When Bach was a Busker in Brandenburg When Bach was a busker playing for humble coin he’d set up his organ in the middle of a square regardless of pigeons, ignoring the squirrels who sat poised at its edges waiting for their daily bread, and work to build its impossible structure of intricacies, assembling its…

If you talk about it, it’s not Tao If you name it, it’s something else What can’t be named is eternal Naming splits the eternal to smithereens ………………………….. —Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC Lao Tzu’s Lament At first I think, I’ve got it— Then I think, Oh no, that’s not it. I think, it’s more…

The town where I grew up had a river running through it, as does the town does where I find myself at the other extreme of a journey. There was a particular spot in that river where it tumbled over rocks through a narrow in a raging white flume until it settled quietly in a…

“The best evidence we have suggests that early Earth was completely covered by oceans… (but) to link two amino acids together to make a protein, you have to remove water. And that would have been impossible if the amino acids were immersed in an ocean. Life needed some land— literally a beachhead—to get started.” —geobiologist,…

……………. All the world’s a stage,                    And all the men and women merely players;                   They have their exits and their entrances,                   And one man in his time plays…

      Down to the Bone If I could un-ring certain bells and un-wind time I would, but can’t, so instead, I’ll just ride this bucket of bones till the wheels fly off; till ball-joints grind and drop from sockets, till this xylophone of ribs riffs the music of the spheres, until my funny…

…..Why Being? What happens, happens before & after, every time, without fail, always— yet, is singular, is a one-note affair in a symphony of nows each moment of which then becomes before & after, simultaneously. If this seems confusing, blame time, or life, or God which, in particular, has been a widespread explanation of the…

A Simple Ontology maybe flower petals are held to stems by thought and the wind’s a counter-thought that plucks and sets them elsewhere in the grass to grow in contemplative resolution beside my notion of a grub-pulling crow maybe the wind itself is a palpable bright idea, something about motion and the abhorrence of vacuums, something about…

Eternal Day-long Sum The music of what happens begins with a bottom line of drums, as in the foundation of a house, percussion— the thumps of bass in sync with a wind of horns: baritone, bassoon, tuba; and in the whispers of brushed snares, the round tones of tympany, and in the rests between —the…

A Small Universe of Suns Here we have a small universe of suns. Behind, a black hole is endeavoring to swallow them. The suns are ringed by nebulae which are no more than clouds of gas and dust, collections of atoms, as we all are. But, in Its capricious way, the Lord of everything has now…

“All humans are, genetically, 99.9% identical” ………..—Roger Highfield, Science Editor 99% Identical “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” a poet said imagining friendly neighbors working their way along that which stood between resetting fallen gneiss and granite loaves and balls fallen to each to keep their wall intact while one questioned the irony of…

A Cornucopia of Elegies as clear as time when the air was green and tenderfeet knew the ballet of beginning, a tern-like teen on one leg in the surf of a sea, a swift on a draft of blinks in the hour of someday-but-not-now— . time is a cornucopia of elegies, the master of poets complicit since the word…

Tell me Something I don’t Know Don’t tell me the earth’s a sphere and the sun’s kiss amounts to half-day terminal bliss with a dark end, or that seasons have to do with angles, mystics have to do with angels, and lovers are about orbiting passions, that pulse like binary stars across light years and…

The Tao that can be thought of is not the real Tao; therefore, the Tao that can be spoken is not real either; so, the Tao that can be named is likewise no thing too. ………. —Lao Tzu, sort of My Religious life I was Catholic, but was not universal enough when I was. I…

Sublime I sometimes shudder at old pics, their bittersweetness, their cutting edge, their tricks: ….. daughter’s brilliant smiles, ….. mittens hung from cuffs, ….. Kodachrome taunts of time ….. —enough I’d rather mine old stones, turn up what’s scattered within my heart and head ….. —the gold I’d rather stick with what’s been deeply sown,…

1/1/26 Typhoon USA Aftermath Premonition —This is a revised version of a poem I wrote when a newly insane river running through our town one day came through, almost over-toping bridges, spilling into streets with wild abandon during Hurricane Irene.  One year back the river tore through on its fall to the sea, courts and laws…

Rapprochement: Just wondering if worlds seen from a distance are really smaller than they are. . . And could it be that when we sleep the world we leave goes on without us? .. Maybe you remember the old days too, days when greenhorns multiplied their joys and were thoughtless as a new moon. Is it…

Two young men greeted a new crew member on a ship’s quarterdeck 60 years ago and, in a matter of weeks, by simple challenge, introduced this then 18-year-old who’d never really read a book through, to the life that can be found in them. —Thank you Anthony Gaeta and Edmund Budde for your life-altering input.…

The writer died while mixing with the rebels, these are natural accidents of war . . . —Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco The country has to toughen up … part of the problem is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right? —US president, Donald Trump The Last Days of Federíco García Lorca Federico in pajamas…

“Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried, in my way, to be free. . .” ……………………….. —Leonard Cohen Birds on Wires The universe is synchronous, its beauties overlap, tunes are made of birds on wires, Leonard sang that song for us Nature plays its songs for us riffs…