Gatherings of poets. Let's see. So I guess we should get started. This is the night where you've been invited to bring a poem of your own desire and originality. And we hope we can include these in, as I said, the chapbook, which will come up in a week or two. So... Without further ado, I think I'll start it. Be careful about this. Is that okay? Okay, so...

[01:04]

I read a book recently, and this line appeared in the book. It's a book on epistemology. And the statement, it's a kind of epigraph for the poem is, anything not experienced as something is not experienced at all. Anything not experienced as something is is not experienced at all. That's by Dale Wright, professor. So this poem is called As, A-S, As. I stare in the mirror on the bathroom wall and see there an old guy, hairless, with jowls and all, staring gray-eyed back at me with a rather fierce glare as though he is some stranger, which is kind of weird when you consider that we've passed these last 26,000 days and nights together.

[02:14]

That's two six zero zero zero days and nights in each other's company. So I say to him, to my reflection, and out loud too because there's no one nearby to hear, I say, as Rumi might have, well, tell me, friend, tell me nothing I've done has ever really lost or won or has ever been saved or salvaged but simply given, as in given up or given in, and spoken in words left hanging in the air as if to draw out hungry sparrows from their nests or words to that effect. And he arches a brow as if to say, why, heck yes, pal. You mean all those long-lost places, the far-gone spaces and love-begotten faces, all that good old stuff, once too green to burden, now all changed and turned as if from cash to ashes. And sure enough, I see that laugh in his eye that warns me that what this is, is narcissus.

[03:20]

Dreaming up some once upon a time somebody daddy who sat so tall between the stick and the wall that you just knew he'd have to free fall or end up as a Humpty Dumpty. And staring at this mole on his jowl, that is my very own, I make up jokes about how we're rounding third base and puffing for home to make the final score using such expressions as thus and so. Not to mention more the likes of, oh boy, oh man, oh gosh, oh golly, and of course, god damn. Or as a this-a or a that-a, such fascinating data, as appear in pairs like, you know, win-lose, pick-choose, lost-found, guest-host, or poetically as a sit-down clown or a three-thumbed pinch-hitter in the game of our darkest, most intimate jitters. Maybe best to just drop it, friend, I say. Let it go and leave it for a rainy day.

[04:22]

Bid each other fare thee well. Adieu, hi-ho, silver away. For I have no hesitation saying we're not a mere conventional designation. Let's go now to turn another page on which is written... the inscrutable inscription of our times and age. Leave the mirror empty again on the bathroom wall and smile, friend, smile, for next time around we'll come back here again and stare each other down with eyes past weeping and too dry for seeping sentiment over 26,000 days and nights relented. All right. I'm done. As if. Who's next? And we can pass this around so you can stand at your seat. Maybe I'll stand up in front.

[05:39]

You want to sit here? You can sit here. Yeah, yeah, I'll sit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you sit down. All right. So for some reason, I felt like I should follow you because I wrote this opera. Yeah. Or actually, no, no. It's an opera buffa, so Doris tells me. Okay. So let's see. I need some audience participation at one part. And I think I'll just divide halfway down the middle. So like between Claire and Prudence, between Todd and Cedar, and all the way straight down. And you're that side, yeah. Max is on that side. And so... If I point this direction, I mean this side. If I point this direction, I mean that side.

[06:40]

You'll just repeat or pick up what I'm singing. It'll be pretty easy. There's only one part. Just do that when I point. And then, and then, uh, and then, uh, at some point, uh, I'll signal to kind of fade down. And then so the volume should fade down to nothing at that point. And, uh, yeah, just kind of follow, like as if my hands were volume knobs. And then, um, It's very good. And then somebody slap me if I say I'm God too many times. Okay. So this is called The Harmony of Difference and Totalitarianism.

[07:40]

An opera buffa in three parts. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about ease. Let's talk about ease. Ah [...] ease. Let's talk about disease. D-d-disease. [...] Let's talk about ease. Ah, ease. Let's talk about ease. Ah, ease.

