The Poetry of Cold Mountain: Open Sharing

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This is Dharma Podcast at thermapodcast.org.

This is episode number 2589. It was recorded on March 1st, 2026, and it is part full of a multi-part series titled The Poetry of Cold Mountain.

A journey with legendary Hermit Hanshan. This episode is titled Open Sharing.

The speakers for this episode are Kaz Tanashi and Peter Levitt.

Hello everyone. Can you hear me?

Okay. Thank you.

Nice to see you again because those who are on the line all over the world and those who are in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Can you hear me? No. It's okay now. Okay. Thank you.

Any of you have written some poems already inspired by this morning session?

Can you raise your hands if you have written some? And online people?

Actually, wonderful, wonderful.

It's great. But also, well, some of us wanted to have a real rest after lunch time.

So, I'd like to suggest that from 3 to maybe 30, we'll do some writings.

So, we'll have maybe silent sessions. We just do our own writings.

That's all right, yes?

I'm just wondering if it's such a rare experience to be with you and Peter teaching.

And also with Dinan and her, you know, bringing, maybe we could have the writing session be a little bit shorter because the afternoon session is, you know, only two hours long and then we have a break.

Would that be okay?

So, like 15.

15 minutes? Okay. So, I'd love to hear some poems that have already been written just to kind of...

Yes, well, you are... Some of you are writing poems. We listen to people's reading. So, is that all right?

So, there's some kind of...

Providing attention factor, maybe that's all right.

So, I'd like to propose that maybe we'd like to hear three people online to read their poems.

And then, after that, three people online, on site, so, automated, online, on site, three people each time.

And are you suggesting that while that's going on, other people are writing? Am I understanding?

Will that work for you? No. No.

Yeah, it's difficult to have...

I think what we're saying is that it's such a very opportunity.

We can write anytime. Also, you can just step out and write if you like.

But it's so nice to hear other people's creativity.

So, I'd like to make one.

Just before we begin, let me make one suggestion. If any of you want to write now during this time,

and you've already written, but, you know, okay.

At the back of the handout, you can start to look at the poems for translation and start to think, okay, how will I work with this?

So, you can use the time that way too. So, you could read, you could write, you could start to entertain what those columns are,

on those last five poems, that's for you to translate. So, you have some variety.

You know, Kika, do you have any suggestions? You are talking about the kinds of functions, creativity,

and then how, maybe, even one of the other ways, how can we be inspired by the functions?

Well, you know, I'm going to suggest something a little radical. Can somebody give me the handout?

Okay. If, if what I'm going to suggest is this, if you want to write, but you just are not, you know, sure what to do,

let's use some of the lines from Hunshan to start here.

So, you can pick one line as your first line of your poem,

and then pick another line from a different poem to appear maybe four or five lines down,

and then one line to end from another poem to end your poem. So, for example, I'm going to start a poem that says,

and I'm going to do this really quickly. I heard sadness cannot be driven away.

In the middle line, amidst these cliffs, last line, I will sleep with the white cloud as my pillow.

Okay. So, that Hunshan starts you, but then the rest is you, fill it in, and then find your way.

So, this is a good way to really rely on Hunshan, but it allows you an entry into what will be your own poem.

In the end, if you want, you can erase Hunshan's lines and put it in your own.

Okay. It's a fun way to do it without feeling like, oh my God, what am I going to write?

Just let him start the poem, and then meet you in the middle and meet you at the end.

Okay.

So, just play with it. If you're having some trouble, just play with it.

So, anyone online, would like to share your poem?

Hello. Yes, Fairy. I'm going to unmute you. She's our friend from Iran.

Thank you, Diana. Can you hear me? Okay.

Okay. Great. So, I wrote, the other shoe has fallen. What now?

Beginner's mind gently lights my way. Makes me wander and wonder where we're headed.

Perhaps a peaceful world awaits.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Your first line, the other shoe has fallen. This is a phrase we know.

But then as you read your poem, I ended your poem myself. That's the way it works.

