Across the years, my drift into understanding has been like a hawk descending in glide, one spiral after another, until I have landed where flight is no longer necessary. And my breakdown into peace has been like a cliff standing up to the sea, until after all my suffer- ings, I only long to join, until with each crumble, I utter, “Take me.” Now, my ability to give is ever increased by my acceptance of surrender, like a dandelion finally... Read more

No matter where you look— near, far, up, down, out or in— there is a bareness of being that lives in the center of every ounce of life, the way air waits inside every bubble as it rises from the deep. The way a small pocket of worth waits inside every attempt to love. The way wonder waits in the center of our heart for something to wake it. The tone keeps ringing in the center of the bell, long... Read more

Once we grasp the essence of another, we have an obligation to honor and carry what we know to be true about that being with us and into the world, while they live and when they die. Honoring and carrying the essence of another is the deepest kind of love, the deepest kind of friendship. This is how the sea loves the shore and how the sun loves all it shines on. While we perish and vanish from the Earth,... Read more

It was the spirit of Tu Fu from the Tang Dynasty who gave me strength to endure my cancer. Now, years later, he appears again, in a book of translations by a ninety- nine-year-old. This time lamenting how the autumn storms tore thatches from his roof and how he woke to see patches of straw fly into the river. In the morning, he could see parts of his roof tangled in the trees. If not for the cold, he would... Read more

I’m not sure I can help but my heart wants to try.   Oh, I can shop for you or bring you dinner.   I can even help you up should you fall.   But when the hunger is inside, when the break is where no one can see,   then all we can do is be a greenhouse for each other. A Question to Walk With: How do you help someone you love when where they are hurting is... Read more

The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. —Aristotle   Jennifer Blessing, a curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, has said that “artists pursue various methods of liberating the mind in order to access the marvelous.” We are all looking for ways to widen our lens of perception so that we can be more alive. The Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley declared in the 1950s that form follows... Read more

Violins are falling from the sky. As they tumble, the wind releases deep music. This is how love sounds to itself. This is what it’s like to love you. It’s a music that can’t always be heard. It makes me pour you tea. A Question to Walk With: Describe one feeling, one moment, one detail that rises in you today and what they open together. This excerpt is from my book of poems, Elsewhere. Read more

In the beginning, I thought I was going somewhere. I thought we all were. But falling in while trying to cross, I finally understood, the journey is to follow the river. All the rivers, especially the ones no one can see. The soul is a fish whose home is in those rivers. So I can take you across, if you want. But the secret is to go everywhere by going nowhere. And I will be here when you fall in.... Read more

In 1689 in Japan, a kind farmer gave the lost poet Basho a horse that knew the way. And in 1910 when Ted Shawn was paralyzed, before he knew he was a dancer, a dear friend left crutches just out of reach and breakfast on the table. And in 1938 in Paris, Django Reinhardt’s brother left a guitar at the foot of his hospital bed because he knew the badly burned genius would no longer be able to play the... Read more

I’m standing on a bridge near the top of a mountain, looking back at the winding path that took years to climb. And there, below, the chasm I thought I’d never cross, so much more beautiful on this side of the rise. And in the vastness that seemed like heaven on the way up, all those I’ve loved and lost. And in that pocket of fog that seemed like hell when I was in it, the truth in all things... Read more