[08:46]

Let's talk about disease. D-d-disease. [...] Let's talk about ease. Ah ease. [...] Just continue with that. Ah ease. Ah ease. Let's talk about disease, [...] disease. Let's talk about ease. Let's talk about disease. Let's talk about ease. Let's talk about disease. Let's talk about ease. God I am [...] God

[10:19]

Thus, with each and everything, depending on these roots, the leaves spread forth. Trunken branches share the essence, revered in common, each has its speech. In the light there is darkness, but don't see it as darkness. In the dark there is light, but don't see it as light. Light and dark oppose one another like the front and back foot in walking. Each of the myriad things has its merit expressed according to function and place. Phenomena exist, box and lid fit, principle responds, arrow points meet. Hearing the words, understand the meaning. Don't set up standards of your own. If you don't understand this play right before you... Well... Oh, looks like trouble.

[11:41]

So this stems from an early morning conversation I had with somebody the other early morning. and uh it's going back to the too green to burn theme at least it's mentioned and it's called uh oh i forgot what it's called actually let's just call it flame Too green to burn? No, not me. A bonfire blazing 16-foot flames visible from anywhere on the beach. Come on up and warm yourselves. Gather around, dance and sing. And if you get too close, too, too green. Clean up your act and sit right down, sit right down and sit right down and watch the flames consume this night or this morning on this day just like any other day. You wake up and you sit right down just to sit right down Next to the fire, but it's fading. Ah, zooms in. Too green to burn. Yes, that's me. I thought maybe I'd memorized it, but no.

[13:14]

I squeeze and [...] squeeze myself through the ringer. And finally, a dry mop takes a break from cleaning up the world. Well, I'm going to read something I wrote before we had the class, but I'm going to give Dagon things I wrote in the class to go in the chapel. But I like this better, so I'm reading this. This was for Jesse on his Jukai. In a starless sky to see the stars, in this winter to smell the spring, that or this, in firewood just firewood, in ash just ash, or both or neither, not different, not the same.

[14:17]

We give up stories for this. We are creatures of story. To startle these crows up off their compost piles and not think of Van Gogh in the dance of wing light and frost melting off pine boughs and winter grass, not to ask if only madness sees what Van Gogh saw. No thought before the thought, after the thought, no thought, no thought in the thought, now what? And then I told Jesse in the computer room this other poem that I accidentally wrote, so I'm going to just close with this very short. I wrote it on the tanking pad the other morning, and it goes, After Dokusan, conference prep. So that's it. The better people stand up. Okay. I can stand it.

[15:20]

So this is about one of those moments, you know, you have those moments and they don't come back. So there's no title here. Practice giving, he said, so I did, unsuspecting and sought. Object and mind arise together, cease together. Me and everything, moment by moment, giving each other into being. No self, just together. I just want to replace the battery. How about that? Now it's good. Okay. Okay, no modifiers.

[16:23]

Her guests have left. As the light fades, she goes outside and clips a vase full of roses. I have two short ones. This one was written when we had class on the year. listening to the mellifluous emissions from Dagon's mouth, entranced by the fire in the wood-burning stove, the backside of the fire in the sky that drives all of this, from the dead tree combusting over there to the scavenged dead blood cells being formed into excrement in here.

[17:38]

So much happening right now. Right now! A crisp autumn day on the grade school playground, selecting teams for a football game. All the white boys to one team, all the black boys to the other, save a lone white boy who chooses the team with most of his friends on it, thereby disrupting the color-coded arrangement. He's a nigger inside anyway, says one of the white boys, and they begin to play. This is called Emanations.

[18:39]

Dusk falls, residually sticky with its indifference. The fountain in the cloistered yard, tepid, still, would reflect the nearly full moon, but for my casually dipped hand gently churning water. Still, the broken shards of light give strange comfort, like a near-barren tree-lined road in late autumn, the unfailing tolling of the hour on unseen church bells, or the eroded, stained saints inhabiting a centuries-old facade. The bead of blood growing on a pricked thumb or the ultimate flicker of a candle when the wax finally runs out. Relishing the subtlety of a last unbroken thread, I raise my cupped palms and drink.

[19:49]

Don't be shy. That's a good first line. So I have a couple short ones. Two years of hell and he's back in my arms. Well, this one's also about Kenya. Okay. Too green to burn, eyes bright, heartwarming, this dove's gonna fly.

[21:06]

And number three, sucking my thumb, soothe my pain, remembering my mother. Far behind Alyssa is the old me, trembling in front of rims and dashboards, stuck firmly in patterns of abuse, never ever questioning, planning my path to avert confrontation. Open your eyes! A new me has begun. Not interested in deceased teachers of Zen, Samadhi, or levels of Buddhahood. Poetry resuscitates me. And the last one is, we have to save one another. Please don't be afraid of duty. Okay, I'm going to read from something that kind of feels to me very custom-made for the spoken word.

