Sunday, February 4, 2018

always this



leaves brown
        bare their trees

  all the more obvious in old age
           fires burning 

      a different kind of heat


**


made me think of our first born
how he looked when first we met

how right the universe is
to stick to its own standards

of beauty and gift


**


rain leans in

free falls

from the trellis top
to the blue tarp
a’top patio chairs

taps patterns
of dream songs

of forgotten promises
of fading recollections of spring


**


Methinks
our need
to name

makes things
neither
more nor
less what
they are.

What then
does this
say of
what we
make of
ourselves
by name ?

Does poet
dream poem

or poem
dream poet—

and if so,

what’s lost
or gained 
in the
writing ?

“I’m here,
so I write,”

the master says—

what else
to say ?


**


Before learning their second tongue,
babies, all of them, 

speak for the universe 
its many varied words for yes !


**


It is the nature of language
that it takes us, even when
it appears otherwise.


**


words telling stories
where nothing happens

fall like leaves making peace
with ground left behind


**


ok after a long sleep

late morning walking sunlight
frees winter cloister

to vows of no return

to slow draining spirits
too close akin to dark

one slice of light
is all we need


**


the grass and weeds 
between the stones

in the stairs in the garden
speak to probing fingers

of the many virtues
of winter rains


**


finally seeing I’d slipped back
to trying too hard, I give thanks
by letting go


**


mind holds course its indulgent way
while eyes pass silk-touch praise

to pink-grey skies, to horizons
free to feel


**


Like its individual face, 
the pathology of self-cherishing

when raised to the systemic
runs brute oppression
on one side 

and on the other spreads 
presumably pure reason 
that sells 

resulting carnage 
as someone else’s 
fault.

Deprive a fire of the air it breathes,
it chokes on its own smoke.


**


Light from street lamps
makes clouds of mist

where rain drops
might otherwise be.

What otherwise might we be

but for sun’s light ?

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