"I don't know" counts

 

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.