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.