Fall Poems--2008

                                Putting myself in various spots

                                and observing the mind that happens there—

                                I want to meet myself.

 

                                          From Haya Akegarasu’s poem, Wind of Early Summer

 

 

 On the exchange of prayers

Showers Lake, by way of Carson Pass, 9/7

 

In deep night

high mountain silence,

the surge of hardened earth

in open-domed dark,

close whispers of mutual turning,

of stars’ most careful approach.

 

**

 

Tamarack Lakes, under Sierra Buttes

Late September

 

Awake well before the sun

touches the highest reaches

of south rising buttes,

we watch in chilled shadows

the quiet waters,

slow building clouds,

waiting the day to tell our turn

in full light,

where a pilgrim’s footsteps might fall

 

and to be gone, then, before

the turn of darkening skies

absorbs again the myriad forsaken dreams,

leaving us awed, yet lonely

for steps not readily taken.

 

**

 

San Bruno Mountain, late September

 

There are no choices to be made

Breathing deep into steady steps

the labored hills in pre-dawn light

edge at early autumn’s promises

 

The green return of spring

spoken and sung

in brittle tones

through nights long with winter

 

**

 

A birthday offering 9/29

 

I know only Buddha’s name.

I know, even on this day, at this age,

of no answers,

can only guess the calamities

of choices made of darknesses given

of limited, yet trusted vision.

 

I know, even on this day,

of no answers,

save those

the Masters proffer:

that this knowing of not knowing,

this presumed confusion,

in light, is clarity,

confusion turning in light,

the truth, there heard,

then sung;

the song of not knowing,

set free.

 

**

 

In my quiet way,

I do my utmost 

to control life;

but slowly,

only slowly, relent.

 

**

 

Buddha speaks

of turbulent encounters

in free-flowing streams

and sparkling sunlight.

Without end.

 

**

 

Five Poems of  Polska (Poland) 10/08

 

Soft light rolls hills in autumn colors,

gently belies the harsh and heavy history

of these ancient people of the meadows.

* 

The tide. Darkened murmurs

of windless cries of the many bare down now,

the great unquiet not ever quelled, never-still silent movement

against the utmost edge, the unendurable

evoked, unrestrained, splayed raw.

Such pains, to mute moon and stars.

* 

Toward Warsaw, trees thin, meadows spread to swells

flattening within a sky grown so steadily larger

even the coming night cannot hold it fast.

Of Warsaw, they say,

nothing was left; yet

today, aside the road, in October,

yellow blossoms.

* 

In the pre-dawn light of Warsaw, while others sleep, 

we stand, mute at the tomb, 

two sentries, the flame and me,

each attentive in our own way

of the eternal.

* 

From the steadiness in her eyes,

we learn of the sanctity of resistance, of resilience

and of rededication to voice

found only in enduring sadness and irredeemable loss.

 

The third season here, she says, is golden autumn.

 

**

 

Home, November

 

First winter rains come warm

on light filled currents,

sky-heavy droplets

gently falling

to so many gladdened ears.