Owl Canyon:
deep mountain song—
do you hear ?
**
a seminal beauty, consciousness—
the given-giver, linked, linked, linked
linking, linking
**
Time-to-time
it’s as if
a page flips
of itself
you hear it
catch a glimpse
and it’s done
already
opened fresh
and so clean
you could pass
without note,
yet
somehow
don’t.
**
The mountain showed me this morning
a trail up through the oaks,
through the oaks to lichened rock,
past gold-brown leaf-flow
where energies surge and fogs swirl
the endless changing ridge lines—
earth shows me mountain this morning
and together we walk
through the sheen
of misted chill.
**
Moss likes looking north
toward coming moistures—
rootless like us, it also
enjoys the sun.
**
Morning darkness gone
but for the chill, raised eyes
find the tiny star that points
the day’s way.
**
High in the tree
among bare branches’ reaching,
four birds shadow
the sunless sky.
**
Good fortune
not overlooked
is grace—
each planted foot
easily lifting itself
as so wished
is no small thing at my age—
worlds of words whirling about
say so, each its own song,
heard as so, or not.
**
Yellow backyard roses
don’t know, don’t care about
the calendar—sun, water,
earth: enough.
**
Whatever we like to think
we’re reaching for
misses
the point—we are
the reaching.
**
Mountain days begin
with first light—adding to the pack
Issa’s poems.
**
Heavy morning chill
holds most everything still—
hummingbird wings.
**
—at Nine-Fern Rock
the many-footed
polypody wakes winter
with soft new green
**
sharing wet shoulders
with the garden Buddha,
chanting with rain drops
**
Winter, life is brisk.
Small birds meet in tree-sized toyon,
slopes facing south-east.
Cactus fruit begin to bulge—
will flower come the new year.
**
—To Issa-bo of Haikai-ji
a wanderer only in dreams,
my real-life roots are weed-like,
setting everywhere
cloud-water poets
nourish those rooted, to move
as freely as weeds do—
dormancy being a pause,
nothing stopping forever
winter rains green grass
on California hillsides—
ready hearts respond
Respectfully,
Shaku Gunmo, Brisbane, CA
**
Rains stop, moon drops,
resistance falters
and warm feet swing to meet
a cold floor right there
where they fall, right there where
nothing less than everything
awaits.
**
caught myself this morning thinking
of making some serious, meaningful
statement, or something like that
—walked instead, took a walk,
straight through a real big street puddle,
splashing childhood memories around
soaking-wet feet, laughing
at my much-wrinkled face down there,
laughing back
**
the homeless guy outside the store
—returning home, the dollar
still in my pocket
**
chanting
on the crest of the hill
overlooking the freeway
—unforeseen harmonies
**
sitting in my chair,
thinking of time, the moon
overhead
**
Leaves won’t sweep
without wind’s help
and neither follow directions
other than their own.
**
winter rains—
half-moon high
in the slowly lighting sky,
new buds push to open
sleeping promise
both sun and moon know
**
So many leaves
on the winds, so many
the words—it’s the roots
that really show and tell.
****
—End note, a quote from much-loved
Zen poet, Shinkichi Takahishi:
“Poems are like blowing wind into the wind.
No matter how much you blow, it is nothing more
than wind.”
And I can’t help but think of nembutsu
and each and every breath we take…
