by Don Baird
Editor in Chief


Weaving down the path of the "Best Of Showcase" became, for me, a journey not unlike that of Basho's but in a much more comfortable environment - my green puffy chair of bliss!

"there in the trees to begin with just before and just after love" ~ (dr. richard gilbert) is a moment somewhere in the journey that stops me in my tracks causing me to breathe deeply, relax, rest, and enjoy my wonderment of the Universe - to feel how much I love it all.

Turning to the left, just slightly, is a moment expressed well by my wife:

as I awaken
you fade . . .
morning light

~ maria baird


And there in the trees, "morning light" brings a sense of everything loving from birth to death and back again.  How does one keep their love so close to their heart in sleep?  The beauty, the love, the memories of what once was, fading into the light of awakening, gently in the morning light or somewhere in the trees of dawning.

Does the morning and the next steps of your journey keep you - allow you to retain the mood of transition?  Or does the moment quickly slip by into the activities of the mundane:

riptide unable to help myself*     ~    Marion Clarke


The Universe continues her ways - transformations as the purest continuum of all things being all things becoming all things and transforming to share:

grass trembling
trembling under the sickle
of the moon

~  Beate Conrad


a philosopher
lost in thought
so too, the butterfly

~  Armando H. Corbelle


Turning toward the breeze, the trees wave, and the seals twinkle in their light barks of beckoning.  The butterfly is lost?  The butterfly doesn't care or possibly even know?  And yet, the endless beating of her wings chases her into another destiny - and soon.

lighting butter lamps
your death anniversary
what else can I do?

~  Sonam Chokki


"What else can I do"?  Nothing.  That's the point.  Nothing.  It seems we are all caught by this tide of coming and going ... and going and coming ... in the midst of transformation at all times, never ceasing to be and never ceasing ...  We journey; we sniff the beauty, mourn death, and hope.  It's all so perfect in the Tao.

But then, out of nowhere, while we wonder and ponder together of this and these:

windblown -
a dandelion

~  Diana Ming Jeong


And, it begins again - the cycle of life; the cycle of death; the cycle of being; and, the cycle of not being.  It begins again and will also remain as a beginning, a new beginning perpetually unfolding.  It's exciting; it's enlivening - to settle in the thought of transformation instead of the acuteness of death.  A perpetual state of becomingness begins to emerge; and so does passion and desire:

February wind
I want to believe
the crocus

~  Bill Kenney


And, so do I.  But what is the important message of the crocus?  Is the message a song of the crocus blossoming in Fall, Winter, and Spring?  Does this give us all hope that in any season, we can flower?  Can our souls flourish as our bodies drop off?  Does the crocus reveal to us, that without regard to season, our beauty is forever in the Great Tao ?

drinking tea
I swallow the

~  Elva Lauter


Yes.  I see that and agree!  And I sense that the Universe embraces and absorbs us right back.  The excitement of this unique and providential experience!  The guttural aspect of being - perpetually being in this great tide is deliciously the "moon and blossoms" of Basho's life and imagination - his reality.

This is one of the most private, personal, and alone journeys that exists - each one of us having destinies of "moon and blossoms" in explicitly personal, transcendent journeys called ourselves.

ahh rainbow!
the light passing
through me

~  Svetlana Marisova


. . . and we, through the light.

Don Baird