midsummer day’s dream

midsummer day’s dream

It’s ripe, the melon by our sink. Yellow, bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes the house too sweetly. At five I wake, the air mournful in its quiet. My wife’s eyes swim calmly under their lids, her mouth and jaw relaxed, different. What is happening in the silence of this...
tango

tango

Rules for Happiness Something to do. Someone to love. Something to hope for. Immanuel Kant What is it that we can’t make, make it stay when it arrives, or make it return once it has passed? Happiness. For us to live with things we like is easy. But to live surrounded...
Tour de Provence

Tour de Provence

I stood in the Provençal light my eyes hungry, the landscape beautiful. I couldn’t get enough of the dappled sunshine to quench my thirst. I’d seen a lot of bowed heads over cell phones instead of the fragrant roses blooming nearby. After Nazim Hikmet...
the journey

the journey

Above the mountains the geese turn into the light again painting their black silhouettes on an open sky. Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find...
diminuendo

diminuendo

“Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.” Douglas Adams We all have experiences that transcend reality, like the feeling we get when we listen to...
awakening

awakening

The Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?” The student replied, “It is.” The Buddha then asked, “If the person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?” The student replied again, “It is.” The Buddha then...