February poems

Early February, a Friday

I’ve got the day of the week right,

but can’t yet affix the correct number to it.

High clouds ride invisible winds,

streamed snatches of blue sky, rippled shadows

tracing the roughened face of the rain-soaked earth.

Dreams of names and of numbers

hold no more sway, yet none less here

than bird song or early buds.

Let them unfold in the music

that’s their very own, that carries them

all their way through.

**

…and bow…

They’re called “wall flowers,”

San Francisco region natives

that dot upper slopes

from early spring, or before,

when runs of warm clear days

break winter rains.

Four broad petals, innocent

shaped

as a child’s fingers might make,

white-beige

to soft yellow,

and a startling burst

of floral aroma

that says,

to only the closest nose:

that which seems

most unassuming, may be a signal

to slow down,

to bow.

**

“Everywhere is the silencing

of ideas. That is Buddha.”

                           Thich Nhat Hanh

Wanting, in the morning quiet

of my study, to follow this,

and your voice speaks my name,

sets down the book, closes…

**

February first

The resonance of chimes emerges

from the peripheral silence,

presence alone speaking everything

of consequence,

before and after resting

right here in the pulse-beat of our veins.

Mythical vows of antiquity remembered

as if our own,

the gentle sadness and the joy

at having nothing, grants everything.

**

These winter mornings, the moon

stays high,

setting slow in the west

well after light arrives.

Night’s dew too,

lingers.

**

For David and Kaji

We swarm, we humans, we gather like gnats

in afternoon sunlight along the trail,

old friends and new

sharing stories of suffering and of healing,

here on the warm slopes

of the mountain.

                Buckeye Canyon, 1/30/13

**

A tinge of normal

returns to our world. Once again,

you correct me.

**

Nanao Sakaki:

Turn off

the street lights

and

moon and stars

jump out

in all their glory!

**

The heart, trusted

like morning’s incense,

suggests a newness akin

to the shift from night to day,

returning remembrance wherein

nothing’s forgotten,

a turning over within

ever-arching horizons

of timelessness,

almost incomprehensibly tender.

The new year

Just before taking you to the emergency room

1/6/13

From the beginning, the new year opens

without looking back.

Stars last night, Starbuck’s tonight,

tomorrow’s promise of blue skies,

and the slow working magic

of hot green tea,

sipped to the release of tension

into attention—the real work forward

gifted from a paper cup,

and  your hand

on my shoulder.

**

1/7

Sleeping on your side,

waking to the empty space

where I should be.

**

1/8/13

The crescent moon

slowly loosens it’s grip

on the night sky.

Muted streaks of pink appear

low in the east.

And straight up overhead, beyond

the glare of street lamps,

the last trickles

of star light

pull a smile and a prayer

to these lips.

**

1/9/13

Forgetting to close the curtains,

I turn out the lights

and suddenly see stars,

patches of fog rolled over the horizon,

hillside street lamps, and lighted windows

where people are awake, late.

Quiet beauties, here

where we sleep, missed

simply by circumstance.

We should do this together one night,

you and I—I’d give you your side back

for that.

**

1/15/13

Ushered by owls,

morning light reveals winter

oranges—a soft one

for your breakfast.

**

1/19/13

Learning from the pen

I lie in bed

in a swim of thoughts,

not just barely breathing,

but holding my breath, breath

held in abeyance, for,

for something other

than the swim—like a pen,

held over waiting readiness,

a pen held back

from certain resolution

as affirmer of the stream,

resolution in continuing engagement

with the body, home-place of its breath,

the open page.

**

1/20/13

Brief thoughts

You’d go

into

their room

at night,

listen

to their

breathing.

Quieter

than you

then, I

am still,

listening

to yours.

*

One-to-

one, ten

thousands

of times

over.

Each one,

every-

one, one.

*

If not

me, then

who ?

It’s not

about

saving

the world,

but it

does.

Doing

their own

thing—stars

light my

way.

Winter

mornings.

*

Karma:

action.

Of course

we ride

many

waves of

karma,

family,

country,

even

uni-

verse—yet

every

stoke counts.

Even

doggie

paddles.

**

1/21/13

The telescope pulls the craters closer to the deck,

here where I stand, just above sea-level,

where the moon’s pull back is so readily felt.

And there too, through the glass, a few clicks higher

to the left, the bright glimpse of Jupiter’s moons,

three of them.

