this year, horse chestnut
leaves were first to fall
lime trees were the last

By some Remove privy to self-preservation's
extras...to be, or not to be had...beached, I've
been...electromagnetically torn asunder!
Odd sounds do, and do come in and out...
a crackly chirp singing the foundations of worlds.
The melancholia of space junk stuck to a mind of
distance...hoards copious amounts of love-filled
forgetfulness.
Bye...bye...Buddha, in all your "suchness"...bye...
bye...letting go is the only Way.

Part of this mind
is furiously angry
and part of this mind
is extremely kind
and this is a condition
which applies
to my whole family
and I have been struggling
to control the anger
by letting it be
and I have been practicing
to bring out the kindness
by being right here with us
so the dual nature
of the split mind

is non-existent
in this suchness
which doesn't have
to be silent,
only loving.

I stand in the shower with lavender fields in my chest

how do I scrape off the muck, scoop out the loathing
and take off the gloves to pick up the patches of fear
that periodically gather at the base of my shower drain  

how do I heal each limb so that with majesty
I awaken knowing
full and bright that I am a child with wings
and elevation is the right song that pours out when I dream
an inheritance marbled into my being’s skin
                              …
how does a child beget forgetting
how does an adult continue such forgetting

what is the suchness of wholeness
whose scent of remembrance seems mythically far
but its verity present within our plot

                              …
our hands reaching for the bunches of lavender
that can be gathered from a bountiful field
a calm whiff of what we truly are
that can send us back into an infinite space of fruitful life
cusping possibility
                            ...
portable pastures inside our homestead
running water
and a chance to be cleansed
what suchness of being over my body  
how ecstatic
how simple to stand under the showerhead 
on the toes of today
with a meadow in my chest

you are slow like daggers or
        cancer.

this is what it feels like to travel
on a discourse:

something about you metastasizes
in my mind whenever the silences
are no longer beautiful;

and just like that, I thumb a prayer
to the fallen obsidian,
this harbinger of marvelous calm.

sometimes all the rooms are white
and I am immersed deep into pallor –
when both our eyes do not meet,
I wring out a cockeyed miracle:

dragging the blood of the trees with me,
these bushy polyps,
   these benign volcanoes skin,
ashen and dull like a heart – these agonized
appurtenances, I gleam like light
   cut from the mirror and fade out
as my visibilities hide.

something in me smiles when you
are flattened out – cross-legged, interconnected
  unloose a star fettered somewhere deep where
hands cannot reach for the inside of a tomb.
  
  this suchness that when I feel your sensations
press their threats against my skin,
      you are a salutary squelch
in this pure-iron condition, or a heavy-earth machinery
   moving inside my marrow, that deep

  into death like a morning waist-high
with tears, walled in by requiems.

Our politics mostly ridiculous
Sadness seeping sad
Despite disabilities
Try to be a good dad

Poe's chronic despair
It doesn't work out right
Richmond. Baltimore.
El Dorado flight

       The Baudelaire Orphans!

today again a Celtic story
       Cambridge gave me Taipei glory
                William James and his family before me …

                                         the multiverse

I - the Devil
& she's the devil's fav. poem
that i rejoice throttling
deep down into
the suchness
of words with the
huma of love
& the pleasure of wot? -
written & rune 'pon the
parchment of HER world.

“Come over here” I said

She came
Laid herself upon my shoulder
And melted into me
As only she can do

For a long time
There were no words
No need for them
Just that powerful thrum
Like a lion’s purr

It held us there in silence
Like kids in awe of church

It assured my faithfulness
Without any need for promises
Or pledges or oaths

It will
As long as one of us can ask
“Come over here”

Have to content myself
With the little and the small
Not much and such
It's a small world after all

Probably not going to find her
Won't be satisfied
Try to be a good dad
Mathematics pure applied

Poetry because I ...
San Francisco grey
Delicious won ton soup
Rainy night Taipei

San Diego Sandor Marai
Californ I A
Music on the fly
Soon the month of May

                the little way

Karma is a friend
Not a judge or a jury --
More like a suchness...

My dear old friend
is waiting for people
to bring her the pill, which will end her life.

She wants it to arrive
before the pain is too much
before the confusion cannot be laid to rest
before she loses her self along the way.

She did this life full up
her hands were always glowing
she did not take more wounds than she could carry
and she did not hide from those she had
and spend her days, as some of us might
standing three quarters in shadow
hoping to be whole again
by chance.

She held it all, once she was grown
in her long strong arms
and carried it full term
to the Big Table and
without a sideways glance or
a catch in her breath
she shared it all with everyone there
with everyone whose eye’s could see
with all the family from all our lives,
she shared and then felt better
to have touched as she was touched
as light knows itself, and rejoices.

This is the story. That is how it unfolded.
Now, what can be said?

I am so full, it’s leaking out
everyone here, everyone at the big table
we could never be more proud
of the person you are, and the person you
let yourself become
your willingness to be
and become whole
even when it looked like
everything might fall apart-
you’ve discovered the trick
that nothing is as simple
as it appears.

I will remember your smell
the suchness of you, in passing
and be sure as you can be
that I will know you again
in another time, another life
when you are fooling me
by being my child, this time
or maybe a happy dog I see
along the way

this is what the tricky ones do
as it is their heart at play
because they finally know that
they rejoice in living all the parts of this life
but they are not bound in fear by any.

