New mornings

                             “ It is all giving.”

                                     —Lung Por Ganhas (Thailand)

Should mornings like this one 

feel as if it’s all new?

I mean, a minute ago 

it just felt. Nothing special motions

through moments seeming familiar enough,

but for the suddenness of change

spread in the streets in the front of the house

with new light; 

or was it the noticing that was new, 

of light already there?

This way or that, the newness had its say

and pretty much 

said it all.

**

In the southern sky, above the lower lines

of the hills, thin slivered promises of the moon

wait the announcement of sun’s coming.

Here and there, lingering with me, handfuls of stars.

**

In nine months, almost to the day, I’ll turn

seventy-seven. Had I hatched in Japan, like Ryokan, 

I’d be counting seventy-eight, and like him, perhaps 

already be beyond counting. Either way, I’m clearly bumping

what once was the farthest away of the book ends. 

As good fortune would have it, although the wife reads me

like a book, I’m neither that, nor a story 

limited to a single shelf.

**

The joy of dharma-study rekindles

in the discovery of my life

in the Master’s words.

At the top of the pole, when I step off, he says:

“Dharma, fundamentally,

                       there is no such thing.” 

**

Christmas morning. How many?

Well, you know, more than memory—but of those

remembered, each different from the one before.

Rains take the first six hours of this one, then stop.

Light comes, clouds part, puddles glisten. I listen

to my own footsteps.

A single bird on a wire looks down

to my looking up.

A human approaches, passes, umbrella closed.

Mid-complaint, I check the weight of my expectations

and lay them down, turn home for hot coffee. 

And those cookies left on the counter,

that used to be there for Santa, 

are really mine now. 

**

There’s no discernible breeze, yet it feels that way,

open, unburdened, freed of the weight of things, 

yet present in the full delight of presence—non-clinging

connection, one might say, yet might likely not feel

the need to say at all.

Like that. Like clouds losing the heft of darkness, 

gaining the day without having asked. 

**

Fighter jets stretch tight-streamed runners

across morning’s sky, so clean, so high, so distant,

sound forgets its way.

“Implements of war,” our teacher said so long ago.

Indeed, indeed. Tools of destruction.

But that doesn’t explain the draw of the pink tinges

that hint the edges of unraveling plumes and billows

slowly losing their grip in the blue empty

anymore than the sun explains that glance

or the why behind the colors

that come of that.

**

No so much the world as I would have it,

though of course, but the world as it is

and the endless possibilities afforded us here

to do as we might do together.

**

When the song-words dance and flow

from your tongue, pass over your lips, ride the breaths

extending from the depths of your earth-pressed feet,

what do they say to you, what say 

of you, to yourself, 

that you might share—what language 

do think that is, and does that even matter

beyond its music?

**

The dough doesn’t rise, almost twelve hours,

it doesn’t puff or swell a smidgin. No life-signs, 

other than a rock’s (much to slow).

Flour. The stuff sounds, at least, like the desired direction.

Yeast, to me, is an insider thing, and insiders know

it means growth; also, fickle.

From the fridge, say the instructions, to “room temperature.”

Room temperature? What’s that? 

For those of us in the Bay Area a generation or more, 

there is no such thing. Except maybe what you feel 

when you strip off the layers you put on 

to protect yourself from it. That? 

OK, ok, so now in the central heating burbs,

I crank up the furnace, and place the covered bowl 

near a heating vent, in the hope that 

the hoped-for pastry’s pickiness can finally find 

its precious “room temperature.”

And try to be understanding. 

Updates to follow.

**

                  

Even when the path is no more than 

impression, it is no less a path.

**

What’s true isn’t at issue. All in the world,

inner and outer, are by their nature that way.

It’s what you think about it that speaks

of likes and dislikes.

**

Millions of little moves, day to day, 

among them our own, and even so,

it’s the water’s story that allows us to float.

**

As buddhist, I had to find my way out

of the temple, into nembutsu, to reunite 

the poet there.

The first was sharp, negotiated,

full with reasons; the latter is the soft lifting

of doubt, 

as subtle as suddenly felt pulse-beats,

and as sound.