p

Balancing Stones

 

Center of gravity:  the single point in a body

toward which every particle of matter external

to the body is gravitationally attracted

                                    Webster’s Dictionary

 

I have seen

ordinary hands

able to place

one stone upon another

no matter how

different the shapes

or unlikely

the weights

 

What holds them

together

is some center

invisible to the eye

only realized

when the hands

are patient

and trust is complete

 

How else

to explain

their creating

stone sculptures

with no nails

or cement

no welding tools

for support

 

The tip

of a craggy stone

becomes the unlikely

pin able to steady

the heft of a rounder

stone whose surface

is curving

and smooth

 

On the sloping

top of one shore stone

a second leans without slipping

the third smaller and jagged

then the large oval

to form a tower

undisturbed

by sea breeze

 

There is a locus

some hands can find

a single point

in the body

to which another

separate body

is gravitationally

attracted

 

I have seen

such harmony

rooted in the impossible

position of two stones’ hearts

no matter how oblique

the angle

one center holding

firmly to the other

 

            Amy Uyematsu

q

To play it safe is not to play.

 

     Robert Altman

 

Junk mail

Do you get dozens of catalogs in the fall?  (and they are starting to arrive again!) Or do you get several credit card offers a week?  Lots of spam?

It is very easy to reduce this junk to a trickle.  Easy instructions are here:

 

http://www.obviously.com/junkmail/

 

Stephen Wilder

Mary McDowell Center for Learning

20 Bergen St.

Brooklyn, NY 11201

stephenw@mmcl.net

718 625-3939

 

p

 

I Married You

I married you
for all the wrong reasons,
charmed by your
dangerous family history,
by the innocent muscles, bulging
like hidden weapons
under your shirt,
by your naive ties, the colors
of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too
by your assumptions
about me: my serenity —
that mirror waiting to be cracked,
my flashy acrobatics with knives
in the kitchen.
How wrong we both were
about each other,
and how happy we have been.

 

 Linda Pastan

 

q

Two persons love in one another the future good which they aid one another to unfold.

 

     Margaret Fuller

 

p

The Weeping of Women is the Only Dharma We Need

 

No mother ever profited from war;

only men profit, women weep.

That alone is enough to condemn the enterprise;

what makes women weep is not worth the doing.

 

There are far worse ways for a man to plan

the course of his actions and the direction of his life

than to avoid at all costs

that which causes women to weep.

 

I have caused women to weep.

My Mother wept at my cruel treatment of her,

my lovers wept repeatedly,

when one by one I turned my back on them.

 

the mother of my children wept at my insensitivity and

my daughters wept, oh merciful Lord,

oh shameful fool, how my daughters wept

at my ignorance, my sore disgrace.

 

The tears of women have brought me to my knees

and blessed my heard in their sweet forgiveness,

they have bathed my heart in their tears and dried it

with their hair, breathed upon it and made it live;

 

what makes women weep is not worth the doing.

 

            red hawk

 

q

Each relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself.

 

Alice Deville

 

Sister Fire, Brother Smoke

 

Have I become an accomplished liar,

a man who believes in his inventions?

When I see my sister in every fire,

 

is it me who sets her in those pyres

and burns her repeatedly?  Should I mention

I may have become an accomplished liar,

 

a man who was absent when his sister died,

but still feeds those flames in the present tense?

When I see my sister in every fire,

 

am I seeing the shadow that survived her

conflagration?  Because of my obsession

have I become an accomplished liar,

 

who strikes a match, then creates a choir

of burning matches, with the intention

of seeing my sister in every fire?

 

Is she the whisper of ash floating high

above me?  I offer these charred questions.

Have I become an accomplished liar

if I see my sister in every fire?

 

     Sherman Alexi

q

Probably one of the first strokes of grace in my life was my father's becoming totally paralyzed when I was eight years old, because it led me to become the kind of person I am now.  Sometimes we understand grace only in retrospect.  If someone were to ask me what grace is, I would probably respond, "It's all grace."

     Bo Lozoff