[ARTS]: Big and Little Poetry--free verse, any verse.

[Tai Shi]

I Wrote Aftershock Poetry

More than one year
Gone into poetry
I stammer, "What's
Become of me?"
I divide the air
With words, wisps
To spare, what words?

Does one year
Three months
Disappear. Like
Clouds on Long's Peak
Morning Air, disappearing

More, more
Sun races into year,
Rain pattern more than year,
I did not drink
That day. The Stuff
Of brown paper bags.
In our day, brown
Bottles sufficed

Any clear plastic
Sack of wine.
Method brought substance,
Then came storm,
Dropping drops, then snow.
After rain, came more rain
Flood rose upon creeks
Turtle Creek, Skunk Creek.

Water into basins
Turned brown, until
Friends in Colorado knew.
Remembered I had been drinking
Then whole university knew;

New teacher in 1983,
One year of marriage
I hit the bars,
Five years, three
Teaching, two
Student, I hit
Bar, after bar,
Always pattern
What happened,
Why did I quit-- never; look
Back never, look back,
Turn to salt,

I turned to potassium?
My kidneys into Zen, into book
The time of great flood August 2014,
Calm Poetry in January 2016
All patterns broken in Japan
Levies gone, 400 homes starting
Nearly twenty thousand
Then more unthinkable,
Since 1945,

I remember bomb films,
Now homes, children, schools
Reactor on doorstep everywhere
Quick Flood, but never our home
Then it was 20-years-old,
Dryer than Japan, I do not
Drink, none each day
When I hear or see Tsunami
My daughter in Hokkaido
My Treeleaf near her first home
Chiba, Drop after precious drop,

Water, not wine, water
Bringing membranes human
Hair, bodies gone
Into numberless heap.
Precepts, this one's not easy
Life, yet, the one about truth,
That one's harder to keep,

I do not drink intoxicants,
Nor smoke, nor shoot,
Nor snort, nor pop pills,
But how? I do not lie?
Thousands out of homes
Water, dripping from our sky,

Where is end to meltdown?
Thousands of years, Where
Is end of rain?
Is this end near? We have turned
To sandbags now in South Dakota,
Again in 2019, no crops, farms
Gone broke, families cannot plant.

We gave our last bottle of wine
To our neighbor, she
Gave it to her boyfriend
Who knew me as fellow lost
Soul, so I surrendered.
With rain, there is no surrender
With quack, with flood?
No surrender.

I tell you now, I've
Stopped lying or being correct?
Or puffed up. It is the same.
Was it God realizing
It made no difference,

Water last night,
They opened Sioux Falls
Friday I-90 highway, April 7th,
2019.

Today I tell you this,
Water is the basis
Of everything, I know,
John the Baptist
Foretold my time of Zen
My time with Jesus Christ,
And just sitting, just sitting.

Mustard seeds could
Not predict death or death
Faith in faith predicted nothing,
The Buddha told us this,
Jesus yet affirmed this.
Where is truth? This I know.
I've mostly learned the truth
Enough to start, no one to kill,
Enough to start.

Tai Shi
sat/lah
Gassho

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Three deep breaths, palms together,
Here in her room, or elsewhere, she may
Rise and take. A habit she has formed,
Even as most of her ideas, ideals,
Even her so cherished findings, hard found,

Deducted, inducted, reasoned, debated, polished,
Even those most like faith, as taught her,
Even those most like science, measured, observed,
Peeled one by one: a human desert, she.

By three deep breaths, she centers somehow: how?
Reality itself a question she's no longer asking,
Eating and sleeping themselves provisional.
All she bothers to call caring is now to listen
To breath, room sounds, outside sounds, to
Her friends, their worries unpacked, their voices
Spending both hope and pain. She bows.



sat today
Gassho, doyu

[Tai Shi]

Hi Doyu, I like your poem very much--you and I write confessional poetry with a difference from the actual school of poets in American Poetry. These poets, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Ann Sexton, others, ended many, if not most of their poetry in negative ways. All three of these poets committed suicide, yet they helped found a whole school of poetry called Confessional Poetry. There are others called Beat Poets, Beat Poetry for Beat Nick, bohemians of the 1950 s and early 1960 s. The most famous of these poets was Allen Ginsberg who helped found the Nayropa Institute near Boulder, Colorado. I earned my MFA creative writing at Colorado State University near Boulder, in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado while thinking I would have been suited to the Nayropa Institute because they offered the same degree and were a Zen enclave. Ginsberg and his friends gave up drugs to follow a different path, and even more so was Gary Snyder who still teaches, though Emeritus, at One of the University of California campuses near Sacramento, can't remember which one. There is a whole school of Zen poets. Look up City Lights Book Store in San Francisco. You and I are in good company with our poetry. Sometimes I try to bring into my poems landscape. I keep trying thinking it will give me more detail. I'm never sure how successful I am. Bill Tremblay, American poet, and my advisor, used to admonish me about rhythm.

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Very kind, Tai shi. I have traveled a lot but did most of my studies at the University of Oregon.

Gassho, Doyu
sat today/LAH

[Kokuu]

Beautiful, Doyū!

[Tai Shi]

I am so happy to be part of Treeleaf with friends and it has made a big difference in my life and I hope for others!


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[Kokuu]

Even in this decaying body
the brightness of ten thousand things;
carrion crow, an oak tree in bud,
crab shells left behind by the tide.

Dog violets mix with celandines
on the forest floor,
clouds pass overhead,
gathering sun.

From the hour of our birth,
no moment is the same,
yet each contains all things,
how can any of us ever be alone?

