common extension

To succeed one must believe,
verbally grasping will to sell
b to b marketing,
on the Mammonic
entrancement, please try
to grasp the nature of worth…
to a poet in the space we use,
for free
for your examined life… you knew

“Andrea del Sarto”
by Robert Browning
rates one precept,
out
of the anxious mind percept
whence comes
this common
inspiration, say this mountain moves. Say it in the name of Jesu
- on Earth, as it is, just so
Amen, Browning was a master…
"Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? "