There are things
we like to have and do,
and things
we like to avoid.

And suddenly,
life will change the menu,
honing down our options,
to a whole new set
of “cans” and “can’ts”.

And in these times,
we may suffer greatly,
constrained within our little boxes,
unless we learn to stretch and bend
with life’s openings and closings,
to be as flexible and resilient
as life itself.

A virus
is just a molecule
that wants to be alive.

It will stop at nothing,
mindlessly striving
to hijack life
for its own ends.

As we hunker down,
waiting for its reign to pass,
there is time to consider
how our own selfish genes
have run rampant over other life,
causing needless suffering
throughout the ages.

A virus has no mind,
but each of us,
its distant cousin,
has been gifted one.

And so,
while we may not lay blame
on the humble virus
for its rapacious mindlessness,
should we not consider
our own?

At any given moment,
disaster may strike,
and I might be
in its midst,
or, just as easily,
at its periphery,
a horrified bystander.
​
Or I may likewise be
enveloped in some great joy,
gratefully accepting
life’s surprising beneficence.
​
In these moments,
all my expectations
will come to nothing.
​
So I will learn to let them go,
and be alert and ready
when life happens.

In every moment
is the chance
to pay attention.

Attention
allows intention,
which allows choice.

Without them,
we become machines,
playing out old programs,
at the mercy of the patterns
of our past.

We are not fully alive
until we pay attention
to the life within us
and all around us;
and every moment
is a chance
to pay attention.

Life does not create our problems.

We create them for ourselves
with our endless commentaries.

Beneath all our stories,
there is a silence
where life flows effortlessly
when we allow it.

I am signing
a nonaggression pact
with myself.

No more
will I try to fix
what I fear is broken.

No more will I judge
what I don’t understand,
or resist what I am
uncomfortable with.

I am promising
to embrace whatever may come,
to accept it as gift,
to trust in the wisdom
that lives in me
and in everything around me.

(with gratitude, to Thich Nhat Hanh)

Sometimes I sit,
just for the pleasure
of simply sitting.

Not to learn
to be a better sitter,
but just to be sitting.

I was born out of emptiness,
and to emptiness I will return.

The more I look into that darkness,
the more I see the birthplace of everything,
where everything must also return.

And when that day arrives,
I need not fear falling
into some strange, forbidding place,
for I will be going home.

There comes a time
when memory foam forgets,
and Eveready isn’t ready.

These are the moments
that remind us
that our world is run
by the engine of entropy,
and that things wind down,
by and by.

All our expectations
are but wistful dreams,
destined to dissolve
in the light of day,
when we are given glimpses
of the divine cycle
of becoming and decay,
granting life to everything
in its time.

What is nature to us,
except a mirror
of our own nature,
our essence stripped bare
of all our thoughts
and pretensions.