One foot in front of the other,
waves break on the shore,
we follow our ancestors
as breath follows breath.

Lighting incense to Amida Buddha,
I empty my bowl
and already find it
full of blossom.

[Shonin Risa Bear]

Kokuu, thank you for this. _()_

gassho, doyu
sat today/lah

[Tai Shi]

For my friend Kokuu
Morning Glories Will Come

Time after time
We reach for sunshine,
Reaching from our beds
Of fertile soil where gardens
Grew roses, now The Glory
Of toil as chariot rides
Across our sky.

We lose nothing
In colorful gold days
Swept clean from clouds.
Why bother our bowed heads
Of yellow, green, red
To stem our winter's sleep?

Locked away our pockets empty,
No seed? Gardener reaches
Into tiny packets,
Paper thin pouches
Around crowns of earth.

Our women and men,
Lingering long in caves,
Still wakeful on walls,
Sentient beings
In books. Finding wisdom,

We reach lovingly
For packets of sun. Our seeds
bring forth deliverance
Of desire. Our graves are not
Dug as lives rejoice, given over
To delight of air,

Sunshine our mindfulness,
Into openings where rain showers
Bring water, bower of delight,
Now tiny blossoms sprout, bloom

Another day rich. We reach for sky,
Living things given to clouds
bursting water, sprouting seeds,
Without souls, We reach again,

Buddhas touch earth.
Now Sacred roots. This is spring.
Down, down, stems of cells,
Biology of wakefulness now alive.
Above is the Morning Star,

For others our earthly ocean
Of air is bright with eternal
Juno's energy, one after one
Cells of Earth's aquarium drop

Of dew point to Earth, reversing
Our Compasses pointing north,
For joyful sun rays give blooms.
Energy renews another spring.

Living seeds, we sing as our eyes
Close, resting notes of poetry
Simple Haikus, form natural,
Broken five notes sung to seven,

Dreaming generations
Such as Solomon
Never knew, so arrayed
Our gold is gone; new of gold
So old my song.

We are shown life every day,
While Venus dawns below Polaris,
New again, We find happiness,
Bright Sun above our morning,
We wake to full days,

Realization of our sun,
Like this morning star,
Our Air is never dry, full sun
Sweeps Starry Night away,

I wake to dawn, my work again
Poetry with bowed head,
Now I chop wood,
Now I carry water.
Now I fetch the Sun.

Gassho.
Tai Shi
sat

[Teiro]

Luke

Golden morning
Caught in a spider’s web
As the damp earth
Exhales

A sudden movement!
Caught in the corner of the eye
Ears prick, exited yelp
Paws barely touch
In the joy of the run

Gassho
Teiro

Sat

[Shonin Risa Bear]

t h e re a r e r o o m s

There are rooms in a life that may sometimes
Have someone in them; but they are guests there.
Even when one most loves, one may find,
Really, a solitude that begins at this wall,
Ends at that wall; the rest is not entirely ours.

As years turn and suns, moons and stars
Rise up and fall like rain by every window
Even one's hands will shrivel soon enough

Right at the ends of one's arms, as hands
Of strangers. But to fret at this discovery
Of emptiness arrived at and emptiness
Made clear by moon's dance with water,
Sun's dance with dust, by endings never sought

In even that one room that is one's own, is
Not worthy of even that we call our life.

All our guests deserve from us restraint.

Little enough we can offer them as it is;
In a short while each vacates each room,
Feeling for the light switch as each goes.
Evening comes. Do not grieve the door.


gassho
doyu sat today

[Getchi]

Thank you all :bow:

One day, I was in
Two minds, stay or
Sit?
Today i did neither, tomorrow
- ill do it all.
Neither gain nor loss,
Here nor There
Heaven and Hell
split
Through each other
we fell.



Gassho.


GEoff.
LaH / SatToday.

[Tai Shi]

Eating Genjokoan

Dropping pain to breath
Breathe in our master Dogen
All in Genjokoan yet in cooking
Public, private, drop away
More hungry ghost,
Les is more human,
Nirvana, here before me food,
Limited by tip of stomach
Growl; toast, juice, fruit,
Can pain drop away?
Not likely sinner ghoul!
No time is ancient
Twenty minutes until 1185
Came to pass in cooking bowl,
Five minutes now, now,
With no pain, pain again,
Hold on more, pain comes
I eat, I let go, cannot sit
In this easy chair, breathe
Breakfast I may eat, my only
Desire, oatmeal, after reading
Dogen this moment,
Mindfully hurting
Iced myself down, so I
May sit with steaming bowl
My gratitude in bowl of food,
From reclining chair
To hardwood table
Downing every morsel.

Tai Shi
Sat/lah
Gassho


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[Tai Shi]

This is the poetry of pictures from my wife's beautiful flowers at the front porch last summer.
Tai Shi
sat lah
Gassho

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[Hensho]

Treeleaf Rohatsu, 2019

My wife's flowers from the front
Porch last summer linger
Like pink and green imprints
In my tired mind, reminding
Me of everything I promised.

A life together in a grass hut.
Moments of joy or did I say
Hope. Was it enough? Did
I warn her about the weeds?
She was no fool and married

Me anyway. We managed. We
Came together. She, the timeless
Constant being holding it all,
fashioning my fumblings
Into this life. This life. This hut,

Like that jar in Tennessee, contains
A thousand doors. A thousand
Tiny buddhas spring from her
Tears, showering me
With pink and green petals.

Gassho,
Kate

Sat today/lah

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