Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Summer poems



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.