[22:29]

It's just a section from a quite long poem that was written a while ago, and it's a two-part poem. The first part is called The Vow, and the second part is called Music of the Big Top. I'm reading from the second part. I'll just go until it seems right. I'm dust. Pick me up. Go ahead. I'm not poison nor truffle, just pricked to good use. If you open, I'll flop to the right place. Grape to your mouth. There it's placed. Guest under your tongue. There, I've said it. You're said. Numa. Fog, lift me up. I'm a child set down here, lost and hankering. I'm a lion, equally lost. My roar is radar. You bounce it back. Sound, where are you? You're cotton to my fields, bones in the bag, the ghost absorbing hymns and curses alike, flown into your pores and sounded back as silence.

[23:33]

So why write this? Real people are burning. There's hands over mouths. smothered cries, then smothering of the answering cry, severing of the witnessing ear, and endless reverberation of the never heard. I'm silence inside it. There's a noise rising up as dust from the circus, where elephants tramp the ground, not from love but bald duty, Bright mirrors have fallen, they're twinkling down here, reverse stars, tumbled graces, resolving itself into you, bright fog, muffled bell. You're my furry cloak, all my lost animals returned, swirling at my feet and resolving into form beyond form. Transparent one, I see now what lights you from behind. You never meant to cover it, only to walk the hills with me and plead for a bit of pity before the heat pulled us in separate ways. Go now, I understand you better. I'm sorry I pulled the forgetting cloak so tightly, I could only enjoy the feathers drifting around my legs.

[24:35]

Go, the damage done, the plumed thing shot from the sky. Go, soothe the wound the sun makes, and I'll equally move. An arrow of opposition, hot where it's cool, soothing where it burns. An everlasting seeking out the hurt place fool. read one more page gone into gotten gotten up good feathered layered long black gold sheen of me batting my lashes giving away glisten and displaying what's left arch of back of calf barely visible spots track marks and pocked flesh i fend off pretenders and direct true lovers to my intelligent absences Bend, startled ones. Loosen the already loose skin to show what's open and singing the song of open. Alive, die, die. A waltz, you see. You lead and I'll change with it, feigning ignorance. Die, alive, die. Like the variation, significant, good.

[25:38]

Make a theory around it. Take an hour, a day, a lifetime. Draw out the lovely green tendrils. The whole is the same. Go ahead. Well, maybe I should just put this over here. We'll pick it up if it's on. So this is entitled... I just wrote the other day. Yesterday. So... I might fuck it up. At Tassajara, you know, I was down in the upper barn, and I'd gone on a hike, and... Like a rain stick.

[26:41]

And, yeah, I'm sorry. Basically, left the food in my bag and realized it at night, and didn't want to go all the way back up to dispose of the food, so I just locked it in my guitar case and left my guitar out overnight in the microwave. Climbed up and in all night long. I didn't even hear them doing it, but they just left a bunch of their food in there. It's rice. They've checked that much. It's rice. But anyway, it makes a nice percussive sound, so I just left it in there. From the upper shack all the way down to the lower part of the tent. Yeah. They did. They did. They're supporting starving musicians. So, I've been, I just learned the Bodhidharma song in Our Hero the other day. I'm not gonna play those. But this kind of sounds like them.

[27:50]

Living in Eden Living off the land Each day I spend hours plowing And nothing could be more grand Oh man, this life is perfect Like every little grain of sand But I got a penchant My mind is making plans Each time I think I want everything I think I want it I think I want it I want, I want, I want, I want it Early this morning, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

[28:56]

But it's late, time cannot last less. My mind's a monkey swinging palm trees. Maybe I'll knit me a sweater, cause it's nippy out this spring day. Well, I know I'd feel much better if I had a love that doesn't hear me play. So I go out searching for pleasures that I'd love to make mine. There's one more stick tied to my head before I'm feeling fine. Be a boy. Be a boy. So many treasures buried in Louisiana

[30:11]

So many treasures, I'll step in when I am. Well, today I start off happy. It's only a matter of time. I've walked the sun through setting. Well, I'll pay to satisfy it. Since I was just a young boy, and I wanted Bunchy, I chose you. I've got a list of all that's meant for me, and every day I live it wrong. Somebody please help me, let's hit this labyrinth. Cuddling my shoes in disease In moments holy I take a sip of peaceful youth

[31:38]

I'll strip until we deal with it It comes from this Each breath is divine I'll exit in my mind Each breath is divine Exit through my mind Exit through my mind Exit through my mind I have a couple of poems here.

