Crossing Nebraska

A new year begins, and with it I embark on a new journey born of renewed intention – even as the mud and memories of years gone by remain. The holiday season brought with it all the joy and sorrow of the karma that is mine; and now I live with the renewed intention that urged me to sit rohatsu sesshin at Sanshinji at the beginning of the last month of last year. Some days into that sesshin it began to snow. I walked in it one day after lunch, just as it was ceasing its accumulation. Here are some photographs of that walk, accompanied by the poetry that has been percolating somewhere in the back of my mind ever since: Walking In The Snow Walking in the snow is a meditation That unfolds of its own accord. If one must speak in terms of beginnings, Then it begins with the closing of the door behind us. And it ends when…, well…, Who can say when it ends?   A closing door, A garden fencerow – A walk in the snow quickly leaves such things behind. ...

The weather is lousy outside, with sleet coating everything and a foot of snow on the way. That’s what I’ve been hearing on the local news, anyway—the foot of snow, that is. The sleet I can see with my very own eyes. I can hear it, too, peppering the windows when the wind picks up, first from one side of the house, then the other. Like a child home from school on a snow day, I stand at the window surveying the backyard where everything is covered with white or dripping with ice. Absent is the usual activity of squirrels tending to their stashes of nuts, rabbits hopping about tentatively, as if they’ve only so much energy to spare, and starlings flitting en masse from lawn to tree to who knows where. They all seem to have disappeared. The squirrels I know are up there in their leafy nests, huddled together and swaying with the wind. The rabbits are down in their unseen burrows, wonderfully insulated with grass and fur. The starlings are more of a mystery to me, though. Apparently...