And it was, read your last line?

Perhaps a peaceful world awaits.

And my last line to your line was, even if we walk without shoes.

So, that's how it works. We can bounce off each other. Thank you. Wonderful poem.

Thank you, Fairy. I think your people are from Iran. Is that right?

Yes. Yes. Roxy. Joan. They are.

I was born there. I lived there until I was 11.

My mother was there also. And she passed away 10 years ago.

And thanks to your grief, meditation, I was able to go move through my grief.

So, thank you, Roxy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your poem.

I'd like to invite Kaushal Shah.

Their hand is up.

And you're unmuted.

Yes. So, did my poem.

I was walking outside and saw a yellow butterfly on a yellow jasmine flower bed.

So, that's inspired me to write this.

So, yellow butterfly on yellow jasmine flying freely without worry, flying freely without set journey.

Hop away to another flower bed, germinating without knowing selfless act without expecting.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Wonderful.

May I call one more?

Please.

I just want to take a breath because these are beautiful renderings.

Thank you, Fairy and Kaushal.

A knot.

A knot.

Yeah. Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you. Thank you so much.

Very tender.

I am an Israeli-American.

My country of origin and that of choice are warring societies.

And here I am in view of the eye mountains, with poetry from Upaya.

This, the countries of my heart, heart of all, and sorrow.

Oh, a knot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

A knot, would you mind reading that poem again, please?

I am an Israeli-American.

My country of origin and that of choice are warring societies.

And here I am in view of eye mountains, with poetry from Upaya.

This, the countries of my heart, heart of all.

And of sorrow.

Thank you.

It's all about it.

It's all about it.

It's all about it.

Thank you.

I love how it feels all together.

Thank you so much.

I think many of us feel the sorrow and also the awe.

Thank you so much.

Can we have...

Let's turn to a few people in the room.

In the room.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Stepping out into Rosie Don, walking old familiar paths.

I am filled with sadness for the road.

I did not take 20 years ago.

I walked these paths, a young man, earnest and confused.

I see now my venerable teachers 20 years older too.

Our time is short.

Soon I'll again leave.

Oh, the precious time I've squandered, ignorant of bird calls and my feet upon the earth.

Thank you so much for that.

So much feeling.

Yeah.

In the first road, yeah.

I'm sorry not to be able to call by name, but I don't know.

And I don't remember when I do know.

I'm Dina.

My body lies parched and dry, fading like the mesa into dust.

Crows fly overhead, circling, coupling.

Their shadows cross my breast.

Juniper berries fall blue and withered with the scent of wind and taste of sweet.

From the sagebrush, songbirds laugh.

That's great.

Absolutely.

That's what it is.

Surprise.

Yeah.

They're all different of course, but they all have, you'll understand the word, they all have volume.

They grow into their volume.

It's really, really wonderful.

Last night, looking at the moon in the windmill.

And some people know today is the sixth week anniversary of my husband's death.

Sometimes I call him moon or moon being or moon being of love.

Secret names embarrassing to let others know.

Names for a love that is so tender.

It can only survive in moonlight, as moonlight.

Love has a reflection of something big, powerful yet gentle as moonlight.

A tender moon beam is reflected light from somewhere else, from something else.

Then a lumens and object as if it were the source of the light.

Moon beam of love, my source, my light.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, today is an important day.

And is it clear?

Yeah, behind.

I was inspired by the tangled vines to a memory of recent experience.

Feet tangled in vines on the path of saturated earth.

Yet astonishingly, I make my way through the rainforest.

Rubber boot souls grip as best they can.

Our guide's strong hand firmly pulls me up and over slippery boulders.

Waterfall reward at the end of the trail.

Watermelon and machete carried along the way, bring happiness in between hiding behind the waterfall.

But then a penetrating sand flea secretly takes up residence in my barefoot,

only to be discovered days later.

Even an Amazonia paradise is never perfect.

Thank you.

So it's actually from the time you were in Amazon, when you first in Brazil.