[32:41]

We have already died now. Is it okay to be free? Oh, come on. No one will see you giving up everything in the universe for one step taken on this dark path so intimate with the stones and shadows. No one will see you belonging so completely. You can slip into that space, a black sliver in the night air. No one will see you. And really, they all want you to. All together, that is what they are. All together, we sing. And no one pretends to be someone else. Here's the other one. I wrote this one tonight. Heads, we're done. Tails, there's more to do.

[34:14]

Walking, standing still, totally fulfilled, all emptied out. Let us give thanks for this inviolable intimacy and let us give thanks for not being done Let us bow to our incompleteness, for it is the freedom of our completeness. Thus, this beauty keeps turning as you, as you, and as you. Hold that. Time is passing. if you bring it over here i don't know before and i'm already nervous enough thank you um i will stand up though i've i've got two short ones thank you is said with a smile or a bow wouldn't it be wonderful to do it all day

[35:30]

And the other one, sun, smile, fire. What do they all have in common? They all bring light to life. Thank you. happy thus rhymes with truth way out on a limb to limb with a rope swing to swing out over the ocean waves the shapeless light sound water rock crash the world of air swinging itself across Broken and other ways to drop in, appear, disappear.

[36:36]

Rising, dissolving, green to gold. Over and out, these waters will transform. Says happy now, the touchless warm glow. How? The way pointing, and there goes the whole tree. Arms around the moon, swinging on a single tooth. So this is from my life before my last heartbreak. A love that from the beginning was goodbye. In this winter, I met you with wonder. I hung in there even when death sprinted through your dreams. Yet in the end, you defined it in 21st century terms, codependency. I would call it fear. You're with another and then another and another after that.

[37:37]

Goodbye isn't such a terminal thing. And then this is that assignment where we were supposed to spin around or look around 360 degrees. 20 flies on my foot. The sea rolls back silver. It tickles. Happy. Someone has found the way. Sad, for I have not yet. Two more. Daughters of Mara, tempting me from near and far. What? Say it like you mean it.

[38:38]

Do I say it like I mean it? Daughter... I don't know. Where am I? I don't know how to say it. What are you talking about? Daughters... Yeah? Am I a puppet or what? I mean... Daughters of Mara. Tempting me. Excuse me. It's wrong. Daughters of Mara. Tempting... Hold on. I don't know that... Confusing me. All right. All right. That's Mara. Maybe, you know, okay. Daughters of Mara from near or far tempting me. Flaming Samadhi. One more. Okay. Dancing with demons. Mick hits the drum. Boom, boom, boom. Kumbaya. My lord. Okay. It's nice if you wear it.

[39:47]

I thought about explaining this because I read it to Charlie. He's like, well, I don't really see how it all fits together, but maybe you will. He didn't only say that, but it's called Demolition. Once it just took a strong wind, just a regular rotation of seasons to uproot a thatched hut and be done with it. Today, the monuments we build are designed to withstand just about anything except maybe our karmic return. Here, this roof and these walls were pieced together with careful intention. They were designed to grow higher and stronger, so it makes sense that the seams rip a bit with the widening. And it makes sense that the beams of the frame moan as they give. For mindful of smashing things, what is the tool that takes down without destroying? Herein lies the mystery. Like those incubating chicken eggs in third grade, the miracle wasn't just that the yolk and whites had dried up and turned into volition.

[41:20]

Setsuo says the chick and mother hen don't know each other. But is this just a favor between friends? The point is, in this business of emerging, the question is, first, who is pecking out? Then, if there's a knock and response from the outside, the question is, who is pecking in? And then, if a hole is bored wide enough for the gods to offer flowers and the rain to soak through, when the effort meets beak to beak, the last question is, who is left standing? Herein lies the revolution. Can I read another one? I'm here. It's short. Something that dies slowly like a habit or my grandmother. Something that clings on to whatever edges are available and holds with abundant tenacity to shreds the way we love even tiny bits of sea glass, the way we can't put the cigarette down.

