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| Marie Bortolotto 2023 The First Words The first words got polluted Like river water in the morning Flowing with the dirt Of blurbs and the front pages. My only drink is meaning from the deep brain, What the birds and the grass and the stones drink. Let everything flow Up to the four elements, Up to water and earth and fire and air. Seamus Heaney, Poet |
September 1, 2023
August 5, 2023
A scattering
by Christopher Reid
I expect you've seen the footage: elephants,
finding the bones of one of their own kind
dropped by the wayside, picked clean by the scavengers
and the sun, then untidily left there,
decide to do something about it.
But what, exactly? They can't, of course,
reassemble the old elephant magnificence;
they can't even make a tidier heap. But they can
hook up bones with their trunk and chuck them
this way and that way. So they do.
And their scattering has an air
of deliberate ritual, ancient and necessary.
Their great size, too, makes them the very
embodiment of grief, while the play of their trunks
lends sprezzatura.
Elephants puzzling out
the anagram of their own anatomy,
elephants at their abstracted lamentations -
may their spirit guide me as I place
my own sad thoughts in new, hopeful arrangements.
I love this poem by Christopher Reid!
You'll find it in his collection of poems -- A Scattering -- which was written as a tribute to his wife who died.
June 22, 2023
Wishing to cultivate the earth,
I cultivate understanding,
In vain I wield my hoe
And sharpen my sickle.
The earth languishes, grasses and trees wither,
Gazing at heaven and earth and heaving a long sigh,
I am filled with despair.
When will
That Garden of Eden
Bloom again?
Masanobu Fukuoka -- Japanese farmer and philosopher (1913 - 2008)
Your heart is full of fertile seeds
waiting to sprout.
Morihei Ueshiba - philosopher, martial artist and author (1883 - 1969)
June 11, 2023
The Rainmaker
A story told by Richard Wilhelm, Chinese scholar and theologian to Carl Jung:
In the ancient Chinese province of Kiaochou there was a drought so severe that many people and animals were dying. All the religious leaders attempted to solicit relief from their gods: the Catholics made processions, the Protestants said their prayers, and the Chinese fired guns to frighten away the demons of the drought. Finally, out of desperation, the town’s people called upon the Rainmaker, and from a province far away there appeared a shriveled up, old man. The old man immediately requested a small hut on the outskirts of town, where he locked himself up for three days and nights in solitude, and then, on the fourth day, it rained. In fact, it snowed at a time when snow was not expected.
Wilhelm, who was allowed to interview the Rainmaker, asked him how he made the rain, and the old man responded by exclaiming that he did not make the rain, that he was not responsible! Not satisfied with this response, Wilhelm pressed on, “Then what did you do for these three days?” And the old man explained that he had come from another province where things were in order with nature, but here, in Kiaochou, things were out of order, and so he himself was also out of order. Thus, it took three days to regain Tao and then naturally, the rain came.
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| Marie Bortolotto |
January 19, 2023
December 29, 2022
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| Marie Bortolotto 2022 A thatch hut in blue mountains beside a green stream after so many years visits are now up to me a few peach and plum trees blooming red and white a green and yellow field of vegetables and wheat all night I sit in bed listening to rain when it clears I open the window and doze off watching clouds nothing in life is better than being free but getting free isn’t luck Shiwu Qingqong 1272 - 1352 The Mountain Poem of Stonehouse Translated by Red Pine/Bill Porter |
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