Is it good ?

 —Is it good ?

is it good   is it even a poem

I don’t know 

so what else can I do 

but write and sing 

wonder and hum   dance 

with the tunes 

like a foolish old man

who thinks what he hears

has something to do

with heaven

**

having forgotten Mary McGinnis 

I pulled the slim volume from the shelf

and thumbed through the pages

till finger-tip touch of body-felt words lifted 

and there she was 

with me

quietly telling me to see, 

“see with your whole body,” see 

**

“Look around ! There is nothing besides this.”

                                                         —Ryokan

I went, when younger

(I’ve told this before),

to visit Ryokan at Go-go an,

his hermitage-home,

deep in forested hills in Niigata,

walking, as he did, 

valley floor, flowing river 

to mountain solitude, 

fluttering bamboo. 

His hut was empty. 

I’ve stayed forever.

**

fog billows

bright white

build

**

Poetry, you ask, or don’t, still lurks, 

in ordinary conversation, words there 

that might be heard, not transacted, 

heard, that is, if we care enough to listen: 

 

sighs of dying time 

making music  

round the birth 

of the new.

**

dry open hills

of rural Calistoga

enchant

the lone walker kneels

again and again

gems of wonder 

hiding in plain sight 

still

like watching deer

**

what might one like Rumi say 

                           turning once again

     the membrane of the force

of the stream 

               the force of the turning

                                             universe…

**

And, once upon a time, I woke

and digital had disappeared

in night sky reclaimed

by so many nameless stars

that all that was left

was to breathe in 

the light.

**

Cid Corman

—syllable

count, three—Cid

counted them,

syllables,

each one each

time, because

“each one counts.”

**

In the dream, on the phone

he asks, 

what is reality…

and in the pause of held breath, 

gathering thoughts tremble, clash, 

begin to lose traction 

and slip away 

beneath new breath

making its way to 

enduring silence.

**

Trying to ripple through the petals

of the flowers in the pots along the rail

outside the window, mind, lips and pen

do their best to play with the wind, 

falter, but do feel the laughter.

**

it’s not because I let it—it lets me 

let it—it’s its flawless devotion to openness 

to whatever now comes, no matter my thinking 

on the matter…

I just do my best not to get in the way…

amen

**

morning walking feeling

like a fish thrown from water, flipping, 

flapping, looking for home

a small golden bird streaks

and gleams from the phone line

to speak

a sudden rush of pigeon wings

rise in multiples toward the sky

to point

**

The moon

     arrives at five

in the left-most window, high

     in the gap

above the drawn shade,

     saying nothing,

but present, here, to return each night,

     each window to the right

till parting the neighborhood again,

     for only awhile.

**

I can’t speak to life in your eighties, 

but in mine

months and years seem to rub off,

quietly drop away, somehow flutter 

somewhere we weren’t looking. 

But just because aging skin

is undoubtedly thinner, doesn’t mean

the breeze doesn’t feel as good as ever. 

So we just keep “making plans.”

**

By noon we know already

the intensity of the heat

readying to arrive.

I clean up, sit down, plan

on ways to stay still

so it won’t find me.