Before kind of doing some climate work in the COP 30 United Nations Climate Conference,

and create climate experts.

Yeah, we are kind of doing this planting ur trees in Amazon forests together.

Thank you so much.

We need to work that we have three kind of homeside people and then three online people.

Yeah, we'll go online now.

Yeah, go to online.

Susie Gallardo.

Thank you.

Leaving the trailhead, the distant ridge looks unobscured.

With strong legs, I set out, sure of the way.

Hours later, teetering along precarious cliffs, suddenly a dense fog sweeps in, erasing the entire world around me.

One old, like encrusted boulder that I know well marks my spot along the route.

Finally, I make short forays into the impenetrable fog, but I can go neither back nor ahead.

I lean against that worthy stone and peel a boiled egg.

When the sun breaks through, I bolt over the ridge.

Wonderful.

Susie, thank you. Susie, you might share where you are right now.

I live in the illusions, and so this chain of violence between Alaska and Japan.

And this, this, this made me, I think Hanchan's poems kind of brought back this memory because this sort of happened to me, but that's all I can say.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Susie.

Maybe, um, Rosie, maybe if people say where they are when they read, then that would be wonderful.

Yeah.

So Cynthia, where are you?

I am in Brooklyn, New York, and I have two short poems.

One I wrote last night, not knowing entirely what the instructions were, but I used all those bits of poems, the, the last several pages of the handout.

And so this is from that, and then I'll read the one that was from today.

Mind like moonlight, brilliant, clear, pure, no thing compares.

Leave worldly dust, tread mountains alone, see nothing but sky.

And I actually did these in both, I attempted to do them in both Chinese and English, so I put the Chinese in the chat for anyone who can look at it.

And I, I don't claim to have any great ability to write in Chinese, but I do calligraphy practice, so I try to do that.

Anyway, that was yesterday's poem, and today, under rubble students buried, bombs strike schools, homes, shattered heart, no words, dark clouds, shattered world.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

It's a real, anti-war poem.

Yeah, really.

Would we just take a breath?

Thank you.

And then maybe one more from online, GP, it's so good to see you.

Please unmute yourself.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we hear you fine.

There is always the sky.

It starts at our feet.

We who walk are really sailing and soaring through currents of an invisible ocean.

Like a mind after all thoughts have retired.

Are we truly free to wander undisturbed?

Thank you.

Yes.

Yes.

There is always this guy.

It starts at our feet.

We who walk are really sailing and soaring through currents of an invisible ocean.

Like a mind after all thoughts have retired.

free to wander undisturbed.

Thank you.

And just to note, GB, who is a close Mahasanga member, lived at

Chaco Canyon for 26 years.

34.

They're sorry.

Since you how long I've known you.

Yeah, I'm obviously attached.

Yeah, well, I could feel Chaco in the landscape.

And you're offering.

So let's maybe Peter call on a few

onsite people.

One, two.

You have your hand raised right?

Yeah, yeah, can we go here?

Thank you.

It's really nice to hear some of the traces and echoes of some

of the poems that came from a Hanshan.

Just not quotes, but from the same environment or similar

environment as they become yours.

It's wonderful.

Please.

Last week, I wrote a poem about oatmeal.

And I shared that with a few of you.

And last night, you asked a question, what is the size of the

universe, maybe?

Where did you hide it?

Yeah, and I said, in my oatmeal.

So this poem was inspired in the kitchen dining room this morning.

This is oatmeal, too.

This bowl of oatmeal is the whole universe.

And each spoonful smells like a different spring.

I am eating all of time this morning.

That sour cherry was a big bang in my jaw.

Peanut butter, like primordial love, is the constant gooey force

joining planets, clouds, black holes and rainbows into something that makes sense.

And now the whole universe is inside me.

I feel full, but it is already burning up, expanding into what is destined

to become a speck of dust on the broom of mind.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Really sweet without sugar.

That's wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, here and then, right?

And then after this man, Shannon, then this one.

Yeah.

So I wrote this this morning.

