Friday, January 1, 2016

Joy does leave traces



Dreams of being my teachers
have followed me most
of my adult life.

More recently, I seem to have
lost them—must have taken
a different turn.


**


The calendar says winter. Rains return 
in the night for the last of the leaves,
each called by its earth name.


**


In the street in the dark in the rain, 
storm drains warn everyone 
who passes.


**


The quiet required of authentic attention
comes with it.


**


It’s pretty much dry
under the pine behind the school.
But I wouldn’t take the rain gear off
or tell the wind if I did.


**


Before the altar, nonsense syllables
sound truer—incense and fallen petals,
one for every direction.


**


Street lights hold intersections
ready throughout the night,

but stars have their own way,
scattered puddles

in darkened stretches
of roadways,

headed most anywhere.


**


Nothing ever happens more than once.
Let’s leave it where it falls.


**


Can’t fix the top of the chest; 

but the cedar center breathes 

just the same.


**


The subject is words,
those things things
bump into being…

some see a world
where no thing bumps 
any other—things become 

together, drift away, as they 
do, words too, so, 
don’t know

then, what more
might be said 
about that.


**


The lamp with the shade 
reflects windows 

that allow lights outside 
to come in.


**


it occurs to me now
how we know this silence
of which we speak—we hear it…


**


life-death, for certain includes 
the occasional resistant encounter, 
like a skein of sheerest silk jostled and shaken 
unrolls of itself to its fullest possible length, 
there and then naturally its lightest


**


I met Ho Tai face to face
there in the garden
under the fig tree

where he sits on rocks
that hold the slope, and wondered, 
as I spoke to him aloud, 

what he’d think,
if he weren’t like a rock,
what he’d say

to a fool clearing leaves
from under tree, speaking 
to a statue,

and concluded he’d likely do 
as he does as a statue—raise his hands

to the sky, and laugh.

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