—all that follows…
February’s after…
and finally we get to breathe-in
and let go
in complete freshness
the full weight of that December-
January shift
in these brief spurts
of winter-clear light
and long nights
wrapped in reflection:
**
And still, we wait
tiredness to fill to full
to pass
so that we too
can move on.
**
February’s moon…
full, wanes, falls, slowly
lighting our waking.
**
if then
life-death
is art,
presence
is pursuit
enough
**
white-tipped
limbs here bare
February blossoms
**
I’ve been told
death’s bad rep drifts away
when you let go of the idea
it’s on some “other side.”
**
Reaching down
to the flash of color
among the weeds
to cry aloud the flower’s name
in delight…that’s beauty.
**
One of those almost never
walks by the bay this morning
early before the sun; two ducks
overhead call out, a big-bellied sea bird
wings—reflections on marina waters,
distant breezes, open skies
and a whisper over my shoulder
to my younger self, to better keep up
with this old man.
**
Though ever-open to anyone,
every and all, the mountain waits
for no one, and you never know
what you’ve missed.
**
From the mouth of the canyon, birds
release themselves in spreading waves
of disappearance—to say only humans
know exuberance is to not know
what canyons know.
**
That the bird
sitting on the distant power line
turns out to be spot of dirt
does not diminish the gleam
and glow of sunlight on windows
across the way.
**
rain-clean streets lift light
to morning sky—who says
haiku can’t sing
**
With the power gone, lights out
and writing in candle shadow, I ask
again of the sound of peace
and remember the teacher,
soft, telling: listen, first listen, then
again listen and, last, listen.
**
Sky-puddles tell of night rains,
morning layers of gray.
No reports of blue.
**
This poem, my life, not so much holds
as opens, not so much all and its end as what
is ever-next, as touch and sight and breath
extend to tell listening to hear here tell
everything there is this now: this poem,
my life.
**
And how else but pen to page,
following voice-silent emergence.
**
More often now in these late years,
waking late, today to blue morning sky
scattered and brushed in distant puffs
of whisper-white,
storm’s chill-jumbled dreams gone
along with all recollection
of day’s intentions and chores…
these late years.
**
Rain drops, wood smoke,
the poncho’s hood—in the air,
though slow to come,
winter.
**
Early blue sky vitality
quietly withers, covering cloud-whisper
claiming one dazzling dance
with another.
**
Rain, oh yes, the rain
in every crack and crevice,
calling the grass,
the wild weeds
to answer.
**
For us, being is learning, being is learning:
**
Eternity’s work is time’s day
by nano-second. Looking up, the hills
look back as I wriggle along a crack
I call sidewalk. How it will be when
we’re gone, well, whole, as now,
eaten bones sprouting trees.
And, oh, the poems…just as I said.
**
Nature’s way, sometimes barely noticeable
trembles, not weakness, signals
endless enduring continuity.
Don’t mistake what we routinely think
for the whole of what is.
**
The telephone wire waves goodbye
to the blue birds.
**
Rains come unannounced, cover
everything throughout the night,
leave me fatigued, so listless
even strong coffee barely whispers.
Hillsides bare themselves to light,
fog crawls the ridge, puffs of gauze
above bush and leaf,
I too begin to lift.
And in these after-minutes
of telling as told through living,
sought after clarity reminds me
no one, no thing has ever not been
all the while here.
Even mystics stand on earth’s ground.
**
Fog hugs
like love
today.
No need
to hug back.
Empty
gestures
don’t count.
**
Drips from passing mists,
pearls from a giving sky.
**
Albert Saijo, an American original,
once said, “If you don’t live on the edge,
you take up too much space”—living
the poem then, a bubble-burst of word
at lip’s edge, spit at the tip of the pen,
muscle curved into paper—all else
no more than discarded skin.
**
final February days bring a break
from cold and rain, buckeye trees
think spring, splay fine new green
**
in a time when clicks count more than content,
when count is King, when King Counter
even attempts to co-opt the uncountable,
maybe it is understandable
that those who control numbers remain so
unaccountable, understandable
that “wise use” spread sheets presume to map
corporate right to nature, deemed valueless
but for that,
understandable that “wise” becomes
a four letter word, digit by digit,
to decimal point,
rather than silent point,
in times like these, when only clicks count,
the scratch and pull of the pen
spells resistance