I was feeling a lot of anger be weirdly grateful to be in a safe place.

But angry.

Yeah.

Yeah, and then grateful that Broshi and Cos and Peter that you started this morning

with acknowledging what's happening in the world.

Birds chirp in Santa Fe as bombs detonate in Tehran.

Let freedom, let freedom ring sings a country built by destruction.

Who am I to judge?

I guess I'll keep scrolling till I go numb again.

The sun warms my face as my inside's ache with adrenaline.

What is the last line again, please?

The sun warms my face as my inside's ache with adrenaline.

Thank you.

I thought you said the sun warms my face as my inside's ache with the gentle.

Just saying.

I like that.

I wrote this poem after lunch.

And I wrote it in my mother tongue.

And I will read it in my mother tongue.

And then I will try to give a translation.

And your mother tongue is what?

Swiss.

And Swiss.

Okay.

My soul, the flattery, the angstic-de-focular straight after the powerful death of Adler

from his young beginning, always weak, always paraded.

But who can say that the lesson is big enough, low enough,

living enough for the wounded mother's soul of the dead people?

The unknown in the temple is quiet, very quiet.

Only the word of the kingdom and the light of the light of the sky.

My soul, a little angstic bird cries for the powerful diving flight of the eagle who protects its children

who are not yet able to fly, always awake, always ready.

But who can say where the being is big enough,

lively enough, loving enough for the wounded mother's souls of the murdered girls?

Here, down in the creek, it is still, very still.

Only the cry of a crow and the quiet sound of the river.

Thank you.

So nice to hear another language.

It's so beautiful.

May I ask you just a question, in the Swiss, in the original language,

there was a kind of building movement as you read it.

And that's intended in the original.

Could you hear it building, building, building? It was very strong.

Of course, my English is not good enough to express that in.

Because it's perfect.

It's not near to my soul.

Mama Lotion is very important, right?

I still can only say certain words and what my mother spoke to me in Yiddish.

I don't know the English, it gets me very confused.

I don't have to say it.

Thank you.

Was that three people?

I no longer know.

So, Russia, can we go online now?

So, Mary Ann.

I wrote this.

Here you are.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah, we hear you fine.

Yes.

A minute after Russia gave the news of this morning,

just to try to capture something about

the gut feelings that hit me.

And it's

the earth suddenly drops out of me.

I dropped, then just as suddenly,

I dropped through to a new ground of being

firm in what I am.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

Mary Ann, thank you.

It makes me cry to read it because it hit me so

you know, it got me out of my mind.

It makes me a total experience.

It also sounds like it got you out of your body.

Like you lost your body and found your ground.

Yeah.

That's what I heard you say in that poem.

Yeah.

It's the earth, right?

The earth body out.

And then I found my ground.

Also, but dropped through or what went away

was any concerns in my own life that I'm dealing with.

It was just a pure, more pure, grounded being I dropped

into.

Yeah, thank you.

And I so appreciate being here with you all in this

place and hearing this news instead of hearing it electronically

by myself.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Mary Ann, thank you.

Lisa T.

Can you unmute yourself, Lisa?

Thank you.

Hi, I had just put it in the chat, but let me turn my camera on.

I'm a bit nervous.

Sorry.

Blackbird.

I wrote this when I went out this afternoon.

So when I listened to the sound, title Blackbird.

As I went walking, the wind wistled in my ears.

A neighbor spoke loudly.

I heard the sound of birds.

I look up and saw one lone, one lone Blackbird flying towards.

The top of a tree.

Then I heard the sound of pounding.

They're building a new house down the street.

Then I heard what sound like geese mixed with the sound of wind,

mixed with construction.

I became mesmerized by the sounds.

Then I look up and saw one lone Blackbird flying.

Could it be the same Blackbird following in or directing me?

Wonderful.

Where are you?

I'm in Virginia, Northern Virginia.

Virginia.

Lisa, thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to appreciate so much how detail brings the poem alive for all of us.

So your capacity to observe is a gift, not only to you or of you, but to all of us.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And you did good.

