Not so poem-like

         “Haiku-like haiku are not particularly bad.

          But haiku that don’t seem haiku-like at all—

          nowadays that’s the kind I’m after.”

                                       —Santoka  12/8/1938

Writing, it might be said,

is the interior making visuals,

in hopes of lasting.

**

Ananda

Santoka’s poem about the bell

at Eiheji, reminds me of remembering you 

when hearing the bell

when there.

**

Certain liturgies…

The wife and grandson sleep

in the next room. The coffee cup 

is empty. Light comes

to the window, calls the pen 

to love the page.

**

Unless the determination

of value is your own,

it’s worthless.

**

What to make of it all

is often dressed down 

as too impractical 

to be addressed

in light of all 

that needs to be done 

in order to be done 

with it all, after all.

**

You may 

recall

I spoke 

a bit

ago

about

trying 

to stay

a bit

off balance

and I 

find it

harder

to do

than you’

d think.

Is this

signal

or sign

or just

the way

it is?

Poets,

that Bronk

poet 

at an-

y rate, 

the care-

ful one, 

says something

like, who

needs to

make of

a life

something,

when all

at hand

is what

life makes

of it

all al-

ready?

Where is

what’s off

balance 

in this 

? ?

**

Fremont CA is flatland, off the bay’s edge,

along the edge of north-south I-880—

walls buffer freeway noise, and more walls 

the noise along its four-lane interior roads.

The only elevation here is the freeway overpass, 

rising slopes of grass, peppered with trees 

full with fall—the slopes bottoming at fences 

bordering a sea of backyards.

If moved to look down through the trees, 

to the leaf-softened stretch along the fencing, 

to look for a sign, a trace, feint leavings 

of passing breaths, one finds none.

**

Tea leaf residuals

make mornings

clearer.

**

I still take notes, but without thinking

I’ll ever consult them—aging 

teaches influence imprints 

its own way. Its time

is my time.

**

Awe is that rising 

rooted in gratitude.

**

There’s this impulse, this movement toward

whatever the discernible limits—even in the comfort

of the forest clearing, we dream what’s out there

will come for us with morning.

**

The room’s silence is often disturbed

by books leaning this way and that,

piled akimbo, papers, scraps, jutting here,

bunched there, so many teasing fingers,

lovers and friends reaching out for me

to reach back.

**

To Steve B.

You once said poems 

I’d addressed to others

you didn’t read, because, 

well, how could you expect 

to understand? So, this one 

is for you. Hope you do.

**

Seeing

Early morning young skunk

starts to cross the road—we stop

and turn, we two, grateful for the light 

that holds us both,

for each other.

**

Night time rains give way to sharp chills 

above wet streets. Sidewalk lights click off. 

The hardware store guy elbows his way 

through the back entrance. I wade the stream 

of someone’s cooking breakfast.

**

Trees lean every which way for light enough 

for their needs—we too lean and reach 

for the sense we need 

of what our senses need 

to bring to us.

**

Hovering blossoms,

a quivering branch,

and that quick-headed

hummingbird.

**

Fortunate for us

writer-poet types,

no one word 

ever gets

the last

word.