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

[Jishin]

Dewdrop on a leaf,
A glistening pearl of the morning,
Nature's own gemstone.

A symbol of purity,
A reminder of the fleeting,
A beauty that is brief.

It clings to the green,
A reflection of the sky,
A mirror of the world.

It sparkles in the sun,
A dance of light and shadow,
A symphony of form.

It drips to the ground,
A journey to the earth below,
A return to the source.

It joins the rivers flow,
A part of the great cycle,
A link in the chain of life.

In this dewdrop, we see
The wonder of existence,
The mystery of being.

So let us take a moment,
To appreciate this small thing,
And in doing so, find peace.

Dewdrop on a leaf,
A glistening pearl of the morning,
Nature's own gemstone.

Gassho, Jishin, ST, LAH

[Jishin]

Consider Another Point of View

Consider another point of view,
Even if it's not the one you choose,
For in its consideration,
A deeper understanding we'll muse.

As an open-minded Zen student true,
We must be open to different ways,
For in their examination,
Greater wisdom and understanding stays.

Critical thinking it does encourage,
Forces us to evaluate and see,
Bringing us closer to the truth,
As our biases and assumptions flee.

Different perspectives we must bear,
To develop empathy and care,
For all beings and their plight,
In compassion, let us share.

So advocate for another point of view,
For it promotes a more informed mind,
And in this open-mindedness,
Let wisdom and understanding bind.

Gassho, Jishin, ST, LAH

[Tai Shi]

Jishin, good morning! I do like "I do not like poetry..." You have a way with words Jishin, try your hand at some open forms? I too have written closed couplets. There are critics who claim the free verse forms are the only remaining forms, and as I like Eliot and Wallace Stevens, some of this may be true. I like very much the play and writing
with verses
That you compose.
Gasho
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

Newspaper Route

My morning today,
With Orange Spiced Tea,
Wheat cereal, with milk,
Chocolate protein drink,

Warmed and today hot
My stomach, my taste
I enjoyed sweet, and spiced,
Applesauce with cinnamon.

I remembered mother's buttermilk
Pancakes with homemade maple syrup,
Brother asking for shapes of cakes
Together our seldom breakfasts.

We gathered, mom, Dougie, and me.
Then I had walked several miles
Delivering newspapers to Corcoran's,
For Mike their two bedroom house
Shared one room with brother Donald,

No better than our one room, snow
On the ground, Temple of Worldly
Hughes. I warmed myself in corduroy
Coat I bought with money
Earned grooming cattle

At Iowa State Fair, the second
Largest behind Texas State Fair.
This special morning as these holidays
Screeched weeks away from school,
Which I had finally learned to love.

Gassho
sat/ lah
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

I really, really like "Consider Another Point of View."
Gassho
sat/lah

[Tai Shi]

James Vincent Tate (December 8, 1943 – July 8, 2015) was an American poet. His work earned him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He was a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst[1][2][3] and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Biography
Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lived with his mother and his grandparents in his grandparents' house. His father, a pilot in World War II, had died in combat on April 11, 1944, before Tate was a year old. Tate and his mother moved out after seven years when she remarried. The eventual poet said he belonged to a gang in high school and had little interest in literature. He planned on being a gas station attendant as his uncle had been, but finding that his friends to his surprise were going to college, he applied to Kansas State College of Pittsburg (now Pittsburg State University) in 1961. Tate wrote his first poem a few months into college with no external motivation; he observed that poetry "became a private place that I was hugely drawn to, where I could let my daydreams—and my pain—come in completely disguised. I knew from the moment I started writing that I never wanted to be writing about my life."[4] In college he read Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams and was "in heaven". He received his B.A. in 1965, going on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa's famed Writer's Workshop. During this period he was finally exposed to fellow poets and he became interested in surrealism, reading Max Jacob, Robert Desnos, and André Breton; for Benjamin Péret he expressed particular affection. Of poets writing in Spanish, César Vallejo "destroyed" him but he was not so taken by the lyricism or romanticism of Pablo Neruda or Federico García Lorca.

