***
—from William Everson’s “The Poet is Dead,”
a memorial to Robinson Jeffers
When fog comes again to the canyons
The redwoods will know what it means.
The giant sisters
Gather it into their merciful arms
And stroke silence.
***
**
Morning fogs collect western ridges,
conceal shifting constellations,
tumble tree-lined canyons,
halt and hover
over the waiting
valley floor.
**
After fumbling around a lot
the last few years, I finally find
the form to request another twenty
is all blanks—no questions,
no multiple-choice answers
to check,
so I look up to Orion’s song
of the joys of morning chill,
I turn to Diablo, who shadows the east
so the sun will find the day
and they say,
if you simply remember these simple givens,
you’ll never need no one else
to tell you your way.
**
“Did he just read a poem,” someone asked
of William Stafford, “I thought he was just talking,”
which of course was what he wanted, to follow
the words, their working taking him, telling him into
the world from which they came,
heading wherever they might go, rubbing
comfortably in the warmth of that which had not
or could not yet be told—you know, just talk.
**
The guy in the movie
we learn at the end
is terminally ill,
spending his days
drinking beer on a beach
in the sun.
I ask how one can spend
one’s last days like that,
while, though not ill,
definitely terminal, I sit on a couch
sipping wine in the dark, watching
some other guy die.
**
The raptures in our lives pass, do of course
pass and life makes its way
impressed with their passing
nonetheless so.
Earth remembers us and we it—star dust
doesn’t just disappear.
**
I sit looking out the large back window
of our morning quiet home,
at the hills, disappearing night time lights,
slow-spreading haze—latent vows,
imbedded intentions resurfaced,
re-articulated, new
in sun-lit now—how, how to live
the here-given—
all other considerations,
distraction.
**
Is it the hills
that through the night
hold the light
the sun comes for,
the hills that rise
to meet our climbing feet
through the misted air
of morning,
is it the hills
that trace the songs
that shape our hearts
to hold the hurting world ?
Indeed.
**
The first thing
I notice,
the willows’
leaves turning,
baring limbs
reaching out
to the sky
that holds us—
may I never
forget this way.
**
—Buckeye Canyon
Two small birds
sweep the path,
make the way
for walking
clear ahead.
I accept
the welcome,
continue—
the canyon’s
open mouth
takes me in,
as I am,
giving me
everything
it has, is,
asking nothing
in return.
**
—11/8 Firth Creek
Election day reprieve—
we loose the lunar eclipse
to rain-singing creeks.
**
Rain drops to my face,
eye-lids blinking wet
like flapping pant legs,
splashing boots—cold fingers
clutching poncho edges
for un-given warmth—rain drops
on my face, making smiles.
**
—For David Schooley
Low in the hills, the steady lift
of freeway streams rise with the rush
of a passing train, neither of which
were here when oaks lined the bay
and marshlands reached deeply
into the valley.
But the hills, the hills persevere, with help
of course—Hummingbird and Coyote
both staying behind for that.
**
Light well-precedes the sun, moon
lingers high and fully to the west.
And cold-charged maples
grow crimson.
Taking refuge with the stone Buddha
who sits at the fence beneath the almond tree,
chanting joined by Thursday garbage trucks.
**
—Chaparral broom
Coyote bush
pushes tiny brush blossoms,
bright white in grey-green,
to signal coming winter
to grasses turning
brown-beige.
