on being joint winners of the Dharma Quiz

for the prize
someone has made
vegan brownies
chewy
chocolatey
rich

my new crocheted hat
raspberry pink
delicious

white berries on the bare bush
naked

afternoon sun glint sharply off the Buddha's golden candle holder and it is suddenly alight...

she tells us about her recent traumatic visit to hospital and existential anxiety fizzes in my stomach

visiting

her cheek is puffed out with cancer. we say goodbye knowing we won't see her again. they have shared their lives together for fourteen years.

christmas day

the cats enjoy their special stinky breakfast

the film is too long, with too much fighting. the popcorn is good.

she walks her dog past our window in the rain, one hand pulling down the peak of her plastic hood. the glass is speckled with water. we are warm and dry.

Matt & Freddie talk about porridge for twenty minutes. They decide on what kinds of porridge would be not-nice. Curtain porridge. Hair porridge. Carpet porridge. When Freddie leaves, his mum has to come back for his plastic porridge stirrer.

day before an open house

full of cold, it helps to remember that we're doing all this baking for people we love

Kaspa says: Come and look at the moon, honey. Just the way it's placed.
A cratered disc, resting on the hill. Gently glowing. One side dissolving into blue.

things that are similiar #1

lemon pips & pine nuts

snow sifts down onto the mince pies, and I am a weather god for a short time.

winter sun splashed on the bird feeders & flooding onto the over-long grass

old bush
ugly with leaves on
ugly without

a splodge of orange in the winter undergrowth
an unlikely flower

The metallic squawk of the woodburner door
as I open it to put in a pale fresh log.
I'm met with a bouquet of woodsmoke
and a burst of cheek-warming heat.

an issue with the gingerbread cupcakes

the lemon icing curdles.
kaspa thinks it looks like baby sick.
we sprinkle pink sugar confetti on top
and everyone says they're delicious.

so much to see
so much to hear
sometimes
(often)
I forget

we return to the wreckage of a bird
tiny grey chest feathers covering the floor of the kitchen
the corpse nowhere to be seen

kaspa tries to sweep them up
and they float ahead of the bristles

wanting to be airborn

the hydrangea blooms have lost all their pink and blue
they waggle on the end of bare dry stems
dessicated, the colour of used tea bags

even this late in the year, purple wallflowers zing against bunches of happy tangerine berries

as we drive out of the monastery where we've spent the past seven days with our sangha family, a deer crosses in front of the car. a gift.

On being served rice-pudding after a very big meal

'That's enough, thank you.'
'No, it's not.'
(he was right)

at midday we begin to chant. we are a choir, ever-changing. we won't stop for 24 hour. the time slips by.

in the temporary shrine room
two smiling golden Buddhas
a crucefix
and a dark painting of Christ, suffering

they get along just fine

the frost starts to thaw: people cry

we sit around in a big circle
several people are nervous of speaking
we don't know each other

in our simple room
a white Christ
on a driftwood cross
welcomes us

sheep dot the hills
rearrange themselves
enjoy their nibbling