I’m not sure it’s spring
but it does ask for laundry
to be hung outside—
**
buddhist thoughts arise,
overridden by poet
thoughts overridden
by old man morning moon thoughts
—almost full in almost light
there are days in different weeks
of different months when moon-brightness
peeks through the blinds
and the moon drifts that kind of waiting
drift out back the house toward
the waiting ridge horizon-line
and each time for me its time
with me is sheer delight for me
**
It’s not that we learn to be
in accord with the working
cosmos, it’s that we are
in accord—the challenge lies
in not interfering with this.
**
—3/25/22
At the shell mound in the canyon,
buckeye and hummingbird sage
round the clearing
in a blanket of fog—a jay calls out
for morning.
**
We watch each other.
Then, lifting from the limb,
coming half the distance
closer, the red-thatched
hummingbird hovers, bobs,
returns to its perch.
Hello.
**
When fogs walk these hills,
nothing is missed, each thing
taking the given as needed,
leaving the rest
to work with
the rest.
**
Tripping on the trail,
meeting face-to-face
with the ground-in dirt
of old-age, telling me
being more attentive
is no longer just
another option.
**
**
“That’s when you taught me tears. Ah
God in the morning
Ah thee”
—from Jack Kerouac’s “Hymn”
**
Blessed are those who know
when lessons are being offered
for learning, and aren’t too busy.
**
And some days seem to just sit
laid out as if nothing’s doing
and yet a whole day’s entirety
is being done as if in-between
the invisible seams of its shown face
tiny streams of cosmic energies
are exchanging songs of survival
so sweet sky resonates blue
and blood red and grass gleams
quivering green toward the sun’s
unaimed, unswerving warmth.
**
Wires are carried
by wooden poles where I live.
Woodpeckers know this.
**
Not pushed around by time,
I remember the given name
of only one of the three flowers
growing along the fence,
yet all give all of their opening
just the same.
**
Startled by my shadow,
the sun’s play reminds me
loneliness is ill-conceived.
**
Once in Mexico I walked at dawn
along rock-bound shores
and found the town beach,
where fishermen drew their catch
for sale, the morning market spread
on tarps among palm trees, table-
talk and laughter.
And off to the side, closer to the street,
a single table, an electric kettle, a large jar
of Nescafe, styrofoam cups,
plastic spoons
and a small bowl,
where I dropped some change,
and with that steaming black,
turned back to join the community.
So I thought of this this morning,
this somehow modern, somehow
perennial practice
that makes morning for me
most everywhere I’ve ever been,
and thought, when the time comes,
the Folgers is in the upper cupboard
to the left of the stove. I think you know
where the cups are.
**
awake
in morning light
of open-window spring
**
Fuchsia pour
from the fence
in green waves
foaming red.
**
Old doesn’t feel that way
this morning—energies flowing
in changing light.
**
spring pruning
the citrus
on the ladder in the leaves,
new buds, lady bugs
**
morning mists
and rains so dense
scattered lights
tell stories
in dream-hidden
hillsides
it’s not so much a matter
for me what a poem is
but where one finds one
and I’ll gladly follow the words
for the making that comes
of just that following
**
the smallest ledge,
rising no more
than a quarter inch
between the patio stones,
a crack and collected dust
and the vibrant reach of weeds
therefrom, single strands
and forming clumps reaching
down, reaching in—not to hold,
but to fly
**
The earth is the place
we plant each foot
for its walking.
**
—On a cold spring morning…
a sideways glance
catches light through the trellis
above the window’s out-side
that slices a thought whole
and delivers it,
there caught,
that all that practice
talked about, worried about,
prayed ?
about, is about
bringing us back to where
we already are—just like that,
light said so
…
and it’s strange, I guess, almost
giddy, this silly sense
of helplessness, it
feels just like
freedom
…
and what’s left to do ? is the best
you can do, with all you have of who
you are…
and those buddhists, or some of them,
those who say, might just say, namuamidabutsu-
namuamidabutsu-namuamidabutsu
