Thursday, December 17, 2015

Like weeds, the poems


11/21

Try to stand in the ocean
and you sink.


**


Owl Canyon

Fog clings low to slopes warmed red
with berried toyon. Coyote brush 
buds white on green. 

And willows layer leaves 
to ground there yellowed.

Some voices are best heard
with the feet.


**


11/25

In the end, words lead to silence. The reverse is true too, 
but too close a call to discern. Just string them out 
to their natural end—there it is.


**


Darkness holds outside the window 
and up from there 

a star
or two, 

muted clouds and whispers 
of moon-glow.


**


11/31

This morning’s words waft
like air-borne leaves in winter light. 
Certain uncertainties recovered.


**


12/1

Creek

Swift running shallow waters keep clear 
the undisturbed bed.


**


On the day before this,
in the still before the sun,

a hummingbird darts

shaded vines 
and wilted blooms,

each of us 
giving all we are.


**


12/2

San Bruno Mountain

And beyond this, beyond these bluffs 
of sand and grass and ancient 
butterflies, 

a city sits in hills that dance 
in winds that sing 

in skies that still watch 
the change

still now 
underway.


**


That we begin again to listen and to hear 
the things of the world, does not mean 
they have been gone.


**


12/4

Everyone, everything ever, tells us
over and again, who we are with them.


**


12/6

“It was like our lives,” he said
of how it was back then for them,

which is how I remember it for us.
Our lives.


**


Too much is lost in taking things 
just for utility—numbers taken for fun

can be dropped without anything
breaking. I try to keep it that way,

with words too. Let them do whatever
they seem to want to do. See where that 

leads. You know, like William Stafford 
once said, “what the day says, 


that’s what I say.”