People Who Eat in Coffee Shops
Posted: November 6, 2014 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: coffee, culture, Education, Edward Field, kindness, love, Poem, Poetry, Prose, writting 9 Comments…
People who eat in coffee shops
are not worried about nutrition.
They order the toasted cheese sandwiches blithely,
followed by chocolate egg creams and plaster of paris
wedges of lemon meringue pie.
They don’t have parental, dental, or medical figures hovering
full of warnings, or whip out dental floss immediately.
They can live in furnished rooms and whenever they want
go out and eat glazed donuts along with innumerable coffees,
dousing their cigarettes in sloppy saucers.
Moon
Posted: October 30, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, compassion, Frederick Smock, gratitude, happiness, kindness, life, love, Moon, Poetry, writing, yoga, Zen 2 Comments…
The day lengthens,
the old earth tips its hat
to the moon.
The changeful moon
goes through many phases,
even in a single night,
though it is the same
moon as ever, we know this.
We are the changes.
Temple
Posted: October 16, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Jeffrey Harrison, love, Poetry, Prose, Temple 8 Comments…
Not a place of worship exactly
but one I like to go back to
and where, you could say, I take
sanctuary: this smooth area
above the ear and around the corner
from your forehead, where your hair
is as silky as milkweed.
The way to feel its featheriness best
is with the lips. Though you
are going gray, right there
your hair is as soft as a girl’s,
the two of us briefly young again
when I kiss your temple.
Composition
Posted: October 9, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Composition, Fall, John Ashbery, nature, Poetry Leave a comment…
We used to call it the boob tube,
but I guess they don’t use tubes anymore.
Whatever, it serves a small purpose after waking
and before falling asleep. Today’s news—
but is there such a thing as news,
or even oral history? Yes, when you want to go back
after a while and appraise the accumulation
of leaves, say in a sandbox.
The rest is rented depression,
available only in season
and the season is always next month,
a pure but troubled time.
That’s why I don’t go out much, though
staying at home never seemed much of an option.
And speaking of nutty concepts, surely “home”
is way up there on the list. I feel more certain about “now”
and “then,” because they are close to me,
like lovers, though apparently not in love with me,
as I am with them. I like to call to them,
and sometimes they reply, out of the deep business of some dream.
Kindness
Posted: October 2, 2014 Filed under: Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Buddhism, compassion, Gratefulness, gratitude, kindness, meditation, Naomi Shihab Nye, Poetry, Prose, Talking Voice Inside 2 Comments: When a friend opens a random page in your life :
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Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.





