“there are not many songs
there is only one song
…
…
truth is the name of the song
and the song is truth”
—Robert Lax
**
**
Winter takes whatever time it wants,
while spring never thinks to ask,
and through it all, gentle breezes
ripple with whoever’s there.
**
Gravity happens, it’s not something we do.
Air fills our lungs, the sky our eyes.
But we touch because we reach.
Harmony is a bouquet of voices
coming together
for the feel of what’s done
when we do do,
just because.
**
One of the many names passing by
that I receive and throw back
is Buddha’s bigger name,
which makes no claim
beyond praise.
**
—My guess is
the words work
even as we imagine the mind
in silence, the words there waiting,
or rather, pregnant, there full
with their own unique promise
of worlds coalescing
by virtue of sheer desire
to do so, like so many tufts
of seeds of consciousness
awaiting to alight
the many worlds
and possibilities
to be enlightened
thereby.
**
**
The “indomitability of life.”
—Thomas Cleary
**
**
—That Marianne Moore,
she said, of W.S. Landor, that he’d said
he’d considered infinity and eternity, but said
he’d speak of them only after he understood them.
But she, the poet, did speak of light’s speech,”free,
frank and impartial,” animating everything it touches,
to hear and respond in kind.
(see M.M.’s “Light’s Speech”)
**
**
“…—why should I require
that people know of me?”
—from Wang-siang’s
“Roaming Free”
**
**
From where I sit now, without my glasses,
the full flowering bush along the front fence
suggests relations to “blue blossom”
—closer inspection speaks differently
and presumed family lines fall to fantasy—
either way, whatever the way, imagination flows
its dance and eyes delight—
and the question I’d pose for my teachers
this time of my life…do words follow, or
do they lead, and
even if answerable, how much might it matter
to other than poets, so incapable
of letting them be?
**
We speak only after having heard.
What and who we’re listening to, how well,
is what we have to say. Listening will tell you
who you are.
**
I left the fold when feeling
I was just going through the motions.
Though still shuffling about
here and there, now and then, I’m not so certain
how much that matters anymore.
**
Sun-lit
window panes
row across west-laying hills,
sharing everything
the east
has to say.
**
As a kid I’d stand tip-toed
when watching the stars.
As an adult, I’m likely to bow
my head, confirm my feet
still anchored.
The thought of flying frightened me then,
was ok in dreams, as long as I knew
I was dreaming.
Affirmation comes now
in knowing the edges, watching them
move outward as I bump them.
**
After days of cloud-grey overcast mornings,
for this one, the fullest moon rests a bit
above the western ridge, surrenders
to the arrival of light early
by giving over all of its own.
**
Run clear through, before beginnings,
beyond any reckoned endings, our lives,
each one, run through with eternity’s nectar,
doesn’t make times like these any better.
But the Buddhist life I understand
is about just this, how its enduring witness
flavors the taste of whatever life offers.
No particular solutions. Just something.
