declarations and freedoms

 

We’ve a large yard out back;

we’ve dug, built, planted, pruned 

and shoveled decades under the gentle gaze 

of the hills here.

Other side the ridge, where bay waters 

once made marsh, the canyon’s lower slopes 

let you find a shell mound 

multiples of feet deep—

when we tell the kids that we’ll only go 

“feet first,” fact is, 

peoples who’ve come this way 

don’t readily leave

and we count ourselves 

among them.  

**

—Yosemite

I’d like to fill the page

with words sure as slow poured honey,

but a mind empty of all but fatigue

has only this:

              go outside on the deck;

              if the trees don’t tell you,

              the singing river will.

**

—Incense Pine

Tall with shredded reddish bark 

and fan-like leaves that clean the sky 

of any suggestion but blue.

**

Between the cabins, 

lupine and lavender iris 

laughing at the dust. 

**

Summer solstice longest day

at the feet of earth’s tallest trees.

Dust-borne resolutions, air-borne prayers

carry us home to low-country.

**

Doves—disguised 

as street-surface, flutter

at my arrival.

**

Thinking this morning, wondering

questions of what zen calls

the “great question,”

what some poets say we do

everyday anyway, so 

what’s the point 

of death

and dying is 

the living it means.

**

Spring pruning

two of three apple trees,

folding ladder folded and leaned 

carefully against each trunk.

Nearing eighty, gotta be ready

to be scolded.

**

So many of the many books 

on the shelves here 

hold so much of me, I can’t begin

to speak of it—the pale, almost open

roses on the altar 

saying nothing either, 

we two just sit.

**

An old friend once said something remembered

this morning seeming relevant, yet 

only a few hours hence is unmemorable;

so I just follow the sun’s lead

and move ahead my business

as if that’s just the way it is.

**

sunlight 

takes the floor

this morning,

leaves the chair

for me

**

the weave of it all,

the ancients say,

a fabric never rent—

every thread ever

in place

**

live oaks

give acorns—

poison oak,

a rash

**

true gratitude, my teachers tried to tell me,

is rooted in awareness 

of its absence

**

—Calistoga

The woodpecker glides

over the pool water’s quiet

to a tree not mirrored there,

glances side to side,

then, soundless as the leaves aglow 

at the tops of the trees,

flutters back across, leaving me 

and these scratchy songs

to slow coming morning.

**

Anita Virgil, poet-artist, writes of

“the fruiting body responsible for reproduction—

like an apple is to its tree,” 

like we humans, like you, maybe me, 

walking, scribbling evidence,

fruiting, ever fruiting…

**

The white flower

aside the road, front petals drooping,

yellow center skyward.

*

Beyond the fence,

other side the street, 

workmen, shovels 

and birdcall.

*

The house sheds shade, 

breezes trace its flank, bring sound

to wakened ears.

*

Amen, amen, amen.

Good way to start the day—

legs, breath, morning mists.

Amen, amen.