Divine Malaise

Finger tips know their own way 

and don’t keep it to themselves.

Don’t let the mind tell you it carries

most of the weight.

**

The plane turns south from Denver, 

late afternoon throwing light through cabin windows. 

Open prairie farmland, lightly dusted white, 

turns to rolling hills and deep creviced canyons. 

Sporadic stretches of forest, crosshatched roadways

and the sudden encroachment of housing tracts, 

the far-reaching outskirts of Colorado Springs, 

then the flaps-down drag of descent 

and arrival—old knots of kinship 

ready to be retied.

**

Out the backside of the house, we look south

over neighboring rooftops, to the Front Range,

lightly dusted slopes and ridge lines

fronting the higher, whiter, further out.

The home is quiet, a comfort. Sleep comes

as long and deep as winter’s nights. The brisk air

of morning suburban streets pleases.

Catching up is so relaxed, the range so wide, 

it’s hard to tell if anything need be caught at all.

The top right corner of the micro-wave

needs an extra push. We leave night-lights glowing, 

just in case—things being said 

that can only be said here.

**

—Making history, with Ted

The two of us, 

who were so many years ago moved so 

by this man’s words, the two of us sit and watch 

the turn table spin, silently listening 

to the needle-lifted tones of Kerouac 

reading his own. 

We, alone and only in the world this day, 

at this hour, with Jack…

Pretty much presumptuous, we observe; 

but likely true.

Same hearts as back then, set to beating a’new.

**

Our last night together, plans in place,

dinner waiting on the stove, Latin music

and a fire.

Direction affirmed without the aid of a pointing finger,

we find our way by listening—where the music

takes us, has taken us, trusting opening 

a different knowing.

**

The ancients bid farewell at river crossings, 

roughened bridges; but for us 

the early morning drive on darkened highways

holds the stories our love like a glove. 

Whatever’s not said, can’t be. 

A hug, a kiss, a wave.

The right seat at the airport yields clear views.

Snow streaked Pike’s Peak, clouds clinging about,

roused from the dark by high country light.

What can real prayer be, if not 

the gladdened edges of a heavy heart, 

and willing devotion to whatever unfolds of that.

**

the last few years have been uneasy

for me, and I don’t know, but now looking back 

an urging, a call, signals without ready answers 

no surface changes, yet swells, traces, as if  

of currents not fully followed, for fear, or something 

something resistant to definition, to calculation 

or design—no not those, something

once absent hesitation, something 

allowing

an edge, to be sure, a point perhaps, but of space, 

of time 

that shows itself and there reveals 

the all unseeable beyond 

an unsayable momentum and pull,

immediate but gentle beckoning

as the breeze that turns the leaf 

there touched by sun, caught by the eye

just passing by

on the path that called the foot that 

then took the step 

**

—An ode to one-offs

I don’t know,

I see now

not one thing

of one-offs

so desired,

except for

the music

in their count,

muttered crisp

to ears cupped

round their sound,

there picked up

with a smile.

**

Almost like over night, so many of the trees

along the streets have shorn their leaves entirely, 

as if winter, finally come for sure, leaves too little room 

for free-fluttering to ride in a sky constricted so with cold

it brittles all it touches. Lucky for us, the many and varied 

and deeper resiliencies that run in the blood of seasons.

**

I spread round the fruit trees today

with composted manure. Winter rains take it from here, 

to soil and roots into spring buds carrying seeds into blossom- 

yielding fruit, come summer.

Been here twenty years, the trees a bit less—my part each year,

less and even less—learned and learning how best 

to just stay out the way.

What a joy.

**

I saw on the desk calendar, predictions

of a fulsome moon sometime soon—but the rains

refuse to listen to such stories.

**

**

“Keeping company with moon and blossoms,

I spend my remaining life.

So clear—rains, clouds, and spirit.

I am awake, as are all things in the world.”

                                                                  —Ryokan

Light and its imaginings...

“LET US GIVE UP THE IDEA 

THAT WHATEVER IS HAPPENING TO US 

BELONGS TO US”

                                  —Albert Saijo

The young maple at the corner of the drive

where the old Chinese lady lives

offers vivid orange and gold. Midway up 

the terraced garden, long stretches 

of deeply colored greens, and upper most, 

a row of fruit trees, holding full 

to their leaves their color,

under the wide and empty chill 

of a morning in fall.

**

—11/19/19

Numbers and letters fall to turning pages

like so many leaves, 

flutter a silent filling to scattered corners 

to cushion the earth

with multicolored stories 

of life in the sky, let go.

**

The fog today blankets the valley

full with only itself. Cold accompanies, 

transparent, affirmed by skin and bones,

by lungs braced by the unforgiving gift

of perspective regained: center-less

is the way it is—inclusive, whole, 

to be sure; no thing rejected, all things

a part of. And center-less.

