Calistoga poems

Calistoga, off the main roads

To rest, delivered in the page, to deliver

to the page the mind making sense to itself

in words making sense of the world

making peace with itself

in words seeking ease,

tensionless harmonies

of sense and sound,

cured on the curl of the tongue

turned back around

to silence.

July 2

**

It’s a settled quiet, that of this place

of oaks and shrubs and sun-covered hills,

where the spread of wings claims currents

that cannot be seen,

where among the trees the only trace

trails the longest of the moss,

and that, imagined

before believed.

The perpetual push to peace

is of the mind.

Simply to notice, is enough

for the heart to know.

July 3

**

I could study, but morning openly invites such silence

as it layers dusts of light over brittle grasses, as it softens roughened barks

with its breath. I could study, I think, then know

that this that I do studies

what’s being done, not what we’ll do,

tends to the going, not to the where, follows

the quieted heart again

to the truth

of who we are, is

who we are with.

July 4

**

And further considerations, after the fact…

Curves, dots, straight lines linked

together, nothing holds true

enough to hold me--

even when sounded, words don’t

justify the felt.

Yet I keep at it,

day by day, pushing words out

into an always

receptive silence that takes

all that’s given, suggests all held back.

No wrong position,

no stance unacceptable,

free to move about

within an ever-changing

world, where the only password is yes.

**

Summer blooms,

despite the stretch of mists’

moist blanket, low

along the northern coast

--summer scents

and jacaranda blossoms--

multi-layered metaphors

for the unnamable magic, calling

the many things that are not

that, enabling the mind

to taste anew

what senses already know.

Amazing!