Inescapable intimacies

 

—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.