That’s why I sang these songs: the art of writing down my name might call up hers or, reaching the true cause of me (a reason? a meaning?), might find a home, or build one that is why I sang

In evening when light fades you feel it, or in the night where nothing shines but stars that gleam from the far end of the thinnest thread: those strands that catch the corner of your eye and rouse your sounds, widen your smile so song is woven on the melody of her curve, harmony in the curl and moisture of her lips; that is where I sang; and where our voices met we settled in, the sunlight came so every seed we planted surged and opened leaves in sweet upswelling fountain-spilling flowers, fruit, future as though I sang them into life

Then there was a little light, burned away what remained of the night colored the fields - the clarity of air - my world, unveiled then there was a sound, I turned around, there was someone coming my way…

there was, there was there was, there was

Then there was a name came so lightly to the tongue then there was a face couldn’t be erased when the day was done then there was a touch - it doesn’t take much to bring you home

Several years ago I was “improving” my photo collection, which had become a wobbling tower of Kodachrome, balanced precariously and in no particular order in a hidden corner of my closet. Every time I saw it, I felt a vague intolerance; and each time I saw it, I felt that intolerance grow, until finally the intolerance was itself intolerable, and I furiously shoveled the concealing junk out of the way, and hooked those boxes and stacks out into the middle of my bedroom floor.

I turned to face the evening       she was there her arms a circle       cool November: mist the light, a fallen curtain       and her hair a silken flicker turned        to mask her face all given, all received       in evening’s arms we fell, we turned the shawl       November’s mist to circled warmth       the lightest curtain furled til darkness fell       on everything, and gave November back to us       returned our names a circle cannot end       November can

Rue - Mark Schultz

Certas canções - Milton Nascimento

Certas canções que ouço cabem tão dentro de mim que perguntar carece como não fui eu que fiz?

Certa emoção me alcança corta-me a alma sem dor certas canções me chegam como se fosse o amor

Contos da água e do fogo cacos de vidas no chão cartas do sonho do povo é o coração do cantor

Vida e mais vida oferida chuva, outono, ou mar carvão e giz, abrigo gesto molhado no olhar

Somewhere in between acquaintance and friend I asked why?, and she answered: I survived cancer. 

It was some years ago, she said, a decade now without another challenge. I counted back: how young! And the thought dissolved - as some thoughts do - becoming a gentle interior rain, washing down to common ground, what is was lost, is loosing its grip, will be taken away. I was trying to remember where that exact feeling, or a feeling closely akin, had touched me before: it is aligned with beauty. It might have been the first curl and browning edge of a rose petal. It might be a spot on the stem. If there were no beauty, the sense would not be the same…

Tangle - Mark Schultz

If you could sing the wind, your voice should wear a sighing sound, as if from distant sources you had flown, and half-way through your flight your wings were weary but not yet done. Or a whistling of time through the sieve: divided into strands that strain then stream in parallel until they tangle, intertwine, and fuse together once again. What else would it seem? Is it winter round the windows moaning ancient love’s lament, a loss remembered making sadness modern, soon to be spent? Is it wind that carries moonlight lightly on its back, depositing in drops of dew the dawn that trees and flowers rush to drink?

Under the cover of darkness, or in the blaze of mid-day, there are the brief encounters with the teacher: the real teacher. When we are young or when we are misinformed, the lessons are ignored or avoided. As though that final test could be dismissed, no thank you, I prefer not. It cannot be dismissed. Under the cover of darkness, when we are most exposed, or in the blaze of mid-day, when we least expect it, we are offered these little practice sessions. Just listen! It is Guará come back not to haunt, and neither to taunt, but to instruct.

Tonight I was sitting in a pile of wood shavings, they fell like heavy flakes of snow as I carved away layers of beech, until I was adrift. A seated Buddha is concealed within what was originally a modest 6" block of roughcut. The Buddha’s always within… I know that… you just need the patience and the skill to find it.

Meanwhile, I almost lopped off the Buddha’s nose last week, having angled my gouge slightly too deeply along the grain, with the pressure of my desire to find Buddha, the fibers released all at once, and a large wedge of wood pulled up right at the middle way where his face might have been. Justin, a master carver and this group’s guide, said “Well… maybe the Buddha in there is smaller than you thought…”

Some words seem to be born of an inner and shared light…

For me they may arrive after the stillness of meditation; but just as often the softest and most human words are accompanied or are led by a melody. All creation is frequency, is a movement of waves, from the highest vibrations of quasars or atomic particles to the lowest throbbing of stars in their orbits.

Or, in our daily rounds, from the bluest light to the reddest, those frequencies of creation which our eyes perceive; from the whistle of a kettle or the hum of a bee to the drone of a bowed bass or the rumble of thunder, in frequencies which our ears perceive; to the cycles of ocean waves, whose interstices we hear as they crash to the sands, while their slow pulse, like the breath of the planet, moves through our bodies noticed, unnoticed; to the celestial hum of the earth spinning on its poles; to the year-long wave of a planet around its sun; to the millennial arc of a sun around our galaxy’s core, a music so slow that only the Spirit can listen, leaving ourselves to intuit from our cruder senses.