The Artist's Life: Her Update

Songs of the Inner Life: 
How I Made My Way in the Dark

The final proofing for Songs of the Inner Life has been done, and soon the book will be finished, published, out and about in the world.
  
The book explores the buried meaning in life events, the juxtaposition of ordinary outer life and mysterious inner experience that leads one further into one's calling and development. It's very personal and very universal. 

Creating art can be a solitary and sometimes lonely pursuit. Friends and kindred spirits are essential to one’s sense of purpose and well-being.  I am fortunate in that regard. I have been buoyed up, inspired and brightened by many people, each of whom brings unique and wonderful qualities into my world.  Harry (Rick) Moody, author of a wonderful book titled The Five Stages of the Soul, had this to say about Songs of the Inner Life. 

 "Whoever thought that a spiritual journey could read like a roller coaster ride?  As Bette Davis said, “Fasten your seat belts! ” -- and be ready for a great ride in Gaea Yudron's memoir of her life and times."

Activities In the Kwan Yin Inn

We are assembling the new audacious aging kits in the Kwan Yin Inn, a studio in the back garden. The button making machine, button parts, magnets, booklets and envelopes---each part of the kit sits in happy expectation of meeting people who want to get a positive aging boost in their lives.

People often say "what a cute idea" when they hear about the kits....

Do you want to wear some sassy, pro-aging buttons or give a friend a kit that contains upbeat, life-affirming messages about aging? Great for birthdays, retirement or just because...... Learn more at our website....


Beauties of the Garden, an Ongoing Saga

The poppies are finishing their bloom, the roses are out in full flower, and penstemons, feverfew, snapdragons, daylillies are among the delicious sights right now in the south-facing garden. I am still working on moving the rest of the 3 yards of compost I had delivered to various beds.

Playfulness and the Art of Aging

I'm giving a talk on playfulness on Monday at the  Ashland Food Co-op. Well, it will be more/other than a talk, depending upon how willing the audience is.

Being playful, spontaneous, creative, silly, inventive, outrageous, letting go of one's ordinary persona and behavior--all of that is so refreshing and delightful, freeing, instructive and just plain fun.  I love doing this with groups, and would like to do more of it!

I presented The Poetry of Aging the other day at OLLI. Poetry and playfulness---two of my favorite things to share with others.... Both allow us to take a vacation from ordinary reality and enter other parts of our psyche. I enjoyed sharing what many poets have written about aging, and we had a marvelous conversation about aging afterwards, too.

A NEW WRINKLE

I just finished writing "Organ Recital," a very funny song about physical complaints that composer Laura Rich is now setting to music. One of its verses goes like this:
 

"We have to go to Thailand for our teeth

Getting work done there is much more cheap

the dentists are quite gentle

they’re never temperamental

Thai food is just delightful

We relish every bite full

what’s more, there is also the beach."

Oh, what a wonderful day it will be when the revue is ready for production. I am very ready to see that day arrive.  Well, that is a little of what is going on here in my life as an artist/entrepreneur/social change activist.  

Of course, my life is full of a great many other things, too. I have been happy to see protests against Monsanto arise in so many cities and countries. I pray for the bees, for the whales, for the humans.  Living in a body right now takes a lot of courage and heart.

Perhaps it has always been true. Wishing all of us the courage and heart to meet and engage with life in ways that are fruitful.

The Inner Work of Growing Old

Two years ago almost exactly--February 12, 2011--I posted an essay on the inner work of growing older. I want to share it with you again today. It's valuable for us to reflect upon and engage in these tasks. In them is the real harvest of growing older. The link to my earlier essay can be found at the end of this blog entry.

I will focus on the developmental tasks of aging in my OLLI class tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. Sharing with others in a circle or class setting is such a rich experience. I've got two groups this week--one at OLLI and the other at Skylark Assisted Living.

I am also readying to gather a 5-session class in March-April titled "The Adventure of Spirited Aging." It will meet weekly on Thursdays from 4-6pm,  in Ashland, from March 14-April 11th. Please email me if you are interested in knowing more about it, or registering.

This week I enjoyed being part of One Billion Rising at the Bellview Grange. It was a wonderful gathering, full of great dance, music and poetry. I shared my poem Forces of Nature, which expresses the elemental and sacred qualities of the Feminine. You can read the poem below. And right after the poem you will find the link to my post from 2 years ago. I hope you take a moment to read about these important inner tasks and reflect on how you are engaging in this important growth work.

