To wake to day breaking grey
in leaf bearing limbs and redwood
forrest silence.
**
The empty campsite
so clean, the robin hops
and pecks for nothing.
**
Night’s rest
leads to muscles crinkling
in newly washed sheets.
**
when seeking
ends return
is complete
**
That felt stillness
the other side the screen,
everything’s breathing presence.
**
—Puerto Vallarta, late July
grey skies pull the grey bay
almost beyond horizon lines: boats,
a wing or two
**
Birds are first to work
the quiet here, small flashes,
pointed, wind-bent fronds.
**
Reading about writing,
I get bored and restless,
and write.
**
Morning number four lightens with clouds,
gnats and muffled messages. Early news reports
suggest waves tell us
we’re not listening.
**
—William Stafford paraphrases:
Our concern is people, so
there are opponents
but not enemies.
We witness a world of many languages
then, without surrendering
to mere alienation…
**
There are more boats, small
on the bay
this morning where
birds drop
as not before
this quiet
wave-hushing
tracing of
ocean meeting earth
in wet sands.
**
Birds here
a’light
the tops
of poles,
tree tops,
leaf tips,
so we
will lift
both eyes
to see
not them,
but sky.
**
Bright yellow belly
birds cruising in blue,
I know you !
**
realizing
the ones I hate help me
realize I still do that
**
circling up from the pool-side,
red-chested ducks on slow black wings
change the rhythm
of the entire sky
**
…and as wind breezes lift
fronds high above the rooftops,
low as low touching grass,
I notice I notice
what that tells
of me
that I sing…
**
Would that
these scattered utterances
not be so self-referential, but
that would be a lot to ask
of me.
**
It’s the winds, the breath
from the winds that gift us
words that carry songs
singing the heard
that carry us along—
it’s the winds.
**
Any word
each time said
is the first—
no one word
ever said
says it all—
singing songs
makes each word
say its more.
**
The perfect ideology
is the one no one has.
**
Sometimes I feel like a fly
on the wall, rub my hands
at all I see—so, so, so…
**
Heat leaves in evening fogs
till blue skies signal sun
to bring it back.
