Saying yes to lists
of resentments and refusals,
I give hours to rose bush trimmings
destined for the compost heap,
every single prickly moment
completely consuming
and satisfying.
So there.
**
Rising from a nap refreshed,
all errant sleep accounted for,
house quiet, outside calm,
questions taking a break too.
**
Old age maybe is a return
to world-centered living,
where the world, as it decides,
brings us what we will live,
music we like,
music we don’t.
**
Windows stay open when summer wanes
here, a wish perhaps to listen more closely
for that shut out come winter
—open-heart time.
**
At Ryokan’s place
back then I took a selfie,
forgot to uncover the shutter
and the photo was blank.
Ryokan still laughs. He wasn’t there,
neither was I.
**
Even hummingbirds
come to sip this long drink
of sun-cast shade.
**
This morning’s street signs
tell me where I am, but not who,
are of no help there.
**
All along
I’ve been hearing
and calling it
everything but…
**
Lower slope willow
poke through high piled flood rubble
right where they once grew
along deep shaded stream bed,
now flat-bottom, clean-carved gully
alive with tiny bright flowers
from earliest spring
into almost fall.
**
The hummingbird wonders
over from the flowers along the fence,
hovers at the window, peers in,
then darts back to business.
Everyone deserves a break
now and then.
**
So still these mornings, color mutes,
sound rounds to distant
and uncertain earth pulls air close in—
to wake in this unknowing, to think to walk there,
and only to think it, is to freeze at the edge of mysteries
only buddhas have words for—
so, carefully, as I did in those childhood dreams
holding unspoken fears,
carefully, I go my way humming
the breath,
that seemed even then, that riding the breath,
trusting its offer,
that seemed and that was and that truly is
the way homeward.
**
a bird,
there outside
the window,
so small—as small as
the hummingbird
it is
**
Chanting yesterday
Shinran’s Sho-shin-ge
after so many years,
one-hundred twenty lines
of seven counted sounds
finally coming to rest
in silent breathing.
**
I forget we live in a valley
until a plane passing over
has me walking through echos.
**
Mid-September
canyon buckeye
already without leaves
don’t mention fall,
probably wouldn’t
understand all this talk
of enlightenment
either.
**
Catching myself
wondering what my work now is,
I work on this ! !
**
Two grey birds
hop on the grey street,
grey as morning’s light,
silhouettes in clean relief
in the fulsome rush
of attention—
connection recognized
and wrapped in breath
and heartbeat.
**
Hot coffee in a paper cup
with cream, blueberry scone
micro-wave warm, a hard cover
book of zen essays—how else
would one know these were
exact needs unless
the shopping center parking lot
glows and glimmers with the silent tasting
of it all, here in the front seat of the car.
**
Took awhile in morning darkness
to finger the sound of rain drops and gutters
just outside the window slightly open
and in those few moments as day broke
the clouds, the last handfuls of drips
from the season’s first squalls
had their time—lingering fonts,
squeezed from the after-wash of freshness,
streets and trees, all the air
feeling brand-new.
**
and slowly, all of a sudden, I’ve realized
I’ve devolved somehow
to a convoluted strategy of protecting
energies given me
rather than making use of them
while I can…
and hereby abandon that bullshit—if I don’t
return home,
look for my body along that trail
that runs under the open sky
**
Dawn’s on me just now this dawn
of the last day of age 79
that all this puzzling over how to do
what’s coming next
suggests that I’ve known all along
these past eight decades
what to do and how, and that
is a real stretch.
**
9/29—walking
in full moon morning light
on the doorstep
of new beginnings
**
80 +1—Oceano
Dunes hold the horizon here
above thick marsh brush
peppered with bird song
and winging ducks.
Changing light wakens surface sands
like a face turning over from sleep,
droplets glisten with sun’s brief touch
and a truck
close by coughs its way into rumbles
that roll away, too.
