A collaboration between Elisa Maria Argiro and SG Holter.*

Dear feather. You fell on my heart.
I keep you on my person now; pocket held;
An eternal companion.
As beautiful as you, I remind my
Thoughts to be.
I wake up as Buddha every day.                  
Peace is the corner stone of my breathing.

Dear Last Crescent Moon,
adorning Lord Shiva's brow,
smiling toward Morning Star
enjoying her sweet presence
in clearest predawn light.
She smiles too, drifting into feathery sleep.

Birdless flight, unclenched, un-
Clung to.
With this dew drop in my palm
I need no ocean to swim in.
How can Life's castle, with its wars and
Tragedies, hide within its
Towers of                                                          
Nois­e such quiet chambers?
Paper sails, bamboo, emerald waters.
Single feathers rest even when
Airborne.

From your outstretched palm,
sweet taste of morning touches
my tongue, oceanic dew drop
sharing itself across floating time.
An offering holding the last shining
starlight of this new morning. Drifting
now through limitless space,
finding words in our common language
on your yellow paper sails, we gaze down
from these towers of our ancient dreams,
emerald water below us waiting to catch
the falling feather.

Dear insight.
Light as the wind itself, you
Floated; fell on my heart.
Merged with heavy memories
Like paper balloons rising;
Tsunami of kamifusen
Render my whole being
Weightless.
Third-Eye-Hindsight sees me
Remembering nothing with
Bitterness.
One or a hundred lifetimes
Wandering.
Finally now,
Even waking hours feel like
Dreaming.

Dear Wisdom, Guardian Planet,
Buddha's radiance shining.
Thousand-Petaled Lotus
is now your own effulgent mind.
Smiling, eyes closed, feeling the
glowing kamifusen of magenta,
scarlet, turquoise, and yellow
floating above us,
we swim so deeply, diving down
into these warm emerald waters,
winking at the luminous fishes
dreaming all around us.

no self
no sacrifice
Zen Christ
in each of us
keeping quiet

sometimes i hate how
i can put my life on hold
& forget about my own well being
just to solve someone else's problems...

all the time, i say to myself:

"i am not jesus...
i am not buddha...
i cannot save everybody."

they call it being "kind"
but they don't know that helping people
but being unable to help yourself
can be a form of self destruction too.

On The Sixth Moon's Night
I came to contemplate the cosmos.

I awoke on a mountainous range:
Projected were ten thousand isles, scattered in remain.

All dancing differently,
But constructing one eternal game.

To what extent might my eye expand?
To what end will death cast its sand?

Upon what shore may the waves crash again
In peace and calm harmony?

No matter how many curtains the Devas will draw
Or how many distinctions Māyā will make~

Always, the un-curved perfection subdues and surrenders to them all.

Like the water-way, cultivating life and harvesting it on the other side.

Formless, it surpasses all stiff form and creates a path of least resistance

To the goal of the heart.

---

You cannot carve a stone buddha out of human flesh.

A stone buddha cannot experience samadhi nor still a pond.

Mind is a mirror
that must be seen clearer!

But behind the glass and that transient social class,
What is that divine perception?

"The Ultimate Peerer"

Dreams of mountain streams
And washing trees in the wind.
Let me leave this world
And start anew again..

Off I set with not much to tote.
Getting lost among the trees,
The mind has little to quote.
But here and there it shall roam,
Looking deeply for a small forest home.

One morning I cracked my door
And let the wind come in.
It sang songs of freedom
And hope for mankind.
But all alone a small man cottage,
Chirping songs of a free bird
But no one to hear the rhyme..

It is my time of day when I must breathe.
Anxiety knocks at my door
Calling me to prayer
Like the bells of an old steeple.
Chanting slowly again and again
"Oh ****, oh ****, oh ****!"
Reminding me that I need my god.

*Breathe and go inside my friend
Be still amidst this storm.
Breathe and let your soul be nourished
By the free flowing waters of faith,
Clarity and peace

Gautama was conceived in the purifying water of the monsoons,
a sweetness aliting to invite the morning bell.
He came to a wealthy world, somehow impoverished,
yet bathed in the crimson light of life;
Blind and unable to shine our gaze into the void,
We complain of distance – when really
there is none between hearts.
Millennia later, the gratitude is mine,
only in the sense that I do not resist its source,
the light.