out in the swampland
misty mornings meet the day
sleepers start to stir

Light that's not quite a light but something in the night -Not an old dead stump, they say, that's caught fire from some stray flash, a lightning bolt, nor some little cloud of swamp gas ignited by a firefly sitting on it too long , but no. It has to be something much more exotic than that. Something mysterious.eerie. hauntingly melancholy... like purple orchid juice being squeezed out from bamboo reeds and vaporizing before it can be lapped up by Venus Fly Traps. That's all.

In my cave I dwell
Emptiness in form forming
Always I am here.
__ it is always now__
Today
Everything is running on according to how things are arranged by nature. Morning suns rise with winds and waves, Sleeping ones sleep cuddled in caves,...and like Li P'o has said, "Peach blossoms and flowing streams pass away without a trace..." Wonderful! This one moment! Vast, distant, yet known only here.
Here.
Now.

mushrooms that's good to eat

Toppled Tree Limbs lopped off a long time before
piled up haphazardly and left there to rot on the forest floor
until one day a Master of Art
came along treading on fallen leaves and twigs, tasty mushrooms unseen,
(some poisonous, thus taboo)
then his eyes, falling on that tangled up collection, began to gleam as a masterpiece of art such as none ever seen was born beneath the deft hands of said Master.
He arranged the conglomeration
with the genius of extrapolation
into a"coherent piece that makes a statement."
Behold!
The toppled trees once more stand
Upright and Bold!
:-)

~her big red bellybutton~
Autumn, the Season many people prefer, is like My Jennifer: A sweet and lovely girl whose tresses moistly curl around a misty morning like a necklace adorning lacy leaves with diamonds bright where upon them falls the light. Soon the sunrise glittering gold melts the frost so crunchy cold; Ah so loved my Jennifer and Fall, for they are the fairest of them all!

Invisible ink
Will write my new river home
In my little book

__seeds of
Form in emptiness
Oceans, earths, wide open spaces
Changing, swirling stuff

Like a Bird Flying
Through endless earths and skies
Happy to be free

Bright sunshine burning
Turning, turning, day and night
Midnight's noon moon

Another summer in my garden now at last begins to fade away into Fall and this one more time today I'm filling empty pots with soil and seeds for summer next. Soon these leaves and twigs I kneel in now will begin their journey of winter around delightful being-here-now paths of mysterious double helixes into another spring full of what will be will be.

What world? Why this one of course! This one that nobody knows but me, Is flowing like your river, flowing ever into and out of the sea, for me! Oh the excitement of it! This world! This world where things happen in long, long strings of shining pearls of existence, Where there's no danger no peril in what does not exist, but which can be seen, touched and tasted! Oh! The Excitement of it! The Agony, the Ecstasy! The sheer Emptiness so Vast and Endless as to be Nothing more than Here and Now!

Beneath circling shadows I sought to sleep in peace. Knot the cord, and fly away fast! If I do slumber, wake me from that eternal sleep, O gentle one, for on this day those stern ungentle hands have laid my body bare, lopp'd and hew'd and chewed and gnawed. Beneath circling shadows I sought to sleep in peace. Again so great a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind's rise and fall between honey tree and locust, only to encounter a cloud of issuing sprouts blushing. Shall I speak? Say I am burnt to cinders? My pretty fingers on lily-white hands tremble like aspen leaves. I hear you play upon your lute, it's silken strings delight me to kiss your honey sweet lips which touched for life's heavenly sweet tongue into harmony in thy poet's heart. Come, let us go! One hour's storm of tears draw back sparkling bright beads of fragrant meads: Upon thy tongue doth melt away all pain and sorrow of yesterday.

Let us go but for one hour's chance to that sweet hut where perchance fragrant meads might make a tear to draw back curtains from glass so clear it seems to us it is not there from moment to moment,
Being Here.

On top of Blackrock Mountain,
Surrounded by a thousand
Hills and valleys,
This pine tree stands under the stars;
Clouds drift silently by.

The rising sun's streaming gold upon lovely earth mother's cedar topped mounts. She hearkens to tidings of love as we haste to a myrtle grove greatly worn with footprints from past sojourners who walked this way-each and every soul seeking the bushes which bear the fruit of many past season's dewberries sweetly dripping sugar upon unclad feet. We catch her thorns and vines that twine about trunks of trees and crawl greenly o'er hills that wind up and down cavernous mountainsides. We pick little lily-white flowers that grow in cold-pale weakness beside streams cascading down cliffs in frothy white waterspray. Bathed by dampness, we feel the washing away of all dreaded numbness, all dismal despair. Here we stand: the children of tomorrow, trembling in ecstasy; All senses cheered, uplifted...quakingly ready: strength rising, rising, rising...until off this way we run! Over hill, over dale, through bramble and brae like little lambs astray and all along the way we shed all covery skin crying out to the wind: "How now, spirit! Whither wander you?" And in laughter we gleefully sing out too, "through flood, through fire, I do wander everywhere!" Come along with me! Let us all run free!

...there's no place like home." __
~ ~ ~Little hut in the forest hidden by greening vine, a place invisible to all others; a place that's only mine. A bed of embers upon the hearth with ashes swept up clean, windows open to the world and beams of light between...

This is it. Nowhere else, nothing else, No other time. Leaves stir to the gentle breeze and warm sunshine brings withered ones whose bark is dark and crumbly back to blossom. I tried to read a History of This, but suddenly shadows and mists of fog swallowed the pages.
-from off the wall...

Practicing medicine and painting the anatomy of patient patients.

When a beginning
Blends together with an end
It's Increcible!

Today on the earth
Somewhere there's a waterfall
Over rocks flowing...

Emptiness is a name for nothingness;
it is a name for ungraspibility,
a name for mountains, rivers, the
whole earth.
It is also called the real form.
In the green of the pines, the
twist of the brambles, there is
no going and coming; In the
red of the flowers and the
white of the snow, there is
no birth and no death.
-Ryusai
_ __Being Here Now in Emptiness___
___________________________________________________

Emptiness
The meaning of emptiness is very important; it means first of all to be empty of a separate self. Nothing has a separate self, and nothing exists by itself. If we examine things carefully we will see that all phenomena, including ourselves, are composites. We are made up of other parts. We are made of our mother and father, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental formations, the earth, the sun and innumerable non-self elements. All these parts depend on causes and conditions. We see that all that has existed, exists or will exist isinterconnected and interdependent. All that we see has only manifested because it is a part of something else, of other conditions that make it possible to manifest. All phenomena are neither produced nor destroyed, because they are in a constant process of manifesting.
~Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

All the same difference,
A cloud, a thought, a morning;
All playful kittens

Trust the universe
Then all at once you are free
In things as they are-
and...
Trust Yourself!! :-)

Mama used to say,
"There's plenty more where that came from.".. :-)

This is it. Nowhere else, nothing else,
No other time; Only this.
Leaves stir to the gentle breeze,
Warm sunshine brings withered trees whose bark is
dark and crumbly back to blossom.
I tried to read a history of Zen,
But suddenly shadows and mists of fog swallowed the pages.

Today,
In imagination,...
__Mind__
Where all that is
Begins,
I saw a whole other world
Begin.

See Beginner's Mind
Open like Lotus Flowers
Outward from within