Almost March

Not nature as thing, but the nature of things as

never repeating patterns remembered

as the call home.

**

Wrinkled paper speaks the vernacular

found in notebooks

scratched with ball point pens

anyone can afford,

though pencils will do 

quite well too.

The old ones spoke

of “plain wood.”

**

I recently read where older folks

sometimes begin to feel a sense

of disconnect, of loss and loneliness,

but have come to see this as the sensing 

of room, finally the space 

within which self and ego stretch

into that silence 

that has carried it all 

all this while. 

**

Spider webs drip last night’s rains

into air held still by doves.

**

That the telescope in the corner gathers dust

while pens routinely run dry of ink

speaks volumes.

**

Each rain drop,

every cicada,

going its own particular way

among all the others.

**

To let go of the need

need not mean to let go

the practice—every gesture

ever carries its perfect weight,

even when we can’t tell.

**

I travel lighter these days,

take fewer notes and 

shorter poems.

**

The almond tree is full snow,

and fragrant cuttings grace the vase

on the altar next to the wooden Buddha

found in the market in Bali—the blossoms

speak well of this.

**

If the renegade is simply unique,

then the world is full of us.

**

This too, this dis-ease,

perfect practice 

here.

**

Friday morning before feeling light

and let’s face it, I’m seventy-two—what place

can new possibilities really have here? And yet, 

here we are.

**

Many things, most perhaps, run better

when things run through them. Body, for instance,

forests and streams. And wind, what would be desert

without wind ?

**

Too many interruptions

turns your story

into mine.

**

Breath: even when lost is still wind.

**

At the risk of seeming contrary,

from where I sit, there is no “other side.”

But there are horizons.

**

One absolute:

ocean works waves,

not the reverse.

The other: change.

**

I’ve lived too long now for philosophy.

Point me to the poets.

**

What makes us think it is we who penetrate 

the world—who do we think we are

anyway? Let’s vow to return 

to trembling readiness…

**

At my age, my grandfather had lost

three of six sons, and his wife. Though

my uncles were beside themselves, he

bought a VW camper and wandered 

the southeast seaboard alone, looking,

he said, for family clues. On his visit to this coast,

he asked us to take his picture alongside “Pigs Off Campus”

graffiti at Berkeley. He chuckled when he laughed, chewed 

when I was a kid and always wore a fedora. 

**

We grew up in blue-collar, suburban New Jersey.

The bus ride across the river to Manhattan 

might well have been the other side the continent 

from the last block on Rosewood Terrace 

which was mostly duplex, lined with maples 

and dead-end at the back fence of the local factory. 

Tall hedgerow hid us there when we smoked. 

My dad did all the work on the family car 

in the driveway out front. In high school, we moved 

to Livingstone Road, nicer, with a garage. He stayed 

with the driveway, but neighbors there came over to watch.

Saturday afternoons in the fall were devoted to college football.

My dad’s day always ended in front of the television, 

with a cold beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon, I think. But all of this 

was before color.

**

End notes: 

1. Sheetrock nails take best to a measured hit—always hold.

2. We didn’t know our bikes were second-hand

    till other kids got new ones—chain guards

    keep grease off your pants.