 

Forces of Nature

Women like forces of Nature

   blue as the sky, their voices

in the streams and rivers,

their scent of the Earth after rain.

Faces from the wind

at the spin of the beginningless

   who have been born and died many times.

Living in secret,

deep in the Mountain Home

rustling their leaves of gold and green

their scarlet hair blown out

      as a music to the autumn wind.

Just before the first snow.

In silence, in whiteness,

in knowing they remain

far ways from here

deep in great forests

       where the secret banner flies

      of the hidden world.

In great trees whose magic

is to elude the destroyer,

women like forces of Nature are hidden.

In fragrant dewy rains of spring

     the tender grass is born again.

Wildflowers appear

     the deer return

the bear awakes

It’s time and

you have what it takes

your face from before the time of mothers and fathers

your heart bright as the sun at midday

your mind of the original nature.

If you trust the way back over

you can go there

it’s not back over there

     it’s not back

                                        it’s not over there.

If you have wings to fly you can fly

You can walk there

      You can walk there

You can walk.

Women like forces of Nature

moving Earth

moving,

      moving and disappearing.

Bouyant

   streaming clouds and prayers of peace

women dancing in the midst of space,

their faces brilliant as a hundred autumn moons

  their diadems a thousand stars.

Jewel planets

   so deep time cannot touch them.

women of the wisdom eye

                     to die in their embrace is to awaken.

Rainbows stream from every pore

laughing their thunderous laughter

                             they walk through the measureless sky

with the cool hands of the healers

                          with the beauty of their diamond bodies

with their joyous armor

shattering every disease.

Living the great peace

     they live among us

they live among us.

They are in our blood.

Here is the link to my earlier post.

SAGE'S PLAY: Growing Old: The Inner Work: Fifteen years ago I was 55 and I was drawn to begin some of the inner work of aging. I didn't think of myself as old then. In fact the ide...

A New Wrinkle Makes Front Page News! Plus the Healing Power of Poetry

I was on the phone with a friend this morning when my housemate Louise suddenly appeared with a big grin on her face. What's up? I wondered, immersed in my phone conversation. Then Louise held up a copy of the local paper and pointed to a big picture of composer Laura Rich and I on the front page. Front page! she exclaimed happily. And so it was, a BIG photo and wonderful article about A New Wrinkle and A Celebration of Aging right there on the front page. Pretty darned nice. I am glad for the chance to get some of these ideas about aging out there in my community. Take a look at the article here.

'A New Wrinkle' | DailyTidings.com

This morning before the front page phenomenon entered my reality, I was planning to write something about poetry. It's National Poetry month. I am a lover of poetry. I even love reading what poets have to say about poetry. For example......


Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
--Novalis
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
--Carl Sandburg
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.
--Rita Dove
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
--Robert Frost

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?
The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.
--Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
--Plato
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
--John Cage
Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
--William Hazlitt

I cannot imagine life without poetry which has been a treasure in my life from childhood on. I could never choose one poet as a favorite, any more than I could choose one fiction writer. I love the poetry of Alan Ginsburg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jane Kenyon, Basho, Lorca, Dylan Thomas, Ellen Bass, Anna Swir, Kabir, Hafiz, Anne Waldman, Maya Angelou, Billy Collins, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson.

How about this 3-year old's rendition of Billy Collin's poem Litany? I find it quite wonderful. May your days and nights display their innate poetry in patterns and cadences that restore and invigorate you.

Bolinas, Village of the Whales

In the early Seventies,my daughter Danielle and I made our first trip to Bolinas. It was the kind of day that makes you forget that there is any suffering in human life, a day defined by brisk air, big blue sky, and all the freshness and movement of early autumn. In our pale blue Plymouth Valiant with the word POETRY painted on the driver’s side, we came over the softly rounded bosom of Mt. Tamalpais, winding down the hairpin turns of coastal Highway 1 until we reached the curved shoreline of Stinson Beach. We drove along the edge of the limpid blue water of Bolinas Lagoon, where white egrets nested in tall eucalyptus groves in a nearby canyon and flocks of pelicans circled and dove into the silky water. Past the lagoon, huge eucalyptus trees lined the road on either side as we approached the town.


