Ghost Light

I’m thrilled to be a part of The Zen Space’s Summer 2026 Showcase and Anthology — an anthology of short form Japanese inspired micropoetry promoting themes of compassion, understanding, environmentalism and fellowship, harnessing the tools of haiku and senryu verse, edited by Marie Marshall and curated by Jerome Berglund.

ghost light
the friar's lantern
clouding the bog

Guest Editor Jerome Berglund also graciously included his thoughtful impressions on my haiku – the seventh to appear in this anthology – in this commentary:

Numerology: Seven can exemplify perfection when it represents the unifying in liberal arts and sciences of the three spiritual or language schools (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the four earthly (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy) or mathematical.

Masterful application of a provocative classical kigo is just perfect, and how this ties both to the important past (am reminded of Jesuit activities in Japan and elsewhere) and also how forces of organized religions – in good and bad faith – have been wildly impactful in the most positive and negative missions over the years. The verb ‘clouding’ and subject of ‘bog’ (reminiscent too of our ubiquitous swamp of much conversing and disingenuous promises to drain it) perfectly describes how convoluted history and the present are both, and with that lantern – which recalls liberty’s torch, and Prometheus’s, Lucifer’s too no less – the dichotomy between illumination associated with forces of good versus its insinuating with evil, well the many fruitful foods for thought in this piece are absolutely stunning!

What a great honor to be included in such an impressive publication.

Click here to purchase the print version of The Zen Space Anthology, or read it on The Zen Space website here, or download a PDF version here.