**

With death closing in, the man on the screen

asks aloud of himself, what he’s done

with his life, and all the others, all aging,

on and beyond the screen, pause.

**

And so the hills felt different, indeed

presented differently for me, and maybe too

for the way I’d come, just wanting to be there. 

And arrived as I did in the beginning of day, 

before the brightness, in the earlier layers of light, 

in the quiet of grasses, dull and fallen leaves, 

reddened berries, the smells, aromas—all so clean 

a simplicity, whole and complete, open to accept

every step, no question where I’d been, any direction 

I’d care to go—a clear and palpable blessing 

of coming to know earth as ever my home.

**

First light

allows

east facing houses

on the hills

entry

from outside

darkness,

the quick brushed kiss

of sun’s rose-gold rays

dulling 

in the veil of mists

that hinders too

the fullest of moons

from sharing

the brightest of its time

in this new-come light

of the soft coming

of this new day

it slowly leaves behind.

**

The moon drops its light

from overhead, 

spreads patio stones lit 

like the face of a mountain lake.

Orion takes the horizon in the west,

I the double yellow lines down the street

some hundreds of feet 

before any sign

of life.

Morning so quiet, it seems un-breathed,

that whatever the next utterance, 

it will tap the whole 

of the waiting resonance.

**

—Late November

The light

in mornings

between the houses

lays silent, sullen almost,

as like the tan colored grasses

of fall’s advance, lying flat

down against the face of the earth,

mixed here and there with darker tones

of fallen needles, lifeless scatterings 

‘round bared, swollen mounds,

packed hard and risen, as it were, 

to better survey sporadic stretches 

of still living grasses, many of which

will last, perhaps into, even through

the strange winter season here

and the promise of rains, which can 

and may green surrounding hillsides

well into a spring not even thought of yet,

except of course by those rains.

The ways of a place, once understood, 

ought to be followed more closely than predicted.

But who we are, what we do, 

for good or not, is usually both.

**

—The canyons

The spring to the eastern side of the large oak

where the hermits have lived, still stains the earth there,

a pleasing find, more easily seen through the leafless trees

and withered scrub. The stream beds too, hold the puddles 

and trickles of successive waves of fog.

Bear berries own the hillsides, white tufts

pepper the wide spread coyote brush throughout 

and buds hint at the limb tips of the bays 

upper most in the canyon, where it begins to close in

with a last reach for the ridge.

One of the ancients has fallen here.

The stories the mountain holds are there for the asking,

page after page of unfolding continuance, step after step

a revelation of the universe at work, even if 

none are inclined to inquire.

**

—Harold Stewart

There’ve been so many things these days

I’ve forgotten—those I can’t name among them—

but over and again I’m amazed at how often 

so accurate a glimmer appears for me,

of a phrase, one piece of a phrase, 

it’s place on the page as opened,

to the left or the right, and how that in itself

helps pull the right book from the shelf

and the intensity that is there re-touched

and in turn can lead to another turn, 

to a forgotten fellow poet, as now, waiting 

so close by, to again touch me.

**

The sleepless first hours in bed last night

slipped into long, low-range dream-sleep

that lifted with first light,

unusually cold and unexpectedly vital,

that took me into deserted streets in time to see 

low-angled rays of sunlight

reach to meet the gold-turned leaves

at the tops of the trees with its own.

The dream held a voice that held a place with me 

as I walked in that most perfect time.

It was strong, gruff, blunt with its words,

not mean-spirited, but no-nonsense.

The words, I could never clearly make out. 

But the voice, the voice said 

the time was now.

**

Even the coldest night holds true certain lines

that loosened contours of breath ride 

like so many lighted passages. 

Fear of death is the self’s resistance

to misperceived limits and misbegotten ideas

of peace as place certain.

The doubt that rebuffs the natural, 

unhindered flow of trust 

is of similar root

and the spark and glow from the rub 

of those tensions

is the stuff of human liberation.

***

***

“We love everything…—we dig it all.”

                                                  —Jack Kerouac

On the road, October poems

Petals signal 

the report held

by nectar

until hummingbird comes

to take it all down.

**

The latest jolt along the nearby fault 

shakes many of the photos and paintings

to crooked, lines faulted to disarray, breath holding, 

tentatively waiting for a second, a tremor at least, 

though neither come to grant that odd relief—

                                                      

in the moment held, we draw together, wide-eyed, 

then part with a sigh, 

the collective stretch to straighten again 

that which we still believe 

we have control of.