Once I saw that place, I was done for. I couldn't resist its beauty. It was the fairytale town I had always longed for. Bolinas had a wonderful scent, a perfume mixed of the sea, pungent eucalyptus, wet earth, chaparral, seaweed, cows, horses, fish and roses. Its tiny downtown boasted a charming white clapboard church. There was an old-fashioned general store, a small cafe, a hardware store, a library, a seedily chic old hotel, a small post office, a bar that never seemed to empty, and a surfboard shop populated with a panoply of beautiful young guys. Bolinas was home to many poets and a mecca for artists, musicians, healers, cowboys, fishermen, craftspeople and unique wanderers. From the start, I felt very much at home there in that village of 1200 people, called by some a hippie arcadia and by others a bohemian outpost.

Bolinas in the Seventies was a heady place. I've been writing about my experiences there in Songs of the Inner Life, my current book-in progress. As part of my research, I thought it would be instructive to re-read The Town that Fought to Save Itself, a book written by Orville Schell and published in 1976. Schell became quite a prominent China scholar in the following decades. Schell's Bolinas book (in which he calls the village Briones--Bolinasians like to hide their town's identity and whereabouts--often taking the road sign down so that motorists can't find the turnoff) chronicles the town's efforts to develop and maintain a zero-growth policy, something Bolinas has succeeded in preserving all these years--an unusual and marvelous feat, to my mind. Forty years later, nothing has changed much, thanks to that zero-growth policy. There is still plenty of open space, natural beauty and wildness preserved there. Nothing can replace that. I wish more towns would do what Bolinas has done. How different Ashland, Oregon the town I've lived in for over 30 years would be now if that were true. As it is, new townhouse developments and impressively large houses continue to be built in fields and on the hills, which changes the natural environment drastically. People who move here from LA and NY think it is a quiet, laid back place, but it is far more speedy, impersonal and congested than it was 30 years ago because of growth.

I've had a fascination with whales since childhood so it was oddly coincidental that I wound up in Bolinas. I didn't have any idea that the name of the village meant whale when I moved there, but when I discovered that, it made me happy. In Bolinas, I became involved with Project Jonah, the first environmental organization dedicated to saving the whales, before Greenpeace began. The time I spent in Bolinas was filled with unusual coincidences and magic, and I've been enjoying writing down the stories.

When I opened Orville Schell's book and discovered one of my poems on a page right before the Prologue, I was taken by surprise. I had completely forgotten that my poem appeared in that book. It's strange to encounter something you wrote a long time ago and forgot about. It's a bit like looking at an old photograph or letter from many years past. Here's the poem.

POEM

Words themselves are medicine.
By telling the events of our time
we give meaning to them.
Words themselves are medicine.

It was considered a sacred place.
The mountain is considered a sacred mountain.

It is said that they lived here peacefully
naked, that they hunted quail, rabbit, deer.
By the bay, in the village that is now Bolinas
the people lived. They are
all dead now, sang songs no one remembers
nor can tell the things they danced to
when time was called moon of the black cherries
moon when the ponies shed their hair
moon when the deer shed their horns.
Olema they named, for the coyote.
Petaluma they named, that means flat hill.
Whales, then many whales
swam past the coast in the time
of water, in the time of darkening
light, swam south to mate.

The Miwok tribe lived here.
Before the Gold Rush, before the
lumbering started, when the land
was still people with giant redwoods
when trees still spoke, were revered.
Before Spanish, Portuguese, Irish or
Italians, before Chinese or Japanese
came here, the Miwok lived here,
or near here. Some say this place
was such a sacred place that no one
was bold enough to live here, but
came here only to get strong, be healed.


The wind is blowing here in Ashland tonight. I guess we're in for some weather. I enjoyed hanging out with some old friends yesterday on Thanksgiving. I appreciate my old friends even more as the years go by. I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving Day, too.

Oh, I don't want to forget this marvelous item about Super Mamika, in which a photographer grandson encourages his 91-year old grandmother to dress up as a super heroine. Great photos! You will enjoy them, I am sure.

When Lightning Strikes

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."--Helen Keller

Security is a myth. Anything can happen at any moment. Intellectually, I know this. And there have been times when I have experienced it, the feeling one has when the so-called rug is pulled out and there you are in the midst of nowhere going no place and being nobody, everything you identified yourself by vanished.

I aspire to get comfortable with that. I want to relax about it, open up easily beyond the finite boundaries of my familiar self and life. Something easier said than done, something worthy of practice.

