I am a retired neurologist, living in the Green Mountains of Vermont.  After finishing my training in the mile high city of Denver, I sold my pick up truck. My wife and I packed our gear and her dog into her VW station wagon and we headed East. Now, forty years, three cats, four dogs, three sheep, three horses, a large number of hens and a few assorted other animals later, we are still living on the same plot of land that we settled into when we arrived in Vermont.  The soil in the gardens is much richer.  The field that was overgrown with blackberry brambles is now an abundant planting of vegetables, flowers and fruit trees, but the view West over the Otter Creek valley toward the Taconic hills is still pretty much the same as it was then.  The sunsets are just as spectacular and the winters just a bit milder.

I spent my working life as a solo practitioner in a community hospital.  Although a city by Vermont standards, the population is smaller than some neighborhoods in NYC.  Being in a relatively small place for a relatively long time has given me a valuable perspective. I have been able to work with and get to know a variety of people in all sorts of different situations. I have been able to see people grow, age and die. I have been able to see people as they change and the community as it changes. I have also been able to see the threads of consistency in that change both here and extending far beyond the boundaries and culture of Northern New England.

Soon after my fortieth birthday, I committed to formally joining a Zen center and beginning to practice with a teacher.  This was a path that had intrigued me since my college years. I had read plenty of books and tried a little meditation here and there, but time was passing and I felt that I had to directly find out about this for myself. As anyone who has followed this path can tell you, it is not something that you do, get all figured out and then are done. It is a life process of both knowing and unknowing. It is completely interwoven with my going out into the woods to clear brush, fixing dinner, sitting at the computer, playing music, talking with friends and it suffuses these poems as well.