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Selected Poems

A Dictionary Of Childhood

Because I had found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my thoughts, I was difficult to teach.

William Butler Yeats,
Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1916)

Having Fun

Playing with dolphins, finding things to enjoy, flying kites

Refrain

I didn’t understand what he meant when I first heard John Lennon sing, “No one can harm you. Feel your own pain.” But I knew his words were true, just as a sudden change in the weather is true, just as the alarm clock with its shrill ring is true.

Sunbeams

We are most asleep when awake.

Paul Reps

Heroes And Heroines

Margaret Mead, John Lennon, Mister B.

Sunbeams

That sudden and ill-timed love affair may be compared to this: you take boys somewhere for a walk; the walk is jolly and interesting — and suddenly one of them gorges himself with oil paint.

Anton Chekhov

Sight

The raggediest fisherman at the farthermost lake in the most distant corner of a country at the edge of the world went fishing one day when it was neither sunny nor cloudy, neither fair nor foul.

Sunbeams

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old; seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho

Our True Nature

On the wooden board outside of the meditation hall in Zen monasteries, there is a four-line inscription. The last line is, “Don’t waste your life.” Our lives are made of days and hours, and each hour is precious. Have we wasted our hours and our days? Are we wasting our lives? These are important questions. Practicing Buddhism is being alive in each moment. When we practice sitting or walking, we have the means to do it perfectly. During the rest of the day, we also practice. It is more difficult, but it is possible. The sitting and the walking must be extended to the non-walking, non-sitting moments of our day. That is the basic principle of meditation.