In the River in Order to Feel

Quiet morning rain may I never forget to be thankful.

Homemade bread with homemade strawberry jam.

Had dogs once but no longer, is this how it ends.

Standing in the river in order to feel the current, considering being taken by it, then realizing I was taken by it lifetimes ago, this too is drifting, this too is always. 

Cardinals in the hemlock tree outside the hayloft window - what is the world teaching you is related to what you are asking to learn (i.e., ask a philosophical question, get a philosophical answer).

How silent the lake is an hour after dawn, mist rising, bass surfacing in still-dark shallows.

Being is communal, why is this so hard.

Dolls my daughter made left in boxes in the attic now she is making rugs and dresses.

My mother the sun, my mother the darkness the sun only sometimes breaks.

Shall we accept the invitation we have so long pretended is not being offered?

Pausing on a street corner in a mostly empty city, dark settling, neither scared nor not scared, neither grasping nor letting go.

Emptying glass bottles of rocks and sand, saying goodbye in this very specific way.

Shortcuts can take a long time too.

Even in the context of a dream one can become still and quiet in shared awareness of God's presence as permeating all experience without qualification or condition.

Watching the horses roll in mid-summer, dust rising.

Overeating again.

Yet ask: what if anything is actually fundamental.

Teachers long ago who did not foresee the world in which their students would be asked to live and so were themselves bereft.

Honesty and nonviolence cannot be distinguished from each other.

This is the twentieth sentece, there will be others.