Just my life...

“It’s just my life,” he said of it, 

dismissing talk of discipline

or plan. “It frames 

how I unfold.

I just try to follow,

take notes.”

**

My most lasting friendships are with those 

quite a bit older, who live elsewhere, 

in different times.

There’s this thread.

**

Feel first—mind follows to the waiting quiet

unfailingly—deep in the ravine, the dry creek

holds the call of bay leaf by its scent—the softness 

underfoot on the granite slab carries heart beats 

of lichen—feel first, mind follows.

**

I’ve noticed of late where “always” is beginning

to tend toward “usually” and even the most cherished

of habits occasionally falters. The poet William Bronk

refers to the “shabbiness” of old age. I prefer to think of it

as reorientation, you know, like tides shifting. 

**

After Albert Saijo

Sacrament: that which when engaged

rekindles innocence. 

**

Unencumbered by reason, 

the breeze,

unseen except 

for its touch.

**

And when we feel we must

say something, then that something

might well begin with “yes.”

**

I can’t color the rising sun with words,

but saw it early

lift above the horizon behind a thinning veil

of morning vapors,

not so much shining as luminous 

at the edge of beginning day,

a coming, a being with

those of us there too.

**

We can practice, but that’s not it—the praise

of amazement, whatever the gesture, whatever 

the words, says it all.

**

Have I ever told you how it was then, before

the now we’ve known as friends and lovers together,

how stark the trail, how different the feel of the steps 

from then, to the who I’ve now become, but for you?

**

Morrison Creek, North Yosemite

Trying to think like a rock, I stop and sit at the edge

looking down some two thousand feet,

contemplating the reservoir rationale 

in a place where water has run for centuries 

and more for any who come and all who belong,

contemplating the beauty of the water

as it lays here now, and the beauty 

and the cost of all that’s been lost.

**

The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne

is four thousand feet below 

Yosemite Valley—

primeval forests here

rain pine needles in sunshine,

cones thunder and thud.

**

Day 5—8,000 feet

Harden Lake is surrounded

by tall California red fir, abundant here as not below,

wind lifting splayed fingers of curved, grey-green needles into clear blue.

About a third of its full size, rimmed for yards with rock-strewn grasses

once its shallows, thumb-nail frogs and tadpoles scatter when water’s edge

is approached—water still clear.

It’s hard to finger, much less

letter a trip like this, down to and return from the deepest of

the canyons in Yosemite, in our seventies, still able, 

still willing, still continuing blessings: when seen from underneath,

red fir stems and branches spread in patterns similar to snow flakes;

jeffery pine bark smells like butterscotch; and canyon’s bottom holds five 

kinds of acorn, each an oak.

Neither purpose nor pride guide us

here these days—why we come and how,

sheer delight—these nights, at this age,

delight—breaths unfold, eyes open,

stars appear through shadowed boughs, and

somewhere in these nights a star shoots.

**

Almost 73

and only when I’m paying only half attention 

does the face peering back from the mirror 

seem to make sense of me…

**

Uttering Buddha’s name aloud,

like a poem uttered 

when alone,

is the sound of intimacy,

open-hearted witness 

that asks nothing in return.

**

After Basho

No scholar-poet, I just listen

for the dance and music of words

in relation,

is what makes me play,

with that natural outgrowth

of being me.

**

Why? Because

each poem is the only poem,

and naturally so.

Why else?

The Big Island

**

Wondering, a man, no less and no more,

watching the Pacific sky clear, blackened earth

go to green, clouds lighting the east of the island,

as the youngest grandchild’s voice joins

with waking birds—this State’s pride, a wild goose

known as the Nene, numbers over two thousand 

these days, up from thirty single lives 

some sixty years ago, accomplished, they say, 

by “captive propagation.”

It’s a crime now to disturb Nene. 

It wasn’t then?

**

Sun first casts shadows, 

sees how earth responds, 

how too the sky, if mostly blue, 

listens to the turn of bird song,

whispers of winds, 

then lets loose its cleansing breath

for all who wait and those who don’t, 

or can’t—each the same in this, 

all receive, believe or not—

nothing special, just everything 

the way it is…