The Poet's Room

  Rachel & Cottonwood      Walking outside in nature can be a form of meditation.  Rather than focusing inside on my thoughts and the antics of my mind, looking, observing, trying to see everything around brings me into the peace found in this moment. This walk where I now live is near the Nevin Springs Wildlife Area acquired by the state in 1876 to create a fish hatchery. The drive to secure space for parks, preserves and conservancies  reminds us of our need for recreation. To Re-create! Recreate ourselves! Bring ourselves into harmony with being itself. On a recent walk I stopped to observe a chickadee feeding. This chickadee besides the normal black and white pattern had a light dusting of yellow on each side of the breast.  The chickadee would leave a low perch fly down to pick a seed head off a plant then fly back to perch and quickly pick the seeds out to eat. Then quickly repeat. As I watched a jogger came up behind, stopped, asked what I was looking at. I pointed out the c

Robes of Oppression                                                                   After t he U. S. unceremoniously pulled out of Afghanistan the Taliban escorted with guns a small group of women draped in black from head to toe with only a tiny slit to look through as alleged support for their repressive interpretation of Islam. Most certainly a death march for women’s rights in that country. No way to be sure real women sat beneath those shrouds. The covering by design conceals the individual and every aspect, every contour of femininity. Everything about the staged scene suggested herded chattel.  Free Afghan Woman      In protest Afghan women living safely outside of the country took pictures of themselves in colorful traditional dress. Suggesting the black hijab to be a foreign totalitarian imposition on Afghan women. Most women’s schools were quickly shut down and working women suddenly had no employment. The freedom to get educated, to work, overnight taken away by repressi

  Sisyphus Condemned to Moving     Moving and down sizing, I must confess to suffering a peculiar form of insanity. Depression upon opening boxes in the basement that had lived down there undisturbed since the last move. Fifteen years of long forgotten Stuff. Would it be okay even smart to just throw the Stuff all away without looking inside. Just let it go. Yes it would have been. No it wasn't to be. Proof of a certain form of insanity. Oh, to put a positive spin on the stuff of memories like slides and slide projector so on and so forth sounds fine.       Depressed Donkey Then there's antique chairs that haven't had a human butt sit in them for twenty, thirty, forty years or more. Then there's the felt guilt of waste and wasted money.  Truth will out. Therefore I must confess to a form of insanity. (My wife shares this disease too whether she will admit it or not.) Neighbors too report a similar experience of packed boxes moved then left unopened. Although maybe not

Author at Two       Written from the subconscious   Buddha Blues   even seems a bit strange to me. Only a few seconds ago brushing my teeth I thought about the strangeness of having an Unabridged Dictionary as a plot device. I recall, my mother had a large dictionary on the bookshelf in the living room.  I loved to pull the book off the shelf then lay on the floor in the middle of the living room flipping through the pages. Not unabridged her dictionary had wonderful illustrations of words on each margin which I enjoyed looking at before reading the meaning of the words. With that memory the fact that subconsciously an Unabridged dictionary became part of the book takes on an interesting significance.     The working title for the book now subtitle Strange To Be Me  also seems a bit strange. A person would think somebody entering their seventy-second year would be completely aware of who they are. Yet my spiritual journey continues to unfold. The picture of me at two surfaced while sor

      Kokopelli an enduring symbol from the southwest, found carved, painted on stone cliffs and on ancient pottery for over a thousand years. The stories told about Kokopelli focus on this flute playing trickster god as bringer of fertility for women, crops, and animals. A joyful figure dancing and playing. His flute music the harbinger of spring.       From the Mideast the nativity scene. A celebration of the birth of a child at the winter solstice. Renewal on the darkest night of the year. In the Christian tradition the child is Christ. Even on the darkest starry night the light of life is renewed. The continuation of life a reminder of the creative energy being brought forth again and again. Each year.       I wrote a book length poem "The Waste Land Revisited" about humanities successful dysfunction leading to global warming. I worked for a year on the poem. The poem starts with April as the month of conception for the longest time felt that something was missing from it

Goldilocks - Home Wrecker More overwhelming absurd news may prove that whoever said, "Truth is stranger than fiction," may have been in touch with True Karma. Three stories follow one true, one partially true and one a spoof. Check your social media sophistication by figuring out how to sort truth from fiction. (All revealed at the end.)             First a Bear Story from childhood!  Goldilocks & The Three Bears: The girl Goldilocks broke into the Three Bears Home, broke a chair, ate their porridge, pooped in the toilet, didn't flush, made a mess, fell asleep in one of their beds. They woke her when baby bear exclaimed, "My someone's been sleeping in my bed, and here she is." She got up jumped out a window without even saying, "Thanks for breakfast and not eating me," and ran away. Goldilocks, although easily recognizable due to her hair was never brought to justice for breaking and entering. Did this give rise to the myth that Blonds Have Mor

A Fowl Reading           "Fair is Fowl, and fowl is fair," said the three witches in Macbeth. But what did Shakespeare know? I cry. Fowl! Fowl! Fowl! Senator Ted Cruz,  who is vaccinated, and who has said "I believe in vaccines" bless him tweeted that Sesame Street's Big Bird, that gangly yellow, soft spoken Muppet, is a yellow bellied government propagandist out to undermine our vulnerable American children who can't help but adore him. What did Big Bird do that's so  egregious now that a vaccine has been approved for children ages 5 to 11?     Horror of horrors Big Bird tweeted, naturally what else would a bird do, "I got the Covid-19 vaccine today! ...wings a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me .... healthy."  Nothing so diabolical has happened since Socrates attempted to get the youth of Athens, back in the day, to seek Truth. Socrates paid for that with his life! Republican right wing propagandis