More with less...

More with less—poems

from May 2013

There was once a man who wrote

each day, pen to page to swirl and to scratch,

to press into meaning the meandering lines,

to trace the tracks along the shore

or traceless futures of untellable trails

that lift into the sky.

And some mornings of summer’s longer days

when dappled sun light reached to touch the hand

as it touched the pen that touched the page,

he’d pause, as always pleased to bow his head,

then again begin to move the pen.

**

It’s that we love, that

we love, that moves us most.

**

Dimpled to opaque,

the colored sheet of cultured glass

hung from the bamboo trellis,

sways with the weight

of captured sun beams.

**

To Jonathan and Victoria

Phrase was the term she used,

the recurring theme in the piece he played,

not passage, nor line, more the rhythmic murmur,

the sounded pulse insistent of ought but itself,

self-contained, readily moved where best received,

but best understood in the gathered hush

of pass and return,

over and again.

**

To wake in darkness before stirring birds

to find winds finally quiet,

fog but broken mist in chilled air

as the first of the sun

lights into the clearing skies

and yet to walk almost blind

with churning argument—it is this then,

it is this, is it not, that condition called human.

**

Like those tall pink blossoms in the garden

jostle and sway, thoughts too speak

of what’s being said.

**

Call it meditation

if you will, if you must

call it something,

but know the quiet mind

is itself already

the work.

**

The ancient masters do not quibble—joy

is real, as is travail; life is rife with both.

Skillful negotiation is key,

compassion its natural associate.

**

Brief auto-biography

Having come to know, this alone leads.

Not hope nor fear, not past nor future,

but this now, this sounded song,

this trail and curve of the breaking wave,

the spread and swell, the articulate turn

of each and every word.

**

Sandino David

In the park at the top of Fruitvale

with the grandson asleep,

each at his age in grass in sun

and all that has occurred

and is done—breezes rush,

leaves tremble, grasses crease at our feet,

and the sky that whispers its mark

on this time in this place as right.

**

The ripple speaks

of current

that moves it

to speak of

its movement—

thus, the stream.

**

to Irma

colored glass—filtered light—glinting

silver—shifting shapes—passing

eyes delight…