perpetual suspension

july into august

leaves dance with breeze  

with broom and me   but none of us 

wants to follow

**

to understand  

live quietly 

read after working

the garden

scribe poems 

pulled from tangled roots

**

a pause to consider this president

because ten words of vocabulary 

might suffice ten second

attention spans 

but when three of the ten are 

I   ME   MINE

peoples’ lives are diminished 

far more than 1/3 

far more than those

simplistic three

**

perpetual suspension

              

stable instability

we are 

often

both called

and urged

but is

the point

in the 

end to

arrive

**

the night before this   words slowed 

to stop

a teacher somewhere said to sit 

the way earth takes pain 

as leaves   to let it there 

to hold   to grow

in light of the myriad dreams

heavens wish

for the wholeness of us all

listening   sitting 

in moon lit breezes

of awakened joy

**

to climb a thousand feet is no small matter

for old legs that somehow nonetheless

find themselves again lingering in fogs 

along the road along the ridge   giddy

in the belly at the aloneness of it all

where rock and dust walk the whole 

of the distance to where 

eyes no longer see

a thousand feet   into chill 

into the fluttered caress

of summer fogs

**

up sonoma way   just below 

where river begins reaching west

shiloh district cemetery 

takes mid level fog 

august mornings   listens 

to low flying geese

and the quiet pass of herons

gates are locked after dark 

ample space left to the side

for walk in’s i suppose

and beyond the chain link fence

to the far side of the grounds

horses graze   swish their tails 

just above 

where heaven meets earth

**

reciprocal fields of energies 

animate even what we call inanimate

routinely carry unimaginable depths

of detailed movement anyway

makes one wonder wonder the point

of distinguishing one 

from the other

**

chia tao speaks of the abode

of unplanned effect

where self encounters ground

before intention's disguises

that place where choice comes 

to rest

**

windsor

wisteria takes the fence along the ditch

aside the road 

in waves of curling tendrils 

and clustered purple white petals 

blown to erratic dance streams 

on traffic breezes  

that work this favored thoroughfare 

to highway one oh one

fresh corn sells down the way   horses

and ponies graze   the cemetery holds

what quiet it can 

and wisteria 

whatever hand is offered

**

a volume pulled from the shelf opened

to a page of light lifted breath

from another time

breathe together its further fullness 

now and here   as ours

**

the shower

the women gather

this afternoon to celebrate

birthing

and all that flows

from that   not for men

but to follow

at the edge

of knowing the gladness

of true center

**

earthlings   if

the universes

and all they are

were not exactly

the way the are

right now

we would not be

think about 

this guidance

not so much to figure out

but to learn to follow

the how already there

**

many seem unable to engage 

a given moment without calculating 

reason or weight 

pre perspectives

often cut to the quick

by quiet eyed revelations

of often unexpected

equations of love

why I don’t salt my food

**

choreography that suggests

to hold what it wants to show

fails its own test

by virtue of beauty’s movement

every step requires trust  

only the next step carries

**

earthling   i wouldn’t say

genetics doesn’t go deep

but that we don’t follow 

deeply enough   why

insist so on being 

apart from

**

that sakaki fellow   nanao   his first name

first language nippon   followed by biology and stars 

not to mention self taught english and a smattering 

of what he calls desert rat 

that sakaki sat in caves sometimes   sustained

by who knows what and green tea   he said first 

slow down   second   do a good job