simple acts,
layered links
unfolding…
**
waking
under the arms
of the oak, watching
leaves take back their green
**
The man, once a soldier,
speaks of peace, of unused muscles
of humanity
seemed atrophied—nations
are nations, maybe lost there,
but people
can come back
to being
just that.
**
Can never seem to remember the names
of the flowers outside my window,
never told them mine either—
we just nod and smile anyway.
**
That young poet nailed it, nailed
me-my experience when her age,
when they tried and failed to take
that which found itself for me
all these years to follow—she said,
the only worthy revenge,
after all that’s tried against it,
is to love, again and again.
**
The thistle at the edge
of the path, a broken roadway
over grown, a clear spot
of bright petals, sharpened greens
not to be touched.
**
all these years
waiting to figure out
that beyond all figuring,
I raise my empty hands
only to see that too
one of the moves
of the dance
that opens the heart
to the songs
I hear myself singing…
**
Pushing the dead mouse to the side
of the trail, I cover it with bay leaves
and at the ridge between the canyons
chant into drifting fogs.
**
not the walk
I might have
walked but this
walking now
brings breezes
breaking brisk
cloud-strewn sky
bluing grey
puffs away
above eyes
lifted high—
not the walk
I might have walked,
but this walking
**
She called it, or was it he
who spoke of “light logic,” taught
of course by shadow—I mean, the pen,
watch it approach the page.
**
Wondering how to live past eighty,
the crows gathered down the street
shrug a disinterest that says,
“you’ve got to get there first, stupid.”
**
What if question
is freedom’s deepest dance,
spread-armed openness
where release is our own grip
letting go, where not knowing
is home.
**
Poets ask,
stories tell.
Stories tell themselves
to those who listen.
What do you hear??
**
Summer browns
almost all
but mustard’s
yellow blotched
petals grouped
in tangles
of green stems
in dried grass
answering
the sun’s call.
**
—Purisima forests…
No other way
humans can take to this
needle-softened earth
than its way—shaded slopes,
flashing sky and long-held silence
showing us how.
**
Pescadero, a long sigh
of enduring earth story.
**
In that movie years ago
the handsome outlaw wearing a hat
tells his sweetheart
he’ll return
in spring,
and I’ve always wondered
what living by seasons
might mean, and now see
old age as more than a few slow days,
and youth indeed a tide
of very different
waves.
**
