You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
a strip of land
to develop
or let go wild
or trash
you make your mark
me, I think I’d rather farm
or run a trap set
drawing on something
in my bloodline
more than the banker
but this is, after all, in a city
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
For more, click here.
A reconstructed whale skeleton suspended in the New England Aquarium pays homage to the region’s close relationship to the sea. For generations, whaling was a major industry that provided essential oil to illuminate the night. The aquarium sits on a wharf in Boston Harbor.
The city is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.
In the congregation of pleasure:
Some are fat; some, skinny.
Some cute; a few, beautiful.
They smile, frown, dimple, blink.
Hair short, curled, long and free.
They come from anywhere.
~*~
“Roger was in my room again till five
telling me he didn’t want to sleep alone again,”
she said, glancing at her lover
while he simply smiled, facing away.
~*~
One votive burns
twice as fast
as the other.
Both, invoking
departed honeybees.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
She liked to bite fingers.
She braided my beard.
Her nose and big toe were square.
Her tresses were thirteen years long.
~*~
She devoured the translation like a cheeseburger
and refused to understand me.
She spent her paycheck
on clothes she bought on layaway
while she was one unemployed
good dresser who had to do something.
She said Kayak poetry review
looked like a Sunday school booklet
with a cannon on the cover.
~*~
She didn’t like the antique silver fork
with the engraved W
I’d bought for a dime
– the yellowed marriage
whose bride was no doubt long dead
held no treasure in her eyes.
Why else would we have it?
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Copyright 2015
As I revisit my copy of The Diamond Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng, the binding falls apart. How appropriate! The price, $2.95, says everything: this is a volume that has been carried from one end of the continent to the other and back, with a world of spiritual practice and discovery in between.
A sutra typically is a Hindu or Buddhist teacher’s discourse for aspirants.
The scarab, a symbol of ancient Egypt, originates as a beetle, By extension, it also becomes a symbol of transportation in the hippie era, leaping from there to the Hindu and Buddhist texts and back.
Break away from routine – job, home, neighborhood and friends, the commerce of community – just long enough to let the mind clear. Don’t fill the silences with radio, conversation, any music or dialogue but your own. From somewhere deep in the nervous system, atypical even random bits of memory and observation rise in unanticipated sequence. What ought to have been obvious all along suddenly asserts itself, perhaps with bold surrealism or jarring candor.
In a flash, the mind dances, as it will, with whatever engages it. Field notes, the words themselves, appear unadorned, without apology. Here something other than straight thinking presents its original mental hopscotch.
To a generation of Americans, the Volkswagen Bug represents cheap, easily repaired, carefree transport – often accompanied by adventurous first-time experiences and personal growth. In ways, the plain VW depicts a break between the routines of schooling and establishing families and careers to follow. A time, too, of spiritual exploration, with a flowering of Yoga and Zen, especially.
Here, then, the machine serves as a vessel into the Void, where the mind glimpses and tastes “all this fleeting world: a star at dawn; a flash of lightning in a summer cloud; a flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream,” in the words the Diamond Sutra (Vajrachchedika).
Listen to this teaching. As Hui Neng insists, “Mirror-like Wisdom is pure by nature.” And persevere!
~*~
Well, these are all at play in my newest poetry collection, Ripples in a Bejeweled Prayer Flag. Take a look at Thistle/Flinch editions.
The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?
~*~
~*~
who knows exactly when it happened
that he realized he held more in common
with squirrels than any of his colleagues?
he couldn’t quite fly, no matter how much
he admired birds, and had climbed
enough trees as a kid to nearly qualify
still, he had little taste for nuts, other than cashews,
unless you mean a strange people,
and he rarely raked fallen leaves
maybe it was all a matter of some vague sense
he didn’t exactly belong in this apartment or house,
except by clandestinely rearranging his peculiar insulation
maybe it was simply a nickname
for the way he rummaged frenziedly in search
of some missing item suddenly remembered
he would dash, then, in and out of the trap
in and out of the trap and, with a snap,
wonder where he was being carried
Poem copyright 2015 by Jnana Hodson
To read the full set of squirrelly poems, click here.
The John Hancock Insurance Co. is celebrated in the two skyscrapers it erected in Boston’s Back Bay.
The city is a rich and varied destination – the Hub of New England, or even of the Universe, as they used to say. Living a little more than an hour to the north, we’re well within its orb.
“Those aren’t bulls, they’re steers”
she corrected from the passenger seat.
Now a waitress at the country club.
“I bet you get some pretty far-out passes.”
“More than that!” She giggled.
Here she was living with a man
in a hotel in town. He was a Mohawk
who raised horses and died
two days after landing a paying job.
“I guess I’ll never go back”
– to the farm, to the city –
it didn’t matter.
~*~
Sometimes it’s the Baptist upbringing.
~*~
She couldn’t understand why her parents
were still together. Thought her mother
once had a lover. She’d hear kissing
after being sent to bed, after her father’s
best friend had come over. Now
he couldn’t stand him.
There was a big waterfall on their farm
which they had to sell.
And she told me
she had laryngitis the previous week,
making me wonder
if I should have kissed her good-night
so much.
To continue, click here.
Copyright 2015
A hundred miles inland from the nearest port, we encountered a three-legged tree. Until looking closer after being told the house beside it was built a century earlier by a retired sea captain, you’d have no clue a whale jaw had been leaned against the young trunk, where they grew together.
Irrigated, of course, this being desert.
The question remained. Who was farther from true home?
For more insights from the American Far West and Kokopelli, click here.
