insect haiku

Black bugs in brown duff
Busy busy busy biz
Great activity!

Beetle on grass stalk
Dancing in the summer breeze.
Who will let go first?

Tiny green inch worm
Stretches hopefully up from
Spent altar flowers.

– Kathy

The container is so immense and intimately held:

Lightening
Clouds black
Drops as big as silver dollars

Heron,
Your feast is my dead end
Dangling in your mouth.
Ratz!

Muscular
Three black bulls
Seemingly aloof and austere
Lean into each other
Nuzzling brows
Brushing cheeks
And a lick behind the ear

– Liz

The bowl of trust, warmth, support, was immensely nourishing to me, dissolved the rough, settled, clarified, home. In gratitude…

What the Eucalyptus Say

We’re entangled. You know this. Never
Separate. Born from a sixteen-toed elephant’s foot. This arm extends over the human made
path. Another braces you against strong wind. Trunks are packed, spiralling toward the sky.

– Centa

The pink blossom is visible above the edge of the deck across from where I’m sitting zazen. An alligator lizard wearing a fancy, multicolored headdress slowly climbs the stem until the headdress just comes into view above the deck. It investigates the blossom, tastes it, and then the headdress flies away, revealing itself as a butterfly, and the lizard as my grasping mind.

Walking meditation, the road lined both sides by giant cypress and eucalyptus trees, we pass one which has fallen away from the road, displaying the underside of an enormous fan of roots. Some of them have obviously pulled out of the ground. Others have torn apart, unable to either release from the earth or to resist the increasing leverage of the trees surrender to gravity. Who clings to what?

A house fly buzzes around the last blossom on a red rose bush outside the zendo. A cliff swallow swoops and swallows the fly with no hesitation or deviation, leaving no trace.

– Myozen