From a Poet

  Everything comes to light by circumstance, hateable or likeable only because of the atmosphere in which it appears.  The problem is most things are judged by circumstance; they are not seen for what they are, but what we think they are, and the bad luck of discriminating between whatever is imaginable in any given situation and our past conditioning is the conclusion to this.  We hear music and laughter at a distance and suddenly feel left out; we cannot go where we had planned and become morose; these are circumstance and condition coming into contact with the senses, that is all, but we make of it the meaning and direction of our lives thereafter.  Where is reality then?  Where is the place that is not affected by all this?  If we could stare all day at the branch of a tree with its leaves unfolding, we would never say they were opening, but if we look at it for only a moment day after day, we may see the change undeniably.  Circumstances change, the conditioned mind may see this c

  What is imagined is always different from what is seen.  Reality, in this sense, has a way of being mutually common; it remains a part of what we construe and a part of what actually happens.  Fools may find wisdom in the wise, but the wise are never found in foolish wisdom.  Diogenes in his tub, or hermits in their caves, are only a part of what we imagine ourselves to be, but their real person was actually every breath and every movement that we are right now.  The only difference is that imagination has more variables, thus able to portray the fantasy under a form of reality.  It is like taking a picture of a mountain, then believing the picture a more truthful portrayal than the moment we were on the mountain.  To see and to imagine is only to be, but the moment we accept either one as real is the moment we see ourselves in foolish wisdom. Douglas Thornton

  The Thunder-Spirit Night time--the orange Clouds withhold oncoming rain; Afar the thunder Lingers to oblivion: Restless are the ways That fulfill unspoken dreams Their lives amongst us, As time that summons passing As a startled bird To wake us in the moonlight Of a winter sleep. Douglas Thornton

  Nature Within And Without In an old chronicle a Shawnee Indian was recorded as saying the landscape that was overtaking his native land was artificial.  For the longest time I believed he meant that nothing was instilled with mystery; the unknown had became lost.  I always thought that this was the way to look at things, trying to find what was ancient or unremembered in the ever changing present.  Sometimes we look no further when a piece of advice is clear and endearing, and so I deplored what this man had deplored only because I respected what he said.  The starting point of someone else's unhappiness is usually the beginning of our own.  We suffer in unison and feel attached because we have taken up another's opinion, reinforcing it with our own distinctions.  After searching for so long and believing everything around me was artificial, that no true landscape existed, I looked back upon that Shawnee from long ago and found that he was not speaking of the outside world.