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Higher Still and Higher

          Higher Still and Higher   Cold saw and breeze, birch Branch:  sawdust rises up on        Winter wind to limbs.                                ~ Phillip Whidden The birch tree is an innocent, its white Increased by splatches.  Maybe even black Is innocent the...

Some Things Don’t Need Recollection

Some Things Don’t Need Recollection An old man takes his time to wrap around His sag of flesh the armor.  This care’s not Because he fears the fight or battle ground. It’s just because his joints are are stiff and fraught With aches.  One younger...

Ultraviolet Poetry

     Ultraviolet Poetry   True poetry tries not to be a phrase Or meaning, but a color God forgot To make, a tint of blue perhaps, a phase   https://images.app.goo.gl/wA9L2aQmRaqN9KgU9   Of orange, that purple punctured Jesus sought When vinegar in sponge was forced...

Communion

                    Communion            Under the cherry Blooms there is no one who is           An utter stranger. ~ Issa, Englished by Phillip Whidden Some circumstances turn us all to friends Or bring us closer than stray strangers set Apart.  The pinkness arching...

Separation

Time separates more widely, fatally Than space.  The second that just passed goes, gone, Leaps gone forever, plummets weightily, More heavily than gravity’s hard, wan Iron cannonball in vacuum, yanked fast Away where science cannot find it, lost Eternally and...

Sacred and Profane Buddhas

        Sacred and Profane Buddhas   The meaning of the Buddha is in all Things, not just sacred lotuses or trees Saints sit beneath.  Secular flies let fall Their droppings on the painted frieze Brushed onto white rice paper on a screen, Or watercolor painted on...

Compassion

                 Compassion “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”  Matthew 10:29            Compassion is a tearless grief, an eye Like God’s. How else could He survive?  He sees And...

Stone-crafted Cyphers of Fact

Stone-crafted Cyphers of Fact   The earliest of flowers of course were doomed As flowers have always been and always will Be, destined for their petal deaths, each groomed By drought, or flood, or mold.  They wait until A fire comes by and kills them, butterflies As...