2014 Notes along the way…

2014 Notes along the way…

January 2014

Words and names

ride breath

being spent,

sound the edge

of having been

and will be,

each return

and no return,

remembrance

awash

in currents

of timelessness.

**

There are the hours where light sleeps,

rests in the velvet of original voice, 

waits the slightest quiver.

**

For me these days,

flashes in the periphery

catch the glance 

of something known,

given again,

intimate, intricate

connections

reaffirmed

in the luminous folds

of solitude.

**

For A. D.

Tell me of this temple

of the open sky,

this not-so-secret sanctuary

of hills and byways, this tradition

of all experience. Speak to me

of this heritage of the heart, of your kin,

your patron saints, the spirit

of the lowest bow.

Tell me your living aspiration,

your favored prayer

for the lips.

**

But I went ahead and lied just the same.

It was closer to the truth, that lie.

Told as the last of the sun’s rays passed

into shadow.     I told it   

so she could smile.

**

No one knows I’m here. And with you now gone,

who will speak with me of the stars, of the lights in the hills

that glitter where the limbs of the great eucalyptus once gathered

the whole of the night. A warm cloak of unknowing, buffer

against the chill of unwanted distance.

**

Heat rises with the dust,

lays like a yoke across your shoulders,

an oxen in time, ever thirsting, ever forward,

but at whose bidding?

**

River of Words

Along the river, one can travel light,

for all that’s necessary is given—early whispers

illumine shadows, direction takes, flow determines

and breath holds true for sound—all else,

just added weight.

**

Witness

And as it does, the world and all that it is shifts

and all about us again accounts for itself anew.

**

On the road in Chiapas,

under a near-full-moon,

fired sugar cane.

**

Here

Here, arrived here today, where

every star holds space sacred, where

every breath ever taken returns, where

notions of must and ought

are rendered superfluous—here.

September, October, November

It’s not poetry as such,

though I’ve read some and will again,

but the poets themselves

and what they’ve become

through the search implied

in the poetic—

shadows of movement

before explanation, the curve of words

as formed in the wind

and the wonder and heartache

extended in lines

of questions never closed…

**

Reentering the world

from half-slumber into daylight

delights returning senses.

Awakened crossing back,

tenderness precedes every thought

and remembrance affirms

the resonant sky

with the gladness

of love.

**

It came as at the breaking edge of a restful dream

that just as morning makes its familiar way, I too

know how this is done—the ground of the earth

is always prepared, the air responds as asked;

light meets eyes, birdsong the ears

and myriads of skins speak to touch.

So let questions dance, let thoughts make their run,

for I too know how

this is done.

**

He leaned forward, just a bit,

you know,

like a little bow,

and said

in a soft voice

that the world is always giving…

**

Each morning, wading the stream,

the current’s ebb and flow, till evening

time to rest, 

like a fish facing upstream

into all it brings, ever watchful

of hovering shadows.

**

With gratitude

Often as not, I wake in confusion,

long-nursed doubts surfacing

refreshed, a’swirl.

But each day comes

not so much with a plan,

as with its own breath

that we ride, a’swirl in our dreams

or awake—either way is OK. 

**

Jet lagged

11/11 seems to have been misplaced somewhere

on the couch where I lay most of the day delirious

engrossed in speaking images graciously passing

the glowing screen—without pause.

This morning though, 11/12, is right where I’d have it

here under the pillow next to my head, waiting and ready

to roll over the edge to outside and in…

to the drizzle-wet streets

of proper coming home—everything in its time always

all we need.

**

Rome

Shadows spill across the page

and onto the floor—only to be wiped clean

by passing clouds.

**

Mallorca

Morning winds clear the way for light,

muscling clouds aside

along with the dark.

Free of the need to signal,

the last two stars

leave too.

**

Early night—early morning.

Dark, star-studded sky.

With Orion right there, how far

from home can we really be?