**

—To Rome

Passing date-lines in the dark of night 

speak of little more than discomfort, fatigue,

until the barest hint of blueing in the blackness

and a soft spread of ribboned pink 

that lifts the slowly lightening sky

to reveal a vast range of clouds

beneath which Europe sleeps.

**

A poet speaks of knowing the self

as the galaxy might know it, before

notions of birth, before definitions 

crimp being’s random edges. 

First thoughts of this, of course

take wing; but truth be known, 

these feet find comfort most surely

on the ground,

which at any rate might well be

where the galaxy sees us too, 

along with the ants, the roaches

and other beings gravity burdens.

**

Life lessons, learned over local wines,

both red and white: dust is a fool’s worry,

settling only on those who are still.

**

—Sicily

The coastline runs generally north-south,

a “W” opening eastward toward Italy’s boot, 

away from an unseen Etna. From here though, 

two small volcanos, unmistakably so, and,  

two rather suspicious mounds. 

And although, from time to time, 

the unseen Etna spews smoked reports,

locals feign disinterest.

**

—Taormina

Upon arrival, Etna, of course, a shapely shadow

of grey darkness parting broken clouds and plumes.

But, after all, just a distant passing freeway visage. 

The strongest roadside impression is a tangled mass

of exposed lava. Sicily: lava. Well yes, but, 

the deeper migration is the push and call, the shift

and the rise of plates: continents, meet here, 

mark here: 

on the crests looking out, looking down, 

the Ionian Sea, the upward claw, some eight-hundred feet 

of unrelenting green

and on the waters’ surge, the stories,

of shattered dreams, of landed voice, of scattered

but continuous song.

**

Native to Italy, the Stone Pine forms canopies,

bent and forked branches umbrella 

in bunches of bi-needled fascicles 

and cones, 

the one aside our patio hosting climbing vines 

and dangling tendrils—silent chimes that bounce 

on the rush of the sea’s breezes, puzzle the ears, 

please the eyes.

**

The center of Sicily is hills and rock, mounds

and bluffs; promontories dominate rolls of green,

scattered stretches of dirt-bound brush and lazy valleys:

citrus, olives, almonds; stone fencing and homes; 

cattle and sheep.

A joyous drive from Catania in the east, 

to the Valley of Temples, on the southern shore,

where notions of hours, stories of miles, fall silent. 

Centuries of remnants of myriads of dreams 

of multiple peoples, kept in the watch of unchanging 

hills. The reaching limbs of ancient trees still listening. 

The barely whispered wishes of lichen covered stone.

**

Buddha’s name finds my lips

on the pre-dawn streets of Matera.

Pigeons flutter up from the stones.

It’s not so much being Buddhist,

I’m thinking, as living deliberate the breath

that burns from beneath the soles of the feet.

**

—On the way to Lecce

a plateau we’re told, 

crossing from Alberobello, over the boot

to the instep, half to toe, half to heel.

Cultivated fields, straight walls, 

never-depleted stones.

Here the vines, there the trees,

grapes, olives, muscled trunks,

doubled and twisted and ridged

with years. 

Promised cherries, not seen,

neither yet the sea. 

But that dark grey bird, again, 

white under-wing and tail, again,

just there, over the fields, 

that bird again.

**

—Lecce

The moon is less generous at this hour.

Shadows cast about from street lamps, greetings 

exchange in lowered tones, all in deference 

to some unspoken order of things,

**

Legs stretched out

in a way that eases a sore knee,

pen raised above a blank page,

under a mind with nothing more to say

than just that, the effort to reach beyond

such un-telling moments

simply falling right into them.

Unable to gain traction enough 

to figure into play some imagined future,

I’ve the sneaky suspicion

I’m experiencing now. 

**

—The courtyard in Sorrento

Where do haiku hide

and why does the pen tip point,

asking the flowers

on the trellis on the wall,

the vines, the petals, the leaves?

**

—Naples-1

Our relation to the entirety of the world

around us: immediacy, intimacy, such that

it simply is—immanent, taken for granted, taken as.

Life-death, sure. Ideas. But more so, 

the moments’ movements across the page.

The answer living gives of itself at work 

among the beings and things that make it

what it is.

**

—Naples-2

And then, outside, a bird. 

Above the thrum of air-conditioning,

over the workmen’s determined thumps,

amid scattered voices and scooter noise,

a bird whistles—not chirping, but whistling

in the cavernous, cobblestone-floored canyon

of the inner courtyard of multi-residence buildings.

In old Napoli, a single bird whistles, and we all 

raise our heads 

to hear more.

**

The empty bowl still holds the chill of cold milk,

now gone. Fingers wrap 

beneath and along smoothed curvature, 

touch 

the raised bead at the base, thumb crooking 

the upper rim, 

lingering satisfaction unwilling 

to let go.