[42:26]

Love, like devotion, scours what's left under my nails, makes me willing to die, and flushes out the question, is there really anything left undone? Thanks. So I have two as well. All right. So the first one's called Nikki. Very deceptive, right?

[43:28]

So it's a haiku. Without you, winter comes. Rains fall. The fields go fallow. No plum blossoms remain. And the next one is about being enchanted. Having just met, we are already married. Living together, we cut wood, bake bread, and grow food. Having children, we homeschool them and build a boat from wood in our backyard. Getting old, we sail to an island somewhere in the Pacific, eat fish, wild rice, and die. LAUGHTER Our life was just how I wanted it to be. And all this was without knowing your name. Something I saw.

[44:44]

I don't see one of your books in here. What's your monthly one? Yeah. Oh, you're so good. This is a crime film short. What has to go on first, the glasses or the mic? What's the problem at this time? I'm trying, I'm trying. I cut Prue's hair. I cut Prue's hair. That's the both. With or without the glasses. That's true. A little of both. If all things preach the Dharma in being just themselves, when have we ever been apart?

[45:57]

Now clear, now cloudy, the reflection in the stream is one with the flowing water. Though this image, too, may be just another thief, I kick off my shoes and wade in. Now, those of you will understand, this poem was during one of those times with my boys. I can't say much about animate and inanimate, but ask me about a mother's grief, and I'll show you how I dry my eyes. These words are just black ink on white paper. They're mute till they are red, though two, they're one. I animate the inanimate. The inanimate animates me. This word play raises the whole world, though just so much wind it burns up the universe. I don't remember that

[47:04]

Since I didn't write a poem, the name of this poem is With a Little Help from My Sangha. Can you hear me in the back? This is a test, only a test. If this was a real emergency, I'd actually let go. laughter Jared's poem, thank you very much. Jared's poem, thank you very much. Now you're warmed up.

[48:29]

We're not public. It's supposed to go on the belt. I just had nothing to take. Thank you for letting me join your class so close to the end. Sorry. Uncurl, rise, stand, stretch, towering, poised, ripe, ravenous, and fuming.

[49:35]

Dig in and fall into your natural fierce pace. Go, go, go, erupt, bursting beautiful, savagely intense, wheeling fast, fast, faster. This is called Found. Deep in the forest, a scared little girl met a lost little boy and held his hand. How do we get out of here, he asked. I don't know, she answered. After a while, they said, let's just stay. There is a golden bridge that leads to a golden gate. Some don't see it, some do. Some don't walk, others walk through. What?

[50:41]

We want to get a Z in the chorus. Okay. This is the microphone. Okay. These are three haiku and one haiku. What's the longer haiku? Oh Yeah, waka Winter night big moon walking beneath dark branches in patches of light Bright morning blue sky and the tops of the oak trees illuminated 5 a.m. Zazen the sound of the creek rushes through silence a Red-winged blackbird glides above the pond. Wood smoke drifts from rooftop chimney up toward a daylight moon in the faded morning sky.

[51:48]

You showed yourself. Wind and water, homeless. The air I breathe out, you breathe in. Rakasu covering the belly, sustenance. Umbilical colorizing. Am I fourth enough here? Yeah, I think so. Let's see. The first two lines of this poem are from Dogen's essay on the precepts of a bodhisattva.

[53:09]

appearing in the vast openness of being or appearing within the dust, appearing on a wall of black glass in Clearwater, Florida, or silhouetted on a church ceiling in San Francisco, appearing in Arabic script on the scales of a goldfish or written in code on a Pepsi can, appearing, little Buddha, in a theater near you, Since Buddha, Mary, and Allah are constantly showing up, let's remember to show up too. Yeah, let's see. This is one I wrote after I hurt my knee the last time. If Kabir didn't say it, he should have. The man who spends his days counting losses is already lost. What's the alternative? Be thankful for what you have. I'm grateful for the bestowal of Dharma, for moments of abiding without fear, for the people who love me, for the few who have held my hand, for the many who don't give up.

[54:19]

In this rare moment of courage, I decide to add personal precept number 11. 11, not counting losses, life is abundant. When one door closes, pry open another. Life reveals itself through the blessings of the present. Too green to burn. Too green to burn. Too strong the bark. Redwood tree. Too green to burn.

