delights and surprises

the red blossom,

the sea of tangled green—

even bamboo holds its breath

**

who’d have thought—three lines,

barely phrases, holding worlds

wriggling with life

**

with only us two,

the house is pretty quiet—

but then she leaves

**

In the end, each word

is a bow to winds borrowed,

returned in saying.

**

Our feet, the earth feels,

but won’t take in without rain.

Either way, no sprouts;

even after years, no fruit.

Yet, somehow, we get to stay.

**

Barely 4 PM,

the sun meets the horizon,

falls below, while chill

slinks away with the shadows—

all this snubbed by evening’s sky.

**

Nailing the metal

Mariachis to the porch rail—

memories secure.

**

“The voice does not belong to the speaker.”

                       —an Igbo Elder

Word in world connects

reaching in with reaching out—

breathed intimacy.

**

A woodpecker pecks

at morning’s silence, trying 

its best to fill it.

**

illumined

through the opaque plastic 

chisel handle

the plywood

table top glows

with thin window-let light

**

the old translator

said his gods lived in the folds

between the petals

“lean closer,” he said, lean in

for the listening returned

**

everything has edges

beyond which

where poems lurk

is always a reach

**

silent

the bird flashing past

outside

calls me there

to hear what’s being said

**

sun pulls

leaves lift

breeze slips

by

**

Those many-petaled flowers

the wife tends, so soft pinks and blues,

drop all browned and dried

along side almost ripe 

tangerines—and it’s dark at five.

**

so certain their commitment

to planet as they find it:

unquenchable: weeds green it…

**

Street covered in gold,

yet that one leaf waits to fall

until my eyes lift.

**

There’s a certain quiet rain brings,

breaking silence already there,

making morning 

from what was

to what is.

Last night you asked me to sing

and nothing today is the same.

**

Have you ever heard a love song

in a tongue you don’t speak?

Words turn in voice turned by words.

What more is there to look for?

**

The moon cuts its arc

in the south aside a star,

singular and bright,

that holds each evening’s sky

as its own, but this.

Hanging a bit west, my guess

is it will out-wait the moon.

**

I can see then

the desire

to keep open

the means we use

to make our work.

No matter how

simple the count,

syllables count

just the same, but

do not count up

to a poem

which moves count beyond fingers,

to where whatever the count,

it drops away in poem

which to my way of thinking

leaves such objectives open to question,

and to my mind shifts the flow of words to

tongue, to lips and the ears, which

when caught there, tell.

Count as you will:

count requires time’s attention, 

includes breath-lettering sound

relationships, revelations,

callings followed in rhythms, rhymes,

extended tones and tellings

not otherwise known or heard

but for sounding 

of the otherwise unimaginable

eddying round the words embodied there.

Count as you will.

**

As an old white guy,

I’ve heard a bunch

of hateful stuff

and young and old have walked

otherwise with others 

a long way.

Ill winds come and go, all grit and dust.

Holding hands reminds us.

**

—Sixty years hence…

with Kerouac came

the dharma world and legends

of walking these states

clear across—diner coffee

and pie ala-mode

mapping movements west—desert

nights, headlights, roaming

dogs and police cars—I traced

what I could, filtered

the rest for the best for me,

for then, and for now.

And I remember who helped 

break open bindings, 

crack doorways not seen before, 

dream the never-dreamed:

real teachers: revealing their 

faults and imperfections too.

First principles

—as heard

        from the Singer-Seers:

   slow down,

                 stand still,

   listen:  here

                 is always here,

   never lost,

                 always finds you—

   what does this tell you

                 to sing?

**

Recent rains and sunshine

tempt new green leaves

the ground opens 

for hummingbird sage

**

Owl Canyon slow-rolls below a steep ridge to the east

that holds a stream and willows that watch over 

the meadow that floods in winter—the trail middles

a somewhat muted ridge, recognizable further up, 

where it drops to the west, where a smaller stream 

feeds a healthy Bay whose leaves release their scent

for even the briefest lingering glance.

Thelma and Besh used to live among the limbs 

just before the climb, in hill-touching oaks there,

where I stop to remember, to rest and to drink, 

and to watch the winds play.

Wherever attention takes you, a way to plan,

when you think you need—a practice even… 

but really, just living

    

   

    red-tail hawks, soundless 

       to all below

    

       —feathered secrets 

             sung to the wind.

**

Gulls don’t seem to care

he can’t walk to the sand’s edge.

Breeze blows just the same.

A couple secures their bikes

to a rack, drive off.

The old man in the back seat

watches, scribbles more,

scratches one page into the next,  

searching for a break in the pain.

**

From spine to right hip,

nervous nerves announce pain-strength—

waiting for zero.

**

Light shares with shadows

what can’t be said out loud.

**

Desk top reflections

welcome the light that washes

them clean—books akimbo.

**

Though pain can swallow us,

anger take our bones, our willingness

to hear, the teachers we can trust tell us

the world around us always knows.

**

The entire west side of our home

runs open to outside by windows

and glass doors and horizon-broken sky

that pours in, even flashing bird wings 

time to time,

runs like a line in a poem Whitman might make,

as if he and I were of-a-kind like that—

and I don’t know, but wonder.

Fully American, North American, like him,

to be sure, but how else like him, I can’t say,

though I’m feeling it’s more, fundamental,

you know.

So maybe, just maybe there is something 

that light-letting line has to tell me of myself, 

and of him, 

of us, maybe, 

or is whispering to the glistening trees, 

to the weeds glistening between the rocks,

growing so freely in the garden below,

maybe.

**

Birds, before twilight,

gather the tall poles,

watch hummingbirds 

work the flowered fence,

quiet streets still

in the false promise 

of light.

