The oak predates our house. How old
it was when it toppled, I cannot tell:
a tree stands for ages, sees war unfold,
endures tribulations, then in one fell
goes still. I hadn’t time to count its rings:

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself

Leaves gather like un- sold goods. Need help, asks the rake. Just browsing, I say.

Both the atheist and the believer have it wrong.
We are not mere bodies, nor do we have souls.
Heaven would be a room strewn with books
and nary an errand to distract from reading;

Not the shaded table by the pool
where I point out a hummingbird eating nectar
and my son asks, “You mean like I eat pizza?”

“Hawaii wildfires burn historic town of Lahaina ‘to the ground’” – BBC I remember coffee-flavored ice cream at the Royal Scoop, how it made me long to be old enough to drink espresso like Dad. I remember stepping off the […]

Is it wrong to love this world like a newborn swaddled in peach skin, beech-tree bark, silt at the mouth of a stream whose headwater is starlight, is ocean-honey, is upwell of grief? World we once called mother, how we […]