the days remaining...

 

“The god we are in is exact.”

                        —Alice Notley

Even given all the players

and the plays, our world,

and each of ours,

is what only it can be.

We buddhists think 

of this as karma—action(s)

playing out the only game 

in town.

**

When nothing comes to mind

but its waiting, is that empty

mind, or is waiting something,

some thing, or is mind

that waiting without something, 

nothing, no thing in mind, 

an empty-handed mind, like

or unlike the one here reaching

for something, any thing,

and even if coming up empty,

pregnant with that reaching-

wanting, there waiting.

**

Does the quiet moon

high in the sky to the west

think of coming fullness ?

I wonder if it forgets 

its crescent self ?

Do you think

it’s exactly the all we see

of it, or is there more ?

**

Ripe figs droop

with weighty fullness

unmistakeable when seen

for what it is, obvious

on sight, even for those

who don’t know, then do.

**

An old friend once said the nembutsu 

will have arrived for sure here, only when

hakujin ho-bos carry it in their hearts, know it

as their words, as naturally as the knapsacks 

on their backs—he was too modest

to be named here, but first in my book, 

and I’ll be damned if I don’t do my best 

to follow both him and his murmuring. 

**

Heat-wave temperatures drop

and the world turns new.

Early hints of cool on the winds

at sundown.

Bodies ease. 

Labored air gives wing to dreams

and a smile wraps the glass

of cool white wine.

Elemental facts,

Merton says, just happen,

like poems, like poets,

just come and just go.

All the more reason to just watch,

just listen.

**

—The fires 2020

But today’s fogs flirt and curl 

in blended discolor 

and coughed orange haze, 

first light quickly receding into the dark 

shroud

that asks inside lights to stay lit 

until time to greet the coming night.

**

Dharma study.

Is there any other?

You know, what’s true

to the world, what’s real,

how it works—what other

study than that?

**

—In times of pandemic,

above the masks,

eyes—the only window now,

opened or closed by every 

accompanying move.

**

The smoke clears at day’s end

enough to show sky’s blue 

bleed through, but not enough 

to tell—only darkness does that.

**

William Stafford’s last poem, last day, 

he watches his hand. And Robinson Jeffers, 

the third to the last of the unpublished: “Hand.” 

And too, here, now, me and mine—glad 

for the hand that moves.

**

Morning’s mist blankets the streets, changes hills 

and trees to distant shadows, a soup, heavy 

with humidity, quiet in the honesty 

of its own weight.

We’ve studiously avoided the news these days 

so close to elections—I once taught my kids to pee 

against roadside trees, to ease the call;

never thought the trees to be gone, nor the streets 

boot-deep in piss—spurious speech, 

ill-intentioned, calculated, thick 

with deceit.

Humans, at our worst, or is this the best to expect ? 

With the world “ours,” what will we 

do next?

Maria Sabina, illiterate sage and healer, teaches,

“Language is wisdom.” What could she mean by that?

She could mean, couldn’t she, that language 

is birth-right free, given, a natural extension 

of lived reciprocity,  

shared spontaneously, and a spontaneous sharing; 

self-sustaining, regenerative growth, processing, 

carrying its own history and reaching, always reaching 

beyond itself into the world at large, spreading, 

rejuvenating, commingling the collectively learned 

across generations and geographies;

something always ours, never ours alone, 

as likely to speak and to sing us, as it is to leave us 

speechless.

The wisdom that is language is gifted, irrepressible spirit, 

seen by some as a threat, to be thwarted, impeded,

and as told by poet Cecillia Vicuna, it is impeded 

only by “injustice and exploitation.” 

And as we wade our way today, and bathe ourselves,

perhaps, in congratulatory stories of democracy, 

Vicuna asks that we consider this: that “demo,” 

the root for democracy, comes from the root “da, dai,” 

to divide—“da-mo” meaning the division of society, 

“demos,” division of people, land. “(Those who divide 

among themselves what there is.)”

                            -From her

                              Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water 

**

**

                                  

“The poet says, 

                                         come with me:

                 I will be writing.”

                                     —Luis Alberto Urrea

—What, Why…

If poet is witness, then what’s seen is 

everything—from here, then:

poet could mean buddha-being,

where intention is everything, everything known 

from what’s seen from where you are 

and given to the page of the world 

then there—

poet witness, then, offers the hand that builds 

the bridge that knows no borders, the hand 

that is never alone, 

that reaches into the fullness offered in the day 

at hand.

Fire and Smoke

 

      “There are only two dates—that of my birth

       and that of my death. Between one and the other 

       all the days were mine.”

                                    —Alberto Caeiro

Each meeting is new, I believe, no repeats.

Yet there seem so many times something else

at work—so I felt this morning, after weeks

of distress, an alignment, if you will, a subtle shift

into place familiar, carrying signals, promises

of a steadiness, if not new, not unfamiliar.

**

—Petrichor:

that’s the word for it, earth’s smell

after long-awaited rainfall, an earthy sweet 

scent lifting from ankle-planted feet,

blossom-less, stemless promise, simply

breathed in.

