From T.S. Eliot's 'Little Gidding'

“You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.”

Falafel sandwich and Turkish Coffee at 'The Mediterranean' in Concord, CA. Also, my view of Carquinez Bridge in Benicia, CA - we were reading on a bench under a shady eucalyptus tree.

An Evening After Work

In a feral garden
behind the market
jasmine wings beat
breezes
over an orange and green
petal-leaf sea.

Day’s pains gained
pilgrim memories
of battles waged:
neuron to synapse
sheathed in conflict
and misdirected
intention.

Comma,
interlocution,
temporal juncture
transcendent,
immanent:

Remand one for the other,
the pounding, the thrumming;
rise naked, unashamed
in still, silent
care-less breezes:
no where,
soul-will
breathes dream
irreducible
in heart not mind
reaching
no thing but
only
one thing.

No void,
wholeness of
oneness with
purpose in
origin;
of quiddity,
what is to be
loved for
Love’s sake:
all-encompassing,
sensing,
affecting
infinite stillness by
insignificant movement.

In this span of transition,
dream of jasmine,
stand,
release what never was
yours to grasp.

Raymond the Alien

Raymond nearly alien
rubs his ancient feet;
head down, blanket-wrapped,
rests on a ledge by the street.

Present but invisible
to commuters driving fast:
do you count the hours that pass?
or ask yourself of what value is
a life that neither takes nor gives
but only shakes a weary head
at what has never been?

There’s food around the corner
and shelter from the rain.
You are detached, ignore
the rising sun that births the day
and offers you another way
to overcome the vagaries
of likeness and conformity
among your fellow men.

What are we to do with you,
stranger from another world?
Can we heal your hurts?
Can we befriend
this lonely man
who offers only misery,
the pains of God
Who hung upon a tree?