July 2015

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.