Pull on pull, the responsive calls of heaven’s works,

the recurring, heart-felt tides

of healing harmonies.

**

12/23/13

William Stafford’s poems comprised various fragments,

seemingly errant tributaries that passed through

each morning, which he followed, or not,

seeing where they might lead, what lessons

might be learned, all the while listening

for the foundational source, the deeper river

he trusted most.

Year's end--2012

….

and what can any of us do but dream

of peace and act accordingly

and once again begin ?

…

                  Sam Hamill,

                   Awakening in Buenos Aires

Brisbane CA

As morning’s darkness

falters, an owl calls softly:

another end in sight…

**

Approaching Buckeye Canyon 12/20/12

The willows along quarry road yellow their leaves,

moist air lifts soil to smell, a jay glides,

swoops, gathers,

again glides.

Beneath my boots, softened earth

sounds its internal song,

but quiet holds.

I don’t know how we find peace, except

places like this, times, given

like this,

speak its certainty.

Tomorrow marks solstice, prospects of storms.

But now, today, that blue sky

swoops low enough

for us to touch.

**

Rainy day riff

Rain drips. Bamboo leaves

shudder under the trellis.

Roots take every drop.

What a life this is.

The morning whiffs of incense.

The wooden Buddha

from Bali next to the stone

monk from Thailand—both silent.

Sam Hamill’s poems,

five or seven syllables

per line, float the air,

drifting thoughtful kindnesses,

hard humilities.

Quiet presences

felt in the trail of the eye,

the turn of the page,

deepening shifts and 

hints of recognition of 

friendship, trustworthy

counsel, gratefulness he’s here

in the working of these words.

We’re the same age, he and I,

paths that cross, not match, meeting

in the landscape of common

tongue, nourished by the music

of rain-soaked bamboo.

**

How the afternoon’s

perfect feel of aloneness

breaks, with company.

**

Slow down enough to sit,

to come to that wider place

where pulse speaks, to listen

to the larger conversation,

there where words just begin

to do their work.

**

In the front garden,

white-petalled blossoms

bounce on the breeze

soundlessly.

**

As we lie in bed,

together breathing the morning light,

rains flash away

into the waiting silence

of heavy misted horizons

holding still in their place.

**

Insight

It comes like a leaf,

sprouted and mothered,

nurtured and exposed

to all its needs,

then let go

into everything

that’s ever been

there, finally whole, free.

**

Angkor Wat-Angkor Thom-Ta Phum

Cambodia 11-23-12

As we walk these old and sculpted stones,

imagining the fullest scope of human ingenuity

and expression,

cicada sing their whistled songs,

from within the leaves overhead, all around,

from before the rocks were brought.

**

Bangkok 11-30-12

The last day of our stay here

and thoughts of returning home

attempt to turn this day

into something other

than itself—“do something hard,”

the teacher says—“nature’s already

taken sides, the small things.”

Squeezed by limitation, 

the unlimited makes

for tasting that lingers, but will not

last. Do something hard, but

“not just anything.”

                              fom Apichart Sakdichalatorn,

                                   Every way is a way

**

Real teachers often carry

suggestions of weight so pervasive

their every gesture founds a ground

upon which all else appears to stand.

Not that they know everything,

but that their knowing is unequivocal,

not needing of anything but itself.

This can be as startling and as subtle

as the well-sounded poem

and just as meaningful

to be a part of.

**

Scottsdale, AZ  12/28/12

Well, we wouldn’t yet call it evening,

vibrant sun still lighting the clear blue sky,

but notions of softenings begin to gather

in the fabric of the air—birds, noticing,

gather too, worry amongst the leaves—perspective

is important when witnessing the falling sun.

12/15/12, a poem

Been thinking of you, all of you, and of the distance

that may be between us as the old year closes,

the new looms so close, thinking of the strange ways we

now pass our thoughts, the slow scratch and fold that served

so well for so long, almost completely supplanted

by these soft and immediate clickings.

Soft too is the color of the green here this time

of year. A break in the rains let me to the hills,

as I haven’t been for awhile, new grasses

pushing to the surface, looking to cover the slopes

in silent, steady waves, from bottom to top.

Coyote bush, a coastal, hill country shrub, common

from here into the Sierra, blossoms in December

and January, small, frost-white petals, bursting

to seeds spread across the dampened earth in minute

snow flakes. Red Christmas berries bunch in native toyon,

young hummingbird sage sprouts along the trail, soap plant

on it. And the blue-grey leaves of new sage, fragrant

and tender to touch.

