Bereavement

Behind his house, my father’s dogs
sleep in kennels, beautiful,
he built just for them.

They do not bark.
Do they know he is dead?
They wag their tails

& head. They beg
& are fed.
Their grief is colossal

& forgetful.
Each day they wake
seeking his voice,

their names.
By dusk they seem
to unremember everything—

to them even hunger
is a game. For that, I envy.
For that, I cannot bear to watch them

pacing their cage. I try to remember
they love best confined space
to feel safe. Each day

a saint comes by to feed the pair
& I draw closer
the shades.

I’ve begun to think of them
as my father’s other sons,
as kin. Brothers-in-paw.

My eyes each day thaw.
One day the water cuts off.
Then back on.

They are outside dogs—
which is to say, healthy
& victorious, purposeful

& one giant muscle
like the heart. Dad taught
them not to bark, to point

out their prey. To stay.
Were they there that day?
They call me

like witnesses & will not say.
I ask for their care
& their carelessness—

wish of them forgiveness.
I must give them away.
I must find for them homes,

sleep restless in his.
All night I expect they pace
as I do, each dog like an eye

roaming with the dead
beneath an unlocked lid.

Kevin Young 

Tara Brach: Gratitude-Entering Sacred Relationship

“I believe that appreciation is a holy thing--that when we look for what's best in a person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does all the time. So in loving and appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something sacred.” -Fred Rogers

OMM: Ram Dass

Being Free Together

"Don't prolong the past
Don't invite the future 
Don't alter your innate wakefulness
Don't fear appearances
There's nothing more than that."

#miyukguk x #aljigae x #nurungjitang

Homestyle mashups like this 

#miyukguk x #aljigae x #nurungjitang 

are the reason why cooking #Koreancomfortfood at home 

can produce the most fulfilling flavor combinations ever. 

This is the kind of soup where leftovers are elevated to greatness. 

Admonitions to a Special Person

Watch out for power, 

for its avalanche can bury you, 

snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate, 

it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out

to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

Anne Sexton

How to Overcome Your Demons by Mark Manson

Transfigurations by Arthur Sze

Though neither you nor I saw flowering pistachio trees

in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, though neither

you nor I saw the Tigris River stained with ink,

though we never heard a pistachio shell dehisce,

we have taken turns holding a panda as it munched

on bamboo leaves, and I know that rustle now.

I have awakened beside you and inhaled August

sunlight in your hair. I’ve listened to the scroll

and unscroll of your breath—dolphins arc along

the surface between white-capped waves; here,

years after we sifted yarrow and read from the Book

of Changes, I mark the dissolving hues in the west

as the sky brightens above overhanging willows.

The panda fidgets as it pushes a stalk farther

into its mouth. We step into a clearing with budding

chanterelles; and, though this space shrinks and

is obscured in the traffic of a day, here is the anchor

I drop into the depths of teal water. I gaze deeply

at the panda’s black patches around its eyes;

how did it evolve from carnivore to eater of bamboo?

So many transfigurations I will never fathom.

The arc of our lives is a brightening then dimming,

brightening then dimming—a woman catches

fireflies in an orchard with the swish of a net.

I pick an openmouthed pistachio from a bowl

and crack it apart: a hint of Assyria spills

into the alluvial fan of sunlight. I read spring in

autumn in the scroll of your breath; though

neither you nor I saw the completion of the Great Wall,

I wake to the unrepeatable contour of this breath.