5.6.2026 – not here and now but

not here and now but
now and here – a matter of
life, death, ticking watch

Fish Haul Beach at Low Tide – Spring 2026

Adapted from the collection of poems, After Ikkyū & Other Poems, where Jim Harrison writes:

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don’t know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.

This collection of poems by Jim Harrison, released in 1996, is deeply influenced by his long-term engagement with Zen practice and is named after the eccentric 15th-century Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun and was republished in The Complete Poems of Jim Harrison by Jim Harrison (Denver: Copper Canyon Press 2022).

Mr Harrison once wrote, To write a poem you must first create a pen that will write what you want to say. For better or worse, this is the work of a lifetime.

Not here and now

but now and here.

If you don’t know the difference is a matter of life and death,

get down naked on bare knees in the snow …

and study the ticking of your watch.

Not sure OF the difference of here and now or now and here so I am studying the ticking of my watch.

But I wear a watch that winds itself as I walk.

If its ticking I must be walking and if I am walking now I am here now.

For reasons of its own, my watch has stopped.

Now not sure if I am here.

5.4.2026 – often to win us

often to win us
to harm, instruments of
darkness tell us truths

Into yet another Monday of my life and Big Bill’s Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow was running through my mind which led me to look, anew, at the play Macbeth and I came across Banquo’s speech where Banquo says …

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s
In deepest consequence …

I need not remind you that this is prefaced by Banquo’s question, What, can the devil speak true?

According to Wikipedia, Banqo or: Lord Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, is a semi-historical character in William Shakespeare’s 1606 play Macbeth.

In the play, he is at first an ally of Macbeth (both are generals in the King’s army) and they meet the Three Witches together.

After prophesying that Macbeth will become king, the witches tell Banquo that he will not be king himself, but that his descendants will be.

Later, Macbeth in his lust for power sees Banquo as a threat and has him murdered by three hired assassins; Banquo’s son, Fleance, escapes. Banquo’s ghost returns in a later scene, causing Macbeth to react with alarm in public during a feast.

It came to me that Banquo would fit right in with today’s executive branch of Government.

He would fit in, but what might Banquo say if he were here?

I asked ChatGPT and I got this:

If Banquo from Shakespeare’s Macbeth were suddenly serving at a modern table and addressing Donald Trump, he’d likely speak in measured, wary verse—ever mindful of ambition, power, and the uneasy nature of prophecy.

Something like this:

“My lord, though fortune sets thee high in state,
Yet crowns are hollow when they court the storm.
I’ve seen how words, once feathered with fair hope,
May turn and prick the hand that feeds the flame.
So tread thou light where praise grows loud and fast,
For vaulting pride oft breaks the rider’s back.”

Ever mindful of ambition, power, and the uneasy nature of prophecy.

For vaulting pride oft breaks the rider’s back.

Banquo might well say this.

But who in the executive branch would understand it and its warnings.

5.3.2026 – the running water

the running water
home of living fish and
silver of the sun

The mountains stand up around the main street m Harper’s Ferry
Shadows stand around the town, and mist creeps up the flanks of tall
rocks

A terrible push of waters sometime made a cloven way for their flood
here

On the main street the houses huddle, the walls crouch for cover
And yet— up at Hilltop House, or up on Jefferson’s Rock, there are
lookouts.

There are the long curves of the meeting of the Potomac and the
Shenandoah,

There is the running water home of living fish and silver of the sun
The lazy flat rocks spread out browns for green and blue silver to run
over

Mascots of silver circles move around Harper’s Ferry
No wonder John Brown came here to fight and be hanged
No wonder Thomas Jefferson came here to sit with his proud red head
writing notes on the great State of Virginia
Borders hem the town, borders of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland,
Be absent minded a minute or two and you guess at what state you
are in

Harper’s Ferry is a meeting place of winds and waters, rocks and ranges

Landscapes Including States of the Union by Carl Sandburg as publishing Good Morning America in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950).

Yes I went for the one line, There is the running water home of living fish and silver of the sun, to go with my photograph of Horse Creek on Hilton Head Island.

It is not Harper’s Ferry.

This is Harper’s Ferry with me on Jefferson’s Rock and my brother Eddie standing in front of me.

As Mr. Sandburg writes:

or up on Jefferson’s Rock, there are
lookouts.

No wonder Thomas Jefferson came here to sit with his proud red head
writing notes on the great State of Virginia.

I have to point out that visitiors are no longer allowed to sit of stand on Jefferson’s rock.

Today there are guard rails to protect the rock.

In Jefferson’s day there were no were upright stone post to keep the rock in place.

BUT I DIGRESS.

My photo is of the sun over Horse Creek in the center of Hilton Head Island.

Miles from anywhere and miles from anywhere.

Be absent minded a minute or two and you guess at what state you
are in.

5.2.2026 – define a tyrant …

define a tyrant …
man unfit to be ruler
of a free people

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress, in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Declaration of Independence, In Congress, July 4, 1776.

In a recent opinion piece, What Would the Nation’s Founders Think of Trump? 250 Years Later, Here Is the Answer, by Stacy Schiff, Ms. Schiff points out that the Declaration of Independence lists grievances against King George III.

Ms. Schiff then takes note of 27 of the grievances and applies them to today, writing, In 2026 they also feel miserably familiar.

Ms. Schiff writes, The Declaration cannot be said to be having a happy semiquincentennial. Very little about the document feels remotely self-evident today. 

She ends her piece with this line.

At the end of his inventory of abuses and usurpations, Jefferson slips in a zinger: “A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

The new nation went on to create a Constitution so that the Nation might live and through that Constitution, our three branches of Government were set up as a system of Checks and Balances.

A system of Balance that required activity from all three Branches.

Those guys in Philadelphia never considered that two of the three branches would go AWOL.

Leaving a tyrant as a ruler of a free people.