One
Catching up today.
Silly notion that.
How do we catch up to now
When now is all that ever is?
Quick!
Write those then words
if ever they were
For Now is beckoning
to just be here.
My dear,
Be here.

Two
Today those towering fluorescent lights
are just that –
fluorescent lights
that brighten the Present.
Recalling they were, once, annoying –
glaring,
daring
fo complicate the simplicity of daylight!
Now
they just hang there,
suspended.
Enlightening.

Three
Sit.
Just sit.
Not when you have time.
Time has you, now.
Will you submit
And sit?
Pause.
No loss.

Wonder, ponder,
Saunter through,
Running no race.
Clocking no time.
Slowly,
Being.
Savoring sumptuous now.

Four
Breathe.
Rising and falling.
Expand and contract
this and that
then and now
here and there
one and other
Breathe.
Allow space for distractions
Allot them their due
Absorb the residue
Breathe.
One.
No other.
No compare
No contrast
This
Now
Breathe.

Five
Don’t tell me how.
Don’t show me the way.
Don’t lie to me that you know
…that you ever knew.
Just be with me.
In the stream of yesterday to tomorrow,
In the wisdom that comes to us,
Be.

All doubts aside.
All plans beside.
Listen.
Follow the thread that pulls,
The call that beckons
…fine, soft…
shrouded in silence,
Wanting.

Six (After a few days of no writing…)
At last today the flood came.
No knowing “Why now?”
No rhyme or reason
Why the delay
To this day?
But who cares?
What is, is.
Rejoice!
At last the words are showing
Sometimes flowing
Wanting to be shouted! Outed!
tugging, winking,
mugging my thinking,
Heard through the pen
And heard again
When we listen!
Rejoice in the mugging
if that’s what it takes!
What joy to be mugged into Love
with words.

Seven
I want a frock…
A long, flowing red frock – billowing, ebullient!
No, make it blue…
Red’s been taken for centuries
And look what’s happened there…
No longer the symbol it may have been
of a dedicated, devoted heart

in sacred service.
Now riddled with Doubt.
No, not red…
Blue will do.
A scintillating, vibrant, enthusiastic blue…
Not the blue sky of celebratory flight
Not the blue shallows of waves kissing sand
But the deep, deep, ocean blue of
silence, seeming stillness,
and undulating undercurrents of
mystery,
kisses,
and flight.

(Then one day in November someone read me this letter)
Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now By Matthew Olzman (b. 1979)
Most likely, you think we hated the elephant, the golden toad, the thylacine and all
variations of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.
It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing but benzene, mercury, the stomachs of
seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.
You probably doubt that we were capable of joy, but I assure you we were.
We still had the night sky back then, and like our ancestors, we admired its illuminated
doodles of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.
Absolutely, there were some forests left! Absolutely, we still had some lakes!
I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide. There were bees back then, and
they pollinated a euphoria of flowers so we might contemplate the great mysteries and
finally ask, “Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”
And then all the bees were dead.

(Deeply moved, this was my response)
Eight – Letter to our Tears Now
Dear, dear tears
…to all those stirring,
waiting, wanting to move,
Please. rise up and fall now.
Feel the squeeze of the heart.
The time to feel and fall and flow is now
While we still can.
Your shedding may be the saving grace we’re waiting for.
Begin the laundering.
Wash away our blindness!
We didn’t mean it, …did we?…
the carelessness, the murdering,
the impulsive, compulsive
driving satiation
in the dark.
We weren’t paying attention
to the Ljght.
Please pour through the gates
And flood the veils –
the desire,
the greed,
the voracious hunger.
Dear, dear tears,
Shower your grace.
Cleanse our hearts.

Nine
I could listen to your voice forever —
and forever and forever —
If you’ll just keep your heart open
And talk with me, not to me or at me.
With.
It’s clear we only need that word
—and how we need it! —
We have been so long without.
With…..each…..other.
Always with.

One with,
Only One.
Your turn!
I will listen to your voice forever —
from here.

Ten – Haiku for Hawaii
No trade winds tonight!
grumbling, like boiling lava rumbling…
Ah, the dawn!

Eleven
A new page!
Like a new day…
Starting over
and over and over again.
Such extreme good fortune…
A clean page,
A pen,
And you.

Twelve
What to say now
After all the saying has been said?
Just a wanting,
The perpetual wanting
And the longing in return
And a song flowering.
Funny that word
Flow – er – ing
Like there’s a flow-est-ing
Like a most flow at the very end
Renewing, growing, blossoming
Forever flowering,
There is no end.
We can sing amen

And again amen
For what has been,
And again – for what will be –
amen, amen, amen.
As it was in the beginning
It is now and ever shall be
World without end.
Amen, amen.