These last few days, in June...

Praying with open eyes…

the shaman, taking everything in, anything

left out, the diminishment

of sacredness—

or the roshi who meditates because

he doesn’t want to miss

anything—

or the poet’s singular motivation

to clarity,

words as true as bird song—

**

Humid air’s a stranger here,

an unexpected skin

no one’s able to name.

**

Through screened windows,

morning’s stillness,

marked by dove calls.

Downstairs, the tenant

moves around the kitchen.

**

Early evening fog gathers along the ridge line,

cooled drifts pushing

toward newly opened windows.

looking toward the coming weeks

These quiet hours, the first

in the days of this season long in light,

broken only by the occasional cloud,

accompanied always in bird song,

softest undulations rising and receding

within that most intimate presence

we know so clearly

as silence.

These, the quiet hours.

**

Decent registers of concern come in colors

both varied and unexpected, beauteous unfolding

of life likened to itself, in kind, in shape and inclination

to recognize patterns of sameness

for what they are:

opportunity to converse.

Would that we would

more readily see our dissimilarities

as such.

**

The days begin now to play

toward gravity,

approaching a departure of consequence,

measured moments add to the scale

weightless layers of freely given intent.

Oxalis, free ranging spring poems...

Over and again,

pressed and trampled grasses

pulled back into the sun.

**

This body, healthy

in old age, complaints passing

like yesterday’s gas.

**

true haiku, others

may do—I enjoy the pose,

absent any real work

**

I tire quickly these days,

of formalities

with no obvious center.

Friends inquire, but all I can do

is point to the cloudless sky.

**

The make-shift altar

in the dining hall, they strain

to follow this hakujin,

chanting ancient sounds of joy.

**

Three red cabbages

from winter’s garden; give one

away, one we keep

and the last, too loose,

we add to spring’s efforts.

**

Sounds of spinning wash

from behind the garage door

—morning clouds gather.

**

Heron’s Point, Bear Dance

April 17th

Gulls and geese clearing the sky

of the last of daylight,

raise a collective call to witness

the silence of coming stars

and the waiting drums.

**

This spring afternoon danced

with hailstones,

lingering recollections

of winter

demanding one last look.

**

Borrowing sun tones

from an early sky, the bay

whispers salmon-pink.

**

Light bounces from feet

unrestrained by gravity

—girl cousin-grand daughters.

**

Morning pours blue light,

horizons humming rain free,

full breathed songs of spring.

**

The sun casts light to east facing slopes

cast light through west facing windows

throwing shadows of flowers

on the wall

above the stove.

**

It’s not that each word is pearl pure,

but the source

behind the impetus

is just that.

Prayer resides here,

in the quiet sweep of attention

before words.

March Meditations

The secret life of nembutsu

The plane’s television monitor tells us

we’re passing over northern Canada, toward Calgary,

while outside, below, the white sheet stretches

well beyond what any eye might imagine,

what any words might clearly say.

Buddha’s teaching of nembutsu, the mindfulness

of utterance,

is like this too: no need at all to add anything

—saying itself, deep and whole

in and through the silent expanse of the heart—

only listening will do

Namuamidabutsu,

Namuamidabutsu

**

What do poets do?

Light struggles through tangled shadows.

In waiting branches, dark acacia leaves chill,

still to the windless morning’s entreaty to the new spring

come quietly between grey rain days

that leave the last of that which only they can bring.

Cold Mountain, the poet-monk, tells us

similar scenes appear over and again;

it’s what we do with them

that differs.

**

Certain mysteries

Clear blue, the Saturday sky lifts

from the crisp green hills,

arching invisibly over the roof top,

waiting, watching,

a lingering presence supposed, but not known,

not seen;

perhaps then, lifting

simply lifting…

**

End March

The day unfolds utterly absent uncertainty, each morsel

of air-buoyed water running its inevitable course, specific

to conditions within the collective spread called clouds

that span a breadth of hilltop some three miles in length.

I sit watching this, faltering in a mind a’swirl with ambiguity

at what the weather might bring, what that might mean,

while the day simply continues its quiet way, delivering all

it has to give.

In search of those still practicing, Bill Porter,

once known as Red Pine, roamed near-empty crevices

of modern China, and reports:

every adept he met followed some regimen

of chanting and meditation, morning and evening--our practice,

our teachers say, brings us to nembutsu, song, twice a day,

the straightforward gathering of body sound and sense,

turned in the direction of full completion

of living gratitude.

**

Best friends

Placed in a small black vase

in the corner on the alter

below the framed scroll,

flowers with white petals

and yellow centers

call into the chill and dim light…

Hearing this implies

a world alive,

the resonant pulse of wholeness

linked and woven,

the tiniest thread

a call of fully extending family,

a world of best friends…

Bunch Grasses

Bunch Grasses

Scattered poems and recollections

of La Paz, Mexico, 2009

The inscription reads:

And if you want peace,

I offer it to you

in the sunny peace of my bay.

night’s clouds break,

spilling swells of light

toward the shore.

**

Evening’s pink

silhouettes

a solitary palm.

**

Sitting

alone at the desk,

waiting for the dark side of the moon

to shift and rise too,

out from itself.

**

Asked his way,

the poet replies: I’ve nothing to offer

but what’s next,

and I’m not yet there.

