princess nukada

Nikon D750   f/5.6  1//400s   300mm   640 ISO

When spring escapes

freed from being huddled in winter’s sleep,

the birds that had been stilled

burst into song.

The buds that had been hidden

burst into flower.

The mountains are so thickly forested

that we cannot reach the flowers

and the flowers are so tangled with vines

that we cannot pick them.

When the maple leaves turn scarlet

on the autumn hills,

it is easy to gather them

and enjoy them.

We sigh over the green leaves

but leave them as they are.

That is my only regret–

so I prefer the autumn hills.

~Princess Nukada – 7th Century (K Rexroth I Atsumi, The Burning Heart*)

*note:  Princess Nukada lived in the later half of the 7th Century. She was the daughter of Prince Kagami, wife and the favorite of Emperor Temmu.

 

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the new sanctuary coalition

Thinking of the world
Sleeves wet with tears are my bed-fellows.
Calmly to dream sweet dreams–
There is no night for that. ~Izumi Shikibu (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old

The New Sanctuary Coalition’s call for action:

We are resolved to form a U.S. Caravan of supporters who will meet the Central American Caravan in Mexico, witness their movement, and accompany them into the U.S. At the border, we will assist those seeking entry with their demands to enter the US without losing their liberty

Hate speech and violence have crept into our communities with the targeting of synagogues, churches and other houses of worship and murders of their congregations. We want and need to stop this violence and we are calling you to stand with us, to put your bodies on the line.

The right to migrate is fundamental. Without it, the right to work, to be free, to live, cannot be realized. We reaffirm our conviction that every member of the Central American Caravan has an inalienable human right to flee from violence and poverty and toward better economic and political conditions elsewhere, regardless of national boundaries. We submit that they possess a right to enter and remain in the U.S. equal to anyone born there.

It has become amoral to engage in neutrality or silence on the right to migrate. On this issue there is a right side of history and a wrong side – but there is no middle. Each of us is morally obliged to choose such a side. The law will either make human beings illegal, or it will legalize equality, but it cannot accomplish both. The world is asking you to choose a side.

The New Sanctuary Coalition is resolved to choose the side of liberty and equality. We are resolved to sacrifice in solidarity with those leaders of liberty and pioneers of equality who are nonviolently asserting their right to migrate by moving their caravan of brave souls across the U.S./Mexican border.

If you are a lawyer, join our legal community. If you are a faith leader, join our clergy group. If you are a person of conscience, join our local organizing in your state. Click here to tell us how you would like to get involved and we will connect you with an organizing community that matches your skills and interests.

Sanctuary Caravan at NSC
http://www.sanctuarycaravan.org/

orchid

The poetry of Japan has its seeds in the human heart and mind and grows into the myriad leaves of words. Because people experience many different phenomena in this world, they express that which they think and feel in their hearts in terms of all that they see and hear. A nightingale singing among the blossoms, the voice of a pond-dwelling frog–listening to these, what living being would not respond with his own poem? It is poetry which effortlessly moves the heavens and earth, awakens the world of invisible spirits to deep feeling, softens the relationship between men and women, and consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.

~Ki no Tsurayuki, (preface Kosinsbū, ca. 905)

thoughts

Would the flames of thought

that envelop your body

ever be quenched?

Never but of the blowing

of these cool winds.

~Saigyo  (B Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)

oblivious

Spring departs —

the clear moon oblivious

of passing time

~Soseki (S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)

in place of morn’ dew

regrets as I may,

even the bell

has a different sound now,

and soon frost will fall

in place of morning dew

~Saigyo (B. Watson, Poems of a Mountain Home)

we saw you off…

We saw you off,

and returning through the fields

I thought the morning dew

had wet my sleeve,

but it was tears. ~Saigyo (Poems of a Mountain Home)

perfectly quiet…

today too

keeping perfectly quiet. . .

little duck ~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

thursday’s special: s-curve

Today again

I’ll go to the hill

where the pine winds blow –

perhaps to meet my friend

who was cooling himself there yesterday.

~ Saigyo (Poems of a Mountain Home)

…submitted in response to Lost in Translation’s photo challenge: s-curve.

the world seems…

Is it because my mind

keeps dwelling

on every worldly thing

the the word seems

more hateful to me than ever?

~SaigyO  (Poems of a Mountain Home)

SaigyO was born in 1118 in the capital city, Kyoto.  When he was twenty-two he suddenly left his post as an elite private guard of Emperor Toba to become a Buddhist  priest.  I find it interesting how his poem written almost a thousand years ago resonates with me today especially when I think of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s (who was born in 1808) translated epigram, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”