Divine Malaise

Finger tips know their own way 

and don’t keep it to themselves.

Don’t let the mind tell you it carries

most of the weight.

**

The plane turns south from Denver, 

late afternoon throwing light through cabin windows. 

Open prairie farmland, lightly dusted white, 

turns to rolling hills and deep creviced canyons. 

Sporadic stretches of forest, crosshatched roadways

and the sudden encroachment of housing tracts, 

the far-reaching outskirts of Colorado Springs, 

then the flaps-down drag of descent 

and arrival—old knots of kinship 

ready to be retied.

**

Out the backside of the house, we look south

over neighboring rooftops, to the Front Range,

lightly dusted slopes and ridge lines

fronting the higher, whiter, further out.

The home is quiet, a comfort. Sleep comes

as long and deep as winter’s nights. The brisk air

of morning suburban streets pleases.

Catching up is so relaxed, the range so wide, 

it’s hard to tell if anything need be caught at all.

The top right corner of the micro-wave

needs an extra push. We leave night-lights glowing, 

just in case—things being said 

that can only be said here.

**

—Making history, with Ted

The two of us, 

who were so many years ago moved so 

by this man’s words, the two of us sit and watch 

the turn table spin, silently listening 

to the needle-lifted tones of Kerouac 

reading his own. 

We, alone and only in the world this day, 

at this hour, with Jack…

Pretty much presumptuous, we observe; 

but likely true.

Same hearts as back then, set to beating a’new.

**

Our last night together, plans in place,

dinner waiting on the stove, Latin music

and a fire.

Direction affirmed without the aid of a pointing finger,

we find our way by listening—where the music

takes us, has taken us, trusting opening 

a different knowing.

**

The ancients bid farewell at river crossings, 

roughened bridges; but for us 

the early morning drive on darkened highways

holds the stories our love like a glove. 

Whatever’s not said, can’t be. 

A hug, a kiss, a wave.

The right seat at the airport yields clear views.

Snow streaked Pike’s Peak, clouds clinging about,

roused from the dark by high country light.

What can real prayer be, if not 

the gladdened edges of a heavy heart, 

and willing devotion to whatever unfolds of that.

**

the last few years have been uneasy

for me, and I don’t know, but now looking back 

an urging, a call, signals without ready answers 

no surface changes, yet swells, traces, as if  

of currents not fully followed, for fear, or something 

something resistant to definition, to calculation 

or design—no not those, something

once absent hesitation, something 

allowing

an edge, to be sure, a point perhaps, but of space, 

of time 

that shows itself and there reveals 

the all unseeable beyond 

an unsayable momentum and pull,

immediate but gentle beckoning

as the breeze that turns the leaf 

there touched by sun, caught by the eye

just passing by

on the path that called the foot that 

then took the step 

**

—An ode to one-offs

I don’t know,

I see now

not one thing

of one-offs

so desired,

except for

the music

in their count,

muttered crisp

to ears cupped

round their sound,

there picked up

with a smile.

**

Almost like over night, so many of the trees

along the streets have shorn their leaves entirely, 

as if winter, finally come for sure, leaves too little room 

for free-fluttering to ride in a sky constricted so with cold

it brittles all it touches. Lucky for us, the many and varied 

and deeper resiliencies that run in the blood of seasons.

**

I spread round the fruit trees today

with composted manure. Winter rains take it from here, 

to soil and roots into spring buds carrying seeds into blossom- 

yielding fruit, come summer.

Been here twenty years, the trees a bit less—my part each year,

less and even less—learned and learning how best 

to just stay out the way.

What a joy.

**

I saw on the desk calendar, predictions

of a fulsome moon sometime soon—but the rains

refuse to listen to such stories.

**

**

“Keeping company with moon and blossoms,

I spend my remaining life.

So clear—rains, clouds, and spirit.

I am awake, as are all things in the world.”

                                                                  —Ryokan