I’ve heard there is a temple
in Shimane Prefecture
that houses a monument
proclaiming the site
the birthplace
of Japanese poetry,
and though I’ve not yet heard
of a similar site here, it is understood
that Walt Whitman was first to make verse
uniquely “American,”
those long and rangy lines its situs, such a place
not likely lost on Japanese poets, whose fellow,
Issa, an elder to Whitman, had earlier declared
his allegiance to the Temple of Haiku.
**
The old man sleeps
fatigue away all day,
celebrates dusk
with a cup-full
of wine—amen,
amen.
**
That gnat knows
well better than I
the full taste
of the cup’s
rim.
**
windowed
quarter moon
opens
night’s sky
**
Quite a number of my closest friends
are dead but not gone, as is said,
out-breaths unfinished, their words
still turn pages.
**
I’ve been watching, maybe too
you’ve noticed the taller trees gone gold
that wave and ripple
are beginning to thin, to bald their tops,
bared branches reaching
into winter’s closing skies.
If asked, they might say
the stars are closer now its winter,
which is why it’s dark longer, for the stars,
why, in part, they drop their leaves
to that solstice closeness, reaching
for the nearness of the stars.
**
This morning’s walk,
hearing the words’
silent music run through my head,
I thought to stop to chant
and while wondering where,
found my lips had already
found it, right there.
**
Although the ridge can see it from up there
at its thousand feet, it doesn’t speak of the Pacific,
nor of what the sun’s setting might do there,
though sometimes the sky does, especially
when clouds join, those given to signal and streak
what they receive when sun and ocean meet.
**
Other side the bay, dark clouds hold
in the coming dawn, peaks and valleys
drawn at water’s edge
where marsh once was,
one of the richest inland bodies of water
in the world, once,
and that wondrous veil of clouds
dropped by this morning’s air there,
to lift in its time too.
**
I’ll be damned
if I know
what makes it
poetry—
what makes it
worth doing,
I do know:
doing it
anyway.
**
Old age and arthritis keep creeping in,
small to sometimes large aches
and challenges,
and while talking acceptance,
I sneak around looking for ways
to beat them both
(and remain quietly confident).
**
Under certain circumstances,
wrinkles in the bottom sheet
wake you.
**
Wrapped warm in my robe, looking out
at the soft pink spread wide open petals
of passion flower.
**
An urge, a pull perhaps, more than a push,
yet a pull from inside rather than out, but that too,
both/and, rather than either/or, a gravity force,
where inner-outer concur, communal coincidences
simply understood as what to do now and here
and therefore simply done—getting up
from under the blankets, into the cold-bump
welcome of winter’s morning air, the why
behind why do it at all ?
**
Down in the yard,
mulched manure
around the fruit trees,
end of the year incense
and tangible wishes
for a fruitful next.
**
Grey days feel colder,
make warmth even warmer.
**
—Fog horns…
deep over the bay, all along the ridge
too, everything lost
but the calling.
**
No doubt, I love the high mountains,
but my backyard is a part of my heart.
Mountains are where I sometimes go,
home the place of return.
**
Shinjin—the trusting heart swells with beats
so steady it’s normal to overlook their presence,
like the star-holding skies we breathe
without noticing
but when we do…
**
The flutter-bump against the window,
a bird in morning shadow,
gone—
wind chime’s swinging
its absence.
**
The kitchen sink sounds of apples
rolling in to be rinsed.
**
Passing wings
interrupt wind chimes’
quiet time.
**
If you’d said
sixty years ago,
in my life there’d be
Highway 1’s grass covered hills
to the east, the Pacific to the west,
I’d’ve been as speechless then
as now.
**
—Remembering Brad Guthrie
We Zoomed the memorial,
his un-present presence
palpable among ours,
quietly persistent
throughout
Brad
**
**
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