Myths, Lies and Instant Karma

In my son’s karate class, his Sensei warned a student
who had kicked his sparring partner a little too robustly
that it would soon be his partner’s turn and he just might
experience some rather painful instant karma.

The adults all laughed, but I’ve been thinking
about it since, how the older we get the more
we think we can control karma by delaying
or preventing its arrival, when in actuality
all we do is dull the impact or deny its existence,
ultimately making little difference in the outcome,
because another name for karma is cause and effect;
A occurs; B follows; it’s hard to avoid laws of nature.

As children, we learned our lessons the hard way;
if you licked the frost-chipped metal on the monkey
bars, it would rip your tender taste buds clean off
as you panicked and tried to reverse, when you fell
off the wooden swing and sat up just as it came sailing
back, a whole day’s worth of memories, erased in an instant
as the three-inch thick board cracked you upside the head.

When you kept poking your brother in the back seat
of the car while your mother yelled at you to quit it
or she was going to pull over, she really was, but you kept
going at it until she really did, making you get a switch
from a roadside tree yourself and bend over to take your instant
karmic punishment while your sisters and brothers snickered
at you from the rearview window of the beige VW wagon.

Those were the days, weren’t they? We understood full well
if we kept pushing it, something would eventually give
and we would pay for our lack of judgment, but lately it seems
we've forgotten. It’s all about sneaking by, cheating fate,
hoping we won’t be found out; but really, who are we fooling?

Certainly not our own souls and I bet God’s not buying our act either.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

Clarity

As elusive as the Pleiades on a moonless
night, the sky flawless and still
you have to look away to glimpse
the truth illuminating the periphery.

Brief, lucid moments accumulate
like pollen from the old cedar leaning
to the silver shore, the fleeting light.

Storms, born on remote continents,
march over the hissing sea in wave
after wave of cloying despair.

Now is the time for clarity:

something inside us must
shift and open.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

When Expectations Meet Reality

You are too accommodating,
it’s like there's a sign on your forehead
I AM RIPE FOR THE PICKING

helpfulness; a transmuted sign
of weakness, small advantages taken,

leaving you
unmoored, wondering
why you even care.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

Blossoms

Forty-eight floors, a god’s-eye view

A man practices tai-chi on a tired patch of grass;
he is measured, beautiful.

Families rest under new-green trees
in Yoyogi Park this early spring Sunday.

Mt. Fuji rises like a myth, fading
to illusion in the gathering smog.



A few inches can be an uncrossable sea

we sit, silently contemplating discord
and the meaningless reasons for it.

Last week, freshly opened
cherry blossoms painted the city pink,
now, faded petals cyclone at our feet.

Tears, fleeting as sakura,
bloom and fall.

Laurie Belanus Odell 

Weeding

You must begin early, while it is cool
and your head clear, your discernment
a sharpened tine, probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive.

Be aware that the velvet sageness
of the leaves belies their power
to take over every space, remember
roots burrow deep, anchoring in
crevasses we don’t even know exist.

It is vital that you delve as close
to the origin as possible, or the weed
you think eradicated will bide its time,
germinating in the still secret ground,
waiting for the light of inevitable scrutiny
to penetrate the moist earth, waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out, a curled
blemish in your otherwise carefully tended garden.

The Hazards of Tunneling

All good escapists
perfect distance before
wielding the tools necessary
for subterranean travel

though palms blister
from repetitious retreat
the clamorous world subsides

down here
the air tastes like whispers
from long-forsaken ghosts.

Marsha Hollingsworth 

Kyoto

Awake to a slowly beating drum,
morning meditation from Chion-in Temple
drifting up the hill; in the garden,
tiny birds add sweet highs, tuneless ravens
the bass undertone, trees whisper
ancient secrets to the passing breeze.

I am gaijin, a foreigner, but still
I feel the pull of this place.

We stroll the Path of Philosophy,
through massive wood and metalwork gates,
into carefully sculpted gardens, exploring
the seemingly endless number of Buddhist temples
dotting Kyoto, each more lovely than the last.

Quiet Nanzen-Ji is where I feel the most, following
worship-worn steps to a tiny cave-shrine
heady with wet and incense.

We are purified by waterfall spray
before returning the way we came,
voices hushed, buoyed by eternity’s hand.

At the hotel, the lobby is filled with crimson
and saffron, glistening heads and broad smiles
from monks gathered there, we bow to each
other and are one, may it never be forgotten.

The Japanese try hard to remember
from where they came, arriving in busloads
for hanami, cherry blossom viewing,
beneath a revered tree decked out in pink splendor
and lit from below so it radiates surreal, internal light.

We sample Kobe yakitori, soba and corn
grilled over open flame as we flow
through the smiling, celebratory crowd.

We savor what is transitory
as sparks and blossoms whirl,
settling on our hair and skin.

Blades

I have been heedless,
reckless in my need
for perpetual motion.

Hours, a blurred periphery,
promises, like blades
pointed down
in case I stumbled.

Laurie Belanus-Odell 

God Spot

*This is an old poem, but the sun has come out today after 19 days of rain, a brief respite before the next storm, but enough to remind me that it is a priviledge to live where I do.


Shoulders hunched, it leans,
riparian limbs reaching to the sea.

This shore I love,
tautly stretched sweep
of rock and heaven top,
aquamarine and evergreen.

Geese squadron low and bank,
announcing imminent arrival,
seeking asylum from the wind
rising in the south.

Despite the falling sky,
I can only be lifted.

I hunger like waves
licking the edge of shore,
to consume

until this land and I
are all and only
here.

I Will

I will take the time to stop and gaze upon
the burnished chest of the resident hawk,
while I am waiting for the sun to drop
and pastel the watered blue.

I will wait for the mountain to radiate,
for the sea to quiet,
for my heart to steady,
for the return of peace.

I will slowly relinquish control
over my tiny world and set it free,
scattered thoughts flying up
brushing their curved wings against me.

I will remember that despite everything
the land and sea will forever be,
remaining long after we hurt each other,
long after we turn our backs on love.

I will take the time to be still,
moon balanced on my open palm,
the path of blazing light
beckons like the road to heaven.