Thank you Dear friends fill my house The ones to live and die with Sun sets, as it should. August, 2003 Following my 50th birthday
Poems
Winter
Winter Haiku 1 Vast clear azure sky Blankets of dazzling new snow Winter days like these. 12.20.07
Wider
WIDER For Jyl Smith-Cameron 2.8.53 to 10.24.11 Sunday morning in the dark, Tsim Sha Tsui still sleeping, seafood and laundry trucks weave and honk, drivers leading night time lives with Guan Yin images on tea bottles, adorning dash boards. South China sea breeze cools Kowloon alleys. Weary hooker carries regrets and a little cash from … [read more]
From Mountains to Deserts
From Mountains to Deserts For my Dad Edward Michael McDonnell 15 March 1924-28 June 2011 Late August A sad gentle breeze blows through the dying brown grasses of late August. Hundred year old Colorado coal mines lay buried underfoot, effort and pain sealed away forever in darkness. Grandpa’s miner’s house where Mom was born belongs … [read more]
Sleepless in Tianjin
Note: Zhàozhōu Cōngshĕn (Japanese: Jōshū Jūshin, 778 to 897) was a Chan, or Zen master best known for the classic koan, “Mu”: A monk asked Zhàozhōu , “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?”. Zhàozhōu answered, “Mu!”, roughly translated as “no” or “not”. For hundreds of years, students have wrestled with this “Mu!” The author plans … [read more]
Dry
Dry For Edward Michael McDonnell At seven thousand feet life dries and cracks, like old lumber behind the shed, mountain grasses brown and flattened, tinder crisp, sand drifting in the wind, down our dirt road, like lines in Dad’s face at eighty-seven. Dry is how I like it. Just enough air and moisture for a … [read more]