[55:23]

I did it anyway. Unborn child. My clothes smell like the kitchen, like delicious tofu, which I don't like anyway, but I eat it. Eat and drink sparingly, five-minute shower, help with the dishes, play, sign, wash flats with bleach, call my mom, send my brother a 20 days late birthday card. Sit, sit, sit, be careful, bug my roommate, bug my workmate, bug Dennis, find Lhasa and bug him, write Courtney and Yuan letters and bug them. Time to do laundry. Why are my clothes or my socks all weird and stiff afterwards like they've been slightly burned? Why aren't the bananas organic? Why do I love you? I heard a poem in meditation the other night, which I never heard before.

[56:42]

I think... I think... I think I'm going to call it Raise Your Tiny Fists in the Air Like Antenna Pointing to Heaven or Silence is Violence. Um... It would be a shame to spend your whole life trying to be something you already were all along. Because the mind is a vast and delicate ox. And standing within this forest fire, your eyes reflect children playing hide and seek by an uninterested ocean. And you, with your little tale of vowels, thank you. To the serious exuberance of your ineffable days and the heartbreaking joy of your lexical nights, may the passive composure of kindness open to the wild flexibility of men, because the clouds are moving very fast over the mountains, which are moving very fast, and my mind is moving with the three birds moving south.

[57:45]

Nothing is still, nothing is holy, nothing is secret, not even the emptiness of the endless nowhere moving on in. because the mind is a vast and delicate ox. And people don't get hungry at the sight of a lush cornfield or a herd of cattle. It's enough to say we've been raised on our education and not our awareness. So I'm just going to sit here and think of a badass nickname for myself, like laser or cinnamon. Would you like this? Oh, you can have it over there. Okay. This is not Zen.

[58:52]

This is, well, anyway, the title of this poem is Ramon. Can't sit still, humming to himself, throwing bits of paper, skinny arms and legs all over the carpet. A fascination with crocodiles, sharks, baboons, and lately jaguars. Because, as he says, them can kill us. Won't eat meat because he feels bad for the animals. Barely reads, spelling words one can only guess. Once retained and still behind. But a jaunty watercolor jaguar, complete with bloody fangs, shows talent beyond his years. When he grows up, he says he wants to keep snakes and paint. Anyone else? What the hell? She said, what the hell? This is something slightly different from room two.

[60:00]

The little thing is the little thing. Oh, yeah, that one. You can put it on your sweater. That's all right. I just want to say thank you for, I've just been coming the last two times and I feel like Green Gulch has opened up poetry to me. So this is a bit, perhaps a bit pubescent, as it were. Sort of way of expressing myself because it's all new. And this is with thanks to a friend. Where did the fear and loathing begin? In what dark place before time began? The undercurrent has been present, creating the walls, protecting the soft rawness, pink and oozing. Where are the boundaries? Why did you not help me create them then? Probably for my own good, my need for freedom, imposed by my need for freedom. He responded,

[61:01]

None of us conscious. Now I am more aware. The pendulum swings between arrogance and self-loathing. No coincidence I've chosen to take the middle way. I cry now from the depths of my being for being left as a child, left not knowing, left without a past, dependent on the present fully. I forgot my notebook, but I wanted to read a poem that really resonated with me. This is Gary Snyder. I'm sorry I disturbed you. I broke into your house last night to use the library.

[62:04]

There are some things I had to look up. A large book fell and knocked over others. Afraid you'd wake and find me and be truly alarmed, I left without picking up. I got your name from the mailbox as I fled to write you and explain. I wrote this before class. So I'm not sure which of the lines I'll read. But it's about, I guess, how this class has been for me. It seems that I have abandoned poetry.

[63:07]

I don't know if she'll take me back. But you were always so demanding, wouldn't let me sleep when I was tired, always asking me for spent dreams you might use for fuel. It got so that I didn't know quite who was who. I needed space. I just needed some time to rethink things, reflect, you know, to have my own place for a while. The years have drifted by. I'm older now and half as old as bitter. Last night, I leapt up from my dream, remembering your face and we had kissed. This is kind of a trifle, I'm afraid.

[64:15]

So, my friend says with a toothy grin, how was it? Did you clear your mind? Are you calm? Did you get your concentration on? How was za-za-za-zen? Oh, I don't know, I say, pretending I don't ask the same questions and forget that we used to play together. I'm kind of overwhelmed by the wonderful things I've heard. But I couldn't come last week when we were supposed to read other people's poems. And it seems appropriate to read this particular one tonight, if it's okay. It's Mary Oliver. Actually, this is a book-long poem that's in sections. The poem is not the world. It isn't even the first page of the world.

