fire

ありがとう

ありがとう is arigato, “thank you” in Japanese.

sunrise sequel

On the last day of my visit home to see my mother, I took one last sunrise photo—my heart filled with gratitude for her return from the hospital and steady recovery… My heart overwhelmed with gratitude for the doctors and nurses, the friends and family who prayed for her recovery, for the ability and support I received from my work to abruptly drop everything and fly across the Pacific to be with my mother, for the healing she received and for her own strong will to heal, for time with my family and our cat, for the ever deepening awareness of just how precious this life is… My heart flooded with the beauty of each and every new sunrise.

The following poem is inspired by and written for my mother, who enjoys gardening and playing the lyre, who loves harvesting the blueberries and baking bread, who delights in feeding the birds and fish and all the little creatures… for my mother, who is a poet and is poetry… for my precious mother, who is the sunrise…

home free

when the sun rises
all the beautiful flowers and butterflies dance
in this garden of life
in this wild symphony of wonder and delight

when the sun rises into the sky
i dance with the swallows
and with the wind
dancing
with no particular path nor purpose
dancing
just for joy
just for the sheer love of dancing
for love itself
and for life
for one another

when the sun rises
we dance wild and we fly
home free


imagine

angels and demons
dance together in my dreams
no heaven no hell

I wrote the above haiku and reflection below about two and a half years ago. With the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, I thought it apropos to share this again. May a world of peace for everyone dawn—pink and soft light over the horizon of darkness.

From Aristotle to Einstein, philosophers, artists and poets over the ages have spoken about the power of imagination. In some regards, it is lamentable that we often perceive knowledge as an accumulation of so-called objective “facts”, and imagination as a kind of unreal world of dreams. But the creation of anything and everything always starts with the imagination. So what then actually, is imagination? Is it not the source of everything?

Since its creation in 1971 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the famous song “Imagine” has been invoked worldwide in a shared desire for humanity to transcend differences and to live “life in peace”. You may say that imagining world peace has not created it; however, in the act of imagination, in stating and singing and sharing the dream, are we not creating the real experience of peace within our own hearts and together with others? When we imagine peace, we experience it. Likewise, when we imagine violence, we experience it. What we imagine, we experience. What we imagine, we become.

We are all dreamers—it is our birthright and our true nature. So why not dance and dream together, for a world of peace? We are our dreams. May they be light.

gold

light entwined with love
in our hearts and in our souls
we are spinning gold

i came here


i did not come here just to love you
i came here
to be love
together with you
to dance
and in one another
come home
breathlessly with these deep sighing waves
eternally and endlessly

like stars
i came here
to be together with you
in love

portal

this body
sacred

holy
a temple
something divine

divinity itself
its beating heart
portal
to the universe
yes, to the universe and beyond…
but most of all
a portal to
l o v e
let the doors wide open now
throw away the key
f l y

poems

flowering


my Love is more
than even the wildest wild rose
an unrestrained, and
captivating beauty—the rarest

flower
tumbling up into the sky, and freer
than the swiftest starling
but still, this singular flower is
rooted

firmly, deeply, ever inextricably
in this soil

in this rich and moist and black
soil,

rooted ever so deeply inside
this deep deep love

flowering

sounding board

Have you felt that too? Not singing, but being sung by the world? Body as sounding board for the swirling elements of air, water, light, and, soft soil? Like mist, song emerging from the slow steps and soft contours of a dance… each and every cell connected to wind and white feathers in flight?
One day, while practicing fue (a kind of traditional Japanese flute) and singing by the Kamo River in Kyoto, I felt that… that sensation of being saturated by the mist and the light. By wind and by love.

The photograph above was taken then, when I felt that. It’s not a particularly striking nor clear picture, but somehow it captured some airborne shimmering light, sparkles, and an egret… Somehow it captures something like being saturated by the light and the mist… something like being a sounding board for the world.