Walking home...

—February, just past mid-month

A quarter moon rides a clear sky

high in the south west

well above the street a young skunk

skittles across

to slink beneath a small tree

of full-blossomed petals

open for coming sparrows, 

while all the while

well above my moving feet, 

my mind remains buried

in the nettles of an argument

yet to take place.

**

Cloud-cover blown past, 

morning light opens

early day’s promised hum

of glanced refusal 

of any claim or mark

but its full but passing 

attention—giving

cleansed by clinging’s absence 

engendering trust.

**

Sedona’s February sky

this second morning waking

is bone-crisp blue. 

Frost blankets.

Junipers flourish.

Blue-berried cones 

scatter mountain slopes

and fissured gullies

of rust red earth

like the ice pellets 

from our first night,

like so many word-seeds

waiting their tasting

into poems.

**

Multilayered faces

of earth’s understory

rise in silence

for the first bird to call.

Still inside, I think to chant,

but hold my tongue, 

remember the feel of breath

on outside air,

temper the urge

until then.

**

Poetry asks of the wonder 

of the power of words—not just some,

but the inexhaustible whole of language

in all iterations—the histories of being,

moment to moment presences, 

transformations of spoken thought-life

engaged in the world, always 

here and now.

**

Prayer flags

round the stupa

flutter wind-flow

murmurings,

asking only for listening.

**

—Metaphor is real

Walking this wild red rock 

reveals the deeper intention

repeated foot-falls hold central:

planting

—earth seeding to flower the word,

that is not the thing, 

working tensions unfolding 

meaning—

more and more and more.

**

The teacher did say,

the foundation of the Mahayana 

is the great earth—daichi.

**

That pink heat preceding 

the coming sun

confirms whatever all the earth holds 

well before shadow casts

nuanced suggestions of difference

even it doesn’t believe

for reasons antiquity knows

better than to look for.

Sky, having its own conversation

with clouds’ persistence,

lingers as always, 

but does not ponder.

**

For an entire week of mornings,

Juniper Pines spoke their names.

I mistakenly heard only one.

Berried cones did their best

to correct this blindness, finally going silent,

but never taking back their storied shades

of blue.

**

Looking back, I see a life long

on propitious accidents, slides of grace

and impulse resonant with unexplained clarity

as sure as the sun’s grip and the earth’s turn

within the stars.

**

We live in language.

We live linguistic realities

so closely concurrent with the world

about us, thoughts of interior-exterior 

are as misleading as the abiding silence

that holds it all is unknowable—each word,

a gifted extension of dimensions of being,

every word a phenomena of conjugation, 

regeneration, enacting perception within context,

each a gate opening meaning, allowing light

to the flow of unending possibilities 

of communal transformations, 

a many-faced, singular truth 

of rivulets and streams, ever making more

of our

 home. 

**

So, I try to remind myself 

to slow down, pay attention, 

say thank you.

**

Don’t know the name 

of that bright yellow flower

jutting from bulbs beneath

the soft dirt in the front—the wife

planted—five points, orange center.

But its bunches call aroma

almost as far as its colors sing.

**

—Three verses, after Han Shan

Scattered hillside flowers,

those cut and arranged in a vase—

which do you think knows better

the sense of the moon-lit night sky ?

*

Because it scratches the wife’s throat raw,

I’ve had to stop burning incense.

Aside from flowers, handfuls of words 

are all I’ve left to offer.

Both are borrowed, but both fresh 

every time.

*

The box is out along the road,

so even the mail man doesn’t come to the door. 

Late afternoons, sometimes we wave.