Winter sunshine
here brings
buds
and blossoms
spring shares
here.
**
morning sky
glowing east
two planes
a bird
west
moon
**
Sometimes
I find, I think
find textures,
directions to be,
then leaning here,
meet the day
as it is, and
its thinking being.
**
No way
really
to know
if the
ancients
knew more,
better,
at all.
And so
maybe
just stepped
one step
after
the next,
breathing,
watching,
hearing,
shitting,
touching,
feeling,
frowning,
smiling—
what else ?
**
The page flips, pen scratches,
small bird hops the fence top,
black head and tail bobbing
like the pen ink, black, jumping
line to line, meandering here
to there, then lifting quietly off
with morning’s troubled crust
tagging along.
**
Lots I don’t know,
uncertain of, but
I do know moonlight
in pre-dawn dark cold
makes a difference
worth singing.
**
Sometimes
here winter
feels spring—
sunlit
air speaks
as if—
I leave
my cave,
trees bud,
flowers
bloom
as if…
**
Pulled winter weeds
let loose
crumbling dirt
find its way back,
earth willing.
**
Sneakers,
loose black and white
high-tops,
the first
of the person
seen
following
their dance down
the stairs
across the street,
legs then torso, thin
young man,
face
bobbing
under
a black
baseball
cap.
**
Do you wonder
what songs breath sings
while we’re busy talking ?
**
I thought
at first
maybe
it was
too much—
but then
again
I thought:
OK.
**
Here
doesn’t throw or project,
rather pulls in and down,
fills the throat resonant
with present-tense.
Here.
**
Recently I came across a site for brief, concise,
creative and fiction-free essays, and wondered
rather excitedly, that prospect, potential effort,
to write personal truth, condensed, wondered
too how the poem might fit and felt so, but for
notions of authorship, because for the poem,
it’s words that suggest the poem, words lived
telling of our living, often before our thinking of it
begins, words that often leave unsaid that which
properly cannot be said, often then, larger truths,
beyond that seen or suspected by those of us
here with the words.
**
—South south-west
For me, here, center-front
courtyard, the night time sky
leaves behind half the moon
and one dim star beside.
**
Through the garage window, past
the hanging plant, a single bird
flying empty sky
reminds me naming offers but one
kind of satisfaction
and delight.
**
The lamp casts halos
on the pale green wall
and clean wood desk
under the window
where my sketchbook,
placed open-face, bathes
for enjoyment and critique—
in this light, empty pages
yet turned to
given consideration too.
**
Crescent moon, cold floor
and dreams of Coyote
come to haunt, or inspire…
at eighty-one, still climbing hills,
just whose rules apply?
**
I pick up the pen
gladly
let language
do its work
inside
and out.
**
How to explain, I can’t
why moving the pen,
the quiet click of keys
pulls me as it does,
but it does, even though
what a poem is
or is supposed to be,
even that, especially that,
I don’t really know, can’t tell
any more than the words
themselves might,.
And still, how wonderful it all.
**
It’s not a rule, but usually
news does not for me come
before reading missives from self’s
meetings with the new day, false-starts
aborted before even tentative beginnings,
but this morning I tripped,
and almost losing balance, reached
for ballast, caught hold of the pen
and gently settled
in the open palm
of the page.
**
I dreamt last night
into early morning of my human
ancestors, earth off-spring, whose calls
turned to words turned to song
over mornings unreachable by count
but buried in loin, in lung and in laughter,
and the wholeness of my life living and
dying shifted
in the warmth
of that gifted wanting
to sing.
**
I’m fortunate to know, to have worked with
a lot of really smart people, some brilliant;
and I’ve seen too the sometimes oppressive
burden lurking round the latter
can be overcome by unbounded capacity
for play.
That laudable goal of saving the world
so often and easily pivots to trouble,
while simply seeing the world
as worth saving
opens many more doors.
**
So often, so subtle
it does, we don’t even see
we talk our way
to meaning.
**
Hear here:
a simple turn of the head
and horizon’s lighted filling
flows in:
the world:
our living:
presence speaking:
