Blessed detail,
breaths of light, every glance,
every color called,
each rock and all the roadside dust,
clouds of knowing me.
Namuamidabutsu
**
Stafford speaks of readiness, a receptive angle,
an attitude acquired—savvy, I say, savvy
that it carries already, itself and all that’s you, self-contained
in an open sky of ever-unfolding specificity
and Oppen, pointing to the hand
in that song of the self, the hand on the shirt,
that, the point, the touch
the rise and fall
under a rumpled robe, the draw of air
nothing to be done beyond what’s done
of itself, the scratch of pen on padded page
the song of myself singing the song
on the singular run of the single moment in a single life
of vast multiplicity
mingled with words.
**
“Old man!” I stand accused
and, so stricken, can do no more
than demur, spotted as such
in broad day light,
taken down by a word taken in,
by a self-revealing reminder
by someone who knows
and loves—the best of omens.
**
Breathing, high clouds, fog.
The whoosh and buzz
of hummingbirds’ wings.
**
Under pulled-in brows—
useless tension of too much
thought simply wrinkles
**
Without question,
the altar rose opens—effortless
offering of fullness received
**
The patient way
of the settled heart belies
all the fuss and bother
as surely as the first touch of sun light
does the shadowed shuffle and flutter of wings.
**
So unsatisfactory, this difficulty--
no right ticket, right or wrong turn.
Listen. Simply listen.
**
The greatest mystery--
how consistency obtains
without a place to rest.
**
Mine is an interior life, and as such
at times feels a lonely one. I know, of course, I
am no other than all
that passes through—yes, I is We.
But here I sit, alone, looking out
the windowed gate swinging both ways,
letting in the world, always arriving,
everywhere home.
**
Years ago, someone topped
that pine now growing
flowing grass style.
**
Boulder Creek
Clear-headed—
the teaching as liberation from the teaching,
the unencumbered declaring availability
for empty-readied hands,
a time for the poet to speak,
to find himself in the world,
until no longer…
**
Wild ducks this morning,
wedge Northward, cutting their way
through low, seemingly indifferent skies,
the clattered barks of random conversation
meeting within the greater silence
arching overhead.
