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Beginner's Heart

A friend asked me what my month of poetry has to do with Buddhism, with beginner’s heart. I wanted to yell EVERYTHING! But I didn’t. 🙂 Instead, I gave a rational response about the need for words when we have none, and the impact of beauty. The way poetry speaks to more than our mind. The…

One of my favourite poets died a few years ago, in 2007. Her name was Maude Meehan. She was an amazing woman, as well as a heckuva poet. She was a worker for social justice from way back: worker’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights… The rights of people everywhere, in all walks of life. Her…

Today’s poem is one of my favourites. It also changes American poetry (arguably). It’s Ezra Pound, of course — that contentious, controversial poet who went loudly nuts during WWII. But this is the quieter, Asian art-influenced Pound. The poet who read haiku in Japan, all of Ernest Fenollosa’s work on the Chinese ideogram, and eventually…

On my Facebook page, I’m publishing my own poems daily — one by one, each written or revised or at least revisited for this month I love. But here, I’m going to link daily to a poem important to me. Or maybe just one of the many I adore. Each day I’ll give you a…

Spring is about growth. It’s full of religious celebrations that predate paper: Passover, Easter, Holi, the Spring Equinox, Makha Bukha, Bahá’í New Year, and many more. For me, spring is also about children. It’s about egg hunts — a leftover from BCE (Before Christian Era) — and candy in baskets and new clothes. As a…

I spent an evening earlier this week with more than 30 women, in a lock-down facility, talking about the dancer Isadora Duncan. Part of an Oklahoma Humanities Council book group initiative, partners are provided with books and a list of ‘scholars’ who can lead the discussion. The women were a joy to visit. Smart, reflective,…

It is Good Friday.  It is Holy Week. It is Passover. And other faiths, too — more individual, more isolate — also bear witness to death and redemption. In California, a dear friend still mourns the death of his beloved. This is the anniversary of a death that came — as they often do —…

I’m working at letting go of perfection, the idea that the world is ‘broken,’ as Naomi Rachel Remen says.  Stop to consider this: the world is NOT broken. The people who shout at cars that take their parking places? The people in the cars who take the parking places? There’s some reason for all of…

Last month I wrote a poem for a funeral reading. The deceased wasn’t a friend — he was my sister’s dear friend’s brother. So writing the poem took some time, as I’ve noted elsewhere. Of course, all poems — most writing of any kind — takes time. But writing a poem you know you’re going to…

This is the season of the story. Because at the heart of every faith — within the faith of every heart, nestled like a growing bird — is story. Sometimes one (an empty tomb, the vengeful hand of a god who passes over the houses marked with blood), sometimes many (when light & dark are…
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