In the hemisphere
south of here, Orion visits
upside down.
**
Ryokan spoke of
the east edge of the milky way.
I can only guess…
**
Each time haiku finds
me my world
opens.
**
early morning shadows—moon
and street lamps
**
hiding behind
leaves between
cement Buddha
and me
**
pine
branches
silhouette
pink blue
sky
**
waking
to breaths
finding
each other
**
I forget, then remember
I forget.
**
Once I walked into a temple
backdoor behind the altar, through
deep scents of years of incense
and didn’t leave
for another forty years
or so—still as much of a fool as then,
maybe even more, new friends
recently said nice things, and as good
as that felt, I knew it was really
the incense they smelled.
**
In November here
flower petals ripple
with wind.
**
Even in darkness,
eyes see what fingers feel,
what feet tell…I follow.
**
Every
body
breaths
air
breathing.
**
El Camino flooding,
leaves falling red
orange and gold.
**
Some might now speak
of God here amidst
rain’s return. I wouldn’t
argue.
**
Through the bamboo blinds
in the bedroom, signals
a star.
**
Rains leave
colors return
remembered.
**
For me, life’s determination
to hold me as it does, as I am,
for me, that’s power enough.
**
have you noticed how words work
quite freely among themselves
before our thinking them,
often finding meanings
we seek before we know
what we’re seeking
**
The clear morning
clears mind
for clear walking
clears decks
enough to clarify
work
clearly needing
doing.
**
After a cold walk,
hot coffee,
cherry-traced
pie crust
and a welcoming
tongue.
**
Although over and again
I seem to find life anew,
it has never yet lost track
of me.
**
Notching breath
with syllable-carved words
into air-slivered meanings
blown around.
**
If not by
other ways,
we know
our teachers
are those
turned to
over
and
over.
**
Waking tomorrow, if indeed I do,
will I again believe the stories
I tell myself of it, or just take it
as given, stories and all ?
**
That voice, that bubbling wellspring
of wonder and question and gurgled fears,
the voice of stories you lived in
on your own
as a kid, that voice
and its world,
do you think, really think
went away over time
or has stayed
in waiting
with you, offering
as always it did ?
**
Almost half the moon, high
south and west, dark so smooth
around it glows.
**
Listening
to walking
feet-silence
working
speaks to me
like nothing
other.
**
The twelve year old
gently encourages the old man
with questions of what he in his years
has tried to do with his art
and after that door opens offers
something new, due in one week,
assignment confirmed
with departing hugs.
**
The hills after sundown
hold open-handed
plans birds discuss,
as easily as questions coyotes have
for dark’s first comings
to gullies and families of trees,
then slowly unfolding to join
arriving night
that always includes all of us.
**
Once many years ago
I was directed to re-write
an essay on Thoreau—that,
though I didn’t know then,
was the beginning
of this writing life.
**
Street puddles
wave good-by
to watching sky.
**
Walking composing
poems to passing rains
that then whisper return
on my face.
**
Walking wondering
what it is that interests me
anymore these days, and there
at the curb,
that indescribably smooth blue
of the neighbor’s recycling bin
completely captivates me.
**
Day begins in pattered thoughts,
roof-drop rains asking
how long I’ve known
their calling gone
unanswered—I can’t say.
****
end notes:
in worlds of no end an end note is an oxymoron;
in worlds of no end, words are no more than
extended wonderings—do then take note,
or not:
that all words are metaphor—multiples
of meanings’ workings—that the urge to speak
is the urge to join the world,
not control it—that freedom of flight
roots them all
***
**
I wouldn’t call them prayers,
I guess—I could, each one
a reaching out into unfolding
that’s whole and complete
in itself.
What you call it, how you think
of it is less the point
than the sound of its voicing.
Hatless, you don’t need
a place to hang one.
Born in Japan, the sufi saint is zen.
Weather rests, but never settles.
Beat a drum, call a name, sing a song…
