I did see a pair of pigeons today, and they did have a rolling gait and matching feathers. One stayed near the little bit of food, and the other strolled off. It looked as though it were meandering, but if you watched for a few minutes, you could see that its zig-zag path covered every bit of sidewalk, that what looked vague and lacking direction actually was an efficient search for more food.

The poem I wrote about this didn't work. Got too caught up in nautical similes and missed the boat (or the point)!

These pics are from a Jewish Congregation in Berkeley. I also stopped in at a couple of other churches last night along my path. In one, a man was playing piano from among half a dozen unmanned instruments. I was too shy to stay and listen much less take his photo. But the image is in my head, the young man in an empty church on a Friday night.

Then, today, feeling energized and opened by a Shintaido sword class, I wandered up a street - Marin - because it goes up for a long way, and I've wanted to walk to the hills that line Berkeley to the east. The hike was beautiful with an Oz-like glistening view of the bay, and of San Francisco on the other side. Water was flowing everywhere down hillsides after yesterday and last night's heavy rain. Plants and flowers were clean and fragrant. Houses shimmered. And what should be at the end of this trek? A forested chapel for the Lutheran Seminary.

The writing is everywhere-
the gulls, shadows, dandelions, planes and clouds
are eager to share
their wisdom with us-
we're connected.

If we can't see,
try hearing
if we can't hear,
try tasting
try smelling
try feeling the breath of air
along the side of the face
the change in the temperature
using the backs of the hands and wrists.
So much to learn
before a word is spoken.

There are ornamental garden plots along the parking lot and sidewalk on Adeline. One plot today was filled with weeds, startling beauties, standing tall in the sunshine.

It comes naturally to the trees and flowers; they aren't self conscious. Their branches and petals reach up and bloom without effort or intent. We grown-up humans have reservations about releasing the brakes, letting go of control. We have teachers, and discussions, and meditations, and practice to permit ourselves to open fully, to experience the pleasure, the freedom, the relief, of surrender to this moment like a child.

wooden swords
lie 1-2-3
in wet grass -
men at play -
the river flows

It feels good at the playground.
You meet some pals on a Saturday morning,
and bring your stick swords.
You run and jump and roll in the grass...
watch out for the ducks!
You have to follow the rules:
Get in a circle, and bow
face to the ground
(tiny dewdrops
cling to slender blades of grass -
and your nose)
Don't step over anybody's sacred stick! Ach!
Bow again
it can't hurt -
You yell and attack, and - oops -
fall to the earth -
aheeeeahhh!
he got me.
Get muddy
get happy
get mad
get back
or maybe not,
it's all pretend,
and off with your head!
New kids come and go.
There's tea party,
maybe you'll get some.
Maybe you won't!
Tiptoe around the leader of the pack,
unless it's his turn to get attacked...
Charge!
Leave behind your shoes or jacket,
just to see who'll bring them back
don't forget to pay your dues
keep on playing, come back

To live fully,
there is stillness, and there is movement,
and the one is as valuable as the other.

He may be Death
but he asks about life.
Backlit by sunlight
the man at the
end of the corrider
sits in a folding metal chair,
a lean man, leaning back,
legs crossed
the clean crease of his slacks
catching light like a knife.
He looks at me,
his face serious and bemused.
"Now,
what is it you're waiting for?"

Discovered the tree outside my apartment window is also a 'snow tree'.



the river shrinks
it rises
runs murky
runs clear
how thankful
it flows

My mother in the early 1990s collected 16 American Historical Society plates. She never displayed them; they are all still in their original boxes. There are four Nativity plates, a Columbus's voyage, several Rose Windows from various cathedrals, a Bald Eagle, the Magi, the Shepherds, Pearl Harbor, a WWII South Pacific plate, the Resurrection, and the one above, Peace on Earth.

As I took pictures yesterday, I was physically uneasy and confused by the war plates mixed with Nativity plates. I couldn't quite grasp that she had wanted both themes, or how they rested together in storage. I assumed she was a little mixed up.

But maybe in a concrete way she was working out something. Maybe peace is enhanced by taking aggression and birth out of their isolated compartments, allowing the painful and the beautiful to coexist in the same drawer.

I started off with an ironic post-Valentines Day post, but the wrappers on the Tootsie-Pops said, 'I love you', and I was un-ironically touched. It reminded me of many things.

I love you too, Toots.

'Oh! It looks like snow!' the kid called out as they passed by. 'Far away!'

To me, it felt like finding a valentine, a bit of Berkeley wildness and warmth...

Love is a mystery.

There is no train where you get on board and are carried directly and safely to the next town on the map. With life, you get on track, and it branches this way, and then that, switch, switch, switch, and the town printed on your ticket is now a few hundred miles southeast, if it's still there at all, and you're somewhere you never heard of with kids or friends or lovers or nobody or illness or gifts, none of which you ever imagined, doing work that no one was even training for back when you were at whatever that place was you thought was home base.

I was walking tonight, I think it was on California, when I noticed the church on the other side of the street. I crossed to better see the window glass, and heard a man's voice within, loud and emphatic. I couldn't understand the words, but it sounded like a preacher. Another fellow approached and went to the door. He turned and invited me in, and I thanked him for the invitation, but declined. He asked a second time, and I thanked him again, and told him I was heading onward, and he went inside. I'd noticed the cross shadow on the front of the church, and checked to see if this was an effect created with intention. It was caused by the street light shining, blocked by a cross bar on the utility pole. The other poles on the block were designed the same way. The shadow was a kind of serendipity against the face of a Christian church, the preacher's voice broadcasting from within.

You're stuck. Maybe it's just the timing's not right, but you worry anyway. You haven't done enough, maybe something's wrong with you. Then one day before dawn, you step outside, and night flowers are fragrant outside your door. The old moon hangs above the winter trees. The sun rises. The things you need flow forward to meet you with no effort on your part. The river has come to your fingertips.