Spring poems

 

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