Poems, July 2009

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.