final pages

The truth of the matter

of this living and dying we do

together while alone

is not one of thought, which is

itself but one of the myriad puffs

of passing living  

that delight and confound,

as all expressions 

of this marvelous mystery do,

but rather, just that,

the mystery 

that is.

**

Words work best 

in bunches let go before breath runs out…

**

There’s only one song.

Words change with the winds,

the moon goes full to gone. 

But there’s only one song.

**

To the very end, well past the time the lighter

lit its last, my mother kept it and her smokes

within arm’s reach.

What the empty pages of my journal don’t say

is that I carried it and a pen, from bed to couch, to 

bed again, mid-morning to middle of the night,

right there, at the ready, every one of the four days 

the flu took most everything else of me 

away.

**

I’m not so sure at this point what I’m looking for 

when pulling an old teacher off the shelf, to read

what I’d written in margins long ago, or to find now

something missed then.

Some say past impressions have already done 

whatever their work; however helpful a dialect 

learned along the way might have been, 

what remains are only echoes.

Disoriented once on the trails in Zion, the map 

became clear to me only when I’d calmed enough 

to remember what really helps—hills and valleys 

forever speak only in present tense.

**

The afternoon sun catches in the bowl

on the low table in the living room, throws light

from the shallow cup to the ceiling,

luminous shards of molded glass, a fractured rainbow

of spotted colors moving in angles at odds with the sun’s 

arc through the open picture window.

At the bowl’s center, a pair of wooden hands, ebony,

found in a Bangkok market along side the elevated tracks

of inner-city train lines.

Pinkies touching, palms open, 

thumbs slightly spread, 

offering.

**

Keeping its focus,

keeping its beat.

The heart.

**

Morning’s walk

into the mist amidst

swirls of change.

This endless count giving 

this only quiet,

this culling voice living

and dying

its own singular joy, this 

breathing this, 

this walking home.

**

prayer has voice

even in silence

it listens too

**

Stand centered

in the stream’s flow and drift,

let its taste

determine direction,

let its rush

tell of your wish,

let its flow speak 

the how of how we all go

and its name

tell of all names.

**

Usefulness is one

of the many petals of

human flowering, identified

only when reflected upon,

such reflection also being just one

of many formless, colorless petals 

unfurling there in natural 

reaching-engagement.  

Flowers do not help, nor cooperate, 

nor interfere, but just reach 

into life’s light with all they have, 

all they are,

this one 

turning back 

to its own 

self-glowing.

March 15, 2016