When I try to describe you  to someone who doesn’t know  you, I smile deep inside, as I do  when remembering a hike up a   mountain or a day at the ocean.    You give your all to everything.  Whether tilling your garden, or   mitering a joint, or wanting to   drive to New England to see a   certain type of tree, you hold   nothing back.    This is what it’s like to be loved  by you. You will go... Read more

Somewhere, along the way, I learned that Plato had no formal curriculum. He was simply exploring deep questions of living with fellow seekers. He actually had no place to gather, when he inherited a grove of olive trees from an uncle who had died. He began to walk with those he loved in the sacred peace and beauty of the olive grove. It is not by mistake that the word Academy in Greek means “Sacred Grove.” And there was the... Read more

Something beats inside   the soul, the way the heart   beats inside our chest.     While the mind plays its   melodies, the beat inside   returns us to whatever it   is we think we have lost.     This is the tuning fork   of the sacred by which   we find our way.     I felt it as a boy watching   the endless waves lap   against the bow of   our boat.    I felt it when I awoke   from surgery too soon   as... Read more

The things we can’t see feed us,  the way the soil feeds the rose,  the way the wind lifts the hawk,  the way the deep pillows the  jellyfish.    Yet in our insecurity,   we insist we’ve done it all.    When nothing—from atoms   to planets—makes its way alone.    Bow, then, to the Mysteries that   hold you up while you sleep.  They need our love, too.    This is from my book coming out in Sept, Falling Down and Getting... Read more

The leaf twirled this way and that and finally landed on the pond like the one thought, after all my suffering, that cleared my mind.   You happened to look at me with all your love at just that moment and we understood each other.   No matter the conflict or mis- understanding, we see through to the bottom together.   This makes the fall into life bearable.   From my book of poems in progress, Elsewhere.    Check out... Read more

  Perhaps all beauty is in the dab  of taste on the tongue. Perhaps we  can’t see everything until we enter  the smallest thing.    Perhaps the pianist, head down, eyes closed, plays the same rumble of notes,  over and over, until he falls into the  canyon of emptiness from which  all music comes.    Perhaps, when split by a moment of  love that won’t let me stay the same,  I am falling into the one truth that  every soul... Read more

We often live like shadows, suffering from stories never told and songs never sung.   Though, even shadows vanish with enough light. And truth remains a perception revealed by time.   To live a full life, we are called to participate in everything, while accepting that we control nothing.   So, with nothing left to say, I explore the wonder in silence and try to net the stars with thoughts of the beginning.   From The Half-Life of Angels  ... Read more