June 2015

June 2015

Of wind and breath

As wind is to breath, breath is to wind 

and we in turn to the many things 

met along their way.

**

What is this

there that takes 

each breath’s empty end 

and lifts it to the next?

**

Children seem to know 

what we struggle 

to remember: a world created 

reveals the self 

who dwells there.

**

Each life’s living

moves beyond itself.

Each always more.

**

I’d vow to give up the nonsense,

but I’ve vowed before

so many things

that maybe nonsense 

defines them all—but, this morning,

a crow 

I could not see, but knew 

to be near, a crow unseen called

so clear

that any vow I might have made

brimmed to full

right there.

**

Hope has a role, I suppose; but gratitude offers firmer ground.

**

Legacy—what the poet said—

that things left behind

wake silence lain latent

in presences now gone.

**

She said, the world sometimes confirms,

mostly not; but adjustments, though fleeting, 

can be satisfactory—the secret: to not demand

so much 

that the unplanned 

can’t be enough.

**

The prayer flags are frayed. Sunlight splays 

the porch railing, lays along fingers holding a pen.

Blues pour from inside shadows, a dove calls

from shaded limbs, and that orange and black butterfly

holds the warmth of wooden siding. 

Colorado Springs means friends.

**

Stepping into the morning air, the limbs of the pine 

still, the sky blue, silent, he stops, breathes,

thinks of prayer, of the hum within the hush of himself,

of beginnings already begun, intentions recalled

and day already complete.  

**

And yet again another of the poets moves me to sentences

like these that pour from pen’s end to white and lined and dimpled 

pages creased by the weight of telling thoughts 

impressed—sprung organic from logic-sparked currents 

through tongue and fingers in directions well-taken to follow, 

if what we want to know of is ourselves in the world.

Listen here, watch just a bit more closely that guiding working 

its magic, even if seemingly silent, even when directed center.

Watch. Sentences rock.

**

The last day together tends to quiet 

the walk for the Sunday paper,

accent pancakes and coffee 

and make music of its own enough

to dampen the need to disturb the air 

that brims to full that hold

between us.

***

Taos to Santa Fe

Waking late 

in the darkened room, 

we crack the blinds to blue 

sky sun light 

and coffee 

garnished with powdered creamer.  

Beggars can’t be choosers, they say, 

and the Masters 

did not wish to be—what a fine way 

to start our stay 

here in Taos. We tell each other 

of our dreams.

**

Poet-teachers and what they’ve done with the pen

is not as compelling as what has kept it moving 

for them—I listen for that.

**

In the tangle of nerves that passes for norm, 

we turn another way, lean in to trace each shift full through 

to its end, to the next. Everything real is here.

**

Through the blinds I can see sunlight on shadowed leaves,

scattered spores of blue and the earth-toned stucco wall

of the living room patio faintly dappled.

Like trying to capture air in a screened box, we try to keep 

time, even when there’s nothing to hold, living as if 

loosing count of our heart beats 

means we loose life.

A teacher once said the depths of the natural functions

of all we are, of all we behold, are as deeply integrated

as impenetrable. But we can encounter telling glimmers,

if only we take them as given, and let them go as they will.

**

The Pueblo at Taos Mountain

has been inhabited since 1350 AD.

Those who live here now 

still drink Red Willow Creek.

And to the west, the Rio Grande 

cuts gorges into the earth.

Time is long here. Days hold everything.

**

Prayers for South Carolina

The Santa Fe River runs the city center

from east to west, reaching steadily 

for the Rio Grande which runs its way 

south—even before the smoke settles, 

televised pundits attempt to advise 

that guns are not the problem. 

But river banks reveal history 

as readily as day’s flows speak 

to current circumstance. 

Time listens to both.

**

     “From here on, 

         may everything 

                  be beautiful.”

The Navajo people

make morning offerings 

with words like these,

so I might sing with mine

of the aspen at the river

and the willow too,

of the juniper’s fruit

tangled in vine,

of the promise of heat

at water’s edge,

of reliance given

and of frequent touch.

May everything be beautiful.

**

Words reveal our conversation 

with the world—the poet’s job, to listen.

**

It’s July…the first…and

after morning’s walk, still within the reach of a single stick of incense, 

mind touching page, on and off, here to there, breath unlabored, writing. 

Coffee cools, the pen moves—questions rise, pass, rise and pass 

again—off-pink petals watch from along the fence.

Then, on my knees, sunlight whispers, 

across my hands a testimony, a record 

of personal witness. That all manner of meaning 

need only be taken as given.