Doubling down...

  —Doubling down

“I have no philosophy: I have senses.”

                           —Alberto Caeiro

Emily Dickenson

tells us, “by slant,” of possibility,

tells us her way, without telling us ours.

**

It’s the weight and heft,

the mass of earth

these hills present

to ocean-born droplets

that gives rise to fogs

that billow the ridge

we watch day-to-day,

we earth-born,  

in the time we have, 

adding our own 

wetted words.

**

in company with the world about us,

of the world we are about, sustains myriads

of particulars giving way inexhaustibly to more

name upon name calls out through us its sound

    “In an instant all my doubts

     and the gloomy mist

     of my confusion

     vanished.” *

owning nothing, owned by nothing, year-long

days open un-tread ways, and we care

to try

and it occurs to me with morning

how carefully I attend the words of a man

who tells me he knows nothing

how we guess our course to catch no more

and no less than 

movement

and with movement, the way of the world, 

we learn to figure our own arrogance

which world takes for granted

and moves us along

just that way

anyway

**

Unable to capture the sun’s revolution,

unable to count the beats of my heart, 

how foolish to think I can plan 

much more beyond 

where I tentatively stand—it’s my feet 

that will find what’s best from here.

**

The road-work guys rattle late morning air 

with signals of ongoing repair, subtly, steadily

accentuating my inability to negotiate the distance

to the kitchen, without stopping to bow to the pain, 

deepening lessons of pandemic isolation, conditions

accrued over years, demanding attention, now, here.

**

—After Mikret Kebede

This poem,

     “It acts out of the act of silence.”

words are acts of silence, rising out, returning to

the never-diminished well of the welling-up

of itself of words

intuition-lifted learning articulating presence

not quiet

each resonant sound returning

its silence

—song hints at this, literacy affirms it

**

Meanderings while on pain meds

—Life’s Deliverables

Birth. Pain. Death. 

Three lights. Birth-Pain-Death-birth-pain-death-birth-pain…..living/dying

threads of dynamic, ever-changing fabric-flow of earth-existence-in-cosmos, 

a wall-less all —three lights of myriads, named lights—name too, your own

fabric-flow energies charging life’s deliverables, as we live them

over fifty years since I cleared out my father’s dresser—t-shirts, under-ware, 

socks, matches and condoms—condoms? Dad? only forty-eight, 

his eldest grandson’s age, 

Mom younger, 

sure

how vivid these things so close to him became then, how real to me, only 

in his absence—a handful of his tools, still at my work bench,

still coming to my hands

as with the knick-knacks on Uncle’s mantle, became so curious—once invisible,

becoming so personal to him, his, but only when he’d gone

life’s deliverables, so readily ignored, until not

high mountains consistently call—the weight, the work, the legs—everything carried 

is all you have—when tired rest, hungry cook, make due—bed, shelter, sleep

conditions at hand, as delivered, determine, tell, direct, restore—the immediate, 

the intimate--forest, rock, dust, lake, stream, stars—all the breathing

doubled over on the floor to relieve the pain, running a finger 

along the dusty shelf, thinking how much in our home 

I’ve ignored so long

unavoidable pain, unexpected gift—immediacy, light, clarity 

aging skeletal and muscular ecology beginning to stress, weaken—deterioration

and herniated discs can equal unimaginable pain 

lightening-bolt illumination, flicking threads, flash opening into its own letting go

in the midst of which I wonder aloud, how can others, who live with this, daily, 

how  they do that—threads realized 

at seventy-seven continuing to pretend to add yet another ten—birth opens 

life’s process of dying into the new, into new—no death, no life

 

threads that flow the forms that friction the stitch unfold the light 

that enables our seeing what we don’t see

for our failure to attend our living-dying

doubling down in covid, bowing to the unimaginable, the loss, the turmoil, 

the challenge around us, the glow of threads and links, tails of collective truths, 

of our living-into-dying, and the dust-covered joys just lying in wait 

at our finger tips

  —From Cid Corman

          With so much

          personal

          sorrow,

          how take on

          the world? Clear.

          Bow, be-

          side me. Must

          as we will,

          share it.