Weighers of Souls

libellule lullabies, 

lilting flight of dragonflies - 

on a lily’s bell alight 

 -Graham Brown

Fantin Latour's Tablecloth

Fantin Latour's tablecloth -

the world has turned turquoise

after seeing it

The Night Wind

Where does it come from?

Where is it going?

The Night Wind

Synchronicities

synchronicities

coming in threes

- cracks in reality

like biting timber
like biting an Amazon
- biting Brazil nuts.

A twirling leaf

- from which to which world

does it fall?

I cleansed the mirror
of my heart… now it reflects
the moon.

Renseki, 1789

May the rain green valley

be a bowl 

that overflows with you

distant islands -
palmed, hidden,
as if in magicians' fists

the suburbs 
turn purple
- jacarandas

Here among the thirty thousand days 

of a long life, 

a single day stands still.
-Donald Hall

Senryu

Like dew drops
on a lotus leaf
I vanish.
-Senryu, 1826

Ryokan

This world
a fading mountain echo
void and unreal.
-Ryokan

Borges

Is there or not
the dream I forgot
before dawn.
- Jorge Luis Borges

Buson

one line of wild geese -
stamps the moon
on the mountain’s edge
- Buson

What makes good art

Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved. I know this doesn’t sound hip at all.

- David Foster Wallace

Togyo

When autumn winds blow
not one leaf remains
the way it was.
- Togyo

Yosa Buson

Coolness,
the sound of the bell,
as it leaves the bell.

Besieged without warning.
I surrender without a fight
- rain in the deep of night

Kerouac

Bach through an open
dawn window —
the birds are silent

Jack Kerouac, “Book of Haikus”