Shelter 2

   

      “there are not many songs

        there is only one song

        …

        …

        truth is the name of the song

        and the song is truth”

                              —Robert Lax

   **

   **

Winter takes whatever time it wants,

while spring never thinks to ask,

and through it all, gentle breezes

ripple with whoever’s there.

**

Gravity happens, it’s not something we do.

Air fills our lungs, the sky our eyes.

But we touch because we reach.

Harmony is a bouquet of voices

coming together

for the feel of what’s done

when we do do,

just because.

**

One of the many names passing by

that I receive and throw back

is Buddha’s bigger name,

which makes no claim

beyond praise.

**

—My guess is

the words work

even as we imagine the mind 

in silence, the words there waiting,

or rather, pregnant, there full

with their own unique promise

of worlds coalescing

by virtue of sheer desire

to do so, like so many tufts

of seeds of consciousness

awaiting to alight

the many worlds

and possibilities 

to be enlightened 

thereby.

   **

   **

        The “indomitability of life.” 

                       —Thomas Cleary

   **

   **

—That Marianne Moore,

she said, of W.S. Landor, that he’d said

he’d considered infinity and eternity, but said

he’d speak of them only after he understood them.

But she, the poet, did speak of light’s speech,”free,

frank and impartial,” animating everything it touches,

to hear and respond in kind.

                                   (see M.M.’s “Light’s Speech”)

   **

   **

       “…—why should I require

         that people know of me?”

                    —from Wang-siang’s

                             “Roaming Free”

   **

   **

From where I sit now, without my glasses, 

the full flowering bush along the front fence

suggests relations to “blue blossom” 

—closer inspection speaks differently 

and presumed family lines fall to fantasy—

either way, whatever the way, imagination flows 

its dance and eyes delight—

and the question I’d pose for my teachers 

this time of my life…do words follow, or 

do they lead, and 

even if answerable, how much might it matter 

to other than poets, so incapable 

of letting them be?

**

We speak only after having heard.

What and who we’re listening to, how well,

is what we have to say. Listening will tell you

who you are.

**

I left the fold when feeling 

I was just going through the motions. 

Though still shuffling about

here and there, now and then, I’m not so certain

how much that matters anymore.

**

Sun-lit 

window panes

row across west-laying hills,

sharing everything

the east

has to say.

**

As a kid I’d stand tip-toed 

when watching the stars. 

As an adult, I’m likely to bow

my head, confirm my feet 

still anchored.

The thought of flying frightened me then,

was ok in dreams, as long as I knew

I was dreaming.

Affirmation comes now 

in knowing the edges, watching them 

move outward as I bump them.

**

After days of cloud-grey overcast mornings, 

for this one, the fullest moon rests a bit 

above the western ridge, surrenders 

to the arrival of light early 

by giving over all of its own.

**

Run clear through, before beginnings,

beyond any reckoned endings, our lives,

each one, run through with eternity’s nectar,

doesn’t make times like these any better.

But the Buddhist life I understand

is about just this, how its enduring witness 

flavors the taste of whatever life offers.

No particular solutions. Just something.

Sheltering--the poems

It’s hard to tell for sure if winter’s gone,

but spring has indeed begun to arrive.

Buds and leaves push, light lays soft

and long, and that distinct morning chill

simply is not. Whatever the vows 

and promises, I’ve long forgotten. 

Whatever this is, is more than enough.

**

With the coming dark, 

we pull the bamboo blinds

that veil the scattered lights 

that spread the blackened hills 

that close, close around

in circled glitter, like close-kin. 

**

Swimming along the trail this morning, 

through waves and streams 

of barely perceptible puffs 

of seed-stuff

traversing currents of air

it’s hard to tell are even there,

wondering, how, 

in the face of all of this,

how I can even begin to think 

I can know how I have come to be.

**

The bright round moon hangs

well above its darkened horizon, 

looks out over our heads, past the ridge 

that protects our back, past the crests  

beyond the bay, beyond which 

the sun will come 

to greet its silvered sheen.

**

This shifting out from winter torpor 

doesn’t have the voluminous feel of unfolding.

It seeps, slowly, somewhat like a timid child, 

who misses nothing, trusts less, and so waits 

some small signal of womb-like warmth.

**

“The dharma of poetry is hard

    for heaven to keep secret;

      All you do is add your own labor.”

                                         —Yang Wan-li

Just before light begins to arrive, 

high clouds’ suggestions of rain

seem too reticent to take serious, 

air too weightless to have voice, 

so large wet drops are a real surprise, 

singular and scattered at first, then 

an hour or more steady fall.

Though I can’t see sky now, clear light 

and a neighbor’s power-saw, tell me 

the rain has had its say. 

And I, for one, am glad 

to have been around

to hear.

**

—San Bruno Mountain

Our place is on the eastern rise of a sheltered valley, 

where our looking west at the ridge, some three miles 

long or so, wrongly suggests it runs north-south, 

when an arial view would show it more than less lays 

east to west. 

Further back, from some orbit perhaps, individual states 

would show neither red, nor blue; and from the moon, 

where human negotiation is moot, none of this 

is likely to be noticed at all. 

