Watershed days...more poem-like things

Owl Canyon: 

deep mountain song—

do you hear ?

**

a seminal beauty, consciousness—

the given-giver, linked, linked, linked

linking, linking

**

Time-to-time

it’s as if

a page flips

of itself

you hear it

catch a glimpse

and it’s done 

already

opened fresh

and so clean

you could pass

without note,

yet

somehow

don’t.

**

The mountain showed me this morning 

a trail up through the oaks, 

through the oaks to lichened rock,

past gold-brown leaf-flow  

where energies surge and fogs swirl 

the endless changing ridge lines—

earth shows me mountain this morning 

and together we walk 

through the sheen 

of misted chill.

**

Moss likes looking north

toward coming moistures—

rootless like us, it also

enjoys the sun.

**

Morning darkness gone

but for the chill, raised eyes

find the tiny star that points 

the day’s way.

**

High in the tree

among bare branches’ reaching,

four birds shadow 

the sunless sky.

**

Good fortune

not overlooked

is grace—

each planted foot

easily lifting itself

as so wished

is no small thing at my age—

worlds of words whirling about

say so, each its own song,

heard as so, or not.

**

Yellow backyard roses

don’t know, don’t care about

the calendar—sun, water, 

earth: enough.

**

Whatever we like to think 

we’re reaching for

misses 

the point—we are

the reaching.

**

Mountain days begin

with first light—adding to the pack

Issa’s poems.

**

Heavy morning chill 

holds most everything still—

hummingbird wings.

**

—at Nine-Fern Rock

the many-footed

polypody wakes winter   

with soft new green

**

sharing wet shoulders

with the garden Buddha,

chanting with rain drops

**

Winter, life is brisk.

Small birds meet in tree-sized toyon,

slopes facing south-east.

Cactus fruit begin to bulge—

will flower come the new year.

**

—To Issa-bo of Haikai-ji

a wanderer only in dreams,

my real-life roots are weed-like,

setting everywhere

cloud-water poets

nourish those rooted, to move

as freely as weeds do—

dormancy being a pause,

nothing stopping forever

winter rains green grass

on California hillsides—

ready hearts respond

       Respectfully,

             

                Shaku Gunmo, Brisbane, CA

**

Rains stop, moon drops,

resistance falters

and warm feet swing to meet

a cold floor right there

where they fall, right there where

nothing less than everything 

awaits.

**

caught myself this morning thinking 

of making some serious, meaningful 

statement, or something like that

—walked instead, took a walk, 

straight through a real big street puddle,

splashing childhood memories around 

soaking-wet feet, laughing 

at my much-wrinkled face down there,

laughing back  

**

the homeless guy outside the store

—returning home, the dollar

still in my pocket

**

chanting

on the crest of the hill

overlooking the freeway

—unforeseen harmonies

**

sitting in my chair, 

thinking of time, the moon 

overhead

**

Leaves won’t sweep

without wind’s help

and neither follow directions

other than their own.

**

winter rains—

half-moon high

in the slowly lighting sky,

new buds push to open

sleeping promise

both sun and moon know

**

So many leaves

on the winds, so many

the words—it’s the roots

that really show and tell.

****

—End note, a quote from much-loved 

Zen poet, Shinkichi Takahishi:

“Poems are like blowing wind into the wind.

No matter how much you blow, it is nothing more 

than wind.”

And I can’t help but think of nembutsu

and each and every breath we take…

The all I'm finding

 

***

—from William Everson’s “The Poet is Dead,”

     a memorial to Robinson Jeffers

     When fog comes again to the canyons

     The redwoods will know what it means.

     The giant sisters

     Gather it into their merciful arms

     And stroke silence.

***

**

Morning fogs collect western ridges,

conceal shifting constellations,

tumble tree-lined canyons,

halt and hover 

over the waiting 

valley floor.  

**

After fumbling around a lot

the last few years, I finally find

the form to request another twenty

is all blanks—no questions, 

no multiple-choice answers 

to check,

  so I look up to Orion’s song

  of the joys of morning chill,

    I turn to Diablo, who shadows the east

    so the sun will find the day

      and they say,

      

        if you simply remember these simple givens,

        you’ll never need no one else

        to tell you your way.

**

“Did he just read a poem,” someone asked

of William Stafford, “I thought he was just talking,”

which of course was what he wanted, to follow

the words, their working taking him, telling him into 

the world from which they came,

heading wherever they might go, rubbing 

comfortably in the warmth of that which had not 

or could not yet be told—you know, just talk.

**

The guy in the movie

we learn at the end

is terminally ill,

spending his days 

drinking beer on a beach

in the sun.

I ask how one can spend

one’s last days like that,

while, though not ill,

definitely terminal, I sit on a couch 

sipping wine in the dark, watching 

some other guy die.

**

The raptures in our lives pass, do of course 

pass and life makes its way 

impressed with their passing

nonetheless so.

Earth remembers us and we it—star dust 

doesn’t just disappear.

**

I sit looking out the large back window

of our morning quiet home, 

at the hills, disappearing night time lights, 

slow-spreading haze—latent vows, 

imbedded intentions resurfaced, 

re-articulated, new 

in sun-lit now—how, how to live 

the here-given—

all other considerations, 

distraction.

