With the Twelfth Moon Rising

What with the Anthropocene it's become that much harder for us to remember what it means to be well aligned with what used to be the normal course of seasonal change.  That's one of the reasons I love this series of poems by Li He written more than a millennium ago, back in the midst of the Holocene.  Li He wrote one poem for each full moon in the course of the year, each poem in the series precisely observing the changing habiliments of the earth and moon over the progress of our full transit around the sun.  This is the twelfth and final poem in the series, as we are just on the verge of preparing to celebrate the Chinese New Year.  The twelfth moon marks the pivot, as the poet observes in the final stanza - we are still firmly in winter's grip, although the daylight hours are already noticeably beginning to lengthen, and the Yang power has begun the long march to its ascendency. 

The Twelfth Moon

The foot of day stretches

And shimmers splashing red

Across the sky

Meager but unrelenting

The frost extends

Under the Cassia trees

There’s only a hint of warmth

To dispel winter’s severity

Already the day lengthens

Even as we resign ourselves

To the long night ahead

十二月

 李贺

日脚淡光红洒洒

薄霜不销桂枝下

依稀和气解冬严

已就长日辞长夜

Photo by Ramesh Anand

A Poem for a Monk With Stillness of Heart (by Fang Gan)

Here's a poem by a Chan monk named Fang Gan that I translated this morning.  This poem really captures an important part of the Chan way -- admittedly a tough ideal to adhere to - of living immersed in nature but steadfast and untransformed, unyielding even while being completely exposed.  And all the while having the presence of mind to compose such wonderful poems!

Over several lifetimes

In practice spent

Time and again

Composing the

Profoundest chants

Sitting in summer at one

With berries and moss

Walking in Chan through

Juniper and cypress forests

Entering deep into mountains

Where snow engulfs your head

Yet studying the Way remains

Your beginner's intent

Heart and mind firmly grounded

Steadfast and untransformed

A true disciple oblivious

To the incursion of heat or cold

赠诗僧怀静

方干  

几生余习在  

时复作微吟

坐夏莓苔合

行禅桧柏深

入山成白首

学道是初心

心地不移变

徒云寒暑侵

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A Collection of Tweets

Needlepoint in Concrete

Needlepoint in concrete

Nature makes its mark

Stitch by stitch

Photo by Robynne Limoges

The Tulip Wears a Crown

Not just regal in its bearing The tulip wears a crown Howsoever brief a monarch For all the world to see

Painting by Sir Peter Blake

Life Goes On ... And on

One hen forms a single egg
But a thousand hens
Perform a widening spiral
So life goes on ... and on





O Biomass That Gives the Lie

O biomass that gives the lie

Just how unsentient am I

Compared to your restless

Branches and shoots always

Reaching for the empty sky

And the obverse truth

Of your rhizomes and roots

Pursuing their destiny underfoot

(Drawing by David Harrison)

I Am the Nebulae

I am the nebulae

Upon first springing to life

I am the seven sisters still

Weeping within our cluster

I am the purest stardust

Shimmering even before it

Has been given a name

The Virus of Life

A green pandemic

Spring breaks out

Attacking the willow first

In a virulent virus of life

Painting by David Harrison

The Whorl of Life

Bared of its leaves

The winter oak persists

With its dancing

Bared to the wind

And to snow

All the better

It commits itself
To the whorl of life

Painting by Martin Jacobson

What She Saw in the Trees

A copse that might be

Copulating just as well

Denuded of leaves

Trunks leaning into

Each other forward

And aft alive to the

Thought that together

We are made a much greater

Living and heaving mass

By Georgia O'Keefe

The Leaning Trees

The trees just seemed

To be leaning into each other

On the road ahead as

If all together they had

Bowed in homage to those who

Had walked this road before

By David Harrison

The Lotus of all Travelers

On the pole boat

The Lotus of all travelers

Makes its way

Not stuck in the mud

But propelled by 

The simple act of

Reaching skyward 

Poem for Odilon Redon

I dreamed of blue poppies

Dying to release their fragrance

They drooped and sighed

And when morning came

Up to the very edge of night

The stems were bare and

The blossoms gone from sight

Poem for Gunnar Norman

A tree may be seen

As a leaf enlarged

In the right texture of light

Its trunk is but a giant stem

To hold the sum of all

Its leafy parts

Tweet for the Almost Full Moon

Whatever sense of order we possess

We owe to you Sister Moon

Reflective yet teaching us

To live more in the moment

Accepting of a fullness 

For which we always come
Either too late or too soon

Poem for #MotivationWednesday

In the ovaries of time

Every pebble is an egg

Destined to hatch

Bringing forth

New treasures

In the 3,000 realms 

Of Suchness

So diverse in kind

A Tweet for Matisse

Quod est desideratum

So the old master said

As he finagled death

With still more art

After taking to bed

A Shout Out to the Forest

The forest is no prison

But misprision to despair

The gathered trunks

Pose no bar to freedom
But serve as herald 

Of no constraint

A Tweet to the Rocky Coast

To the rocks
The waves paid
Obeisance
Showing homage
To the sheer endurance
Of the stolid earth

A Tweet to Energy's Passage

On a cellular level or

As viewed from outer space

The ghost map of our world 

Reveals the same scene of

Energy coursing through

The world's many veins

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