—Post card poem—to Noreen, Durham NH
Two of our three children were born
in Derry, NH, almost fifty years ago now,
but beyond shared history in New Hampshire,
what captures my attention today
is the intentions you and I share while reading
these scratches and swirls—we two,
thousands of miles, thousands of minutes
apart, we two, bent over this same card,
trying to discern what it says, says more
than any card can ever hope to say.
**
The older I get, the less certain
I am about most everything,
but breathing-space helps
and the care close attention allows
just in the doing—even the teen
with ear phones and hoodie,
the one who doesn’t look up
when it’s only us two on the street,
knows I’m here
and earth steadily deepens,
sky is immeasurably wider.
**
—after Robert Aitken
Be careful
not to confine Buddha
to the cortex.
**
without words and without fail,
the morning walk, the setting that sets
it all right most every time
**
—for Matthew
Sipping that green powder cha,
even when not whisked well,
quietly quiets.
**
Those inner rhythms of relation,
our own lives within the universe
working within—the weave
of inescapable intimacies.
**
high, the crescent moon curls under itself,
curling fog folding over the ridge,
and around my jacket-less chest,
the chill
**
just before the sun,
almost-salmon horizon-light
reaches to touch the face
of the shimmered bay
and its grey glows back
**
—solitude
when you are up early,
then my early isn’t enough
**
That into which world opens
spreads before morning feet
making detail day takes in
its own way
spreading world’s way
among probing feet
making this way
the day.
**
It’s said
the zen way
of saying
leaves unsaid
that which others
might better
say themselves.
**
squirrels scatter
along the way, all of them
black today, but one,
its tail tipped white-grey
**
An invitation to read
sparks flurries of memories,
openings and insight
and alone in the kitchen,
I make coffee, find the way
to the flowerless altar,
take up the pen
to fall to the page
in the fullness of it all.
**
Shinran speaks to us a language we know
even before speaking,
that of fog and overcast skies that block
the sun and dim, but do not, cannot
hold back the light: falling, settling,
details on details unfolding,
both within and because of…
**
The potato patch, year after year abundance—
just stay out of its way, and harvest.
Dirt, roots, sun and sky, occasional water—easy.
It’s been that way for me too.
**
—wasan: soft verses of praise
“soft” as in ordinary spoken,
readily written Japanese, not special,
not scholarly, not parsed to grip,
but easily said, easily read, remembered—
good on the tongue, fine to the ear
songs pleased to be sung.
wasan: joyous encounters
with life-given sounds
fully lived
**
Turns out I had to leave and to search
to reach what was never left, had to cease
what meant most to feel its absence
unnecessary.
**
It’s September. And that’s significant
in some inarticulable way: perceptible shifts
nudging momentum of its own.
It’s September, and the third day in reveals sun
rising dead east, the morning cup better bitter,
stiff and tired legs better than OK, and all of it,
all of it so compelling, so deserving
of closest attention and telling, yet somehow
enough off-reach and beyond, that saying
doesn’t work, only pointing will do,
and neither does that either…September…
**
—day 4
It’s still-September,
pre-dawn light settling in air
without chill, distant hills
shadowed silence,
only the sun’s noise, open,
slow-stroked waves, sharp cracks,
fire-edging outlines
of things to come.
**
If so inclined, please mark these words
because although “mine,” past experience
tells me I’ll need them said again, likely
another way—that nembutsu,
Buddha’s name uttered, namu-amida-butsu,
like buddha-breath, buddha-nature,
cannot be limited
to any single formulation,
because it’s not the nature
of the way it is…
and so, please take these verses
as instances of that which
I hope I’m talking about
and will again and again over the days…
namu-amida-butsu
namu-amida-butsu
**
Threads and weaves,
ripples and wrinkles…
We’ve lived with the ants before,
ongoing, day to day, in fact.
But time to time, their needs,
though difficult to describe
as greater than ours, overwhelm
nonetheless, and we clash.
I’ve learned, much like us,
as conditions change around colonies,
ants respond accordingly, every time,
so over time, we’ll adjust.
A poet whose name I cannot recall
speaks of “regions of kindness,”
both inner and outer, and sang too
of another poet of another time
whose songs insisted on light’s insistence
in our varied worlds.