I say their names out loud, these few I know. The season’s

so short, this seems important. The streams, silent in summer,

sing too; their tongues knowing all there is to know of this place,

their Bodhisattva voices carry every name,

forgetting not even one.

Higher in the hills, I begin to recall the carnage.

It might be the middle-east, could be the invisible

Philippines or some unknown African country,

but it’s Connecticut this time, teachers and children,

targets so common these days, almost anywhere

we might name.

With a President as thoughtful as our own,

I am saddened when he touts our military might

as a towering accomplishment, and more so

as he stands today, helpless in the face of our children

killing our children. As real as outside threats may be,

it’s a cancer on the inside that torments us—all of our might

cannot make this right.

Something different need be done.

The News will chew and bite, encourage us

to swallow, as they diligently search more feed.

But what matter the motive, when the method

is readily given; what matter the method

when the solution is imbedded

in society’s psyche

as viable.

Broken bodies litter non-combat zones across the globe,

school yards just one. How many names, how many the lives

as brief as interludes, snapped shut—we are not different

in this, and any indifference marks complicity. This

is not the heritage I wish to protect—it is this

that needs breaking.

Whether ensconced in constitutions or lodged, abstract,

in folk-laws, this cancer will have its way with us

and within the lives of those we influence, unless

we learn to call it what it is, aloud: ours, it is ours.

But sickness rides the same currents that healing does,

and in time all resistance can be recognized

as temporary. With this, and only with this,

comes the light that allows for creative change.

Just as winter is one word, but not a single experience,

our work needs to be in the deeper recesses

of the violence in our own hearts. There, and in sharing

as open and authentic as the working of streams,

we will find the way to the seeds

of violence’s opposites

and the beginnings

of a different way to be.

I am indebted to poet Sam Hamill, and his “Awakening in Buenos Aires,” which closes with the following:

“….to have come so far

to find again what I believe:

how things—slowly,

but inevitably—can change,

and how our hearts

and this world can, at last, be made.”

More from October

October poems-2012

Beyond the window,

evening chill settles,

outside darkness

reflects the lighted room,

and the moon, 

reaching for fullness, lingers

high above the roof top,

as unseen as tomorrow’s faces,

yet to be known

and yet as readily recognizable

as our own.

**

Su Tung Po lived on East Slope,

looking west, just as I do.  

He took his name from that slope,

but I’ll stick with my own, Gummo,

and imagine that he too

sat among the many weeds

setting summer suns pull

from hills like these,

imagine that he too, in his time,

sat like this, looking west..

Su Tung Po is one of the Chinese ancients. His name means: Su of East Slope. “Gummo” is the name I took as a follower of Buddha’s way—it means “weeds,” a most common form of life. The wife and I have made our home on the east slope of the small valley that holds Brisbane, California.

**

The first of the newly hung bird feeders

gets some attention, but the second hangs lonely,

unattended, hummingbirds busy elsewhere

around the yard. Perhaps when winter comes,

unattractive offerings, such as this one,

may show different colors for those then

passing by.

**

Buddhist Temple of Marin

The flowers from the altar

now rest in a vase

on the kitchen counter,

memories 

of gathered beauty

spread of itself, 

friendship in worship

deepened over tea

and togetherness,

the way made concrete

on considered words,

petals transcending time and place.

**

Winter rains arrive

without equivocation,

arrive with little room left

for even a lifted eyebrow,

arrive in the steadied flow

of movement of time

as certainty—winter rains.

**

And so there are others, recognized now,

who’ve walked this way,

and breaths come less the lonely

because of it.

**

With the great eucalyptus down,

a constant presence

all these years,

now gone,

the curved shock of night sky opens,

the horizon’s comfortable-usual

giving way to wonder.

**

I woke groggy

and aching

this morning,

peered into the fog

that revealed

everything.

**

Elizabeth Street

Elizabeth Street in San Francisco

is one-way, runs parallel

to 24^th, that somewhat upscale stretch,

there between Delores and The Castro.

It’s quiet here, sitting in the car,

under trees, looking down-slope,

with housed hills in the distance,

a block and a-half up from morning traffic.

Balding men in slacks

and short-sleeved shirts

enjoy the sunny sidewalks;

all seem to carry folded newspapers.

