September 2012

September Poems

I think of recluse masters a century away,

I nurture your secrets. Your true nature

eludes me here, but taken by quiet, I can

linger this exquisite moon on out to the end.

                                            T’ao Ch’ien

Preparing for my 69^th in the Sierra,

Freemont Lake at 8,000 feet

Leaning against the rocks,

wondering at the movement of the years

and the certainties gathered here—ablutions

on a bouldered slope, chanting in trees

in the coming dark, in the unfolding entirety

of the life I’ve known as my own.

I write, but poems don’t find the page. So I listen

for the wind, for trees turning to shadow, for the stars

to signal of sky life

as clearly as I hear the waters 

on the shores of this lake.

And they come,

one, then another, and another

of that silence so ancient, so subtle

that time can’t capture, nor distance determine

the closeness so thorough

as only a poem

can know.

And I’m here, so I write, in the headlamp’s light.

As a breeze from the lake lifts the edge of the page,

I’m here, so I write.

**

Day three

We hike the lake’s perimeter today,

first the overlooking outcrops,

nearly a thousand feet above,

then descend

to slow-walk, explore and fish.

As we rest in the shade, from among the pines

on the other side, an aspen waves,

its yellow wave.

**

Evening prayers

Clouds streak pink,

westward peaks shadow,

the lake grown still

and soundless—we speak

of the sacred, of the day, of early departure,

then slip into our bags for the night—

on a scrape of rock, aside a mountain lake,

in a sea of slow-turning stars.

**

I’ve learned much from the scholars,

and stand indebted as such, but it’s been the poets

who’ve taught me to watch

the misted push of ocean air

along this drift of ridge, through the window

of the place we’ve together built and call home.

**

Morning comes gray

with heavy fog,

Saturday sounds

from the street out front.

Sluggish, as well as

the usual foolish,

I pad around bare-foot,

looking for my favorite cup.

To write something new,

or prepare a few of the old

for the world at large—indecision,

that old friend

suggests both.

So here I sit, over a cup of coffee,

celebrating sixty-nine years

with a song.

                     9/29/12