We no longer see the one who teaches us

Musician, play this moment's music as grace
for those who block our road, grace for

bandits! Musician, you learned this from
a true bandit. I hear the teacher's accent

in the student's art. Musician, turn your
face to absence, because existence is

deceitful and afraid. The soul knows it is
not from here. It feels bound in a body,

yet also knows the pleasure of absence.
Absence is the ocean we swim! Existence, a

fish hook. Anyone caught loses the joy
of freedom. Being nailed to the four

elements is a crucifixion. If you keep
running after your wishes and desires,

that's your crucifixion, be sure of it!
There is a fire in patience that burns

what of you is born to fine ash. Strike
the flint of Sura 100, Honor the one

who loses breath. And, Fire rises
where they walk. These are brave souls,

musician igniting musician. What's the
point of the chess-game world where a

pawn cuts off a king? I walk awkwardly,
but the smoke goes straight up.

Sometimes a pawn makes it to the other
side and redeems a queen. The knight

says, "Your plodding is one or two moves
for us." Judgment Day is closer than

that for everyone, one step away. The
chess king says, "Without me this motion

and figuring mean nothing. The bishop
might as well be a mosquito." Winning

and losing are the same. There's check-
mate in both. We no longer see the one

who teaches us. You could say we've
been checkmated. What happens now?


— Rumi

infinite distances

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

In the Thriving Season

In the Thriving Season
by Lisel Mueller

In memory of my mother

Now as she catches fistfuls of sun
riding down dust and air to her crib,
my first child in her first spring
stretches bare hands back to your darkness
and heals your silence, the vast hurt
of your deaf ear and mute tongue
with doves hatched in her young throat.

Now ghost-begotten infancies
are the marrow of trees and pools
and blue uprisings in the woods
spread revolution to the mind,
I can believe birth is fathered
by death, believe that she was quick
when you forgave pain and terror
and shook the fever from your blood

Now in the thriving season of love
when the bud relents into flower,
your love turned absence has turned once more,
and if my comforts fall soft as rain
on her flutters, it is because
love grows by what it remembers of love.

everything you want

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear."

— Jack Canfield

This was one of the meditations that got

my daughter through the labor and birth

of my second grandson

Henry Bennett

born February 20

as it flies

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity's sun rise.

— William Blake

it matters not how small

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: 

what is once done well is done forever. 

— Henry David Thoreau

photo shot by my husband on his phone

before James's 2nd birthday party