The way it is

Remembering the hummingbird’s visit

in the last of yesterday’s light

and its return of early morning surprises

of hovers and darts, then again gone.

And I wonder of chill, of slow moving nectar, 

of flattened light, of discouragement

and of fact; and I wonder of lingering

and of rest, of the delicate, and the brusk.

And I wonder if they are really

very different from us.

**

This age ? 

Well, it’s like waking from the dream

   of a younger man,

       

       waking almost fully rested 

          in dappled sunlight…

**

Forty-two—

tomorrow is the middle one’s birthday, 

brought home to an acre plot

in rural New Hampshire

to the outstretched arms

of an older brother

still right there 

within reach.

**

Polly Dome Lakes, North Yosemite

Taking Murphy’s Creek Trail

up from Tenaya Lake, we camp 

on a rise in a crook of the creek 

looking down at the rush and up 

through the trees to the star-studded sky 

to breathe in the breath of heaven.

**

McGee’s Lake

We are miserable with mosquitoes—the smoke

won’t choke’m, the chill doesn’t still’m,

repellant not repel’m—miserable

with mosquitoes in the Sierra, 

talking into the night

of the next trip.

**

Hiking into the Tuolumne River canyon

along that string of breathtaking drops 

from Tuolumne Falls to White Cascades, to California and La Conte,

and finally to Water Wheel—falls and rapids, stretches and pockets,

roars and reaches and runs, and those ponds, swirls and suddenness 

of bedrock quiet—bare and domed and scraped and ripped, cracked 

and felled into boulders—rocks as big as houses—and dreams

even bigger…thank you, John Muir. 

**

La Conte Falls #1

wind blows needles

and branches that bunch 

the surface of boulders

where grasses grow

in accrued debris 

of disinterested care

where cliffs give way 

to whatever offers

of sun and rain

where ancient chants 

are yet one more 

untraceable beauty…

**

La Conte Falls #2

Just as darkness lifts, I realize

the falls surround us on three sides,

and though the trees don’t betray,

the ground admits 

of a resonance, of a flow 

and a pulse,

the dominant, yet simple rejoinder

of unremitting presence,

the who of decisions here.

**

Did you know that dust in the air 

feeds lichen that feeds on rock 

that turns to dirt that feeds plants 

that feed the air we breathe—

and how, when my boot treads

that felt-like cushion

that covers a granite slab,

how my heart skips a beat?

**

Scientists may come to measure, 

mystics and poets for symbol and light,

but the common ground in high country

is always wonder and awe.

**

A purplish hue hovers the interlude 

between the dropping sun 

and dark’s arrival; river 

continuing its talk, mosquito 

beginning its inquiry, 

we make appropriate moves

to secure the screens on the tent.

**

Everything figures in, every gesture

counts—the saints among us

know this one thing,

and move on it 

every time.

**

“If you don’t remember, it doesn’t belong.”

                                            —Nanao Sakaki—

The bristled purple blossom of the lodgepole pine

pre-figures the coming cone—a purplish-green, 

pineapple-like cylinder at first, it dries 

to outside brown that pries the brittle petals 

to gentle curls that reveal, for awhile, 

smooth purple undersides 

that also dry over time, to brown, to become 

simply “pine cones.” 

These mountain trees, the only two-needle pine 

in the high Sierra, are sometimes called tamarack, 

“a deciduous conifer of tough wood and bright foliage.”

**

“nembutsu,” the Buddhist practice of remembrance

through spoken word, utterance, chant—not so much

that we speak, but that the world speaks in and through

and as us, and all other—“a primal poem”—the open-hearted

energies of world at work the way it is, in and through

and all around, for everyone to hear…

                                               * “primal poem,” from John Martone

****

End note: reading tonight (7.16.16) Albert Saijo’s Woodrat Flat—a work amply and naturally scattered with Latin biological terms for the abundant flora of this Humboldt County time in the poet’s life—I realize I’d hiked and written seven days into the high Sierra and managed to mention, herein above, only one of the many flora encountered over that time, and what a sad state of affairs that is. So, for the record I’ll say another now: Sierra Stonecrop (Sedum obtusatum)—growing out of lichen filled cracks under and between large rocks laying on rock slabs studded with lodgepole and juniper pine— hardy succulents often rooted in what appeared to be Starburst Shadow Lichen ( phaeophyseia decolor), white to yellow blossoms on long stems protruding into strong  mountain winds, there even prettier than the field book picture—so there.