Outside light changes.
Out back and over the roof,
the sun plays with clouds.
**
In the flower box
outside, two birds, chilled shadows,
busily at work.
**
The cold in the house
calls out for favored blankets,
robes, cup-filled fingers.
**
The green, the green hills
against floating clouds—the trail,
the stitch that pulls eyes
that call the thread that voice knows
the body knows of air.
**
Rains return, the winds
—ancient promises clatter
rooftops, press windows.
**
In misted dark streets
people pass greetings often
held back in daylight.
**
The shared pulse is felt
as our own, touched as others’
and thrums past them both.
**
in the south and east
the promise of clear skies lifts
ribboned salmon-pink
**
sitting in morning—
dark surges rise tides lighted
in quiet insight
**
The chill on the skin
of my bare legs wakes me up
from intense study
to the lighted room—to light
outside—to open
rippling flowing sense—aware,
coming back to moving-on.
**
In small openings,
in mirrors passed by—we see
what there is to see.
**
Self in relation
to things—the rock in the stream.
Time and the timeless.
To us the rock is solid,
but stream knows it otherwise.
**
—After William Stafford
When your poems fail
to meet your standards, lower
the standards—poems
have life of their own not yours
that others may have to say.
**
Morning walks break day
free of what night didn’t want
to hold for too long.
**
Even to say brushed
is too much—the pink of clouds
this morning: its breath,
expelled and thinning, barely
pinking in the not quite blue.
**
The legs this morning
seem to want to share something
they did yesterday.
They move as they used to, but
with age, ask more attention.
**
—Because: a reason
Because, a reason,
intuition-brimmed, reasons
enough to get up,
to make hot coffee, then stir,
to light the incense,
look out at the spreading sky,
lay words alongside blue lines.
Because.
**
The crow finds the pole,
its top, but not yet the sun.
With its mate, It waits.