He was married to Dara Wier. Tate died on July 8, 2015 at the age of 71.[5]

Career
From Wikipedia, "Talk"

[Jishin]

The Treeleaf Sangha, now online we find,
A virtual community, connecting minds.
Through screens and wires, we come together,
To sit in silence, now or whenever.

With every breath, we let go of our fears,
With every click, we enter the present here.
No longer bound by distance or time,
We find true connection in this online climb.

We share our thoughts and stories, near and far,
And find in others, a reflection of who we are.
We laugh and cry, and learn to be at peace,
In this online sanctuary, we find release.

Though screens may separate, our hearts remain as one,
In the Treeleaf Sangha, true freedom is won.
Our virtual zendo, a place to heal,
Where mind and body find a sense of real.

A space for growth, for learning, for change,
Where we can find a new range.
So let us join, in this digital space,
And find true peace, in the Treeleaf Sangha's grace.

Gassho, Jishin, ST, LAH

[Tai Shi]

For me, I have worked to allow, as Tate did, my keyboard to follow where his pen lead him in a manner of free verse to see where my thoughts might take me and I usually compose where I am as I have done with my poetry since I was 16, and now I am 71. I enjoy all of you.
Gassho
Tai Shi
saat/lah

[Tai Shi]

As i wrote in simple
Dignified praise from beginning
Of our verse wringing
As is this back not
Supporting today without pain
The advent of my pain
Curse me disease bones
Into my back, neck
Sacrum, Ankylosing
Spondylitis breaks
My Eyes, my every step,
Even as I sit crooked,
Invisible to much,
To most I am but figure
Straight, Amen.
Pain again, again.

Gassho
sat/ lah

[Tai Shi]

I read Every Poem

It is but 4:58 a.m.
My heart take wing
Friends this for you
I sit daily for Friends,
Family, Dear friends
Of Unitarian Universalist
Seeking their own right
Spirituality, regarding
Unconditional as woman
For man and man, woman
For woman, man for woman
As the Tathagata spoke
Loving Kindness one
For many, many for one
An one for one, loving
Self actualized. One seeks
As parents taught mirror
Behavior as the Buddha
Taught Love or Jesus,
To Kind parents, give
As mother would give
Also father hurts
Same in regard always
Child's operation father
Deep in the brain
Does not walks not
Simple as not desire
Desire so straight to doctor
For his child I did
Seek in solitude weep
There winter, done
With others love each
Other as in our marriage
When now we seek, my
Best Friend, frail two
Years, bab cry not
Removed not AVM
Not relive, Karl Rogers
Sought to show child
Learns in more ways
Understanding love
Dad direction in classes
Took to literacy priority
Books stones in soup
Mom conservation
Montessori studied child
Learning in freedom.
Actualized love never
Always learned nightly
AS SHE READ BEDTIME
In habitation stotrove
Equanimity, alone,

Together is their home,
Beautify those desires
To make reason never
Shown and plaything
Medicine for psychology
For teacher, I helped
Girl publish in small
Magazine understanding
My Little Book of Poetry
Another wishful in dreams
Her notebook of silent need
On Yellow mountain, letter
Becomining bright Marge
Chuck way to Peace.
Child of Loving-kindness.

Gassho
Deep Bows`
sat/lah

[Tai Shi]

Rhyme for There are No Words.

The empty space is
Not his bonded
Pain that she takes
in spite of his rigid
Spine that makes it hard

For her to sleep. He takes
Her when she is so sweet
They are hard together
They love with joy

So Deep, she is not
Coffee, his is not chocolate
Chips their is soft marriage Bed
Though as old people

They could not sleep, bower
Never had been bliss, but prejudice
Because she loved so deep
Breath She never said “I love you?”

