Writings

Most of my writing is in English. I grew up bilingual and we speak more English than Dutch at home.

(A Scroll for the Untuned Disciple)

(Dedicated to my very patient mandolin teacher Wander van Duin)

I.
The mandolin sits in its case:
a little boat waiting for tides.
My fingers are the clouds
that will teach it weather.

II.
First attempts sound like
sparrows arguing on a tin roof.
This is correct.
Even the concerto was once
an unplucked string.

III.
When my fingertips protest,
I remember:
Calluses are the body’s
first engraving.
Pain is just the strings
whispering their path into my skin.

IV.
Practice is not repetition
but the art of finding
the same river
every time it has changed.
Today’s clumsy G chord
is tomorrow’s
accidental wisdom.

V.
Ask the masters:
"How long until I play beautifully?"
They will answer:
"About as long as it takes
a bamboo grove
to grow a flute."

VI.
Some days I am the player.
Some days I am the string
being played.
Most days I am the cat
who sleeps through
all the scales.

Postscript from the Mandolin:
"I am just wood and metal
until you make us both
forget what we are."

More...

    The sun rises.
    The sun sets.
    The wind
    doesn’t count
    the hours.

    Yesterday’s rock,
    tomorrow’s bird,
    today’s coffee cup.
    Life pours itself
    into endless shapes
    and laughs at the labels.

    Feed the hungry,
    then walk away.
    The river doesn’t
    thank the rain.

    Let them chant.
    Let them kneel.
    The river
    never asks
    for permission
    to flow.

I.
She is not running but writing:
each dash to the door
a stroke of invisible calligraphy,
each loop back to me
the hook of a question mark
demanding an answer.

II.
The garden is her parchment,
the lawn her unfurled scroll.
When she becomes the brushstroke,
I must become the clumsy ink
that chases but never catches.

III.
Two rounds is all the scripture requires,
no more, no less.
Then the revelation ends
as abruptly as it began,
leaving me panting
in the cathedral of ordinary grass.

IV.
Her attention is a mayfly prophet:
here with urgent truth,
gone before I kneel.
The sacred texts say only:
"Again.
But not now."

V.
Ask the grass:
"What does she want?"
The wind replies:
"To run.
To be seen running.
To stop."

More...

VI.
This is not a bed but a slow river:
each pillow a stone worn smooth
by the turning of seasons,
each pelt a cloud that forgot to float away.

VII.
Tiseye comes as a small dark tide,
claiming her kingdom of crumpled sheets.
We are both natives here:
she the hunter, I the landscape.

VIII.
Downstairs, Squeaky
curves into her basket like a crescent moon.
Two nests breathing together
across the silence of walls.

IX.
The sheepskins remember:
how winter light pools in their folds,
how fingers become pilgrims
seeking the sacred in texture.

X.
Ask me: "Where does the nest end
and the world begin?"
The duvet answers:
"Nowhere. Everywhere. Here."

More...

I.
A bed is a nest is a bed:
no beginning, no edge,
only the slow archaeology of sleep:
pillows as river stones,
sheepskins as drifted snow.

II.
Tiseye comes and goes,
her paws stitching dreams into the duvet.
She knows:
a true nest has no inside or outside,
only the warm dark where her claws knead galaxies.

III.
I am the egg and the bird.
The mattress remembers my shape
better than my own bones do.
All night, the merino pelt whispers:
"You are allowed to be this soft."

IV.
At dawn, Squeaky downstairs
stretches in her basket:
a satellite nest, orbiting mine.
The whole house hums with the silence
of creatures who need no permission
to rest.

V.

Ask me: "Is this a bed or a world?"
And I reply:
"Yes."

More...

    Steal the rules.
    Bury them in the garden.
    Water them with laughter.
    See what grows.

    Let them claw at the walls.
    I am the crack
    where the light
    gets in.

    They say ‘fit in.’
    I say ‘fit where?’
    The river never asks
    for the shore’s permission.