NEW YORK NEW YORK

"It's a hell of a town.  The Bronx is up and the Battery's down."

I can be here and in Kathmandu, Nepal.

 I can be thinking about the people and animals shaken

by the worst earthquake since 1934,

 about the stranded climbers and the dead.

(5000 and counting)

 I can know, I can mourn and I can pray.

 https://youtu.be/EbG0ljkBlu8

~*~

I can show up on Monday night,

join my writing group "The Moving Pen" for a final reading.

(screen capture partial of photo by Elizabeth York)

 I can appreciate our brilliant leader Frank Haberle,

drink wine and share cookies with our friends.

 I can lose my thoughts in an audio book

till sleep comes.

 I can sit Zazen with the New York Center for Contemplative Care,

find space for peace.

 I can be surprised by a protest while waiting for the bus home,

and capture some of it on a brief video.

(First a surge of 20 or so young men all in black and many with masks ran past me at break neck speed.  Then one kid was caught and cuffed and the march continued across 23rd Street  toward the West side.  I'd been seeing helicopters circling and eventually, when I got on the bus, ambulances and police vans followed.)

https://youtu.be/cEJ7ooYOETw

I can think about Baltimore, about all the protest marches all the way back to the sixties.  I can mourn for all the people, for all suffering beings, for the planet.

I can pray.