The way it is

 —The way it is

I do really love dropping 

words on lines and watching them 

wiggle me somewhere they seem

to want to go.

**  

another day of chilled fogs 

and illness—a gift of time—

learn rhyme and how to tell kids

peering through redwoods 

my tricks

**

what, when they tell you your time,

can sound offer words to say

that chanting has not first told,

that the ears already know

**

Here, west horizon is ridge

raised a thousand feet, valley

shadowed at sundown, birdsong

following all summer long.

**

Mornings, the wife creeps around,

bared feet, like walking clouds, seep

and quiver all though the house,

quietly picking up stuff.

**

my ears, for reasons their own,

prefer rhyme so close it’s missed

almost—breaths folding over

heart-beat music held heart-close

**

and some mornings window light

helps me see shuffling feet

determined to stay inside,

outside glow a mere mirage

**

Seed-pods drift, call us outside

for play, no rules, no boundaries.

Air says you just have to be,

beginning to end, you’re in.

**

It’s often just so simple

it’s simply missed, not by those

receiving our attention,

but by us, the good we send.

**

I’ve been noticing, a week

here in Chicago, people

catch your eye, often smile,

just because—you become we.

**

Two cement birds on the rail

splay early morning shadows

turning slowly with the sun.

**

—the way it is

sun-lit hours are longer

as earth tips this way not that

turning even slower than

moon-dappled leaves in autumn—

what does it mean to come back

when we haven’t really left:

we dream, a life living us

as we sleep—it not waiting

**

it happens in front of me…

fine crafted, thoughtful language

placed in lines across the page,

graceful movements of meaning,

full-throated assurance 

of depth, of resource, 

confirmed companionship 

re-affirmed, worlds alive, 

pulses beating

**

True, it’s best to keep moving.

But to dig in, you have to stop.

**

…about hope:

trust the work itself, 

not some future scale

to weigh its worth

**

Watching hours slipping by,

feeling regret—at my age

is like assigning values

to syllables sounded  

just as they disappear

at the lips—

it’s the heart beats that push them

that really count—is it even possible 

to think those ever wasted ?

Solstice poems

 —Solstice poems

Solstice reminds me

it takes a year to round the sun

while all the while I’m thinking

sun rounds me

watching shadows tell me 

that story, y’know,

worlds of movements,

me center stage…

solstice reminds me,

my real place.

**

stretched its maximum length,

the ladder rests on the edge

of the top-most gutter, looped

and secured by rope—I bend

and tighten my laces

**

Thumbing through Thoreau, 

journal pages of a young man 

who chose “nothing to do,”

busily explaining how.

**

words trap you 

only when you try 

to trap them

**

the teacher said

do not put your trust 

in teachers—

I don’t remember what else 

he said

**

when all is said and done,

breath-storied words

are winged sky

**

As a kid in the east,

snow-giving sky had a look

we learned to tell

and we’d say

looks like snow, and

pretty much, sure enough.

In the morning we’d listen to the radio man, 

not for weather, but to hear if the snow 

was good enough 

to cancel class.

As I remember, learning by looking and telling

wasn’t encouraged in school,

seems it was nurtured by the drifts in the streets 

we played in when they were closed.

**

the hawk, the hawk, the gleam, the streaming

streak above the canyon floor,

the swoop, the wings, the up and gone…

the hawk

**

How certain turns of water in the bay 

glitter with sun-rising light, while shore birds 

trace circled trails in low-tide muds.

**

thinking of Issa,

words popping out, here and there

deftly brush-stroked to paper

then watching my own 

percolate, bubble up and around,

drop out, stumble and trip

**

summer-hot sun leaves

at 5—clouds cover the rest 

of its shift, cooler

**

the moon windows

at 3 am, lights the room

leaves only after 

I’m awake

**

the last day

of the first half

of every year since

celebrates the birth 

of the only middle child

**

clear blue sky hovers

ridge-line horizon

draped in gauze-white ribbons 

of hill-bumping fogs

just beginning the reach 

for canyon floors

that ride sea-to-bay peninsula

cool evenings

**

hearts beating again

and again don’t repeat life

but give it new, new, new…

**

and after all that walk and talk, 

this and that, a passing glance 

at volumes of poems on the shelves 

sets my heart to racing 

only the pen will slow

**

—for Jake Sigg, a Bay Area original

         where the heart goes, legs follow

                      thank you, Jake 

                               

**

thinly lit in still chill,

morning air reaffirms

body’s healing being

there with it

**

Auto-biographical notes

disguised as poem-whispers

listen for what mountain grasses

say, I’ve learned, on the mountain.

Sitting in a worn leather chair, as I

do, looking out the window to the edge 

of the universe, I know we never fall off,

only further in,

yet, nonetheless, often I swim 

in that lingering sense of endless oceans 

of word-breath, unable to fathom final land

and then, somehow calling connects, hearing

happens and there, the re-call of home: 

the joy, the richness of the familiar, and if not

that, the concrete—the faces, the petals 

and leaves, the crunch of heel 

to trail, where 

there and then 

eases all, and rootless doubt 

lifts to sky-smiles

where here-now knocks

doors never closed,

there, where pen and chair, daily chores,

the myriad mundane, each in its very own 

shift and click, each with its own unique rub 

tells the giving earth 

of its place 

in the universe.