Thank you for teaching me, and
being my friend.

In the distance, I can hear the bell calling
wake up wake up wake up
it has echoed near and far
always, throughout my life

I share this with you
as a clue on your journey
and I will loan you, if needed,
my old well worn night wings
you can jump up so high
and then break the illusion
ride the bell singing
way up to the breathing
the endless breath circling
high above this world

and the wings will drop away
because there is no thing such as falling
and there are no more edges
there is only the song
and the breathing
and  the song
and you

AN RUD A DÚIRT ÉAN BEAG LIOM
( A Little Bird Told Me)

- for David Cooke -

"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter."  - Ecclesiastes 10-20

"Oh!" said the bird
" A human who..."

( and I never saw such
a surprised starling )

"...can understand
our language!"

"You can speak!" I blurted out.
"So, I see can you!" gasped the starling.

"The strange thing is...!"
I framed my words carefully

"...we can understand each other!"
the starling finished my sentence.

"But how..?"
being human I had to ask.

"Forget the hows and whys!"
friend starling replied.

"Just relish the moment
the such and suchness of it all!"

I made up my mind
to do so.

"Everything talks if
you only listen!"

the starling continued
its lesson.

"The mountains talk
to the seas continuously!"

The starling so
informed me.

"But humans never ever
(well hardly ever)listen!"

chirped the starling
playfully.

I see it had been listening
to Gilbert and Sullivan.

"And..." the starling went on
it was us birds who taught them!"

I could tell it was proud of
the whole nation of birds.

"Well, I'ill be...!" I sad.
"Yes..." said the starling "...a poet!"

"Poets know the language
of everything"

The starling stated
as if it were a law.

"What the reed in the rushes
told the lake..."

"Or how the sky sees
and says it all..."

Then its feathers trembled
with the change in the air.

"Well, I must fly!"
chuckled the starling.

"Well, well..." boomed the sky
in perfect Blueness.

"Was that a human
I saw you talking to..."

thundered it vastness
dark clouds looming on its horizon.

"Noooo - not me!"
lied the starling

for whatever
reason.

"Hmmm..!" hmmmm the sky suspiciously
"He looked a bit Irish to me!"

"Níl Gaeilge ar bith agam ar chor ar bith!"
stammered the starling.

And the day continued on
talking to Time incessantly.

*

The éan beag that told me all this against the wishes of the sky...was the drud or druideog...the common starling or as in the W.B. Yeats' poem THE STARE'S NEST.

It liked to quote the lines to me in its own charming voice.

"We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty;"

And here was my little stare friend opening my mind out and turning the key.

When caught by the sky telling tales to humans the little fella tries to get out of it by telling the sky "I don't have any Irish at all!" but in Irish. Of course the sky although knowing everything didn't however know any Irish!

I was uncertain of the lines about uncertainty in the Yeats and was trying to remember the Callimachus about people not listening...how a mountain never listens to a sea. And David Cooke when he was staying with us was delighted to find some Greek that he both loved and could indeed read and I thought I betcha David could tell me. But of course not having a David Cooke at hand I stumbled along in these lines and offered up the poem to him.

As sunbeams trickle
So too do the moments here
Spent in my suchness

The isolation is lifelong
We never seem to touch

Life is Suffering
The Buddha said as such

Suchness in the flowers
Suchness in the rice

I remember Michael Jackson
I remember Vincent Price

Thriller.  Very nice.

AN RUD A DÚRIT ÉAN BEAG LIOM
( A Little Bird Told Me)

- for David Cooke -

"For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter."  - Ecclesiastes 10-20


"Oh!" said the bird
" A human who..."

( and I never saw such
a surprised starling )

"...can understand
our language!"

"You can speak!" I blurted out.
"So, I see can you!" gasped the starling.

"The strange thing is...!"
I framed my words carefully

"...we can understand each other!"
the starling finished my sentence.

"But how..?"
being human I had to ask.

"Forget the hows and whys!"
friend starling replied.

"Just relish the moment
the such and suchness of it all!"

I made up my mind
to do so.

"Everything talks if
you only listen!"

the starling continued
its lesson.

"The mountains talk
to the seas continuously!"

The starling so
informed me.

"But humans never ever
(well hardly ever)listen!"

chirped the starling
playfully.

I see it had been listening
to Gilbert and Sullivan.

"And..." the starling went on
it was us birds who taught them!"

I could tell it was proud of
the whole nation of birds.

"Well, I'ill be...!" I sad.
"Yes..." said the starling "...a poet!"

"Poets know the language
of everything"

The starling stated
as if it were a law.

"What the reed in the rushes
told the lake..."

"Or how the sky sees
and says it all..."

Then its feathers trembled
with the change in the air.

"Well, I must fly!"
chuckled the starling.

"Well, well..." boomed the sky
in perfect Blueness.

"Was that a human
I saw you talking to..."

thundered it vastness
dark clouds looming on its horizon.

"Noooo - not me!"
lied the starling

for whatever
reason.

"Hmmm..!" hmmmmthe sky suspiciously
"He looked a bit Irish to me!"

"Níl Gaeilge ar bith agam ar chor ar bith!"
stammered the starling.

And the day continued on
talking to Time incessantly.

suchness, seeking, solitude
        long time passing
              unforgotten!