A friend told me that two days ago, after an enormous sound, a blinding experience of light flooded her living room. When it was over, there was nothing scorched or burnt. But it was lightning. Others nearby called to check on her because they saw it strike her home and were concerned for her wellbeing. Lightning can be like that. Powerful, yet leaving no trace of its visit. If you are fortunate. It infuses you somehow, but you live through it, as a childhood friend of my younger daughter did when lightning passed through her body as she swam in a pool.

Sometimes it feels like being struck by lightning to be reflected by one's spiritual teacher. I haven't had the experience lately, but over the past 35 years I have definitely had it. My spiritual mentors have let loose with bolts of shattering insight and effortless, inherently loving snapshots of my unique predicament. I cannot imagine what my life would have been without the presence of my spiritual teachers, beautiful, profound, earthy, humorous and deeply compassionate Tibetan lamas. So many people have never even met an authentic spiritual guide. Or they scoff at the idea. I find it very sad. It is difficult being a spiritual/religious person in a society that is either relentlessly secular or fanatically religious in ways that are inconceivable to me.

I guess that's why I am thinking of India so much. It would feel relaxing to be in a country where thousands of naked sadhus running into the Ganges is their version of a marathon, and where the importance of spiritual practice and development is taken for granted. Maybe I'll travel there one of these days. Lately, I've been thinking of traveling to India as a celebration of turning 70.

My younger daughter is 28 today. Astounding. The spirit is timeless, but the body is carried along in linear time. She and I had dinner together the other night to celebrate. What a beautiful, deep person she is. I always feel fortunate that she is my daughter. When I was her age, I made the journey from the East coast to the West coast. I discovered Buddhism, healing arts and environmental activism. I wonder what this year will bring to her life.

I'm often reading various stuff. I just finished reading a book about India titled Empire of the Soul. It has some truly marvelous writing about India and the spiritual search. But overall I found it rather dispiriting. It was the writer's distance from and distrust of his spiritual life that got to me eventually.

Yesterday I read a poem by David Wright titled Lines on Retirement, After Reading Lear. I like this part of the poem.

"...Feel the storm's sweet sting invade you to the skin,
the strange, sore comforts of the wind. Embrace
your children's ragged praise and that of friends.
Go ahead, take it off, take it all off.
Run naked in the tempests. Weave flowers
into your hair. Bellow at cataracts.
If you dare, scream at the gods..."

Take it all off. How about deconstructing the self? It's a good idea to practice expanding into the infinite, letting go of the particular markers of the individual life.

Even so, I still have ordinary work to do here, and it is naturally an expression of the sacred.

The First Violets

Yes, I know the dear little fellow is in the midst of a field of bluebells, not violets. But he expresses so well how it makes me feel to find the first violets each year. Yesterday I found them at the side of a house in the historic district of Ashland, very near where my daughter lives. There they were, marvelous clumps of beautiful scent and color along the fence and at the side of the house. When we returned from our walk, I had to pick a tiny bouquet.

When I went out in the spring meadows
to gather violets
I enjoyed myself so much
I stayed all night.
---Akahito

I read that poem last night with the tiny bouquet of violets sitting on my dining table emitting its delicate odor. I did not stay out all night in the spring meadows, or run through a field of bluebells, but my rendez-vous with the violets was a vivid splash in the midst of the day. This year once again I eagerly await spring. As poet Alan Spence writes--

First warmth of spring
I feel as if
I have been asleep...

We need more rain and hopefully it will arrive. Perhaps it will grow cold again. It is only February after all. But the buds are swelling, the daffodils push up from the earth, the crocuses are already blooming. And the violets have appeared.

One more poem for the day to come, from Kabir.

Do not go outside your house to see flowers
My friend, don't bother with that excursion
Inside your body there are flowers
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
Inside the body and out of it
Before gardens and after gardens.

Photo by Goodman Chris via Flickr

The Elder Hall of Fame

We have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Baseball Hall of Fame, and seems to me we could use an Elder Hall of Fame. Now this is not a complete list in any way, in terms of my own nominations. But here are a few elders I put forth for your consideration.

Three of them are known as spiritual leaders.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mother Theresa
The Dalai Lama

There are the 2 Alberts, Albert Einstein and Albert Schweitzer, faves of mine since childhood.

And here are some others. I admire the political activist Granny D., who at 89 walked across the country to draw attention to campaign reform. Of course I should mention Jack La Lanne, embodying and teaching physical fitness far into the later years, and B.B. King, a great blues singer who continues to perform in his 80s. And I want to include Clarissa Pinkola Estes, mythologist, storyteller, and author of Women Who Run with the Wolves.