Yet In a billion ways She caressed
his head,
She touches his hand
What they will do
When they are gone,

And probably down the aisle,
It was their tears, that she had
They loved each other forever
No smile he was his or hers

Always his own best man
As be what she sought
His love with depth, Which he
Would not behold

She could not hold,
Unless just the two
Of of them never leave,
Time eternally to be

She saw at three a.m.
When the brain surgeon
Took away part of his skull,
She could not know

What to expect
Would she would find
An empty shell,
Or an Imbecile,

All that she could do
Was Watch him talk
What she had found
Was brilliant poet always

Writing songs about her,
His steadfast light
Shining through blue eyes
Her eyes. both of them

She was not blind,
Her man she realized talked
He saved their lives
More than once

Driving through deepest black
Pouring rain blinding night
The adventure in stratified
Rock where prejudice

Hate, and despair ruled education
Desperate with an iron fist.
They left to found their child
A home in South Dakota

All alone, their intellect
For little one their Fulbright scholar
They gave all to go away
To make alternative books

For little one's mom worked
Quietly to find father proud.
Then they had so much
That they would keep

Each other warm
Until the rainbow melt
In paradise
They would keep
Earth until death

Which slept separately eternal
in brilliant bed of flowers
Near the stone marker
Never read or left

To have, or hold
Until darkness take
One of them went home
Two follow in their

Own Karma
Some salvation in books,
Melting deeds. Some ideas,

Had to be deep.
They tried to keep
Their warmth
Neighbors never really slept.

There was no grave stone
As they will wept
There was only fevrid bow,
No death because in peace.

At last all reality
As in depth forever dust
In the soil, toiled never
To trust every sentient
Being could rise

Rectifying their steadfast
Reconciliation their fright
Forever deep in stars,
Galaxies exploding

Leaving nothing, but supper
Nova, flying atoms
As sparks of life
Into universal dark.

Freedom forever
Found in space.


Tai Shi
Charles E Taylor

[Tai Shi]

ARTS: Poetry

Watching fog descend,
White misty plains sweet moisture
With palms up, hands cold

Gassho
sat/lah


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Tai Shi]

Having Made Mistakes

Though like most editors
Poetry of women, written
In calm daylight in day calm,
Giving into the other, one
Sits, daily, sits daily
Shokai, Zenkon status, living
Life everlasting without
Salvation, saved without
Repenting, Verse of Atonement
Wish of the realizid, Priests
Ubasoku all nine of us, Onkai--
Newly transmitted, one year
ago, Kokuu, stone grace,
Each of the Others who
I shall know as I have loved
Shokai, Kokuu, Sekishi red beard,
Those who achieve priesthood
Someday, Zenkon shall,
You are old like me, Shokai
All four have taught me--
Shall even we be like one
Another speaking of the best
Of The Lotus Sutra, equality
Forgiven as we forgive our
Doctors having made mistakes.

Gasho
Tai Shi

[Tai Shi]

This is for the poetry of Rich and the first free women who write with humility.


ABHIRUPANANDA
DELIGHTING IN BEAUTY

Haven't you spent enough time
comparing your hair
and your clothes
and your face
to the hair
and the face
and the clothes
of those around you?

See the body of what it is.

Real beauty is in
the clear open light
of the nonjudgmental heart.

The First Free Women

[Tai Shi]

Deepest Thee Well of Health

Finding more of light
Farmland of this place
Prairie of corn, beans
Those who farm as
In families old generations
Boldly remain for families,
Those dear old houses
In Hartford our town
Of three thousand next
To Sioux Valley, place
Of Sioux Empire, Sioux
Stampede no more, set
Aside, and who moved
Away from that very land
Once bison strode land
That land of corn, beans
Once of bison streamlets
Brought water so dear
Needed water to flatland
Now rain soaks no field,
Grow dry, as rain comes
Not, and farms sweltering
In drought, land slaked
To dust again, wind storm
One hundred more miles
An hour now destroys
Roofs of Dakota, White
Lakota all affect comes
Torrent of feeling, Nakota
Sioux to ancient Days
Where yet some people
Come to inhabit what
Is left of Priene Land...
Gone to Earthquake

Gassho
Tai Shi
We invite all who would write are welcome, write all poetry for heart.