August 2012

August  2012

The sleep of old age is heavy,

it lingers, holds on, even as there seems

never quite enough of it,

or so it’s been for me of late.

Except for those dark mornings of course,

the only alternative to rise before day break,

walk those slow breathing hills

that accept any careful step,

of any age,

and offer back a bedrock peace

that carries as weightless

as lingering starlight.

**

Six days in the Trinity Alps

Upper South Fork Lake

In first morning light, he slowly skirts

its western perimeter, surface

so placid it captures the entirety

of the tree-studded cirque

to the tiniest detail—I know

there’s only one of him, walking carefully

along the edge, yet I can’t decide

which one to watch.

**

Mavis Lake

The rocks hold their place

in sun and shade alike, tall pines

whisper or rush, breeze or wind,

either conversation enough.

And we sit and wait for shadows

and for the fish to find the surface, ripples

lipping stories of cloud-filled skies.

Later, we’ll walk back.

**

Fox Creek Lake is home

to fish, many fish, who eat  

only what the lake serves up.

**

Since we have a signal, I’m photographed

by phone, which sends the photo to the wives, via

the net—place, date and elevation.

All the while, I write poems of this place and time,

will carry them with me from this elevation, to everywhere

I’ll ever go, signal or no.

**

The young eagle sits on the limb,

looking down on the lake,

like us…given enough time,

it too will leave.

**

We have a plan,

hatched over two

servings of soup.

There was a bite.

Wait for the sun

to fall behind

the ridge, shadow

the waiting lake.

Try once again,

leaving dinner

to figure itself—

after brandy.

**

A poem’s worth

As if in response to the unarguable purpose of solitary song,

the setting sun suddenly illumines the lake’s eastern shore,

lifts the rising pines in witness

to the slow turn of summer

and the promise

of  a cloudless night.

**

Mavis Lake Blessing

To wake with morning’s coming,

leaving dreams behind.

To see the pines

against the sky.

To feel apart of

the closeness.

***

Three poems from San Luis Obispo

They call it the marine layer here,

the ocean’s push, above the costal range,

past the vine-filled valley, to the low slopes

where we sit in the last of its reach,

a graced witness, breath against the face,

shoulders warm in first sun light

and the cradled flutter, the silence

about the beat of hummingbirds’ wings.

*

Over too many glasses of wine, a satisfying meal,

after a long day in the hills at the edge of the ocean,

we share stories not yet told, retell ones already known,

to remember separate journeys come together

to bring us this far, to this age, to these days,

still friends, still remembered.

*

Before the sun finds its way

through layers of misted cool, he walks

the length of the drive to retrieve

the morning paper, while hummingbirds

breathe their blurred and flurried dance

at near-empty feeders,

taking all that’s offered there.

Home is what it is, implicit in time and place,

in the varied contexts of need and desire,

a web, the stretch and reach of intention

and remembrance, a resonance as nuanced

as the glance of rustled movement

from another room,

as the crunch of gravel under a foot,

a well-known path in the echo of early morning.

**

Artless

Artless, the laying down

on the page

of words of the day

turned awake of its own,

its time unfurled in those

in turn concerned

to make of the day

what it of itself would make.