santa barbara

Power out-
navigating table & couch
by full moon in beach cottage-
boom, skid, ouch!

Moon climbing nightly,
   Toward conjunction with Venus-
      On the glory dawn, FOG!

miller-moerman

It was only an errand
To fetch a stick of stovewood
Behind the tilting plywood shed

When a sudden breeze
Passed in the tall pinegrove
Up the hill

The shimmer
Of ten thousand pine needles
Danced on my retina

Tansporting me
To Rumi's "Ode to Joy"

Some kind of backwood beatitude-
Along with the split oak
I droppt my jaw

for Dan Sweigert

"You'll learn to like it"
According to my Bandy Blue
As I collect Bon-Bon's doggie-do
From Chester Street
-And yes indeed!    this time
Turns out to be true!

beach cottage

Navigating furniture
   By full moon tonight
      Room to room

-Santa Barbara

Groupthink? be careful

      People want to belong to something larger than themselves. It may even be genetically directed:  good enough, but with a price it comes: it concentrates decision- & policy-making power in the hands of a few or even of one, & you better hope s/he's benevolent, with the best interests of the group at heart; but from where I stand the almost universal downside of this 'cluster' phenomenon is its inevitable push for orthodoxy of some stripe, some tenet, principle or protocol that each member is expected to line up with.  This shapes the way they see the world, and it LIMITS what realities are available to them, because what's Real True & Actual is already etched.
      To the student of human behavior this has also shown itself to be dangerous- to whit, religion & nationalism-- as part of the way any group defines/ contours itself: by projecting others as an out-group, as not-them (hint: jihad) (hint: kool-aid).

Aurora

Climbing the stairs
To fetch the morning paper
My eyes leapt to see first light
Coloring clouds to the east.
It tells them
A spectacular dawn
Is in the making.
Coming into day
Broken rainclouds move up from the south,
Their ridges & outlines
Catching first rose tints of sunlight.
In the distance
More clouds scud across
The pine-tops like a flotilla.
O Aurora!
How you ravish
This poor lad.

-after Wang Wei