Kingfisher: the colour-giver, fire-bringer, flame-flicker, river’s quiver. Ink-black bill, orange throat, and a quick blue back-gleaming feather-stream. Neat and still it sits on the snag of a stick, until with… Gold-flare, wing-fan, whipcrack the kingfisher – zingfisher, singfisher- Flashes down too fast to follow, quick and quicker carves its hollow In the water, slings its…
grace gives me a day too beautiful I had thought to stay indoors & yet washing my dishes straightening my shelves finally throwing out the wilted onions shrunken garlic cloves I discover I am happy to be inside looking out. This, I think, is wealth. Just this choosing of how a beautiful day is spent.…
This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you…
Starting here, what do you want to remember?How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?What scent of old wood hovers, what softenedsound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the worldthan the breathing respect that you carrywherever you go right now? Are you waitingfor time to show you some better…
I am the black lace tree Fashioned to the shifting swathe of sky Lifting your eyes to beauty I am the steadfast girth Of the wide gnarled trunk Urging your body to lean I am the swooping blackbird Thrilled by the cool freeing air Calling your heart to joy I am the determined dog Nose…
I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that thinking for a moment it was one day like any other. But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room, it must have been the first easy rhythm…
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean – the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down…
The Arabs used to say, When a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where he’s come from, where he’s headed. That way, he’ll have strength enough to answer. Or, by then you’ll be such good friends you don’t care. Let’s go back to that. Rice? Pine…
Every day ….I see or hear ……..something …………that more or less kills me ….with delight, ……..that leaves me …………like a needle in the haystack ….of light. ……..It was what I was born for – …………to look, to listen, to lose myself ….inside this soft world – ……..to instruct myself …………over and over in joy, ….and…