July 5th, Sunday
Each day carries the one before
into the next, leading expression
never entirely its own, but its own enough
to claim, beginning to end,
both date and name.
**
July 6 is a Monday here,
breaking light and fog and dew
that lay a sheen on streets
that whispers passing tires wet,
careful too, to not say more
than what’s known.
And what if we could live
like this, caring enough
that patient readiness
becomes the mark of wisdom
and the insistent voice,
the cut of doubt.
And what if we could live as if
democracy’s mark
were an attentive ear?
**
International Peoples’ Tribunal 2015
Heart is to breath as breath is to voice as voice is to story.
Nations purport to be of laws, but people are always of story.
Spoken and sung and listened to,
we overlap, we make peace, open avenues of justice
and heal
telling our stories as heard, we learn beyond
where pencils break, where boundaries fade.
Singing our stories we lend of ourselves our hearts
to song as heard by hearts
already there; telling our stories
we hear our healing together;
speaking our stories we dream of the dreams
that only our hearts can hold.
Heart is to breath, as breath to voice, voice to story
and story to remembrance of our original intention.
**
For Janet
They’ve begun
to slip in now,
flutterings
passing through
suddenly emptied skies,
signals
of those gone
with the years
we all follow.
God’s speed
old friend’s
little sister.
**
I pray,
I think,
sometimes—
though some
say one
ought not
have to,
it’s not
like that
for me.
For some-
times one
might feel
thanks in
order,
for things
received
from no
one in
partic-
ular.
I do.
**
As humans, others’ loss and suffering can become our own,
if we let it. If so, is this burden or opportune; if so,
what does this say of the state of the world
and the hearts that range
in and about it?
**
religion, politics, poetics
I put my trust in LIFE—all caps—
and return my living to this LIFE
without limits
which unfailingly enfolds all things,
all beings, as worthy
in themselves.
I remember and return to this
because of all I don’t know,
can’t ever know.
But for this: aggression, yours
or mine, cannot be trusted;
suffering ought never
be ignored;
and solidarity means the movement
of the voice of tenderness
toward and among us.
**
After William Everson
Craftsmanship
is knowing when
to stop,
how to leave the words
at the gate of the silence
where poems reside.
**
Cid Corman said,
“If this is divinity,
best make the most of it.”
John Muir Wilderness
**
Stepping out into night air
to pee,
the Milky Way
arcs across the sky so high
only dew-light falls
far enough
to touch.
**
And finally we see them, this morning,
three young bucks, who’ve spent their nights
in circular sweeps of needles
under nearby pines
that seem to have protected us all.
Long deep nights, sleepy mornings
of musing and the slow promise
of coming sunlight—together.
**
Sitting on the western shore of Steelhead Lake,
watching the curved cirque of rock that tops
at 10,600’—there this morning, small fish
break the surface with muffled plops, muted peaks
burst with the first catch of sunlight
and a hushed silence
tempts the waiting voice.
**
Winds come up around 5:00, well before dinner,
temperatures drop in chill enough
for jackets and caps
and the moon moves over the ridge, behind the trees,
to hide till stars come out—so slow, the turn here,
so slow.
You have to be here to hear it.
But you can actually hear
who you are.
