the days remaining...

 

“The god we are in is exact.”

                        —Alice Notley

Even given all the players

and the plays, our world,

and each of ours,

is what only it can be.

We buddhists think 

of this as karma—action(s)

playing out the only game 

in town.

**

When nothing comes to mind

but its waiting, is that empty

mind, or is waiting something,

some thing, or is mind

that waiting without something, 

nothing, no thing in mind, 

an empty-handed mind, like

or unlike the one here reaching

for something, any thing,

and even if coming up empty,

pregnant with that reaching-

wanting, there waiting.

**

Does the quiet moon

high in the sky to the west

think of coming fullness ?

I wonder if it forgets 

its crescent self ?

Do you think

it’s exactly the all we see

of it, or is there more ?

**

Ripe figs droop

with weighty fullness

unmistakeable when seen

for what it is, obvious

on sight, even for those

who don’t know, then do.

**

An old friend once said the nembutsu 

will have arrived for sure here, only when

hakujin ho-bos carry it in their hearts, know it

as their words, as naturally as the knapsacks 

on their backs—he was too modest

to be named here, but first in my book, 

and I’ll be damned if I don’t do my best 

to follow both him and his murmuring. 

**

Heat-wave temperatures drop

and the world turns new.

Early hints of cool on the winds

at sundown.

Bodies ease. 

Labored air gives wing to dreams

and a smile wraps the glass

of cool white wine.

Elemental facts,

Merton says, just happen,

like poems, like poets,

just come and just go.

All the more reason to just watch,

just listen.

**

—The fires 2020

But today’s fogs flirt and curl 

in blended discolor 

and coughed orange haze, 

first light quickly receding into the dark 

shroud

that asks inside lights to stay lit 

until time to greet the coming night.

**

Dharma study.

Is there any other?

You know, what’s true

to the world, what’s real,

how it works—what other

study than that?

**

—In times of pandemic,

above the masks,

eyes—the only window now,

opened or closed by every 

accompanying move.

**

The smoke clears at day’s end

enough to show sky’s blue 

bleed through, but not enough 

to tell—only darkness does that.

**

William Stafford’s last poem, last day, 

he watches his hand. And Robinson Jeffers, 

the third to the last of the unpublished: “Hand.” 

And too, here, now, me and mine—glad 

for the hand that moves.

**

Morning’s mist blankets the streets, changes hills 

and trees to distant shadows, a soup, heavy 

with humidity, quiet in the honesty 

of its own weight.

We’ve studiously avoided the news these days 

so close to elections—I once taught my kids to pee 

against roadside trees, to ease the call;

never thought the trees to be gone, nor the streets 

boot-deep in piss—spurious speech, 

ill-intentioned, calculated, thick 

with deceit.

Humans, at our worst, or is this the best to expect ? 

With the world “ours,” what will we 

do next?

Maria Sabina, illiterate sage and healer, teaches,

“Language is wisdom.” What could she mean by that?

She could mean, couldn’t she, that language 

is birth-right free, given, a natural extension 

of lived reciprocity,  

shared spontaneously, and a spontaneous sharing; 

self-sustaining, regenerative growth, processing, 

carrying its own history and reaching, always reaching 

beyond itself into the world at large, spreading, 

rejuvenating, commingling the collectively learned 

across generations and geographies;

something always ours, never ours alone, 

as likely to speak and to sing us, as it is to leave us 

speechless.

The wisdom that is language is gifted, irrepressible spirit, 

seen by some as a threat, to be thwarted, impeded,

and as told by poet Cecillia Vicuna, it is impeded 

only by “injustice and exploitation.” 

And as we wade our way today, and bathe ourselves,

perhaps, in congratulatory stories of democracy, 

Vicuna asks that we consider this: that “demo,” 

the root for democracy, comes from the root “da, dai,” 

to divide—“da-mo” meaning the division of society, 

“demos,” division of people, land. “(Those who divide 

among themselves what there is.)”

                            -From her

                              Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water 

**

**

                                  

“The poet says, 

                                         come with me:

                 I will be writing.”

                                     —Luis Alberto Urrea

—What, Why…

If poet is witness, then what’s seen is 

everything—from here, then:

poet could mean buddha-being,

where intention is everything, everything known 

from what’s seen from where you are 

and given to the page of the world 

then there—

poet witness, then, offers the hand that builds 

the bridge that knows no borders, the hand 

that is never alone, 

that reaches into the fullness offered in the day 

at hand.