And when all else fails,
I turn to poetry.
Philosophy and metaphysics,
they only can take me that far.
But poetry,
she surely takes me all the way.
I turn to my heroes,
my poetry heroines:
Maya Angelou and Mary Oliver.
And of course the usual suspects:
Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, Kipling.
And then Lao Tzu,
and a heavy dose of Zen Koans.
And then I’m as good as new again.
Soul uplifted, hope restored,
this is what poetry does for me.
When all else fails.
~~~~~
But then there is also my camera.
And there is always a beautiful woman’s face.
Or the intricate pattern of a butterfly’s wing.
Or another cloud at sunset,
looking like Heaven.
Today I guess, I have been blessed by The Muse!
~~~~~
It seems that the older I get, the easier it becomes.
Poems just enter my mind, naturally.
Wisdom condensed into words.
Words come and flow,
like quicksand.
Get ready to drown in them!
~~~~~
I know Beauty when is see something beautyful.
No thinking necessary whatsoever!
No academic analysis.
A woman’s face.
A cloud formation.
A butterfly’s colorful wings.
The reflection of sunlight in a dewdrop.
I know Beauty when I see beauty.
It nurtures my soul.
Beauty
It rises quietly, like mist over a river,
soft-footed, unannounced —
not in grand things,
but in the tilt of a white heron’s neck,
the silver ripple of a fish breaking the surface.
Beauty, I think, is the way the world
leans toward wonder,
like the sunflowers turning their faces,
or the way a Guanacaste tree carries the sky
on its broad, patient shoulders.
It is not something you take,
but something you notice —
in the fragile breath of morning light,
the swirl of stars stitched into the night,
and how, in between, life unfolds,
ordinary and wild.
It hums in the curve of a seashell,
in the taste of ripe tomatoes,
and in the way the wind
sends leaves skittering across the ground,
as if even falling could be a kind of dance.
Beauty is a verb, I think —
not a thing but a motion,
the way kindness lingers in a touch,
or laughter rises from a room like birds startled into flight.
It’s the feel of bare feet in wet grass,
the shimmer of rain on a spider’s web,
and the quiet persistence of flowers,
blooming, no matter who is watching.
Beauty is what saves us —
the way it insists, again and again,
that this world, even in its brokenness,
is worth noticing, worth loving, worth living for.
And when we let it in —
the golden glint of a butterfly’s wing,
the scent of salt on a beachside morning stroll—
it changes us, just a little,
making room for joy, for grace,
for the possibility that this moment,
just as it is,
is enough.
~~~~~
The Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of life? you ask —
and I think of mornings, soft with mist,
the grass covered with morning dew, the sky
barely awake, pale as a chicken’s egg.
Maybe it’s this: the way light slips
through the trees, golden on the dark green;
the way a river knows how to move forward,
even when obstacles are in the way.
Perhaps it’s in the small things —
the rhythm of breath, the lazy yawning of a cat,
a dog resting its head on your knee
like the weight of love, asking for nothing.
Or maybe it is in how we stumble,
again and again, only to find
the world still waiting, still beautiful—
as if forgiveness was written into the soil.
Life, I think, is more verb than noun,
not something to solve or hold in your hands,
but something to live through,
like rain on a summer day —
you let it drench you,
soak through your skin to your bones,
and when it passes, you stand there,
dripping, the air sweet with what remains.
Happy.
Isn’t it enough to be here?
To watch the clouds morph across the sky,
to feel the earth hum beneath your bare feet,
to know, for a moment, you belong?
The meaning, if it lives anywhere,
must live in this —
in the way we listen for birdsong at dusk,
in the way we carry each other through the night.
So maybe the answer isn’t found in words,
but in the living itself:
this messy, luminous thing —
a world always in bloom,
our heart always becoming.
~~~~~
The Koan of the Wind
A monk asked, “Master, what is the meaning of life?”
The master replied, “Bring the teacup.”