**

Is it the hills

that through the night

hold the light

the sun comes for,

the hills that rise

to meet our climbing feet

through the misted air

of morning,

is it the hills 

that trace the songs

that shape our hearts

to hold the hurting world ?

Indeed.

**

The first thing

I notice,

the willows’

leaves turning,

baring limbs

reaching out

to the sky

that holds us—

may I never 

forget this way.

**

—Buckeye Canyon

Two small birds

sweep the path,

make the way

for walking 

clear ahead.

I accept

the welcome,

continue—

the canyon’s

open mouth

takes me in,

as I am,

giving me

everything

it has, is,

asking nothing 

in return.

**

—11/8 Firth Creek

Election day reprieve—

we loose the lunar eclipse

to rain-singing creeks.

**

Rain drops to my face,

eye-lids blinking wet

like flapping pant legs,

splashing boots—cold fingers

clutching poncho edges

for un-given warmth—rain drops

on my face, making smiles.

**

—For David Schooley

Low in the hills, the steady lift 

of freeway streams rise with the rush 

of a passing train, neither of which 

were here when oaks lined the bay

and marshlands reached deeply 

into the valley.

But the hills, the hills persevere, with help

of course—Hummingbird and Coyote

both staying behind for that. 

**

Light well-precedes the sun, moon 

lingers high and fully to the west.

And cold-charged maples

grow crimson.

Taking refuge with the stone Buddha 

who sits at the fence beneath the almond tree,  

chanting joined by Thursday garbage trucks.

**

—Chaparral broom

Coyote bush

pushes tiny brush blossoms,

bright white in grey-green,

to signal coming winter

to grasses turning 

brown-beige.

and from here, where??

Windows in the east-facing hills catch the sun

of movement-moments that fire, and flutter out.

Crossing thousands of miles of time, the barest touch 

and brush of day-breaking light.

**

I’ve heard mountains grow at nearly the same rate

as fingernails, and continue too, 

well after we’re gone.

**

**

—Bulgaria

Sofia’s morning streets are dark at six; 

groups of young men, small windowed store-fronts, 

coffee, hand-held breakfasts—talk, laughter and smoke

crowd the sidewalks.

Pastel colored cabs stop if you wave—women,

mostly in pairs, do that.

**

Twenty thousand years of human activity,

be it the Balkans or the Sierras—we don’t know

who they were, but related seems true enough.

**

Driving to the interior today, having slept 

longer stretches without waking, 

but still deeply tired, she asks the count 

of days left till we return home—I laugh 

(but make the calculation)—

touring with a group, no longer just us two,

reveals pandemic-shaped parameters 

unknowingly adopted—

among the other strangers, we meet

our post-Covid selves.

**

Rolling west through open Thracian lowlands

—arbors in every yard, roadside markets,

      mist-distant mountains, fall gold-yellows

         and withered leaf wheat-country meadows.

**

Of the seven hills of ancient Plovdiv, six remain

for counting—the seventh disappeared

with its minerals.

**

Bulgarian roses are gown for their oil. 

Petals picked in the morning

stem the oil’s return

to the root.

**

Along A-1, open plain lowlands. 

Mountains to the south shared with Greece,

to the north conceal the Balkans.

And the road sign points to Istanbul.

**

We cross the Balkans today at their lowest pass,

where they drop into the not really black

Black Sea,

**

**

—Romania

Cross the Danube to the North

and you’ll find the Latin alphabet 

you thought you’d lost.

**

—Bucharest, Revolutionary Square:

—The cen   r  is     ever

                te                  y where

              off-

                     center

                                  un-finish  -d—

**

Birds circle statues in sky-clearing blue

chill, sidewalks accepting every foot

that chooses to fall, whatever 

the way taken.

**

We leave the city today by train;

mountains and forests, the last leg 

of our touring,

a quiet good-by— empty hotel restaurant,

hot coffee—talk-memories linger

above the pen’s morning liturgy.

**

Some of those poets in old China

were on to something

they just couldn’t get into words

either—the day’s ebbs and flows, 

unfinished conversations, aimless flashes 

of joy embedded in just hanging-out,

can leave the best-gripped pen

right where it rests.

**

Recrossing Transylvania’s Carpathian range,

meandering fall-kissed forests,

glistening roadside streams, we return 

to its southern plains, 

the ring of shadowed mountains,

fields of wheat and sun flowers,

that all say it’s time too,

to return home.

We don’t resist, will not linger;

but the taste of this has found with us

a place.

**

And the leaves in Bucharest,

golden weaving messengers, 

blanket the ground 

with fall’s call.

And the smell,

dust-burnt-fresh,

crushed and rustled

to chilled park air,

leaf upon leaf, myriads

of passing feet.

**

And I recall our host, standing at the edge

of the wooden press that inked the first letters

of the first Romanian words ever written, script 

formed and printed by those not Romanian, 

as he spoke of the importance of our presence,

our attention, to the process taken place then, 

taking place now—it’s not so much the language, 

he said, 

but the culture, the “culture of movement 

as expression of being” that makes 

in its making, Romania Romanian—and indeed 

together all of us, who we are, who we will be.