Yeah.

Yeah, let's, you know, you can thank your nervousness.

And not just you, but everybody.

You know, nervousness is a firing that gives us energy.

And instead of letting it hold us back, if we use that energy to go forward,

then we can find ourselves doing something we may never have thought we could do.

It's really important to acknowledge it.

You're really nervous.

Okay, go.

You know, Peter, I would like to read a comment from Fairy, which is very powerful.

Please.

Her people are from Iran.

She was born there and she writes, I should not be happy for anyone's death.

Yet, heaviness is lifted.

My country, men are celebrating.

There is renewed hope for now.

Impermanence lives on.

Very important perspective for us also to hold.

Go.

True.

Thank you.

On your car, we do unmute yourself, please.

Thank you, everyone.

I wrote this poem on our break.

The pain held in the silence compels me to the open sky.

Walking amongst the forest, I pause.

Hello, dearest friends.

Shall we play today?

So up I climb towards the heavens that hold my children.

Though the world of rationality says that there's no time for such nonsense.

But those same logical minds choose to bomb children and become sheep to a madman.

So I think it a blessing to be something other.

And they give it all to the winds that are caressing my cheeks and simply climb.

Greeting moss and squirrel and hawk is beloved.

Feeling my skin shred upon the winter human bark as I scrape and blow myself higher.

More, something whispers.

Climb until you are nowhere but with the clouds.

So I listen until finding that final place to rest,

purchasing vulnerable in the bear and canopy, swaying with the music of nature's song.

Until the dogs bark, reminding me that I can't leave.

May I remember that I now carry my children inside my bones when I descend.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So there were three, Peter?

In the room.

I'm not hearing.

Maybe three in the room?

Yeah.

In the room.

Okay.

Yeah, please.

We have bombed Iran killing spy masters and schoolgirls,

but still so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow.

Yeah.

Robert, please.

We have bombed Iran killing spy masters and schoolgirls,

but still so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow.

Do you want to say where that last image comes from?

Do you want to tell people?

That is from Patterson New Jersey.

Yeah.

So this is a red wheelbarrow.

This was William Carlos Williams, famous poem,

so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater

beside the white chickens.

So your poem is so true, right?

We bombed still so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow.

That's the context for it.

Thank you so much for that.

So the English is so interesting, you know?

We bombed.

But are you part of who?

Maybe not.

You know, as a country, maybe, but I'm not part of it, right?

So more people in the room.

Yeah, please.

And is anyone on the side?

Because I'm not.

I'm a little blind here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Walking and wandering to what purpose?

A shadow dark affix behind me in front of the glimmering

chamber of a shade in my mind or not unseen by others

possibly hinted at do others their own dark shadows of past

and translucent silhouettes of future have with my own shadow

and shade between the two.

I am seldom centered wandering and wandering with the bird song

really sound any better if I knew the bird's name.

I know the bird's name is a little blind here.

So it's like a shadow dark affix behind me in front of the

glimmering chamber of a shade in my mind or not unseen by others

or not unseen in the dark.

Absolutely.

I am not.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

I am.

mountain. Dharma dreams are fed with squash, grown in sister's garden. If you

would be wise, clear and free, taste the rain, earth, time, and sun, that is all

there is to do and watch, sigh, shy, cloud, wisps, pinking, turning pink, but I

like pinking. Great, yeah. The observation, as Rose said, the details are so

important that the observations are placed within the poem, move everything, they

move everything. And of course the rhythm of the language. Can you hear each

person has a different rhythm? Using the same language, everyone has their own

rhythm, their own way of approaching the oral aspect of poetry. If I read the

poem that you read, I mean any of you, you would hear a different rhythm in my

speech. So it's really important to know that that is part of the oral

tradition. Some people like say in reading Chinese they may read very quiet,

other people very flamboyantly, same ideographs, but there's a different kind of

life energy that goes into it, not better worse, just me, a cause, a fling, you

know, like that. It's very important. We each make our own music, right? Pine trees

