Dharma Poems and Other Writings (BK-32)

Poetry for me has been a way to record my inner changes and experiences. I don’t write poetry that often, but when I do it always is in response to some realization or other, something I am going through that finally becomes clear to me.

And I don’t just try to “write a poem.” I use poetry as a way of clarifying my experiences, as a way to lock my emerging realization into a form that can serve to bring to mind again and again the actual experience I am trying to understand. If I can capture the experience in a poem, I know that I have realized something or other about myself and my life. And by carefully reciting the poem aloud to myself, by articulating each word with understanding, the idea the poem captures can live again and be present in the mind.

Whether others can read my poetry this way, whether the captured vision will be present in the minds of readers, I can’t say. I only know it works for me and I write these poems for my own inner satisfaction. Nothing in this world is as satisfying to me than realization and a new poem. That being said, I hope those who read the poems in this book may enjoy them too.