TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME
Ode #25 - Transcribed Poetic Dictation, Zen Mined Ode
[Today I am sending through a double dose of odes. In the morning after waking I received WHAT’S TRUE FOREVER and realized it also needed to be sent out, alongside TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME. Which would be the 25th and which the 26th? I took a look at the 25th and 26th correspondent Missives and decided TO WRITE constellated more elegantly with A POUNCE OF GOLD. It also makes sense, as I had been thinking of sharing TO WRITE as the 25th Ode for some days now since reading it last week at the public launch event for The Portland Dirt Issues 06 & 07. TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME was first published in Issue 07, though it arrived back in late 2024 at a dear friend’s home while sitting together in silence. It was clear at the time that it was not meant to be shared as a Missive, but I wasn’t sure where it was to appear. Turns out: first in the Dirt, and then as an Ode! I realize, it does have more ode quality to it than missive. And, to be shared today, on the entrance to the lunar Fire Horse year.. feels just right. We are entering something. Everyone around me feels it. I remember the origin context of this piece well. I was visiting quite a lot with Shunryu Suzuki and his work. So we call this: the Zen Mined Ode, after Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (1970).
If you have been looking to share your work with the world, I highly recommend submitting to the Dirt! The whole project is a gem, and the editors pure magic. I have contributed three piece since their beginning (in Issues 01, 05, and 07). There is a real vitality here. A vitality of the real~ ] Received 11/16/2024 | 11:35-45am
Companion Missive #25 - A POUNCE OF GOLD (11/6/2023)
Listen to the Recitation:
TO WRITE FOR THE FIRST TIME, EVERY TIME As the first time leapt from nothingness, into Sometime, so something is held from the rim Of no time, which too is had, as we have no Time with which to speak, no time with which To write, as if for the first time, every time sings Into the bellyhallows of the deep, ringing up Echoed harmonies, curling and whirling, down The drain, a cyclonic query plumbing wonder In the crisp furls of a creased countenance, We call in response to the furrows, to the fallow Earth, lifting our prayersongs to the tips of trees And back down again, we offer in burial a somber Word, curling as it whirls along the corridors of mind. Forget what you know, and reach out again— The beloved's hand, new, awaits you~
