The Melting World

(painting from www.atlasoftheuniverse.com_milkyway2.jpg) Guarantees Four a.m. my son awakens, stricken with a grief he cannot explain. His hands search like starfish for my mouth and eyes, his head burrows into my chest as if he wishes to be unborn again. What can I do for him except tell him I am here? All Will Be […]

(photo by me)

(photo by me) I AM LOST IN THE SUPERMARKET I am lost in the supermarket somewhere between the brussel sprouts and the tangerines, lost in the age-old parent-child debate over brand-name vs. generic, wavering between 100% organic and 100% genetically-modified, I am lost in a maze of an imagined life without you. You’ve already settled […]

(painting by me) Miroku (Buddha of the Future) Unformed air and cut ginger root voice of the in-between inhale and exhale, Miroku, a curious god to walk with toward distance drawn nearer step by step and every and any direction is Divine. The simple way to live tucked inside the pocket of her brown shabby […]

(Outsider art from Asahikawa Public library) This Morning I dreamt my man held my hand against his warm green sweater The man in jean shorts I share a bus stop with finally mouthed good morning The brick storefront I stand in front of just had a silver spiral door knob installed Fog covered the fields, […]

This piece was made by the sculptor, Mikako Tomotari, in dedication to the Ainu lands submerged by the Hokkaido government-sponsored dam in the Nibutani area of Hokkaido. Her comments and then comments on her comments (in English) are here. She had wanted to throw it into the waters, so that only by the elimination of […]

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Drawing by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Scanned postcard: photo by Donna Terek The Dottie Wottie House: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We are all the same color on the inside.” On the east-side of Detroit there is a street unlike any other you’ll probably ever see, called Heidelberg, and its array of polka dots, riots of blue, purple, pink, red, […]

My son said, What you think as a problem, think as a skill. To speak a language no one knows – but for me – crushes dandelion dust under my chin and love’s butter seeps into my marrow as deep as those who utter moo, meow, and ba-ba black sheep have you any wool. No […]

(anonymous outsider art at the local public library) The hawk hovers above the courtyard and knows that the earth is awakening. It is mindful of the movement below the soil, the stretching of limbs and the assembly-line yawns. Rivers rippling past creaking bones. Any animal with a nose knows the same. The wind kisses each […]

Faith doesn’t materialize in human breath, in an utterance of Sanskrit or ancient Hebrew or in the foam at the top of a tall glass of milk directly brought from the udder to your lips. Faith has more to do with silence than speech, more with the open spaces among the notes and words. I […]

When three hawks flew by in straight lines I knew something must be done straightaway to pull the thread taut and flatten the seam of the quilt. Enough unraveling! We have a world here before us of drizzly snow and shiny black branches against white sky. Something is being said in Chinese and it’s time […]

I had a dream a few years back that an unseen force, shall we call it a ghost?, picked me up by the back of my bed clothes, and I hung placidly in its invisible jowls. Such dreams seem ｓｏ　real, physically felt, and I am always wearing exactly what I had chosen to sleep in. […]

Painting by me, 2002. I wish to devote this entry to a poet I consider my soulmate (of another time, plane and place), the free-style haiku poet, Taneda Santoka (1882-1940). The ‘o’ in his name is a long ‘o’, like how Minnesotans say ‘o.’ I first found out about him over 10 years ago when […]