Robert Butler M.D. who created the word ageist and is credited with creating the field of aging has my vote as does the recently deceased Gene Cohen, M.D., Ph.D. author of The Mature Mind and The Creative Age. And Rabbi Zalman Schachter, who coined the phrase spiritual eldering and wrote the wonderful book From Aging to Saging.

Here's a few others whose lives and work I contemplate:
Anne Halprin, innovative dancer and choreographer
James Hillman author of Force of Character and the Lasting Life
Maya Angelou, poet, civil rights activist, best selling author
Artist Louise Bourgeois, pushing 100 and still producing amazing art
Barbara Marx Hubbard, at 80 working for positive futures for humanity
Irene Pappas, the marvelous Greek actress and singer

Oh, how about Ram Dass and Wavy Gravy? They are great examples of humor, service and heartful living.

And I must include some of my townspeople here. Like John and Dot Fisher-Smith, both in their early 80s, riding their bikes all over town. And the painters Charu Colorado, Harriet Rex Smith and Betty La Duke. The dancer/choreographer Robin Bryant. The poet Lawson Inada. Just a few of the vivid elders I am fortunate to live among.

That's just for starters, a mere amuse-bouche so to speak. There are so many more. I wonder who you would choose to nominate for the Elder Hall of Fame? What elders inspire you?

The photos are of Albert Einstein, Barbara Marx Hubbard and Maya Angelou

December Full Moon

On full moon nights, I love driving out to the Tashi Choling Tibetan Buddhist temple in a mountain valley outside of Ashland. When meditation practice is finished, a wonderful experience in itself, there's something else to look forward to--the drive back to town with the full moon's splendid light radiating over the expansive valley. Tonight though, it's cold and foggy and I chose to remain home.

This painting by 19th century German painter Carl Anton Joseph Rottman is such a beautiful evocation of the energy the full moon pours out over the landscape. The moon streams through the inner landscape, too. I couldn't sleep last night because of the way the energy of the full moon spurred recollections, ruminations and musing. I usually appreciate the disturbance of being moonstruck. But I'm glad to get a rest from the intense luster of the full moon for the rest of the month, or who knows what the heck life would be like.


I lie on my couch by the front window
and watch the moon rise
like a pearl held between two cloud shells
like the luminous center of a flower of cloud petals
like a jewel appearing in a round cloud window

just the full moon
above a mesa and canyon
composed of cloudbanks


I wrote that poem in December 2004. The moon waxes and wanes. The months and years pass. Now here we are nearly at the end of 2009, which has been for me a year of deep invention, acceptance and expansiveness. As the composer John Cage once said, "Everything we do is music. Everywhere is the best seat."
__________________

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Dr. Gene Cohen, author of The Creative Age and The Mature Mind, both marvelous and inspiring books. I have been and will continue to be a big fan of Dr. Cohen's pioneering work in the field of aging. I wanted to share this tribute to Dr. Cohen from the December 1st issue of the Human Values in Aging Newsletter published by the AARP Office of Academic Affairs, H.R. Moody, Editor.

REMEMBERING GENE COHEN

This month the field of aging lost one of its giants,
with the passing of Gene Cohen, M.D., on Nov. 9, 2009.
Gene Cohen's life was a stellar string of "first's":
At the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1970s,
he was the first chief of the Center on Aging. Later
he became President of the Gerontological Society and
Editor of the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Since 1994,
Gene served as the first director of the Center on Aging,
Health and Humanities at George Washington University.

Gene was a prolific scholar and writer. His book, THE CREATIVE
AGE: Awakening the Human Potential in the Second Half of Life, and
later THE MATURE MIND: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain,
have become classics expounding a vision of "positive aging"
based on solid empirical inquiry.

While at Harvard, Gene was a student of Erik Erikson and
he carried on Erikson's legacy of adult development. Unlike
Erikson, Gene lived only until age 65, and, as with Moses, he
glimpsed the "Promised Land" of old age, but did not himself
live to enter it. He has left us a legacy and I hope we live
up to it. For those who knew him personally, Gene was, truly,
a giant in his field, but a gentle giant-- humble, funny,
endlessly creative and accessible. In a word, he was a mensch.
He will not be forgotten.
_____________________________


Thanks to http://visipix.dynalias.com/ for the full moon image

Full Moon after Autumn Equinox

I went down to the old railroad district part of town today, and there were bright red leaves on the maple trees and lovely golden leaves on gingkos and aspens. It was first Friday, which means a big social scene at the art galleries.

