A Few Lines for My Daughter
by Jeff Knaebel 25 August 2006

I’m thinking of your poem
happy horse brown eyes
chewing chin pony whiskers
apple crunching
sticky hands wiped on trousers

“This is my life,” she said

Stick to it, I say
persist and persist and persist
And dream not of wealth
nor name nor fame
but focus on love
here, now, always, only

Bright and shining,
holy and radiant
is the humble heart that loves
without grasping nor getting

 Many are the dreams of love
vanished for this round,
just as day is gone
when the rising westward prow
of spaceship Earth
pitches up rounding past the sun

What to do – one does not live forever!
For me, the gift of Buddha
is awareness of countless aeons
to finish my work
and ultimately to graduate

So I say to you Dear Daughter,
dream, yet plow your dreams with work
and live full in the day
for now is all there is and always here

Love life, that Life may love you
And choose not will-o’-the-wisp passion
but hold your hand steady
on the plow
and grow the garden of your heart

And now bear with your Old Bird’s musings –
an old man talking to himself …

Life is about living
and loving
There is no money in this –
only life

It is about the living
who are dying -
but not killing
It is about loving all beings
who live and breathe
and stir under the sun
It is about Gratitude
for the pumpkin
the Good Earth let me help grow
which gave its fiber
that I may live

Rather than all the money
and power and kingdoms
would I have the look of respect
and communion
in my brother’s eye
when I hand to him the fresh green produce
of my garden
and he hands to me
his tool box well made,
four square and true
each exchanging by hand
a manifestation of heart
Nothing remaining on one side
or the other
to be deposited for increase at interest,
wealth without labor

I wonder, will Brotherly Love
ever be realized
by the mankind who works for money only
or earns by machine, cutting the earth?
I walk among my vegetables
and doubt it.
How can robot cyber-man feel this?

I suppose there must be a place
for abstract cipher-beings who live virtual lives
gazing at a cathode ray tube, mindlessly
for I am seeing it,
and nothing not meant to be
can exist …

But it is a strange sight to me,
it does not feel like humanity
It is something else,
I know not what

  For I cannot understand a world
where the blood of children
blown to bits
flows in the streets
children’s blood
to beget an increase in corporate dividends
the Gross National Product
and our common debt to the Central Bank.

This is the world of mind
acting without heart
cold as black space
and as empty void of meaning

How we have twisted ourselves
and lied
to where we call this living
It is strange to me.