But for us, whether rightly or wrongly understood, 

the mountain maintains a presence in our lives here, 

a steady understatement of certainty

that speaks as clear and as sure

as do the tides.

**

Pretty much everyday,

I sit in the same chair, looking out

the same window, at the same

framed fence and plant-life. 

How is it then, that the words

winding their way day-to-day

across so many same 

blue lines

seem so utterly determined

to so consistently see

so many things 

so differently ?

**

—Sheltering in place

Buddha followers take refuge

in the so-called three treasures of truth,

an often repeated abstraction

of the very concrete practice 

of accepting the reflection the teachings

offer, slowing enough 

to be, here-alive, in the moments

and circumstance now at hand.

Poets, I believe, writers, who write

for the finding there, take shelter

in the words’ passing offerings, at their best

a pure reciprocity

understood as such: syllabled breath,

pulse marks of living place and time.

The governor’s order to shelter, 

a helpful reminder of “we.”

Place and circumstance shared, 

vulnerabilities and strengths honored.

**

—After Robert Lax

A quiet turn through the street-run hills, 

another morning of rain-wet promise—

winter’s words, the silent house,

rustled pages, pen’s scratch

and the hallowed voice 

of the old poet hermit

resonant with whispers 

of humility.

**

Vernal: spring, fresh, new

Later today, 

our world will tilt 

from the equinox 

more toward the sun, 

a celestial bow

into the sun-cast light

of extended days

once again.

Having cause to pause,  

may we see better 

which way to go.

**

**

—“If you are yourself at peace, then there is

at least some peace in the world…share your peace….”

                                                     —Thomas Merton 

Walking home...

—February, just past mid-month

A quarter moon rides a clear sky

high in the south west

well above the street a young skunk

skittles across

to slink beneath a small tree

of full-blossomed petals

open for coming sparrows, 

while all the while

well above my moving feet, 

my mind remains buried

in the nettles of an argument

yet to take place.

**

Cloud-cover blown past, 

morning light opens

early day’s promised hum

of glanced refusal 

of any claim or mark

but its full but passing 

attention—giving

cleansed by clinging’s absence 

engendering trust.

**

Sedona’s February sky

this second morning waking

is bone-crisp blue. 

Frost blankets.

Junipers flourish.

Blue-berried cones 

scatter mountain slopes

and fissured gullies

of rust red earth

like the ice pellets 

from our first night,

like so many word-seeds

waiting their tasting

into poems.

**

Multilayered faces

of earth’s understory

rise in silence

for the first bird to call.

Still inside, I think to chant,

but hold my tongue, 

remember the feel of breath

on outside air,

temper the urge

until then.

**

Poetry asks of the wonder 

of the power of words—not just some,

but the inexhaustible whole of language

in all iterations—the histories of being,

moment to moment presences, 

transformations of spoken thought-life

engaged in the world, always 

here and now.

**

Prayer flags

round the stupa

flutter wind-flow

murmurings,

asking only for listening.

**

—Metaphor is real

Walking this wild red rock 

reveals the deeper intention

repeated foot-falls hold central:

planting

—earth seeding to flower the word,

that is not the thing, 

working tensions unfolding 

meaning—

more and more and more.

**

The teacher did say,

the foundation of the Mahayana 

is the great earth—daichi.

**

That pink heat preceding 

the coming sun

confirms whatever all the earth holds 

well before shadow casts

nuanced suggestions of difference

even it doesn’t believe

for reasons antiquity knows

better than to look for.

Sky, having its own conversation

with clouds’ persistence,

lingers as always, 

but does not ponder.

**

For an entire week of mornings,

Juniper Pines spoke their names.

I mistakenly heard only one.

Berried cones did their best

to correct this blindness, finally going silent,

but never taking back their storied shades

of blue.

**

Looking back, I see a life long

on propitious accidents, slides of grace

and impulse resonant with unexplained clarity

as sure as the sun’s grip and the earth’s turn

within the stars.

**

We live in language.

We live linguistic realities

so closely concurrent with the world

about us, thoughts of interior-exterior 

are as misleading as the abiding silence

that holds it all is unknowable—each word,

a gifted extension of dimensions of being,

every word a phenomena of conjugation, 

regeneration, enacting perception within context,

each a gate opening meaning, allowing light

to the flow of unending possibilities 

of communal transformations, 

a many-faced, singular truth 

of rivulets and streams, ever making more

of our

 home. 

**

So, I try to remind myself 

to slow down, pay attention, 

say thank you.

**

Don’t know the name 

of that bright yellow flower

jutting from bulbs beneath

the soft dirt in the front—the wife

planted—five points, orange center.

But its bunches call aroma

almost as far as its colors sing.

**

—Three verses, after Han Shan

Scattered hillside flowers,

those cut and arranged in a vase—

which do you think knows better

the sense of the moon-lit night sky ?

*

Because it scratches the wife’s throat raw,

I’ve had to stop burning incense.

Aside from flowers, handfuls of words 

are all I’ve left to offer.

Both are borrowed, but both fresh 

every time.

*

The box is out along the road,

so even the mail man doesn’t come to the door. 

Late afternoons, sometimes we wave.