Archive for 2025

2024

Monday, July 7th, 2025

Simplicity is a child
in a shroud of words.

– Apirana Taylor

2001-12-23 – Swept

Sunday, August 10th, 2025

All of us so swept away
with the minutia.
Dealing with everything
in our close and immediate spheres.
We are a roiling tumult
of living and acting out.

In our small and personal dreams
scarcely one of us
in 1000, or 10,000, stops
and reflects on where we’ve been
and where we’re going.

But, no matter.
Destines do not require
the destined to be cognizant.
The stage moves
beneath our feet so slowly
that we don’t see
the scenery changing.

We don’t notice the gathering
of the historical dialect.
We imagine we see progress
in the increasingly unstable facades
around us.
And we think we see
promise in our increasing ability
to subvert the natural order.

We mostly act to change things
with little understanding or care
for the consequences, if they but lie
just an inch or two
beyond our immediate concern
or the length of our attention span.

How many times must complexity
and evolution yield up
self-awareness again and again
before it is complete?

Each half formed attempt arises
deeply unaware of its limits
on yet another planet.
Staggering onto the stage
on some new biological Eden
with mirror and ego in hand
and the power to cause havoc
in a new world.

gallagher
Monroe
23Dec2001

1986 – Women & Spirit

Saturday, September 13th, 2025

He sleeps and the water runs
and I wait for the future
with my fears whispering to me.
It is odd that finishing a book
could make me so sad.

I read the The Razors Edge
by W Somerset Maugham
and now I see stories of Buddhas
arising like flowers in the field.
But I keep wondering,
is this just literature?

And I remember Bhagwan saying,
You will not jump. until death, agony
and the unbearable push you.”


It was I, back then, who would never
sacrifice himself for his children.
And it is I, now, come to see
that there is nothing more precious
than your blood and spirit
gazing from small eyes.

And it is I now who questions
if the wonders of this world
can be worth seeing
if you have no connection, no bond,
no caring, and no continuity.

How empty gapes that chasm across which
an aspiring Buddhist must jump.

Darkness and fear of being alone and unloved
are echos from childhood memories buried so deep.
That last desperate moment when mother finally arrives
and you run screaming into her skirts.

gallagher
24Aug86
Irvine