One part of the silence
of writing mornings for me
is the absence of hearing aids,
still in their box.
But thinking of silence as sound lost
or absent, fragments, distorts
wholeness always at work.
The earth, there, each time we extend a foot,
just there, we know. But when it trembles,
we know it a different way.
And when it gathers its sounds closer
to center, our heartbeats signal…
and we hear more deeply too…
**
On this final August day
before school kids meet Friday
head-on, the young woman bends
to retrieve her dog’s leavings,
and rain drops
on the three of us.
The dog pulls my way,
she a-way, diverts her gaze.
In the rain, dog and me, OK
**
Of the last clean page
in my journal you can’t see
but this small part
of its fulfillment.
**
Mirrored in the big window
across the room, my face,
over houses on the hill
below morning fog
below sky clearing to
not quite blue,
a part, one piece, to be sure,
even nicely framed,
just one fading sliver
of a very moving
picture…
**
Learn to fly…
the line in a song for the young
catches aging ears, ageless heart,
ageless mind taking its wings
**
Savoring Wm Bronk’s poems,
scholarly, dense, that rigorously reveal
our incurable foolishness, and the light
we find ourselves in anyway.
**
If I really knew why
we found ourselves arguing,
probably I’d stay mad. But,
really, I can’t quite catch
its drifting away.
**
Whatever comes, what finds its way
is fruit of thought, of sense
and feel, ink for the pen the open page
takes in as love-taps.
**
A Monday morning hammer
works its way through
quiet streets, almost rain
and heavy dew,
through half-screened windows
above the wooden desk,
to gently carpeted floor
where bared feet rest.
**
—meeting at City Hall
The rush we feel when hearing
others speak lovingly
of what we love
cannot be spoken of lovingly
enough for what it reveals
to us of who we are.
**
Of Wm Bronk, again, saying we listen for sound
and buried beneath noise find silence
finally heard. Silence, always there, not of time,
needing nothing of time to be—if we
but turn, it’s there, been there, doing—nothing
for us to do: silence
**
First-light coffee,
strong black.
Looking out,
over the cup-rim eyes,
squint.
**
The last coffee-swallow
over last night’s dessert muffin
asks a deeper breath
of appreciation…gladly given
with a sigh.
