Jays
Most often,
just blue streaks.
But they hop too.
**
Intimacy:
coming in touch
with another’s
particulars.
And furthermore, when
particulars
begin to chafe
and one does not
think to run,
maybe even
love.
**
4/28/14
The calendar says spring,
but outside, petals quietly pry
open the crisp grip
of the last of winter’s chill.
**
5/1
May breaks
with salmon-gold
and feint splotches
of dusty white
buckeye blossoms
beginning to bloom.
**
Have you ever noticed,
on these mornings when
windows have been open
through the night,
how dogs bark
almost-songs, how
children’s voices
waver the air, how
auto engines
turning over
sound the signature
of comfort ?
**
For Hayden Carruth 5/3
I wouldn’t have thought of it that way
if you hadn’t have spoken like that, but yes,
“acts of love,” gestures made in spite of ourselves,
because of ourselves, in light of their “impossible
indispensability.” The unmistakable,
if mysterious, clarity of intent
to give in kind,
of that received as gift.
**
5/6
Night’s winds drop away in the space of a breath.
At the turn of the head, morning’s quiet pulls eyes skyward
to the last of the stars to hold.
What might it mean to be readied to die into the light,
to be taken in to a way of death beyond shadow,
a singular sliver of light, lingered, then slipping back.
**
fog is air gone
to water not yet—still,
we breathe, get wet
**
Last year’s kale served us most of four months
in soups and salads, stir-fried and mixed, and crisped
in the oven for the grandkids,
never once complaining, nor wavering, neither asking,
nor receiving anything in return,
till now.
**
5/11
You’d think at seventy
I’d have given up following
this pestering pull, but here find myself
sitting on the floor, knees folded, thumbs touching,
breathing—not wondering, until now, how
much more might be left to let go, figuring,
as before, I’ll somehow know.
**
For the Poet-Monk, Gensei
--don’t call my poems, “poems” 5/12
The early signals of truly warm days
are as distinctive as the pull of a known name
just before its sounding,
an unmistakable taste, prior to, that somehow
nonetheless fully partakes—like the earliest hint
of heart’s wonder, the flutter before flight,
like the shadow that prefigures
the moon’s halo.
**
Buckeye Canyon
San Bruno Mountain 5/16
The grassy slopes are mostly brown now,
summer’s color, studded with shrub,
oak of all size and bay in canyons and gullies.
Even without traffic, trails have turned
to hard pack that lasts through till winter.
Walking in this place on weekdays,
one will meet with many spider webs
and invisible pockets of nectar filled air
that speak to the long held influence
of native buckeye.