This time of year here is dry. The last of the plums

hide in bunched leaves, apples fall ripe, and now, 

at last, the pears.

The trees edge the pathways and stucco walls

that frame the vegetable gardens. Willa Cather’s

“Professor’s House” prompted building the walls.

Two seasons’ work, my father’s visage with us

the entire time—the storied scholar, 

the grade-school educated laborer, and me, 

the only one sweating.

We three, we did good.  

**

The corn ears this year were a bit stunted

and harvested about a week too late. 

The kernels didn’t squirt their juice, but

when bitten, did ask to be chewed.

**

The first light before the sun breaks

between the homes across the way

is neither grey nor shadowed, 

but whispered, there, but not yet full,  

and neighbors move in this light

as if through sheltered rooms 

where loved-ones still sleep, move 

with care and carefulness 

simply not afforded later times 

and later light of day. 

**

Oh, the quiet light, again, 

that light that lays in whispers

on the streets, in the trees, the leaves

so still, the air that claims all for its own 

embracing our hearts in smile.

The teachers, the teachings, the leanings

most true to my living, never leave, linger

always so close, that any need to make claim

on my part is superfluous. The I that I am, if at all, 

receiving, waking, responding.

**

Mornings, before the sun,

evenings, at sundown,

hummingbirds come

for fence-running 

blossoms.

**

—8/15

Open windows, the door to the deck open 

throughout night’s quiet—rippling starlight, 

moon’s crescent, and Venus, high in the east, 

above the sun’s huddled waiting.

**

—8/16

This morning’s earliest hours belong

indisputably to Heaven.

A rolling announcement

of softly offered glow,

sharper hints of spark,

followed by the full encore

of bolts and flash and boom,

traced through sudden bulging drops 

of summer rains…

Amazing for us here in these parts.

And little did we know, the start

of the fires.

**

The grandchildren are doing a great job,

which I do appreciate; but sometimes 

I miss my teachers.

**

Waking before dawn these August days 

of Covid—this day, wandering the house 

and out to the deck to check on the stars, 

to see how they are—and some are there 

for me to see, staring back in their shining, 

in their dying.

And as I lay back on the bed, I think

our world too is dying, as am I, as are

we

and a lightness makes its way, makes 

in me a way for the song of Buddha’s name,

uttered and uttering clouds of OK-ness,

of lightness—a way. 

And I sleep.

**

The wife, I’ve said this before, observes

in me a stubborn streak, to which I retort

that I’m not stubborn until I am. That said,

there’s little doubt the wife knows of what 

she speaks—and between you and me, 

I don’t know the same can be said 

of me.

**

Grey morning skies

speak of fires. The news

spoke of five last night, of more

this morning, another summer

of flames linking us to the wilds,

illusions of difference erased,

lessons signaled.

**

Smoke laces the canyons, 

filling the valley from the west,

deepening up and down—no sky,

no sight, for a quarter mile.

The fires.

The summer.

The fires.

**

—Because…

The second real walk this week,

hip and leg mending, I breach the arch

of a dusty rise to see the sun giving its light

in the haze above the bay— 

a red-tinged orange disc 

glowing in oddly lowered tones,

murmurs of nearby fires.

These therapy walks bring me to break

old habits, to different views of town,

of remembrance of the presence

of the bay, just here over the hill 

from where we live.

On the street side of our front fence,

on my return, bouquets

of purple passion flowers. 

**

Two days ago I spent two hours

hanging a triangular sun canopy

from the arced trellis to the front fence, 

finally getting it just right.

The smoke from the fires keeps us indoors, 

but I’ve watched a hummingbird, multiple times, 

come perch, at rest 

on that single stretch of nylon chord, 

before zipping off for blossoms.

That singular, personal sense of presence

within the world at hand, that at death

goes missing, 

owes whatever it was to all the rest 

that remains behind, that which gave rise 

to that sense of presence, that gave that sense 

something to sense, 

like flowers, like hummingbirds, 

like a stretch of chord. 

**

—They say, Boulder is gone…

But make no mistake, we are and are of

the places we love, we are and are of the places

we have learned to love in, and have learned

to be loved in, 

and loss, oh loss fractures, pains the whole, 

but cannot lay claim to the whole, 

only our generations can do that, can claim, can 

reclaim what we’ve known there—the house, the home, 

the refuge, the treasure of who we were there, 

who we are because we were there—see, 

there in the photo, aside the debris, 

the circled redwoods, there in silent wait 

of the fairies and the dreams, and of us 

and the generations.

**

True living signals so often come

as outside calls,

a window open to utter stillness, a leaf, 

not even that fluttered,

all still, yet still with voice, lifting eyes, 

gifted silence.

My wish for you is this.

**

Ice to the nerves

of the stricken leg

soothes puzzles

of physical being,

a would-be poet

sipping again

at the stream.

             ***

      this world—

      the silver dewdrops

      aren’t lying

                    —Issa