What signals
can we take
from day-counts
we can’t get
from heart-beats—
are we not
already
all we see,
breathe and touch—
does that not resonate,
does it not stream our blood-
pulse in full,
give to us,
thump to thump,
all we need,
need to know
of time that’s ours ?
**
—News:
Marauders plunder
sacred white-sage—black market
profits in bit-coin.
**
In the hills, pulling from shared roots,
hummingbird sage scaffolds new green
into the sky, pushes crusted blossoms aside,
lets wintered leaves rot and drop.
If something’s not answered here,
earth and its springtime flora
haven’t noticed.
**
—Seventeen syllables and an epiphany…
“One of nature’s greatest currencies
is events that happen
rarely.”
—Nick Jensen
conservation program director
**
The way it is is
lips before head,
heart before that.
Just listen.
**
And so we thought it couldn’t be done
till sun’s rays arrived for us, and didn’t,
and we waited day to day doing what could
be done in chilled light waiting warmth
we all didn’t really need for all the doing
done in that light given.
**
Roadside eucalyptus
share traffic reports. Squirrels
usually listen, but sometimes
impatience wins out.
**
At age seventy-seven and almost half again,
that I might not make it to tomorrow is no longer
hyperbole, if ever it was, and if so, now less so.
So what now, last night I asked myself, who
had and has, no answer.
And, still here this morning, looking over at the cup
with coffee, balanced on the table, the pen in the hand
on the pad on the knee—
showers stopped, leaves still dripping.
And as Lew Welch says the wise might say,
as everything is seeming to say, “it all comes down
to this.”
**
The Heart Sutra’s
strokes on the scroll on the wall
say nothing to me.
**
Mists freshen the skin,
rains puddle. Morning glories
wait the hummingbirds.
**
When daylight arrives
at the window, lamp’s glow there
disappears with it.
**
That old poet Ryokan
lived down slopes so slippery
only frogs survived the rains—some
as small as your thumb.
I slid those slopes once, to his empty hut.
Cicadas, forests, little frogs—I clicked
and clicked, the camera’s shutter
covered
**
Morning winds stop: garbage trucks.
**
With the windows open,
crow’s calls
come in.
**
From along the slopes, the city appears
and the Sales Force Building
that boldly breaks that distant skyline,
shines with morning’s first light,
until, that is, sun chooses elsewhere.
**
—Hardwood country, let alone
El Corte de Madera Creek Open Space Preserve,
Fir Trail to Resolution to Tafoni sandstone walls’
millennia-scratched stories.
Deep forested canyons, steep ravines,
thick-padded trails. Bowls of earth-time
and dapple-lighted years.
So many aged madrone,
air here is smooth and chilled—
crows like its sound.
**
Limb-hanging lichen’s
glistening lace celebrate
photosynthesis.
**
In quiet moments
the trees attending your breath
signal shushed consents.
A way to spend the rest of a life—old growth,
the sound of listening hardwoods.
**
Even if only
half-heard, the little dog’s bark
joins falling petals.
**
Afternoon traffic
flow ebbs—a moment of rest:
worries surface.
**
Lights in hillside homes
hold darkness close and in place,
calm wild dream-scapes.
**
outside my front door,
wafting floral gift—smokeless
curls of incense wait
