That fire in the windows
on the hill, the sun
showing off.
**
The Heart Sutra hangs
ink-charactered swirls lined
on rice against silk
trying to say what was said
in their making—and failing.
**
AR Ammons—The purpose of a poem
is the silence it engenders.
**
Winter or summer,
the same, the valley’s ridge blocks
sun’s rays from its floor,
early, light then just a guest
left behind—present
but muted, here with,
but off—something close
nearby, almost…
**
Valley people live
facing the other side’s edge.
In the desert, here
is as far as sight can see.
Either way, our feet
touch ground, claim space, enable
turning the head, lifted eyes.
**
A poem
is a point
along the way
of clarity taken
for all its worth
to enable us life
enough to see
to the next.
**
This last season I gathered
useless, unsightly leaves
fallen from citrus trees
deeply under their limbs
to see if roots through winter
remember earlier fruiting
and fruit again, and they did
and I’ve learned
a messy past
may add more
than we’d give
credit for.
**
Looking out some days,
at this late age, wondering
where I’ve left my life.
Ryokan tells us, while shooting an arrow
at the empty sky, if you don’t aim,
you can’t miss.
Jeffers says the world will show you
what’s worth next getting done.
And Buddha knows no target
means no talent needed and no place
to get to.
Which all means, I guess,
nothing’s been left anywhere
and wrapped up in wonderment
is not so bad place to be.
**
—a wednesday
after days of down,
looking up—two small birds feel
sky, pass thru blue—gold
hues drape the hills—all saying
that mystery matters most
**
“like respiration and digestion…acts that take place
…without being noticed, and yet they advance
the life of the whole.”
—Robert Lax
Nature’s reciprocity,
the heart of pacifism,
is pervasive, not passive.
Mostly, we miss it—
its entirety not just
the bones of being
but the frame of existence,
open hands rather than fists.
**
And too, the telling
quiet of early mornings
where only mind’s moves
disturb, until it too speakds
of itself, and returns home.
**
Living so far west
that farther still
is somehow East,
oceans have helped define
for me what really living
might be.
**
At times it seems best words
dangle just beyond reach.
Sometimes I get wordy.
Others, words feel
almost a waste—but,
whether there or waiting,
resonant or wanting,
I’ve come to know words
do make the way for me.
**
petals fall,
flutter,
litter
all that waits
**
What is the walk about
if not to let morning take
what night didn’t need,
if not to receive morning’s offer
to let go, so as, once again,
to begin.
**
Frost on the rooftops,
uncommon here—owls complain
in canyons too cold.
**
To read Jeffers best, I choose
the living-room wide window
to the mountain slopes, to the stretch
and fold of ridge beneath sky.
and to beyond, under that reach,
to the ocean he would watch,
the same seen from up there now,
where small flocks of birds take flight.
**
And after so long,
the mountain’s call wakes in me
return to trails that speak
of belonging unbroken
by any human reckoning.
All the more room and reason
for every living unfolding there.
**
Morning fogs so dense,
crows don’t call, no wings are seen.
Only woodpeckers.
**
These hills,
of a different time,
take all
that’s offered,
give all they are
in return.
**
**
—Remembering Shiki
It doesn’t take much.
Sun behind the trees, falling.
Birdsong in the chill.
*
Near the tennis courts,
on the ground, sleeping, a man
—an orange jacket.
*
It doesn’t take much.
Half the banana, coffee—
too cool, too much cream.
*
Children kick a ball,
run the rutted grass. Mothers
covered head to foot.
*
Grand daughter swims—loves
the laps, contests the contests.
Chooses her battles.
*
It doesn’t take much
but paying attention, close
as one can—then write.
*
Over the canyon
stream, neighborhood sounds include
slow echoing blues.
*
It doesn’t take much
to recover things not lost.
A bench in a park.
*
Shiki often wrote
ten in sequence, broke most rules.
So I’ll just stop here.
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