**
When lingering fatigue is simply given in to,
allowed, sleep willingly makes over our way
to its own, and rest finally takes root. So it is
in youth and in old age,
though the cycles implied not only differ,
but for the latter, tend more and more to baffle,
which I’ve begun to realize is directly related
to the diminishing power of denial
to have its way,
which leaves those of us now in an aging way
simply with the way it is.
**
The continued utterance of prayer-words,
mantra, if you will,
a run of syllables, song or chant,
even if denied as such,
a handful of chosen words
that of themselves uttered
trace the contours of the individual
immediacy of finding one’s self as is,
within the gifted arc of ancestral breath
that reflects, time and again,
the be-storied and unrelenting acceptance
to be heard there.
**.
I can’t say I remember who said it
for me, but said why I study
is to better understand what I’ve seen
and heard and thought and otherwise
experienced, so that thanks can tip
the end of the pen to show on the page
the teachers to be recognized as such,
those threads in the weave
of this joyous way
of the student.
**
—Ode to the folding chair…
Agape’, love in action
in the arc and swing of the folding chair
unfolded,
back and seat readied,
legs claiming the certainty of place
in time-shown need.
Family, community, fellows.
**
Even in early February,
morning lets light earlier, and evening
allows its lingering,
more room perhaps for cold
to have its time before spring begins
to beckon,
though even so, I’ve seen
on sunnier days, scattered blossoms
smiling on the slopes, in certain trees,
and seen bulbs sprouting vibrant green
from beneath the moistened earth,
and not to forget
the handfuls of words
here and there heard humming
melodies of the perennial.
**
Where I come from, Friday comes for us
with its own feel, young or old, working, school,
or not, comes a momentum’s surge at shore’s edge,
readying to spend the whole of itself
in the simple slide and spread of elation let go,
even if negative, even if only implied,
seeming innate to the species, traced in the collective
of cells, molecules, atoms—but actually, really, old story,
told and told, agreed and passed down as true,
to successive generations of the unsuspecting “we,”
many of whom individually
will let pass unnoticed
tonight’s full moon.
**
“Awareness of disappearance,”
the poet’s utterance
Not nostalgia, not of cycles
native to us
Not of blood or age or birth or death
but awareness of loss of
the native
Of petals, roots, paw-print, of leaf,
of language, of peoples
Of ways close to earth and sky who care,
are cared for in return
Loss of ways of seeing, of being,
for nothing more than
convenience, greed
Awareness of intentional erasure
**
I’ve never seen myself as standing out
from whatever stream flows
about me—have been fortunate, loved,
have learned and continue to learn
through listening.
And although the moon tonight
is so bright, only Orion holds its own
in what seems a lonely sky,
the moon still meets every eye,
holds every palm
open to it.
**
—Porgy’s Dharma
“I’ve got plenty of nothing
and nothing’s plenty for me.”
point me to the countless teachers’
names too bountiful to recall
where communities of living
abound without boundary
where
there’s nothing to sell
no want to be sold
no treasure
that can possibly be held
**
Cutting between the playground and the school
down the street from our home, opens a view
all the way to the expanding financial district,
downtown San Francisco, and the SalesForce Tower,
a rude reminder of this neighboring proximity,
this morning catching the rising sun’s brightness
from the east of the bay
and beaming it straight down that channel,
right to where I stand—an amazing sight,
indeed; but in the end, all the sun, and all the rest,
as they say, mirrors and tricks.
And glancing over my shoulder, the moon,
still high in the sky, appears to concur.
**
It’s visceral, unmistakeable—at first, just a stirring,
deep in a dark-clouded sludge of dormancy, then sparks
and charge that ignite the turn into sun-drenched daylight,
that revives.
Dramatic, perhaps, but the feel, for sure, of that instant
when winter’s grip slips from body-mind like brittled skin,
and nakedness greets the gentle breeze inherent there.
And the world, as perhaps it is for Brother Bear,
the world re-presents itself in all its glittering entirety.
What a time to be alive, indeed—and too,
what a time to die.
**
We planted this almond tree by the fence
along the street in the front, in a year gone now
from memory. Each year since, the almond
is always first to bud to flower, never forgets.
**
Nothing comes today
that piques the pen’s fancy,
but I push anyway,
pressing the final pages
of the journal for clues,
whatever it was that freed
the morning of its earlier weight
seemingly having lifted with it,
traceless—no mist, no smudge,
no place to place even a single word,
other than the foregoing, of course.
