—for Ron
Can’t imagine home
without sounds in the kitchen—
impenetrable.
**
That morning solitude,
like a worn sleeve: hearing aids
left on the bookcase.
**
Coffee cooled, bitter,
swallowed now despite its taste
rather than because.
**
At dusk
in the west
a star…
my heart
**
The haiku poet
priest from Japan asked plant names,
drank lots of red wine.
**
Morning’s sun-sparkle
sheen spreads across the carpet,
rumors coming heat.
**
Yard-work waits outside,
promising satisfactions
shared in the doing.
**
Earth-bound snow flakes fall
their own trajectory, each
to its very own spot.
Snow-blindness isn’t about
the snow.
**
There is unmistakeable joy
hearing others value
what you have to tell them—
just be sure to remember
true teachers listen
best.
**
hummingbirds visit
shade-drenched blossoms
just before sun’s light
takes it all
**
backyard strawberries
so sweet, fingers-tips drip
sunlight
**
then, from nowhere, breath
ripples fence-climbing blossoms,
tumbles bamboo leaves
**
Old T’ao Ch’ien’s lament
was drinking so many times
without enough wine.
What’s yours?
**
Look to where
your feet stand—
now tell me
where you’ve been,
where you think
you have gone.
**
I’ve learned to answer
to many names, even none,
just the same—eyes or smile
can say it all, a bow
maybe even more.
**
Can’t overstate
how grounding it is
to meet with old friends
in pages on shelves within reach,
those, the timeless, truncate confusions
every time—like standing at a door
always open, remembering
you don’t have to knock.
**
That which resonates heart-beats
never falters, never has—welcomes
are redundant, wake-ups, new
every time.
**
We live on a west-facing slope,
a small valley, tributary to the larger
that sheds waters to the bay to our backs.
The ridge we face slows ocean’s fogs
most daylight hours, lets’m trickle the canyons
come night—evening often a mix of clearing
and tumbling.
We’ve a large yard and garden,
enough so the work is never done—
flowers, fruit and vegetables
year round here.
Mostly, we’ve built and shaped our home
over the twenty year’s time
past the kids’ goings,
so it’s truly just ours, for us,
and even the grandkids’ swings
have transitioned, as of course
have we, as of course
which is what it’s about, our time
with the earth, what’s been done
with what’s come.
Our hearts are found here.
**
A poem is the prayerful spontaneity
of a bunch of words
lifting clarity
from the endless multitudes
of linguistic possibilities,
a breath-dispersed, breath-pausing
constellation
recognized
by its feel and for
its coming.
**
Blossoms jangle
their silent way, tremble
their rhythms, weave and bounce
for winds, seemingly always wanting more.
**
Outside the window, in sun-lit space,
a bee zips by, a flashing n glint,
swallowed in the sound
of a passing plane.
**
Plums are so ripe, we pull some every day,
pick strawberries, mouthed one at a time
with dirty fingers—makes me feel so young,
I prune trellis-climbing roses from a ladder,
leaning and stretching over an invisible abyss
named for a silly old man I’ve not met yet,
so far as I know.
**
Varicose veins, having travelled with my right leg
without a word for years, have now begun to speak.
Dialect unfamiliar—intent very clear.
**
Fluctuating, overlapping fields of energies unfolding,
say the philosopher, the scientist, perhaps—but for me,
the coarse bush with rangy limbs and bell-like petals,
red, extends a single blossomed branch
beyond window’s edge I see.
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