the love affair
of language with itself,
the way it is when left alone,
words let be
together,
as we listen in
**
it almost doesn’t matter what,
it’s almost not what the poet speaks of
or is moved to speak of, but what moves
the poet to speak the way the poet speaks
that chooses who the poet is for us
**
Bees regularly
visit random flowers, one
at a time, each time.
**
Dappled sunlight drops
through the outside trellis, playing
shadows with the page.
Patiently, the page
coming next, waits this one’s fill,
for itself and more.
**
The quiet outside
creeps through the window, settles,
listens for my breath.
**
pressing ink along lines,
a ballast, an anchor pull,
sifting thick living stuff
**
inhale—exhale
petals ripple
**
feet to earth foundation
settles spirit, clears tangles,
vanishes hesitations
**
Succulents blossom
this time of year, silently
withhold aroma.
**
Feeling remote,
utterly unable
to determine direction,
turning to my feet,
to follow,
turning to the words,
to be sung—
utterly complete,
every moment, ever,
fulfilled.
**
Fogs slip upper canyons, lift
and disperse on reaching the bay.
Leafed limbs quiver, branches sway,
but pines, holding somber
their morning,
stay steady, readily drinking
of passing bounties.
**
Nearing the end of the fifth month,
beginning the ending
of the first half,
the year, a withering sheath,
a bud pushing to burst.
**
The hills hereabouts are turning beige.
Morning’s moon is high, a whispered half,
edged with blue that calls me
from somewhere I’ve been
to remind me I’m home.
**
A faithful account of my living here,
someone has said Thoreau said something
like that I should have known all the while
of myself—but once said and heard once,
the rest then is sensed as done.
**
The mountain does’t ask where I’ve been,
why I’ve been gone, just takes me in,
giving me all it has in season, whispering
secret news to muscles and bones.
**
Barely perceptible,
just below ridge line distance,
a crease, a trace of trail
for those who know,
whose feet have tread,
legs have followed,
and it calls
in as clear a voice
as this old man
has ever heard.
**
Peet’s Coffee
on a Saturday slow
sidewalk, not knowing
who is to add the cream,
not remembering outside cafes,
maskless or not, forgetting
my phone, not wearing a watch,
wondering if this is the way
the new way will be.
**
There’s this rooster
living across the street
up the hill, back of things
up there. We’ve not met
eye-to-eye, but we do,
each of us where we are,
no thanks to me, we do
share these mornings.
**
The grand daughters, the three,
all the way across from Vermont, no less,
first solo flight from Irvine, spirited away
from across the bay,
now tangled in bundles on the couch,
on the floor, safe and secure in that who
that we are together,
bulging packs and sleeping bags stuffed
with the stuff of family story.
We breathe this, you and I, we linger
in this, but I don’t know how to write it,
any more than I know how to write
that which brought us to this,
that brought you and me
to all that this is,
so I won’t even try.
**
—Silence is, finally, the only perfect statement.
AR Ammons
Things pop up, then us,
says A R Ammons, the poet
who listens to the silence things are
for guidance to who we are
in the words that come there,
found all around
to hold and to hear.
**
Met two people this morning,
walking in its light—
I usually meet none.
Both had dogs and smiles
and lighted eyes that
talked in smiles too.
We talked of walking, the mountain,
the town, the sierra hills,
to name a few.
We smiled in the light gathering there,
which could have been just for that,
and bid each other adieu,
as the light grew and grew.
**
Long longed-for quiet
sneaks in beneath layered fog—
wet, wind-left kisses.
