History is the gradual instant

The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart.

When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals, like frost on a window. His last breath obscures the glass.

The shadow past is shaped by everything that never happened. Invisible, it melts the present like rain through karst.

I wanted a line in a poem to be the hollow ney of the dervish orchestra whose plaintive wail is a call to God. But all I achieved was awkward shrieking. Not even the pure shriek of a reed in the rain.

The dead leave us starving with mouths full of love.” from “Memoriam

Any given moment - no matter how casual, how ordinary - is poised, full of gaping life.