Here's a goofy little doodle from a journal page. . .

Have found, and fallen in love, with a poet new to me -- Shinkichi Takahashi. This poems's from a book called Triumph of the Sparrow/Zen poems.

GODS

Gods are everywhere:
war between Koshi and Izumo
tribes still rages.

The all of All, the One
ends distinctions.

The three thousand worlds
are in that plum blossom.
The smell is God.

Chicken lamp

Busy, hurry, list it, do it, fast, now and now-er, better, best it. . .seems to be the dominant tape running in my head and no matter how many things I check off the infinite To Do list, dozens of other things boldly add themselves so that the list never shrinks, only grows. This morning, though, I heard a quieter voice, quite funny, actually. It said, "Why don't you just pay some attention to the chicken's tail feathers." Meaning the carving, I guess. So I did. I stopped and meditated briefly on the beauty of the wooden feathers. In the background, the To Do list was ramping itself up with trombones and xylophones,small mortar rounds and the sound of Humpty-Dumpty crashing and climbing, crashing and climbing. But it doesn't make any difference because today, finding my way from beauty to beauty is the doing.

Grateful for rain

Whole porch full of geraniums burst into very nearly audible hallelujahs
when the rain finally returned.