The Buddha Out West

85.
Few among men are they who cross to the further shore. The others merely run up and down the bank on this side.

94.
He whose senses are mastered like horses well under the charioteer's control, he who is purged of pride, free from passions, such a steadfast one even the gods envy.

97.
The man who is not credulous, who knows the uncreated, who has severed all ties, who has put an end to the occasion of good and evil, who has vomited all desires, verily he is supreme among men.


Wisdom from: What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula: The Words of Truth, Selections from The Dhammapada. Page 128

Image #85 from The Hopper Juan
Image #94 bad ass horse

Image #97 Eanger Irving Couse, Kachina Painter, 1917

Four From Lescatre

middlin'

easy slides the trombone

with the gutteral

honesty of the throat

squeaky of tone or

gravelled

textured as sound

with truth

a point to be made

while you

tap toe

turn leaf

take hand 

type text

tiptoe like right hand runs

to memories

too magnificent

in their

rear view mirror

hum

bob and clark

mellowing but bringing

questions with easy answers

more mining of my memory

that faulty system

adjusting the hue

of phenomena so familiar

a flugelhorn and a trombone

of one family but

such distinctly

differently

dealt with

drivers

destinations

derived due to

deemed deliverance

from what, no

to what

now only

and your smile

as you bob your

head

sending blessings

to your fellow beings

true story

intent is too often 

defined after action

and that's just time

doing it's hide and seek

never being where you are

because everyone's already

there

realities abutting endlessly

and always able to fit

made to

unquestioned spatial definition

because that too is unknowable

intent is unknowable

hunted, studied, questioned, raked over coals

and even truths derived

by sheer might of evocation

seem false in quiet

thought

perfect day

she broke the news

so quietly I had to

ask her to repeat it

and then I didn't

want to believe it

the memories

attatched to his

work and play

flooded me

but the acceptance

followed swiftly

like the next

line of a song

gratitude to a universe

capable of housing

such a soulful son

so sharing of his

scope and sense

she and I spent

the earlist morning

sining and saying

smiling

she'd be sweet jane

sweet nicky

cassandra

give it a name

sweet lou

Poems: Rob Lescatre

Painting: "View of Ute Mountain from McElmo Canyon in the Winter" By Derek Alvarez

Those Hills

Fiddle call while the summer sun sets
and those barking, fox like hounds
beating the morning birds alarm call.
The days like too much fun and freedom
pass fast like the whiskey flame eating
through dry rot.
And I'll sand that wood to bring out the beauty
she is, or could be, saw dust, and lacquer
shines like a dollar taxed till it coughs.
Black powder and venison on our plate,
fiddle call the hounds back to evening moon,
where at least they'll listen and earn their stay.
Trout over campfire flame, once on my fly
tied with pheasant feather and peacock.
small tippet, dry hackle, that damn fiddle
playing out like line drag,
in with careful pulls into my grandfathers wooden net.
All up high where the spruce tip
beer ferments and the people are poor
enough to build a truck up right and
not pay for firewood and play that fiddle call
way into a work night and appreciate a rain
enough to see those Birdsfeet flowers growin
over the Aspen tree roots.


Photo: Ponderosa pine tree pollen in a puddle of rain water by James Gagnon
Poem: "Those Hills" by James Gagnon

The Appalachian Book of the Dead

From Rain on the Cumberlands

Rain in the beechwood trees. Rain upon the wanderer

Whose breath lies cold upon the mountainside,

Caught up with broken horns within the nettled grass,

With hooves relinquished on the breathing stones

Eaten with rain-strokes.

From Hounds on the Mountain

Hounds on the mountain ....

Grey and swift spinning the quarry shall turn

At the cove’s ending, at the slow day’s breaking,

And lave the violent shadows with her blood.

From Graveyard

There is no town so quiet on any earth,

Nor any house so dark upon the mind.

Only the night is here, and the dead

Under the hard blind eyes of hill and tree.

Here lives sleep. Here the dead are free.

From Horseback in the Rain

To the stone, to the mud

With hoofs busy clattering

In a fog-wrinkled spreading

Of waters? Halt not. Stay not.

Ride the storm with no ending

On a road unarriving.

From Spring on Troublesome Creek

Not all of us were warm, not all of us.

We are winter-lean, our faces are sharp with cold

And there is the smell of wood smoke in our clothes;

Not all of us were warm, though we have hugged the fire

Through the long chilled nights.

From Mountain Dulcimer

The dulcimer sings from fretted throat

Of the doe’s swift poise, the fox’s fleeting step

And the music of hounds upon the outward slope

Stirring the night, drumming the ridge-strewn way.

From Child in the Hills

Where on these hills are tracks a small foot made,

Where rests the echo of his voice calling to the crows

In sprouting corn? Here are tall trees his eyes

Have measured to their tops, here lies fallow earth

Unfurrowed by terracing plows these sleeping years.

Poem: Stanza's from James Stills, "From the Mountains, from the Valley" 

Scrimshaw: Pending...

natural mystic

natural mystic

through the redwoods

my first time

she's showing-off her

grandest creations of growth

we drive through one

and dip and swerve

as the sunlight flickers

through the canopy like

celluloid in the booth

off the screen and

through my southern searching

down clear to the Sur

where men made mindful

of years which echo

heard symphonies and surf songs in so many pools

sunny days and the end

of anticipation

Poem: "natural mystic" by Rob Lescatre

Photo: Pittsburgh Plymouths cap 1957: Jack Kerouac’s typed, handwritten and illustrated fantasy baseball league was extravagantly detailed in old-fashioned composition notebooks. His players have distinct histories and personalities. Cities lost and regained teams; rosters and batting orders changed. A single season lasted 40 or 50 games, with an All-Star game and a World Series. His teams, mostly named for automobiles, included the Chicago Chryslers, Boston Fords, and Chicago Nashes. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, Kerouac added a black Cuban shortstop to the Philadelphia Pontiacs. Navy Pinstripe Round Crown, Embroidery on Navy Felt Logo.