singing even without wind. That's what I'm talking about. Okay. Did we do a

three? I can't count to three. Okay. Did we? Shall we go online and then come

back? Yes. Yeah. Wonderful. I don't know if we did through, I actually can't

remember. Janice, please unmute yourself. What a funny request. I am from

Ontario. I heard the news and only the title would come. 1984. War is peace. And then I

went for a walk. And I could only think of my ancestors who came here to this

side of the world to find peace. And then while God said right and listen, I

could. And the rest is the dove claims peace requires destruction. Drowning the

shadow while the eagle steers the ships without knowing direction, mindlessly

dropping iron child. Big boy grows up. Thank you. Thank you. Where did your

family come from? My family originally came from Poland and went to England in

the pogroms and then fled from England to Canada. Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I asked

because the power and the personal expression as you read it is beyond personal. There's

history that informs how you say those words. So even if you don't name the history, the

history is in your poem and in the way you express it. These are much bigger than we

think. I use volume. The volume of what makes these poems possible and the way we articulate

them has many unseen sources. But they're all present in the writing. Yeah. So thank

you. Thank you. Maggie. Maggie powers. Hi. I'm in the Cochella Valley at our, my parents' home

steadied in the wilderness. So it's 24 miles with me in one ranger. I've been here for 10 days.

It's the Kauea Indian land. And to wake up this morning with that was crazy. But

during the break, I realized this is my cold mountain. Big sky country desert wilderness,

palm oasis. I withdraw to here to expand, need to protect from sun and scorching sand.

Though haunted by addictions to self, to substances, I still smoke. This is my, I still smoke

cigarettes, you know, and I'm just here going, let it go, let it go, guarding demons in paradise.

Joyous colorful sunset, the rustle of the breeze, ever present in the palms, the rattlesnakes

slithering out of hibernation soon. Where will they appear? They will appear. The weather just

got hot, scorpions hunting at night soon. Gratitude suffers, connection eludes, releases finite.

The desert is in my bones, oneness hopes, awareness is crowning.

It's beautiful.

You notice everyone's poems are so different. That's great.

I like how grounded the poems are in actual things. You know, actual things.

I'm gratified to hear, you know, when I said that hanshan rooted not in conceptual language,

but in the dharma of dharma, in the things of things. It's really great to hear this,

because you can see how they gain weight that way, instead of kind of talking about theoretical

reality, you know, we're talking about the body of the world.

Another one, please. Wonderful. Logan, please unmute yourself. Maybe you're unmuted.

You're good. Thank you. Thank you to the community and this workshop and all the

poems I've heard today. I'm new to your community and happy to be here. I was

inspired by the idea of landscape as a reflection of mind and how different my landscape is in

reality and in my mind from hanshan. And so this is what my poem is about. I live on in a very

temperate and mild place on the coast of California. The sun has only to climb a gentle hill

to reach the garden. The garden basks all day and breathes. A good place for the gardener

to learn the difference between a flower and a weed.

It's great. Thank you, Logan. Thank you. Thank you. What area of California?

I'm south of San Francisco and just north of Santa Cruz.

It's quite, I did want to say I am so touched by the horrific news and I know I'm in

in a very peaceful place and being able to take advantage of that. But we've also had

very bad storms and wildfires here and I don't know if there's a part two to my poem but

it's all you know it's interesting to be experiencing the peace of this place and knowing that

this is impermanent too. Thank you all so much. I live on an island in Canada off the coast

of the west coast and it's amazing you know to be Canadian and Canada we've had one day of snow.

Which is very different for us the weather. We've only had one day at negative one degrees.

It's shocking so where either people are saying oh it's been such a mild winter hasn't it? Yeah terrible.

Both realities at once. We share that reality Peter. We share that reality.

Yes. Yeah winter never came. Yeah shocking. So I'm Sherylyn.

Hey thank you. I'm trying to transmute nervous energy into goodness.

Take a deep breath and blow it out.

