Plum Trees
The blossoming plums are a comforting sight,
they understand I am heavy with wine
– Chiang K’uei
do you recall
when I planted plum trees
to the east of our home
and dusk promised us
a life still
as a Chinese scroll
yet later in darkness
I turned away
and seemed to sleep
so many winters
my head heavy
my plum trees gone
If your brother sins, rebuke him;
and if he repents, forgive him.
And if he wrongs you seven times in one day
and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’
you should forgive him.” Luke 17:4
Photo: Mount Desert Island, ME – March 2018
Help us to spend this day in the spirit of joy.
photo: Solvang, CA December 2017
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
I’ve been writing seriously for 50 years and I just got paid for the first time – $20 or $.40 per year. As Guy Clark wrote, “there ain’t no money in poetry/that’s what set the poet free/I’ve had all the freedom I can stand…”
I’m so happy to be included in the Fall issue of Nine Mile Magazine (available soon on Amazon, iTunes, and in hard copy on http://www.ninemile.org.)
Now I just have to figure out how to spend my hard-earned pay.
We praise and thank you, Lord, for the uncertain, in-between times in our lives when we can be still and know that you are God. We praise and thank you for the hidden wonders of each day. We praise and thank you for acts of kindness, great and small, that serve to bring about your kingdom. We praise and thank you for the courage to place ourselves under your protection, not allowing fear to have the upper hand. We praise and thank you for your patience with our weakness, for being willing to work in and through us in ways we do not understand. We praise and thank you for our emptiness, which will one day be filled with your love. We praise and thank you for the silent wonders you work in us, preparing us for a life that will find its completion in you. Amen. – Kathleen Norris
photo: Abiquiu, NM 2018
I went out on the porch before dawn to think of these things, and the words of Ezekiel (22:30): “And I sought among them for a man that might set up a hedge and stand in the gap before me in favor of the land that I might not destroy it, and I found none.” And while I was standing there, quails began to whistle all over the field and in the wood. I had not heard any for weeks and thought sure they were all dead, for there have been hunters everywhere. No, there they are! Signs of life, of gentleness, of helplessness, of providence, of love. They just keep on existing and loving and making more quails and whistling in the bushes. – Thomas Merton, journal entry November 7, 1965
The house without a window is Hell:
to make a window is the foundation of true religion.
Don’t thrust your axe upon every thicket:
come, use your axe to cut open a window.
~ Rumi
Photo: Assisi 2005
Fear, shame, and guilt often make us stay in our isolation and prevent us from realizing that our handicap, whatever it is, can always become the way to an intimate and healing fellowship in which we come to know one another as humans. After all, everyone shares the handicap of mortality. Our individual, physical, emotional, and spiritual failures are but symptoms of this disease. Only when we use these symptoms of mortality to form a fellowship of the weak can hope emerge. It is in the confession of our brokenness that the real strength of new and everlasting life can be affirmed and made visible. – Henri Nouwen
Photo: Portland, ME – November 2017
Edge of Atlantic 