[65:15]

But the poem wants to flower like a flower. It knows that much. It wants to open itself like the door of a little temple so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed and less yourself than part of everything. Why don't you do somewhere else while I look? Anyone else? Oh, Sparky Playstone, who comes a lady gross doll? How I delight in you. That's wasteful.

[66:21]

I don't like the one I wrote. Who else is hiding back there? Anybody? Paul? Can you give me a phone? I He wrote this right before he left and he wanted to turn it in. The cherry trees around the temple are in full bloom. They are the spirit or soul of Japanese people. We can't think of our life without cherry blossom. I have to leave here today.

[67:22]

Goodbye, our soul in America. I hope to see you again. Kiko Tatadera. Where's the thing? I think you just wear it now. All together. I'll just hold it. Is it like your hair is on fire, even if you're too green to burn, even if you're still wet behind the ears, even if you're too young to die? Yes.

[68:29]

Actually, we have two minutes. Our guests want to recite one more. Anybody else have one or two? Now's the chance. All right. If we need to know someone else's, can we recite? Go ahead. Okay. It's called Linguay Alone. Out on the weedy ledges, snakes doze. I sip cold tea and listen and imitate the bird song that darts and sparkles through magnolia bushes in this mountain place. How I am filled with salt of the season's bright hand. If only there were someone for whom I could shape my exquisite lack of loneliness.

[69:32]

A poet named Christopher Howell, he wrote it in the 70s, he wrote a whole book based on this apparition appearing to him from the 14th century in China. And he kind of wrote a lot of poems in that voice. It was the 70s. I didn't think about this. Yeah, it's a published book, right? Yeah, the Ling Wei text. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. You know the whole thing? No, no, that's the only one I've memorized. They're short. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to say... Well, this is to my dear friend. During Dogen's study hall, millions of hands reached down to pet me. Where is my master? I want to know that. Please. I have another short heartbreak one.

[70:38]

This is from, you know, the most recent heartbreak, which feels like a while ago. Oh, and then a follow-up too. Not a follow-up heartbreak. The altar, empty now, just a flower, a photo, and a reclining Buddha that you left. You left, and Quandian followed. Steeper and steeper, the road does not rest. Each precipice shows the way clear through to the bottom. Only here, to the bottom, this is Trouted Peace. I was wondering if we could maybe do this over the summer, if you'd like to host like a once a month outing.

[71:42]

I think people would be interested in where we're going to be. I'm interested anyway. Well, I think we should do it. Then after the practice period, maybe have one. That's been a reason. Way to do that. I think it has to go to the practice committee. That's almost a haiku. Honey, we can work it out. Honey. Do you want to collect the papers? I do. If you have those poems and you want them in the book, then you should give them to me, but tonight or very soon. Do you want a full-size screen? I would like a full-size because it's easier to reproduce.

[72:43]

We're putting our names on? You can put your names on them. I think it would be fine. If you want to, you don't have to. Are they going to be typed again? Well, I don't know where to type them. I don't know. Well, one of the things is, it's kind of nice to see that. Yeah. I like that. That's great. But you could also put them at the present if you wish. What's the deadline? Well, I'd like to get it done as soon as possible. I'm going to start another class in a couple of weeks on something else. But I'll be around a couple of days here. The next couple of days, try to get the phone to me. And I'm really... I'm both astonished and gratified with such a positive reaction to this.

[73:55]

Because I, at the last minute, actually make this up when Fu asked me, what would you like to, what kind of task would you like to teach? I just pulled out a hat and said, oh, you know, Zen. Good things start that way. And they're like tadpoles. They can grow into bigger fish. Or a frog. Instead of hunting for you, for those of us who don't have a full sheet of paper tonight, a folder or a sheaf or something on that table in the dining room or the money collection box, would that be all right? In the office. Mailbox in the office. Mailbox in the office. Mailbox in the office, okay. Put them there. Put them there. It's got both names on it. It's great. Well, it's about a quarter of, I guess, we can go and do the refuges. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. This half do this, and this half... I'm out!

[75:19]

That's my class.

[75:50]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_66.15