GHOST TOWN POETRY OPEN MIC
Hosted By Clark County Poet Laureate Christopher Luna
And Printed Matter Vancouver publisher Toni Partington

7pm
Thursday, May 8
Cover to Cover Books
6300 NE St. James Rd., Suite 104B (St. James & Minnehaha)
Vancouver, WA 98663

LGBTQ-friendly, all ages, and uncensored since 2004
printedmattervancouver.com

Featuring Daniel Skach-Mills:

Daniel Skach-Mills is an award-winning poet, author, and a former Trappist monk. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies ranging from Sufi magazine and The Journal of Daoist Philosophy and Practice to The Christian Science Monitor and Sojourners. Daniel’s books include: The Tao of Now (listed as one of the “150 outstanding Oregon poetry books” for Oregon’s 2009 sesquicentennial); The Hut Beneath the Pine: Tea Poems (a finalist for the 2012 Oregon Book Award); and In This Forest of Monks (a double finalist in both the Poetry and Spirituality categories of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and lauded as “a powerful work that touches, delights, and amazes” by the judge of the 21st annual Writer’s Digest Book Awards). Manzou (a Chinese farewell that literally means: walk slowly) was published in January 2014. A docent for Lan Su Chinese Garden since 2005, Daniel lives with his partner of 21 years in Portland, Oregon.

Listening To The Waterfall
I Remember The Abbey Bell

Where in the waterfall’s cascading cadence
can you detect past or future?
Where in an ocean wave’s ebb and flow
can you glimpse a single mistake?
Snow embraces everything it touches.
Plum blossoms fall wherever wind decides.
Slowing down, you catch up to what I’m saying.
Speeding up, you fall behind.
The human world can drive you crazy
if you let it.  Be like a bell,
that fills the air with clarity
by emptying itself
of its own sound.

—from Manzou
by Daniel Skach-Mills