When I lived in New York, I never missed the Friday art openings. Art openings and jazz at the Five Spot were my mainstays in those days. The art scene in New York was heady, competitive, and very creative as painters, photographers, writers, designers etc all gathered together in a swarm at art openings and bars like Max's Kansas City.

I enjoy living in this small town of Ashland, Oregon, where I've lived for over 30 years, but I have to say that the art scene in Ashland is usually pretty ho-hum. It's not that there are no good artists here. There are some. But there is no real art scene, which to me is a scene composed mainly of engaged artists. First Fridays in Ashland bring a variety of folks out on the town, and you can catch up with friends as you drink a little wine and eat morsels of this and that.

Today at the currently favored gallery there was a guy with little horns on his head and a very pretty coral and white snake around his arm, and another fellow in full evening dress with a tall top hat. Such pale artifice! I really am a curmudgeon today. I did see one very striking piece at that gallery, made of thorny mesquite branches, copper and feathers.

I went to one show of about 130 postcards from all over the country, which followed the theme "Dark Night of the Soul." The tiny gallery was up a long flight of stairs in a very old downtown building. There were four or five beautifully outstanding pieces. The exhibit was refreshing to me because it had no commercial focus. It was egalitarian. You see anybody can be an artist and say something about the dark night of the soul, or anything else for that matter. Some people called Betsy Lewis, the show's organizer, to tell her that they thought the dark night of the soul was the work of the devil. I suppose they had no idea the the phrase dark night of the soul came from the mystic poetry of St. John of the Cross.

This week I read two books. One was Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, Fascinating stuff --enjoyable writing as usual from Gladwell. Success, it turns out is about 10,000 hours of focused practice and a fair amount of good luck in the form of helpful alliances with others and just being in the right place at the right time.

I also read The Third Age: Passion, Risk and Adventure in the 25 Years After 50 by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot. Well-written and often inspiring, this book is based upon interviews with many people 50 and older about how they have redefined their lives through travel, new forms of work, learning, mentoring and loving. A significant look at the emerging new paradigm of aging.

The moon is coming to the full. I like lying in bed and watching it move across the sky, sometimes radiating a rainbow nimbus, sometimes covered by big billowing clouds. The moon waxes and wanes, the seasons change. Here is a poem I wrote about autumn in 1994.

Song of the Autumn Moon
for Carolyn Myers

1.
Another autumn evening
moon nearly full
leaves blowing off the oaks.
The sounds of the owls and coyotes
wakes me and I cannot
fall asleep again.
Year after year and always
the autumn to conjure the ache
and the spring to conjure the itch.

"The bamboos outside my window
sob like the broken heart of autumn,"
wrote Chu Su Chen in the 13th century.
Nothing definite is known of her they say.
Is it better that way?
Lifetime after lifetime
coming, going, returning again.
My hair has grown silver since we met
my body has thickened
and the beauty I never knew I had
has changed.

3.
"The autumn constellations
begin to rise," Tu Fu wrote.
The moon toad swims in the river
and does not drown.
The moon rabbit pounds the bitter herbs
of the elixir of immortality."

I often think of those bitter herbs
and the pounding it takes
to prepare the elixir of immortal life.
Everything presses me
from one thing to the next
as if anything were real
as if we would live forever.
I want to pull myself away
to open up the space between thoughts
until the primordial nature
appears unobstructed.

4.
Nai-yuine has entered
her fourth year of retreat
in the cabin where you once lived.
From my kitchen window
I see her light way into the night.
The prayer flags around her house are green;
the color is auspicious for our teacher's long life.
In the cabin behind my house Bruce
sits on his cushion for hours day after day
meditating has been his job for years
whatever room or country he finds himself in.

5.
And in the morning outside my window
juncos peck at the blanket
of golden rice hulls
I have spread over the garden.
I walk up the hill
to the little forest
that you have always loved
and think of you. Old friend,
it's love that brings me to this poem
and to the years we've shared.
It's simply love, as good as
"women laughing together for three days on end"
love that makes me glad when I see you
it inclines me toward you
the way that branches of trees
incline toward each other
forming a shady path.