And what's more...

What the moon shows 

is less than whole, 

what it thinks, 

what it might if it does, 

only the bluing sky knows.

**

After Whitman…

April 4 

up at 4 

with morning 

lunar eclipse

with stars

on earth 

with all of you

casting shadows 

made by sun 

on moon 

casting back

luminous light 

let go

**

This

Good questions. He said they were good—this off-duty teacher

and old friend—but held too tight, he said…and with that, the habit of it

lifted in the drift of the lightness of its own seeing

to flutter and settle and to lay again right there

where it lay before. Now new.

**

Everything needed 

to get there

is already here.

You’ll see.

**

local time— 

from where the morning moon rose above 

the house across the street, 

to where it sits in the dark along the ridge 

as seen from the back deck, each digit, 

every turn, a mark in the stream of the arc 

left behind

**

Real things as they are, tell of time. Sunlight

moves through secluded rooms as readily 

as over the globe. Stillness is only so 

in relation. And only for a time.

**

                     “The page simply can’t register 

                          what the voice is saying.”—William Everson

There’s more to it than the linear—there’s saying, there’s

the saying aloud of prayer, of name held as sacred, 

of song as sung on air as taken and as given, 

of doing as living fulfilled in that register 

unreachable in the page.

**

Light learns and relearns 

the surface of the earth, 

which responds inevitably

and in kind.

**

Let’s not forget, she said. Let’s not

let things go, fall apart, simply because 

we’re old, and because that’s what old people

do—let’s not forget what we’ve loved we still do 

and show it, best we can as always we have,  

by paying attention—let’s not forget.

**

Home is where we are remembered,

even if we have not—original trust regained

without ever having been lost.

**

If every act is a cause, shouldn’t we then…

take a moment…

**

Without the precise, the particular, 

where would we be, how would we speak, 

of what, to whom?

**

Compassion is not a feeling, after all, 

but action, acts within and for the world, 

without the help of self.

**

We’ve got a nest I believe, 

under the eve above the bamboo

outside my window—

recent recurring flutters 

tell me so—slight shadows 

in the top right corner

leave branches to bounce 

and quiver, 

almost like wind passing through, 

innocent breeze made cover 

for more fruitful endeavors. 

**

April 14th

Looking out at 

that scraggly plant 

we hoped would screen

passing foot traffic. 

Enquiring eyes in floating heads 

that seem to pry 

privacy open, to reveal

me, to you. 

All those eyes, looking

through those beautiful

bell-shaped blossoms

that hide nothing.