August 2012

August  2012

The sleep of old age is heavy,

it lingers, holds on, even as there seems

never quite enough of it,

or so it’s been for me of late.

Except for those dark mornings of course,

the only alternative to rise before day break,

walk those slow breathing hills

that accept any careful step,

of any age,

and offer back a bedrock peace

that carries as weightless

as lingering starlight.

**

Six days in the Trinity Alps

Upper South Fork Lake

In first morning light, he slowly skirts

its western perimeter, surface

so placid it captures the entirety

of the tree-studded cirque

to the tiniest detail—I know

there’s only one of him, walking carefully

along the edge, yet I can’t decide

which one to watch.

**

Mavis Lake

The rocks hold their place

in sun and shade alike, tall pines

whisper or rush, breeze or wind,

either conversation enough.

And we sit and wait for shadows

and for the fish to find the surface, ripples

lipping stories of cloud-filled skies.

Later, we’ll walk back.

**

Fox Creek Lake is home

to fish, many fish, who eat  

only what the lake serves up.

**

Since we have a signal, I’m photographed

by phone, which sends the photo to the wives, via

the net—place, date and elevation.

All the while, I write poems of this place and time,

will carry them with me from this elevation, to everywhere

I’ll ever go, signal or no.

**

The young eagle sits on the limb,

looking down on the lake,

like us…given enough time,

it too will leave.

**

We have a plan,

hatched over two

servings of soup.

There was a bite.

Wait for the sun

to fall behind

the ridge, shadow

the waiting lake.

Try once again,

leaving dinner

to figure itself—

after brandy.

**

A poem’s worth

As if in response to the unarguable purpose of solitary song,

the setting sun suddenly illumines the lake’s eastern shore,

lifts the rising pines in witness

to the slow turn of summer

and the promise

of  a cloudless night.

**

Mavis Lake Blessing

To wake with morning’s coming,

leaving dreams behind.

To see the pines

against the sky.

To feel apart of

the closeness.

***

Three poems from San Luis Obispo

They call it the marine layer here,

the ocean’s push, above the costal range,

past the vine-filled valley, to the low slopes

where we sit in the last of its reach,

a graced witness, breath against the face,

shoulders warm in first sun light

and the cradled flutter, the silence

about the beat of hummingbirds’ wings.

*

Over too many glasses of wine, a satisfying meal,

after a long day in the hills at the edge of the ocean,

we share stories not yet told, retell ones already known,

to remember separate journeys come together

to bring us this far, to this age, to these days,

still friends, still remembered.

*

Before the sun finds its way

through layers of misted cool, he walks

the length of the drive to retrieve

the morning paper, while hummingbirds

breathe their blurred and flurried dance

at near-empty feeders,

taking all that’s offered there.

Home is what it is, implicit in time and place,

in the varied contexts of need and desire,

a web, the stretch and reach of intention

and remembrance, a resonance as nuanced

as the glance of rustled movement

from another room,

as the crunch of gravel under a foot,

a well-known path in the echo of early morning.

**

Artless

Artless, the laying down

on the page

of words of the day

turned awake of its own,

its time unfurled in those

in turn concerned

to make of the day

what it of itself would make.

Mid July

Mid July, 2012--poems

Where we stand

They stood and talked, working

their way to present circumstance,

two friends, catching up

in the whispered shift of light

that clicked in him, a place

just so, and he saw—

there it was, he thought, here it is,

given, as lived.

And with no further fanfare,

the ancients and their way

seemed no longer so distant.

**

A hundred more

and they’ll look back

on us…

**

Summer

The light at eight in the evening

in the garden seems the same

as at the earlier eight.

The sky. The quiet.

**

Where we stand--# 2

An old friend and teacher once said,

we must remember our original intention,

and I took this, as delivered, in a religious sense,

as such well enough, but the religious then

was for me so narrow  

as to preclude my truest motivation.

Spoken or recognized or not, 

the urge to first-person choice, the breakaway move

toward fulfillment, that self-conscious clarity and vision

from which all else follows—for me, was you

and all we’ve together built

and continue to build, as life speaks—

     The voice of peace of mind is response

     to the inner call that never fails,

     never interferes

     except to never relent.

     Eventual convergence, the healing rule,

     tide-like guidance of all into place

     in the greater turn

     and shifting embrace.

