Molly - right here, right now and on the altar!

If you can disappear when all about you
Are madly searching for you everywhere,
And then just when they start to leave without you
Turn up as if you always were right there…
After Rudyard Kipling

Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse, Henry Beard.

Thanks now to Molly and all at the Berkeley Buddhist Priory including all those who I've seen and spent time with during the past ten days. I was so glad to catch the Molly cat peacefully perched on an altar - waiting.

January's Aftermath, 2010 Mount Shasta.
Trucks pass each other on the street
Small trailer trucks, their splintered side boards
bulging with their loads;
Massive construction vehicles with steel beds
easily contain whole tree trunks
protruding into view from behind the driver's cabin-
all and each carrying away refuse
from a winter storm that snapped tree tops,
stripped branches from their mooring
sending them through roof tops
living rooms crushing rafters
cracking foundations
or just creating craters where they landed
in snow-covered earth with such silent force
that limbs stood up like wooden matches
until they loosed and fell.

An old woman, her body propped with two canes
walks down the middle of the street
then moves to the side, making space
for passing debris trucks. She walks haltingly,
calculating tree rings from felled oaks or
identifying cones from piles of pine.
She pauses, giving homage to tangled power lines
from downed poles, and to mutilated steel stacks
from crushed car ports, once sheltering
adventure vehicles for some other season.
The woman walks softly on beds of sawdust,
listens to humming chain saws,
creating mountains of firewood
from tall timber giants lying on the ground.

She stops at a corner; looking up, she studies
a centenarian oak. Its crown rises
above the nearest rooftop by three stories.
Splintered and broken, jagged branch stumps,
each big enough to form a single tree,
cling to the ancient trunk.
The old woman observes them, one by one:
They speak to her in some language without words,
a tongue she understands completely.
From the corner, she moves three steps
toward the East, to better see the trunk.
One side, ripped open, exposes
the tree's heartwood core.
From outside bark to its center
the oak changes color, texture,
its light and dark reflecting
in the woman's eyes. She knows
what it is to have a heart break open,
be exposed to storms,
to learn the sound of wind
entering a center.

There is something to be said
for gentleness.

Anna Lucas

Many thanks Anna. There is indeed something to be said for gentleness. Found in the midst.

Eden Valley - April.
Between winter and spring
When neither snow falls
Nor one bird sings

By the river with rubbish, Lancaster
Left alone
In a silent, bare
Land of eye and ear.

Honeysuckle after rain.
Still,
A sound
A sight
Rises
Unannounced
From the up-reaching, barren
Branched trees

Calw, Black Forest
Eye and Ear
Found full
Then back again
To the day
Between winter and spring.
Jacks Poem.

Presents for Pilgrim
And so it is
and so it has been.
These past couple of weeks
since leaving the Eden Valley
- and that rock in the stream!

Full to brimming.
And dull dark dripping days.
Gardening, sewing,
Eating and talking.
- and passing on a tradition.

What an honour.

Thanks for your patience while I deal with many matters. Thankfully I've a reliable Internet connection now so posting must surely resume.

She said it was a Quiet Night, so I'm quiet.

Being quiet.

Sounds - sights - smells - silence. All together quiet.

Everything quiet - still. And still the sound of water.

Remembered. In silence - in a grave.

...the evening draws on.

Found (just for this morning) on the office door of our IT monk. Bless him!

Here below is the stanza and the whole poem, by Shelley.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find 25
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustom'd visitor:-
'I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflection, you may come to-morrow;
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,-
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,-
I will pay you in the grave,-
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough.
Hope, in pity mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on your sweet food,
At length I find one moment's good
After long pain: with all your love,
This you never told me of.'

The hand written note reads, i.e. I'm in the garden. In gassho, Berwyn

West Allen Valley

What might I leave you
as a last gift when my time comes?
Springtime flowers,
the cuckoo singing all summer,
the yellow leaves of autumn.
Zen Master Ryokan, translated by Sam Hamill

In the 1960's there was a TV programme called 'All Our Yesterdays' in which we saw what life was like 25 years previously. Mostly it was black and white newsreel footage from WW2, if I remember correctly.

This picture was taken twenty five years ago in 1982. The priory, as it was then, was switching gears from being a lay retreat center to growing into what it is now, a full training monastery with a continuing guest programme. The chap who sent me the photograph, along with many others who read this, played an important part in the growth and development that has taken place over the years. Here is an opportunity to say thank you.

And the poem? I found it today in the monastic alms box. That's a place we can put religious items for others to pick up and use, I thought you'd like it.