And so when
I let go-opened up
said goodby and hello
to the flush and rush
so softly lightening me
to toe-tip-finger-buzz rightness
of the no-looking back kind
where looking back is part of
the whole of it all in the light
of it all, I couldn’t help
but smile at it all, here
in light of it all.
**
The hammers
hammer
the damp air
of light
rain before
storm waves
wash workers
away.
**
Atoms
don’t work
alone.
Why do
we think
we do ?
Loneliness,
perhaps.
Alone,
never.
**
Breath-count poems
proliferate heart-held joy
engendered therein.
Observe lightly, be spare,
for inks have dried, she said,
in pens poised for too long.
**
The morning before the morning
before Christmas, rains leave
six-thirty streets dark
with mist and fog, shadowed
movement, muffled sound,
leave chill’s edge
to blanket-felt
silence
sensed
only by those
willingly
there
with the world,
willingly there.
**
for Liza…
that finger-tip knowing
often done when gathered—gentle
laying-on touch I think intuitive—of us
as a knowing through us, though not
rightfully claimed as ours, per se,
but, yet dependable nonetheless
trustworthy…confirmed
by the veracity
of that felt
**
Drafts find in and out;
water, bottom and level.
Words follow the drafts.
**
first light returns
with the shift of fog and mist
to rooftop sheen, pulling color,
foreground and back,
into warm remembrance
**
Dawn.
Rain-washed petals,
Christmas lights.
**
Slowly I’ve come to see presence
isn’t limited to me…
that it’s not what the world wants
of me, but what the world is
with me
that holds me.
**
Pre-dawn
lights
black shadow
hillside
house
holds
dripping
mists.
**
Our lagoon plays bridge
between bay waters
and ancient marshlands
covered over with time.
Neither lagoon, nor sky
have forgotten.
**
All through the night bamboo
reaches, tree limbs reach, leaf tips
and grasses, all through the night
till dawn, listening, listening
for what light will bring.
**
—1.2.25
Franz Valley Creek
winter watershed
ponds
shallow
recesses
that seep slow
wet spring
to summer
dry
blooms.
**
Local airport vibe
is familial, everything
at hand, kids
can’t get lost,
bag lunches
and no-one, but no one
dressed up.
**
Sketch-book refrains press lines
encountered before heard
clearly enough
for words
to find
sound.
**
—California
rising from the desert floor
east ranging mountains
carry stories of snow
to remind us
it’s winter,
while neatly etched farmlands
below
say things never heard
on west-lying ocean
winds
that resonate yet like bells
in the blanketing fogs
of north-country
vines
**
Dawn colors emerge
departing darkness
like water from snow
lightening in the sun
and again I think of Nanao
the poet how he left in the night
taken in by the snow
—not a track, no trace—
and wonder how many now
can follow steps like those.
**
—coins of my realm
conversation, conversations, talk,
more talk, its songs, its musics
deep and shallow, shallow to deep
surrounds the heart, ripples bones,
jostles minds, then calms
that extraordinary warmth, that
natural tangle
of common-place breath
so commonly, so carefully, so
beautifully
exchanged and shared
**
just think, now is always
only here
only once—all else,
piddly.
**
If I could make music like music
moves us
my songs would move closer
to the stars
would concert with shadows
in morning’s hills
sing love songs to wintered willow,
if I could make music—
like music moves us, I’d riff
with the streams,
finger-pick bird calls, ask coyote
for harmonious refrains.
If I could make music like music
makes us,
I’d ask the gods to never stop.
