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No Small Wonder
It’s those unexpected details in life that can astonish you sometimes, like little thieves waiting for an unwary tourist around a corner. Ants coming out two days before it rains. Burro dung holding up adobe walls for two hundred years. A hummingbird’s heart beating over a thousand beats per minute. A blue whale’s tongue weighing… Continue reading
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Dharma Wonderland
Kennedy, King and Lennon. Public squalor, private wealth. What is this strange country, the United States of America? It is the dog that – when left unattended – discovers everything on the table is within reach, the pleasure and the poison, and devours both. There are times I feel socially homeless among some of my… Continue reading
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Pilgrimage
All day long, I see things a painter would paint. What is there to complain about? Even my own pain has been endured by thousands before me, and depicted by master sculptors. Pilgrimage, penance, failure, learning to hold one’s self tenderly, in friendship – all these have relevance to my experience of life. Honoring the… Continue reading
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Basho’s Traveling Companion
On the jade-colored plate, yellow fruit. Between the window and folding screen, a bed, some clothing. In the stillness of the forest, water flowing. On the mountainside, plum blossoms. In the rain and mud, wild horses. From a bowl in the hermit’s shelter, steam rising. In the iron stove, embers glowing. At the edge of… Continue reading
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Big Sur
A whale spouted by and I dreamt of the story my life could tell. I remembered many loved and lost, I received the world, had a conversation with the cosmos. A whale spouted by, the vastness deepened. I sat, hands in lap, left over right, palms up, thumbs touching. A whale spouted by, I smelled… Continue reading
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Dragon Gates
While drinking cold tea from a glass jar and dividing your thoughts between Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Neruda, you cut a kiwi in half the long way and consider the oval ring of black seeds at its heart. You always see Our Lady Of Guadalupe there, proving that eating a piece of fruit can be… Continue reading
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The Dream Before by Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson The Dream Before ~ She said, What is history? And he said, History is an angel Being blown Backwards Into the future He said: History is a pile of debris And the angel wants to go back and fix things To repair the things that have been broken But there is a… Continue reading
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“Say You Are Lonely” by William Stafford
Say You Are Lonely ~ William Stafford More still than a star, one thought shies by: what if the sky loved you? But nobody knew? But that magnet in space pulled hard? But you acted like nothing at all was reaching or calling for you? More still than a star going by, that thought stays.… Continue reading
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Merlyn
The mountains are alive with fire, transcendent breath, vigorous and endless. Though they have been given a name, a part of them will always be nameless, and I could say the same about myself. I heed the call, after all, of mist-laden glades. I walk among stones with broken blades. I come to you, mountains… Continue reading
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C.M. Rivers 