So this I'm in Boulder, Colorado. This poem was just written as I wandered this afternoon.

Wandering on a warm day in late winter. Posing to ponder why these flowery tree buds are so red.

Oh the bees my stillness reveals their motion, their aliveness in the sky between the branches.

Though they see in different ways than I do we are attracted just the same and I am content to

taste the honey that comes of it before it is made. Then my dear old friend Cinder calls asking

me to teach a little girl not in Tehran about the stars.

Sherylyn is an astronomer by the way. I am grateful that you need to bridge for us back to Tehran.

Thank you. I'm plus count again. In the room we're out of the room. We're in the room Peter.

I'm sorry I can't keep up with this. I wrote this after lunch sitting in a wonderful

on a wonderful stool looking out the window. The branches dance gently in the wind waving to us

in a silent gesture of freedom. How can I tell the world to be still and grow? I can only grow

in my own stillness. Thank you. Do we have more people? Oh we see. Yeah.

I wrote this in the Zendo where you never write Peter.

A half days walk from the transplanted temple where I sit, conflicted men in wide brimmed hats

once birthed an exponential spark. Now as I struggle to rhyme white cloud with babbling stones

a divided us launches precision-guided accusations against the distant them

aiming to snuff the embers of a hostile fiery dragon. In hopeful silent descent

I abandon my poetic puzzle and pray with those of inexhaustible compassion

clothed in the garb of a people once turned to vapor by two orange clouds.

Hmm.

Dry grass cushions the path dead leaves chatter on the breathe all have gone before it felt

this heat. Trail may not be recognizable. Hmm. Double back change course. Slow down. Catch

my breath. The farther and longer the greater the wildness and the deeper the stillness.

Hear the mountains silent. Teams with language I cannot speak. I strive to discern and fail to

be. This poem is getting in the way. Well truth is truth. Thank you.

See we go. Is there more or online? This poem was written here in response to something that

happened here. At Temple Dawn the wood mallet strikes wood. The cool air sounds crack.

Perched above the raven listens and replies. Correct. I enter bow and sit in the presence of the

raven's mind. Wonderful. Thank you. Great. Maybe should we go online? Is there more online?

Oh, yes. Yes. Uh, written. Please unmute yourself. You're good.

I live in Martin's vineyard, Massachusetts. Wampanoag territory.

Hmm. Four days since the deep snows came, leaving many powerless. Twice a day I strapped

yak tracks onto my boots. Eager companions urging far more confidence than I think I have.

I made a vow to take care of a plush black cat. Tentative crunch of tracks.

Will a vibrating welcome await me? Yes, it will. It will. Have you had a big winter in

Massachusetts? We did. For four days ago we had a blizzard. Uh-huh. Oh, right. I heard about.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. We're still hoping for one.

Dear Mickey.

War song. The old moss covered troll under the mountain, guts rumbling hunger and wounded pride

cracking fire knuckles. He scrapes iron nails along the meaty walls of my heart howling to be heard.

His hour bones hold the names of all the bloodied beloved children murdered since time in memorial.

Okay. His hushed names sushing in the blood are the cold record of murder's beginning.

Hmm. What could help me recognize this mother tear song?

Hmm. Oh, Mickey. Thank you. Thank you.

Another online person.

Yeah. I lean.

Um, I'm in Asheville where we had a really long, unusually cold winter.

Hmm. During the break, I wrote, I found a small dead worm in the early spring grass,

but its life force seems still pulsing. It's the eve of spring today.

I asked my fisherman neighbor why he thought the worm died. He supposed it was the rain we had

earlier this week, but I don't think worms drown on grass or dirt. Sometimes on hooks,

dangling, swallowed whole, by the snap of a fish's mouth.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Great. It might be time for a pause, a break. I just, uh, there are more poems here in the room

and with our Mahasanga, but I would like to invite us to take about 15 minutes to just take

care of the body and then let's return. Thank you. Cause and Peter so much.

So we returned at 415 our time. Okay. Thank you, Mercy.