WAYFARER

Photo Mandala by S. Auberle

Wayfarer, the only way

is your footsteps, there is no other.

Wayfarer, there is no way,

you make the way as you go.

As you go, you make the way

and stopping to look behind,

you see the path that your feet

will travel again.

Wayfarer, there is no way--

only foam trails in the sea.

- Antonio Machado

May your way this year be blessed with small joys, good health and friends. And may a new and silent peace circle 'round the world.

Happy New Year from all at the Cafe to all on Village Earth...

- Mimi

WHAT DO WE KNOW

Photo by S. Auberle

in the blue night

frost haze, the sky glows

with the moon

pine tree tops

bend snow-blue, fade

into sky, frost, starlight

the creak of boots

rabbit tracks, deer tracks,

what do we know

- Gary Snyder

WRITTEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1513

Photo/Collage by S. Auberle

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see. And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. but we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.

And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

~~ Fra Giovanni ~~

Christmas Eve, 1513

SATURDAY NIGHTS AT THE CRYSTAL BALL

Very pleased to announce the publication of my book, Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball. If you're interested, it's available from Cross + Roads Press, P.O. Box 33, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, USA 54210. $12, plus shipping and handling. Or you can e-mail me at sea_poet@msn.com for ordering information.

WALKING DOWN A SNOWY ROAD

Photo by S. Auberle

WALKING DOWN A SNOWY ROAD

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Walking the beach road today

I am questioning...

what drove me this year,

what force held me in its grip,

shook it's shaggy head as it toyed with me?

A pileated woodpecker raucously questions

who are you

I breathe in cold, say I still don't know,

stretch out legs long, trying to step

in the footprints of one who came before me.

Dark shape draws my eyes,

a wing lying in the snow.

Torn from the body--large,

the texture of dark velvet--I pick it up

carry it in my mittened hand.

It seems important to question this

to think about what happened

to remember that nature does not concern herself

with who lost this wing, or how...

if it was a fox came upon the bird

or coyote. The bird lived and then died

and it may be the kits of a pregnant fox

will survive because of it.

I see myself--sixty something,

carrying a wing down a road near dark...

this is a poem, I think.

So is the one-winged carcass

buried somewhere in the snow.

So too the shaggy beast,

licking its bloodied paws.

- mimi

WINTER WONDERLAND

Photo by S. Auberle

driving up the peninsula

watching a luscious moon

rising up out of the lake

sun is setting over the bay

four o'clock on a December day

snow has blanketed the land

old barns and cabins looking snug

in the car

I'm listening to carols

most fondly thinking of you and

today gas cost only $1.69

simplify, simplify said Thoreau

and really, can life get any better

than this?

- mimi

TO LIVE

Image by S. Auberle

"To live is so startling

it leaves little time

for anything else."

- Emily Dickinson

RED

Photo by S. Auberle

three degrees today

sunset fire fading at four

one last blaze of warmth

- mimi

'TIS THE SEASON

Photo by S. Auberle

"Nothing is worth more than this day."

- Goethe

SNOWY OWL

Photos by S. Auberle

old

man

winter

on

the

wing...

- mimi