Even with insects
Some are hatched out musical
Some, alas, tone-deaf.
Issa
Freedom
James Kavanaugh
Man does not want freedom,
He only talks of it,
Satisfied to choose his slavery
And to pay it homage.
Freedom asks too much:
Silence and strength,
The death of empty alliances
An end to ego baths.
Freedom confronts loneliness
And lives with it,
Makes more of larks than lust,
Builds no monumernts to itself.
Freedom, content to live without goals,
Satisfied that living is enough,
Scoffs at titles, laughs at greed,
Too free to propose reforms.
Man does not want freedom
He fears its demands,
And only needs to talk of it...
The free man has no such need.
But man can live without freedom,
Content to laugh at slavery
And to know today
That yesterdays pain is gone.
Violin Room
Peggy Leyva Conley
Yellow sunburst painted walls
Violin lays still on a chair
Music notes
Mural of seaports
open room
stillness.
On Reading Dogen
(in Bly's Tiny Poems)
Kim Hodges
Reading Dogen I ask
'what is the one true thing?'
looking up from the book,
my face reflected in
the night windows --
murmur of conversations,
someone coughing behind me
in the cafe.
Dogen says it is the rain
on the black roof.
Maybe it is the swish
of the constant tide of cars,
the clink of glasses,
the woman's turquoise jacket
as she sits, back to me,
unmoving.
- Kim Hodges
Quietude
Patience Strong
If you stand very still
in the heart of a wood...
You will hear many wonderful things
The snap of a twig
and the wind in the trees
And the whirl of invisible wings
If you stand very still
in the turmoil of life
And wait for the voice from within
You will be led down the quiet ways
of wisdom and peace...
In a world of chaos and din
If you stand very still
And hold to your faith
You will get all the help that you ask
You will draw from the silence
all the things that you need
Hope and courage and strength for your tasks.
