Lovely Sunday morn
finds me in haiku space
--thoughts flutter like leaves

Mid-winter haiku:


Begins here at home
cosmic religious feelings
--tree ice brightens me

Haiku

Darkness awaits light
while Earth orbit in motion
prepares springtime flower

DENDRITIC CONNECTIVITY

Bare trees, wispy limbs
like dendrites connecting sky
to moon moving by

I AM THE JOURNAL

When at a Buddhist shrine in Nara, Japan, recently (Oct. 2008), I purchased a blank-paged book and had the monk shown in the photo write something in Japanese calligraphy. Then I wrote this haiku:

In my blank journal

monk writes fluid calligraphy

--I snap quick photo

Perhaps the blank journal is metaphorical of our lives. Surely the Preface is already written, but to what extent is the remainder of our lives a tabula rasa ready to be written upon? The question, then, is to what degree does the Preface prefigure the remaining plot and character development?

Sometimes I feel my life-plot was written ages ago and I am passively/actively observing its narrativization--written in exotic calligraphy in my Journal--of a life in which I strive to be a Conscious Co-Worker of the Divine Plan.

The story denouement is nearly always anticlimatic, for the main action occurs in the middle of the Journal, in the present. That's where I am now: in the always-present, not entirely cognizant of the meaning of the calligraphy. But, that's acceptable, because I am the Journal.

HAIKU--BALANCED BUDDHA

Composed at Buddhist temple, Kyoto, summer 2002.

Quiet, still statue
People walk chattering by
--Balanced Buddha sits

HAIKU--CROWS SQUAWK OVER SILENT MOSS

Composed in Zen temple garden, Kyoto, summer 2002.

Crows squawk overhead
Noisily talk: the students
--Wet moss lies silent