**

Haiku workshop

To witness, to set

the circumstance, so those who

don’t, who think they can’t,

see by doing that they can

do, with style, grace and insight.

**

Pacific Seminar 2012

The tree is still there,

the one in front of Starbucks

on Shattuck, south and west of the campus.

Berkeley, under high grey skies,

the morning chill fresh against the chest,

a few block’s walk from the center,

still there, all these how many years

since having wandered and found

an early morning cup

and sat and wondered the fate

of that scraggly street specimen

now arching some twelve feet or so

over the side walk,

still there,

so one might stand under

and look up and in

to this living canopy of green.

**

Vocation

Like marrow,

unseen, except for you,

unheard but for your name.

**

We worked into the night,

each to our tasks,

to close the day together

in that fullness

of having nothing left,

of having given all,

to having given in—

that waiting ease,

unspeakable.

**

The question

She spoke it for him, when he asked of her parents,

the unspoken riding the edge of carefully chosen words.

Knowingly, she’d nudged it, her answer turning to fruition

that normally taken as loss.

She didn’t say passed, did not use gone,

but said with a smile instead, completed, this life,

for them, completed.

And this morning, weeks later, it tipped

again, for him—that gnawing sense

of incompleteness—illumined.

Of course.

**

For Kiyo

Forgotten promise,

rising out of the tangle

of words—a friend’s name.

**

Sometimes only a whisper

but this morning, the sky waits,

hesitant patches of pale blue, high

out of the way of the blustery busyness

of ocean-sent winds,

the chimes, the great eucalyptus,

distant pines, grasses and fogs,  all aswirl

on the surging tides

of earth’s great breaths,

indigenous carriers of wonder.

**

I traveled once to Japan to see

the places my teachers had lived,

where their words might have been heard

by passers-by who had seen their eyes,

who’d measured too their human worth

over scattered snatches of breaths

shared along the trails and roadways,

beside the rush of rivers and

under shaded canopies of

cicada-filled trees—one pale face

adrift, a few pebbled handfuls

of the native tongue, specific

destinations, unobtrusive

as possible, yet taken in, turned right

at every pause and stop.

My teachers wrote often of gratitude.

Its sustaining power, its taste,

how it lingers, how it holds true

even in the tangled scratches, the marks of a life 

carefully lifted and placed on the page.

The freely given gratefully returned

to a world so much in need of it.

Toward Summer

Through the thatch of bamboo,

a stuttered flash of spinning chimes.

**

Even dim light casts shadows,

the attentive ear hears the faintest shuffle 

and peace rests in the details

of the daily life

of those who take the time

without asking more.

**

It has its way with me, well before day’s turn, the moon,

pushing light through stained-glass, scatters

broken colors, dark’s dreams, across waking tides,

and I rise

in the secret air of first bird calls.

There’s no question of earth’s place at this time

of aloneness, as all and every wait

their proper turn in the palpable presence

of rightness—yes, it is this

that carries the entirety to fruition.

**

The slightest suggestion across the feathered breast

moves the world in ways unplanned, unsuspecting beings

we are, recording minutia of living-dying, what it is,

every nuance encoded exactness, passed on

to rise or not, occasion to occasion—hints on the wind

may alter our direction, influence how we go

about it, but make no mistake,

move to move, we choose.

**

The cabin at Calistoga

Before the birds, leaves stir, the branches

nearest the screen door, slow sunlight

follows retreating chill—not a whisper.

The door’s ajar, the key dangles its fob,

occasional cars, shrouded in distance,

place us safe, unseen,

together breathing.

**

For Nanao

I’m here, so I write,

here, thus I chant

and let this body-voice

chant me

welling tears—this moment

enough, each moment the point.

**

A refrain

returns to

foundation. 

So listen

well, listen

for refrain.

For refrain’s

home, calls you

back. Answer.

**

Waking early, with gout…

the displeasing wrongness

of it all so pervasive even dreams

message throughout the night

till morning still in darkness,

to wake with pain and wounded spirit

even as day has just begun

that floundering 

the slide of desperation,

at best lingering sadness—unless

until recognition,

recognition of limitedness,

of itself the unlimited recognized

as point of demarcation, horizon

of the truth of our living met

with working wisdom

a lighted point

of what’s true and what’s real:

that point where the poem is.

.