February poems

Early February, a Friday

I’ve got the day of the week right,

but can’t yet affix the correct number to it.

High clouds ride invisible winds,

streamed snatches of blue sky, rippled shadows

tracing the roughened face of the rain-soaked earth.

Dreams of names and of numbers

hold no more sway, yet none less here

than bird song or early buds.

Let them unfold in the music

that’s their very own, that carries them

all their way through.

**

…and bow…

They’re called “wall flowers,”

San Francisco region natives

that dot upper slopes

from early spring, or before,

when runs of warm clear days

break winter rains.

Four broad petals, innocent

shaped

as a child’s fingers might make,

white-beige

to soft yellow,

and a startling burst

of floral aroma

that says,

to only the closest nose:

that which seems

most unassuming, may be a signal

to slow down,

to bow.

**

“Everywhere is the silencing

of ideas. That is Buddha.”

                           Thich Nhat Hanh

Wanting, in the morning quiet

of my study, to follow this,

and your voice speaks my name,

sets down the book, closes…

**

February first

The resonance of chimes emerges

from the peripheral silence,

presence alone speaking everything

of consequence,

before and after resting

right here in the pulse-beat of our veins.

Mythical vows of antiquity remembered

as if our own,

the gentle sadness and the joy

at having nothing, grants everything.

**

These winter mornings, the moon

stays high,

setting slow in the west

well after light arrives.

Night’s dew too,

lingers.

**

For David and Kaji

We swarm, we humans, we gather like gnats

in afternoon sunlight along the trail,

old friends and new

sharing stories of suffering and of healing,

here on the warm slopes

of the mountain.

                Buckeye Canyon, 1/30/13

**

A tinge of normal

returns to our world. Once again,

you correct me.

**

Nanao Sakaki:

Turn off

the street lights

and

moon and stars

jump out

in all their glory!

**

The heart, trusted

like morning’s incense,

suggests a newness akin

to the shift from night to day,

returning remembrance wherein

nothing’s forgotten,

a turning over within

ever-arching horizons

of timelessness,

almost incomprehensibly tender.