May this page be a home for poems, photos, notes, sounds, and other miscellaneous expressions of being. I am grateful to all those who have watered and continue to water these seeds in me.

BEING

for Julyen, Megumi

“We ploughed the stars last night,”

you read aloud one day in Brussels.

mm.

The mountains here part the sky just so.

They hold me, as night pours itself into

their valleys.

They breathe in all of it.

How generous, the both of them.

On the way to Gent Sint-Pieters

The generosity of wind

in autumn:

Already giving when the leaves admit

“it’s time to become again.”

Such a love propels me

even as these ancient streets funnel gusts,

battering my face.

A waking dream

There are three rocks –

two the size of infants,

one the size of a boy –

that guard the entrance

of a small path

through the pine forest

on the edge of Lake Michigan.

My heart beats

beats heavy for them now,

my mid-stride dance of avoidance,

smile cast back as I run on

into the smell of freshwater and

rotting leaves

I am wearing mittens

and a hat in this dream.

The air crisp in the woods,

still summer, somehow,

on the shore

seagulls caw above,

swimming for miles in

an endless blue sky

floating on

an endless blue lake

that stretches all the way to me:

Here.

far from a home

I did not realize I missed

so much.

a poem for Thây

I was on the toilet when I first

heard the news of your continuation –

Poetic, I know.

“One Buddha is not enough,”

I sat upon my throne,

Thinking…

on Sunday, October 16th 2022

I’m eating a candy bar –

A stale Bounty purchased from

the late shop just down the road

from this new home, to be exact –

and strolling through a mid-

twentieth century cemetery

smiling to myself.

Because in such a solemn place,

such factory-made bliss

the absolute ecscasy of it

sensed with the lucidity of

saliva

blood

steps

borders on the disrespectful.

But what would any of the

sleeping do if

alive

in a park

on an unseasonably warm autumn evening

alone

under a patchy grey sky

surrounded by their dead sisters

pastors

bus drivers

fathers

but walk a little lighter

laugh to themselves and the birds

blink in gratitude towards the gentle cat

keeping tabs on

Clementina (1913-1942) and

Adrienne (1930-1979)

and eat the candy bar.