**

A walk to the corner, halting

here and there, like that black squirrel

crossing the street, tentative explorations

with and eye to caution.

My focus, the nerves in my hip. The squirrel,

I suspect, watching me, watching for cars,

is readying for winter’s coming.

Which one of us would you suppose

is better prepared for whatever it is

to come next ?

**

When people ask what I do 

with my time, I make small talk 

about gardening, working 

around the house—don’t mention

poetry, because most ask,

then, if and where I’ve published.

At that point, no point talking—

sweeping and shaping the mind

to conform with the heart 

are solitary pursuits.

     —as old Chia Tao says:

           The solitary bird 

           loves the wood;

              

           your heart also

           not of this world.

**

For the falling moon,

dark holds steady, offers stars

to the coming dawn.

**

Leaves let winds muse limbs,

let colors loose for earth’s flags,

borderless, boundless.

**

I’d recently thought

pulse-beats akin to sounding

coordinates—place

affirming a presence, there.

But listening 

lifts multiple resonances,

myriad here-nows

beating coincidentally—

not singular patters, a hum,

a thrumming, vibrant fielding

of connected voice

run through with electric joy

eddying about

constantly shifting 

tide-surge,

lulls laying low, lean

with the barest vibrations

of scents of light,

the lilt of shifting shadows, and

the unmistakeable, inescapable textures

of the knowing nearness 

of intimate companions—

the place 

of places dwelled in 

with others.

**

—illumined flannel nightgowns, 

shared smiles with the women,

the two who call me son—

unusually rich dream-life of late,

poems, insights too,

carry into deepened days

what some might call visions

—disturbed and brittled sleep

to be sure,

but some might say wakings

things come around

 

Orion above

puddle-spotted streets—

winter’s early signals.

**

The wooden Buddha

holds still—that web, nose to finger,

just not a problem.

**

—Jack Dairiki

my architect friend

filled post cards both sides with signs

of his gratitude,

shared unfiltered wonderment

about the world he walked in

**

—life with Sandino

That youngest child

in our lives broke all the rules

at birth, continues

to do so—locking eyebrows

with uncertainties, 

he probes with curiosity, 

but closes with tough, 

unwavering conclusions,

for all time: we learn

with the joy of the former,

sharpen our skills with the latter.

**

It doesn’t matter

what’s said so much as saying

what the words want to say.

It doesn’t matter

what’s said so much as hearing

what the words want to say.

**

It’s the way it is.

Some days, limbs and leaves ask roots

to say, all’s OK.

**

Walking, pondering

advancing age, my feet stop—

the hills are laughing.

**

Haven’t seen real rain shadows

in so long, had a hard time

finding my feet on the streets

in morning’s darkness,

bumped loneliness so hard,

it leapt to my lips and spoke.

**

Waves of winds and rains

carry through night

scattered thought-dreams.

**

Where winds couldn’t do,

rains wash long-needled pines clean

across wet sidewalks.

**

Fifteen-cents an hour.

First job, at Pat’s. Washed dishes,

learned too, to make change.

**

—Muso Soseki

That old poet priest

said Buddha’s Enlightenment

was his only home—

doors and windows left open;

entry fee, just your breath.

**

More and more, the rain,

after years of draught—if concern

is prayer, how we’ve prayed!

**

Windshield wipers wipe,

winds and rains bluster

    —freeway’s center: 

                      an oak leaf.

**

When it stops, leaves, limbs,

downed wires, gutter debris

     and crows, 

             taking cleared skies.

**

Under just cleared skies,

we find the cemetery—

even more tears.

**

Poetry, that hum underneath, 

tastes of rising traces of its own scent.

**

Hills still draining

what they can’t drink, flora stands

straight up, watching.

**

Slowing down to count

doesn’t change anything, and 

why would it have to?

For those close enough to hear,

poetry happens itself.

**

The sky’s light glistens

in shards of stained glass—winds stopped,

I stoop to sweep.

**

Quenched cacti blossom.

From the storm of the decade,

these tiny petals.

**

Morning’s moon gets lost

overhead—shadowed footsteps

have other stories.

**

Soft pink in the east.

Christmas lights on my right.

Day’s light—year’s light.

**

Clocks, about to change hereabouts, 

presumably changing life here too.

Other beings may notice the shift

—but the moon and the stars?

**

A rooftop glistens.

In the smallest breaks of clouds,

pieces of the moon.

**

Who besides yourself

have you read closely enough

to change your life?

**

The teacher once said

to study only dharma.

Misunderstanding his intent 

as too narrow, the door closed 

was mine—till now.

**

“The roosting bird understands the Tao,

sails don’t know where they go.”

                           

                                       —from Tu Fu’s “Six Choruses”

I won’t pretend to know others,

only myself, and that’s iffy, even, especially 

maybe 

as to the marks left behind,

and what might have been

different, you know,

which I think is likely nothing.

We do…in context—

who we are in the world, as is

then, there,

lessons breaking through

in their own time

to whatever who is then there,

which depends of course,

on contexts including age

but not to be deduced by age, which shifts

like everything else.

Others speak better to legacies we leave

than we do, and we can do

only the best we can do

at whatever the time.

Some lessons leave traces 

the same as fallen pollen; 

others, like farts, 

just smell.

**

Reluctant, the sky holds its rain 

but for large drops

splattered here and there

like so many bloated thought-stains 

spreading clarity’s edges

over pages so sodden

they tear with light’s weight.

Dying well is life’s project,

intimate, crucial partners: birth-death, 

sound and song, momentary snaps

of sense-energy floatings,

world’s of mystery’s musics.