**

From Oppen’s prose and daybooks,

a poetics of no-poetics:

This will not summarize.

This will guide

without demand.

**

Sunday, along the darkened Malaccan, along the water,

well-mannered walkers whisper early morning greetings;

but for the slow turn of the earth,

this the only breeze.

**

For George Oppen

Some teachers stand out, as such, and the world is not the same

but for them; but for them, the world and all it is speaks, each thing

of its own voice and shape, and the ear, and the heart by way of the ear, hear

and recognize and know.

**

The pages of the journal take the ink as given,

swirls or broken lines, tears of joy or deeper sadnesses

laid neatly out or helter-skelter, the pages take all

that comes, as it comes—ever full;

ever full and enough, at any last lift of the pen,

or before the very first push, the pages,

ever in all their fullness.

**

Each morning,

a rooster--scattering

clustered silences.

**

Under my bared feet, tiles blink

—streetlights off,

the morning sky has its way.

**

Together

we sit, read and write

into late afternoon--Ana Karina,

one of her favorites, on TV, Spanish sub-titles.

**

at the airport, a mural

in muted oranges and yellows, a pastoral

suspended above the continuous rush

of barely controlled frenzy—we arrive in time

to wait to leave

**

Praxis, the Great Practice

Writing the poem, writes the poem.

Saying Buddha’s name, says the name.

The work itself teaches us

where we will next go.

Doing is trusting. Trust is everything.

Recent Mornings

early color

wild mustard sprinkles green-hued yellow

on hillsides

under a sun stunned speechless

in a wintered sky…

on the arm of the brown

leathered chair, an aqua cup,

congealed instant coffee

on the outer lip…

**

The deep pull and draw

of the center to itself—

rain drops and incense.

**

The acacia waits,

holding energies inward,

listening for spring.

**

I didn’t know Cid Corman

but his lines carry a voice still

discernable—rain falls, I hear its drops

1958, in a Kyoto garden

**

Under early lit skies,

walking shadowed streets

silently listening

to pink streaked whispers

pass by.

**

Not knowing the signal,

I watch breezes push past

each branch

and be gone—so much grace

so early in a day.

Letters and poems--early 2010

February 3, 2010

A Letter to my Niece,

first written in the journal you gave to me, so thoughtfully inscribed, leather bound, easily hand held, about which, if asked, I’d have said that I prefer larger pages, except that this one reminds me of you each time I write, and its too small pages seem to push poems from my pen that might not have otherwise come of it—and at least one letter that might not have been written.

I want to tell you, because I believe you’ll understand, that the writing, the poetry, has become bigger and bigger for me in recent years, not so much as to replace my religious life, nor, as I once thought, to challenge it, as such; rather, I have come to understand it as the core of it all, as my primary practice, principal manner of worship and praise, and so have found it helpful from time to time to be around other writing poets—this being the major change—in order to listen, as most recently, a day ago, to the newly inaugurated Poet Laureate of San Francisco, Diane di Prima, who says that the spiritual dimension of writing lies in its isolation.

I’d just stepped back into the room and caught her comments like fragmented sparks that illumined a centered fullness I’d previously been unable to see, and I take this to mean that there, at the desk, solitary, in the chair or on the couch, there, over the pen and empty page, I am alone with my self, in my self, in its unadorned solitariness, the foundational condition of all humanity—indeed, of all existences; we, each of us, are alone and in this common aloneness are intimately connected with each other; all others and me, connected in the blessed paradox of being fully alone, the recognition of this being the spontaneous banishment of loneliness, the restricted, the crippling, a quiet liberation, experienced similarly in the solitary breathing of meditation, in the singular voice sounding the Buddha’s name, and, I would suppose, in that solitary house of prayer, the human heart and mind, ever opening within the ever present possibility of true and real communication, as Ms di Prima whispered, words resonant with integrity, given with the wish that they be helpful.

Realizing our primal aloneness is not only OK, it is the liberating awareness of our inextricable reliance upon and responsibility for all other beings. This, in the writing. This the sustaining influence of the truth of the matter of our singular and collective humanity, our living and dying, both alone and together. I find myself here, resting in the quiet center of the unending vitality of wonder and gratitude.

What a joy, my young Niece.

My love,

Uncle

Why Now ?

Just as day breaks the edge of night,

we walk through wet grasses, into the hills

overlooking the valley and toward open bay waters,

once contiguous marshlands, vital and giving of life,

then given over to fill and then to a park,

landscaped contemporary industrial.

Last night’s rains run normally dry creek beds full

into culverts now, secreted along their way under the town

no longer cognizant of these ancient voices,

nor the rich conversations of sweet meeting brine

that filled for myriad generations the silence

at the feet of these slopes.

But hints of this music can yet be heard

if you venture to the trails above the canyons

on days like today—on days like today, indeed,

if you go there.

In these times…a poem

Startling behavior for weather

in these parts. Thunder and lightening

at any time of year is a surprise here,

almost unheard of in winter.

Moreover, in recent drought years, where

normal has become consistently deficient,

long-term considerations teeter mostly over a chasm of doubt.

Even so the notion itself, long-term, seems estranged these days,

quick returns being the preferred currency.

As much as anyone, I appreciate the sparkle and clarity,

the cleansing function of shallow running streams, but absent the return

to deeper currents, shallow runs simply dry up.