—winter songs
giving myself over,
winter takes me in,
asks where I’m going—
“to spring,” I say…
and winter, that thin smile…
**
eating today
the last apple
of the season
branches bare
for pruning,
fertilizer,
mulch—
dreary mornings,
short afternoons,
cold feet, long nights
lingering malaise:
the crusted month,
the waiting month,
Novembering
finally
letting
go…
**
joy
sometimes
doesn’t
smile
sometimes
eased
knowing
makes
its own
way
**
the teacher, the teachers abound,
never tire of striking the bell—
each time we think
there’s nothing there to hear
is where, is when
we’re most clearly heard
**
the fence-top squirrel laughs, winks
at winter’s arrival
weeks before
its calendared date
**
wondering out loud, they
smile at my writing
each morning finding
poems floating here and there—
and how, I ask, can I not
**
“Not for one moment, Walt Whitman…,
have I ceased to envision your beard
full of butterflies…”
—from Lorca’s Ode to Walt Whitman
**
“…the normal process for the artist” is to seek
“kindred formulations” of other “older artists”
and from there to continue…
—Waldo Frank
**
waking to unexpected bedside energies,
hillside streets are easily worked—
clear cold dawn-lit air puffs
with building heat
**
learned, from my granddaughter,
her working declaration—wisdom-laden,
freedom-laced—her pivot practice
of release:
when finding herself too tightly hanging on,
“Oh well…”
**
—December deaths…
plastic-wrapped news
akimbo
at the bottom of the stairs,
morning’s streets
tremble
and over the bay,
beginning it all again,
sun’s rising orange
**
when we learn
what we seek
is the calling voice
worlds unfold
**
a singel star,
darkened hillsides
Christmas
**
sitting
waiting for
whatever is to happen
already is
unfolding
without prompts, beginnings
vows or promises,
just noticing
as noticing does
what already is
and when
done so
we wake
each time
just a bit
more
alive
**
fog slick streets,
everything wet
deepening drippings
running rivulets
of root-life,
needles drinking freely…
**
if, as the shaman says
“light is the message”
then shadow…its song
**
yellowing leaflets
tremble
a stream
of gold and green
along the darkened trunk
carpet
the ever-working ground
of earth—
nothing, ever, here is still, nothing
ever purposeless, always ever free
and yes, you too, and me
**
flapping poncho walking,
misted drizzle dropping
foolish old man mutters
over the scholar’s “personal
religion” remarks,
an oxymoron, to be sure—
religion studied is
religion lived…
no periods, only colons
will do here:
**
where wind goes
feet find earth space
every step’s home place
home bound family found…
here-now eyes touch,
fingers touch
organization enough
**
and we spiral
for its own sake
to feel wind
sound itself
around us
**
when dark I can’t see
ocean’s swells
carry me
across
**
rains say, quietly dripping
breeze-tangled bamboo,
rains say, deepest, longest dark
lingers and recedes
time’s rounding distance soothes
bald-faced winter
**
moon showing
just its dark side
dark: “veiled, concealed”
likely distant Germanic “tarnan,” dark…
ignorant, un-enlightened,
also implying oppositions
that are not real…
moon showing its dark side signals…
companion light,
signals new moon
light close by
