quexotic

I know there’s a place you walked

admin — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 19:48:46 +0000

I know there’s a place you walked
where love falls from the trees.
My heart is like a broken cup,
I only feel right on my knees.

– Pete Townshend

Paradox

admin — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 20:12:51 +0000

Not truth, nor certainty. These I forswore
In my novitiate, as young men called
To holy orders must abjure the world.

“If …, then,” this only I assert;
And my successes are but pretty chains
Linking twin doubts, for it is vain to ask
If what I postulate be justified,
Or what I prove possess the stamp of fact.

Yet bridges stand, and men no longer crawl
In two dimensions. And such triumphs stem
In no small measure from the power this game,
Played with the thrice attenuated shades
Of things, has over their originals.

How frail the wand, but how profound the spell.

– Clarence Wylie, Jr.

Comments on time by Einstein and Feynman

admin — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 06:01:52 +0000

Since the laws of quantum physics are reversible in time, we shall have to consider computing engines which obey such reversible laws. Feynman RP. Foundations of Physics, Volume 16, Number 6, 507-531, DOI: 10.1007/Dec.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. — Albert Einstein on the occasion of his friend Michele Besso’s death…and three weeks before Einstein’s death.

Light Girl

admin — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:56:55 +0000

Light Girl

(an aubade
on the occasion of her birthday)

Light girl, listen -
by that noon you were missing
the gloom in heaven at your leaving
(mourning after morning,
or after parting, should we say -
you, then, being almost post partum).
Hid, though, from your recalling
is you’d been born in dawning
but for this:
A quiet voice
(I think it was God’s, though angels circled)
saying, don’t go, sing for us again -
linger just an hour.

Heaven hushed, then,
(Is heaven ever silent? More likely, laughing children –
but I think even they paused play)
except that one still voice saying,
sing your longing just once more -
yes, those wishings: caring, soothing, justice, light;
but sing your other yearnings, too
your sea-sky dreams, church bells, deep golds, crimson,
fogshroud streets, silk lace, rainstorms, kissing.
Your alms of healing are songs to God?
Your joys and passion are just as much,
And just as dear.

Light girl, listen -
I know your brown eyes closed then
all hope held there, grace within
your full lips curved round gentlest notes
and sang, in quiet, as I have heard,
until the last pure, heartfelt tones afloat -
faded,
then borne away you were,
into your song itself,
birthing,
your life and all your yearnings,
ceaseless, daily hymns to God.

Flowers on a path

admin — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 00:09:31 +0000

Morning on summer’s first day
on this overgrown path
leading ever upward,

someone,
annoyed
at the bright yellow
dew laden blossoms
bent cross the path

has broken
twisted and
shredded
the branches

as if they could not bear
the bursting-light flowers,

the touch of the world.

Winnowing

admin — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 17:08:15 +0000

A white-dusted woman looks up from sifting circles of
Yellow grain, and husks, and leaves.

In the clicking speech of her people she calls, Ah hello.
Dear God! Your two faces shine before me.

The tallest wipes the sweat from his eyes and says, We are
Elders, come to talk of you, of your belief,
And our own. You see, we are much alike—

Winnowing, wielding a sieve.

The old woman grins up, and sorts into woven baskets
Yellow grain, and stalks, and leaves.

She steps through the white heat to hoe burdens of chaff under
The rich, unfailing black earth.

I alone am drifting

admin — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 06:02:16 +0000

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool. Oh yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless.

I am different.

I am nourished by the great mother.

– Tao Te Ching

Searching

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 08:13:59 +0000

I would like to be in touch with any of the following people:

Kim Ok Gi (alternate spellings or forms: Kim Okgie, Kim Ok Gie, Ok Gi Kim, Okie Kim, Okgie Kim)
born February 19, 1963 in Seoul, Korea

Kim Yung Ai
last known address:
#760, 22 Ban
Bupyong-Dong
Inchon, Korea

Mr. Kang Jae Woo
Hung nam dang jae kwa so
Bangsan Market
5th-ka, Ulchi-ro
Seoul, Korea

Mr. Han Hyong Shik

Jang Woon Sang
#287 22nd-Ban
Bupyong-Dong
Inchon, Korea

Kim Jin Ho
12th-Tong, 2nd-Ban
Sue Jung, 4th-Dong, Dong-Ku
Pusan, Korea

Please email me at:
keith AT keithflower.org

The Way is in training

admin — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:48:28 +0000

The Romans are sure of victory,
for their exercises are battles without bloodshed,
and their battles -
bloody exercises.

Flavius Josephus
The Jewish War
37-100 A.D.

Undoing

admin — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:28:15 +0000

I remember waking
in afternoon slants of late autumn light
and watching you,
the crimson grapes, plump
in one slender hand
while the other hand
moved over my desk,
the metal dividers
(keys, old boarding passes,
Fast Track statements),
and you stood on nude tiptoe
before walls I’d made
of book and hope;
sharp upright edges you caressed -
undoing so much.