Stephie

Stephie studied fine arts and spent her working life in an art museum in Hawaii. She was a Registrar, a person who keeps track of art: the hanging of it, the shipping and crating and un-crating of sculpture, canvases, and precious beautiful things (Japanese snuff boxes, tiny jade carvings). 

She’s a Buddhist who trained with Maezumi Roshi for years and went to Japan to study more deeply, lived in a monastery in Kyoto until repeated cases of pneumonia sent her to Hawaii. There she was Robert Aitkin Roshi’s secretary and continued her sitting practice. With such interests and skills, she ended up living in the same building I do, a place for aging people who have not accumulated material wealth.

She writes under the name of Pine Wind. Three of her poems:

Oncoming train—
settling on the tracks
cherry petals


Early autumn—
still woven through my white quilt
your black hair


The hawk circles
Scanning the earth not for prey
But for the gloved arm,
The tethering perch,
The warm roost, the hooded dark.

She had a terrible year last year with cancer, mastectomy, a serious fall, and a nearly-deadly infection, but she is slowly and surely climbing toward wellness. I took her out for dessert this afternoon to celebrate her 81st birthday. She had white velvet apricot-camomile cake; I had a layered confection, a spumoni panna cotta flavored with pistachio, strawberry, and chocolate.

P.S. I made it to the gym for water-walking this morning.