The most straight-forward

of explanations, if at all necessary

in the wider scope of things,

is that this is where, right here

is where life is right now,

as I wait for the store to open at ten,

right here now, where as best I can,

I watch, and listen, and try of its taste.

**

Freedom happens

when others

are allowed theirs. 

Scattered, then found—poems

October 2012

With stars

for companions, 

what standard of measure

might one ever devise

that ever really

measures up ?

**

Is it that light lays on leaves

and catches, or that light is caught,

that it dapples?

**

Like the lightest of breaths,

held so as not to disturb,

moon beams breathe on me.

**

Everything this morning speaks of space

—the gray sky swept aside for blue, the moon

rests high, showing just  a sliver;

clustered crows, barking dogs,

allow only echo; even curbside grasses

give way to beige.

**

Gina

Young, bright,

not overly certain,

eyes like sky

radiate promise

that fills all that befalls

their gaze.

**

For the grand daughter, Kawayan

Only twenty-four

hours past its fullest face,

the moon begins to “melt.”

I suppose this is

Indian Summer—long heat

over shortened days,

windows kept open

through silver-tinged darkness,

the kind of light

that shimmers

on high mountain juniper

that grow out of rocks

that glow like you do,

even as we speak

of the moon.

**

Out of the clamor

and confusion,

Buddha’s Name

blossoms…

Namuamidabutsu

**

Mid-October

Leaves, browned and fallen,

pack along the streets like doormats

thrown outside to be washed

in first winter rains.

But for now, still summer,

an invisible sun streaks breaking clouds

in soft pink, turns the tallest eucalyptus 

to shadowy, swaying silhouettes.

**

Orion is directly overhead

this morning—what direction

is that, Heaven ?

A dead mouse

on the shadowed walk

is really a leaf, parched and curled.

That adult over there

is my child, is loved, loves

and is torn—you’d think

that would be enough

to find the way from here.

You’d think.

**

Preparing for the service

with the old folks,

reading the poems of Ryokan,

wondering

if he’ll warm their hearts

as he has mine.

**

Shadows play, breezes weave,

through grasses dancing

with flowers.

**

My religion

From the street side

         of the courtyard fence,

beyond the flowering shrubs,

         in lifting fog,

children’s voices pass

         through the lingering mists,

pulled by a bell—

       

reaching,

         listening.

**

She don’t bite, he said,

and neither do I; but how

were we to know ?

September 2012

September Poems

I think of recluse masters a century away,

I nurture your secrets. Your true nature

eludes me here, but taken by quiet, I can

linger this exquisite moon on out to the end.

                                            T’ao Ch’ien

Preparing for my 69^th in the Sierra,

Freemont Lake at 8,000 feet

Leaning against the rocks,

wondering at the movement of the years

and the certainties gathered here—ablutions

on a bouldered slope, chanting in trees

in the coming dark, in the unfolding entirety

of the life I’ve known as my own.

I write, but poems don’t find the page. So I listen

for the wind, for trees turning to shadow, for the stars

to signal of sky life

as clearly as I hear the waters 

on the shores of this lake.

And they come,

one, then another, and another

of that silence so ancient, so subtle

that time can’t capture, nor distance determine

the closeness so thorough

as only a poem

can know.

And I’m here, so I write, in the headlamp’s light.

As a breeze from the lake lifts the edge of the page,

I’m here, so I write.

**

Day three

We hike the lake’s perimeter today,

first the overlooking outcrops,

nearly a thousand feet above,

then descend

to slow-walk, explore and fish.

As we rest in the shade, from among the pines

on the other side, an aspen waves,

its yellow wave.

**

Evening prayers

Clouds streak pink,

westward peaks shadow,

the lake grown still

and soundless—we speak

of the sacred, of the day, of early departure,

then slip into our bags for the night—

on a scrape of rock, aside a mountain lake,

in a sea of slow-turning stars.

**

I’ve learned much from the scholars,

and stand indebted as such, but it’s been the poets

who’ve taught me to watch

the misted push of ocean air

along this drift of ridge, through the window

of the place we’ve together built and call home.

**

Morning comes gray

with heavy fog,

Saturday sounds

from the street out front.

Sluggish, as well as

the usual foolish,

I pad around bare-foot,

looking for my favorite cup.

To write something new,

or prepare a few of the old

for the world at large—indecision,

that old friend

suggests both.

So here I sit, over a cup of coffee,

celebrating sixty-nine years

with a song.

                     9/29/12