**

Casciano

Leaves on vines

in the orchard rows

have begun to yellow.

Burnt by summer,

weathered in passing rains,

some lean closer to orange

to whisper of the coming fall.

**

To Frienz

Hard to tell what’s being sung,

but railroad songs in any tongue

are as clear as the tracks are long.

**

Our method for learning

Rome’s bus system: confusion—we succeed,

get to where we got,

and back again.

**

Traveling through Tuscany with a GPS

named Emily, I become quite attached.

Over and over I ask, “Where am I?”

And over and over again

she patiently replies:

“You are here.”

**

Barcelona

Under the moon-like light

of the street lamp, the intersection

opens its silence

to the swaying shadows above

and a single

crinkled

leaf

lets

go.

**

Cordona—lighting candles with Marghareta

From the remains of the old Roman wall

overlooking the spreading countryside,

along the steep, coble-covered path,

muraled images

of the stations of the cross

leading the way,

the street-clothed priest

motions us in

to the sun-patched sanctuary—

leaving us alone

with the Sant.

**

As the conversation turns to “art”

I find myself thinking of people taking time

for morning coffee together

at tables at the edge of sidewalks

on traffic filled streets,

seemingly wanting to be right there.

That canvas.

September's End

We sit with our backs to the east.

A small house in a small town, overlooking

a small valley,

homes on the opposite slopes

looking back.

Mornings—if early enough—you can trace

the sun’s progress by looking west—hill tops first,

the softest touch. Then the slow pushing down

of shadows out of the way reveals

flashed signals of the sun’s rising presence

igniting east-facing windows like bursts of light

shining out from the earth itself.

There was a window out there

morning last

with strength enough to light the whole of our interior

with warm-glow—made me to turn and to smile

in silent amazement

into the source. The sun, you know,

has its own sense of time, its own sense of space,

its own sense of our individual contours. And although

we are a part of its broader concerns,

the best we can likely do is as best we can to attend

to its finding us. And to rest

in that attention

to where we are and to when.

**

Ah, good friend, you’ve set me free

in sun-soaked by-ways, along wind-stroked hills,

and narrow corridors of shadow graced with light.

Namaste

**

There is intensity of focus that comes of us

as natural and as certain and as easy as winds

that drench the face and the edge, the back

and the very end point

of every needle of every pine

within their reach—and then to all the rest,

they breathe the wish that blows behind

their rivered and rippling kiss.

**

Vows we find we’ve made:

looking back, I’d have to say,

a long-standing inclination toward silence

and the solitary, from birth even, yet always as these

are drawn through the intimacies of the few, the nuclear

and as carried on within the broad strokes and patch-work

of the greater quiet—the urge to acts of mutuality,

of respect and consideration and the wish to understand

these enduring visions of love at play

in the daily comings and goings that define the ordinary,

the universal, the connecting groundswell of commonness

that is our collective humanness—and this,

it seems for me, is the center-less center to which

I have leveled my most heart-felt claims

of citizenship.

           

**

Near-ecstatic revelation

The lift of our living within

              the firm embrace of holy name

is found

not on the in-breath,

                    but of the out-going.

Namuamidabutsu

**

After far too long a time

trying to prepare for seventy,

I’ve somehow come to let it go

to itself—this turning grace

called aging—and, 

as it does what it does and what it is,

to use the best of all I have as such,

and as I am, to see it through

all the way through its grace filled,

self-fulfilling way.

**

Whose voice is it

you think

you hear,

yours?

And so

of the words,

yours too?

**

Often after the fact, I pull back in wonder

at the somewhat frantic nature of the search

for that which I already know to be there, yet

nonetheless continue to need to reconfirm,

like seeking out the earliest cast of the sun’s rays,

as if to assure myself the warmth remains

there in the light where last left—and for us,

the spoken name is like this too,

the emergence and re-emergence

of the warmth of embodied memory

made manifest; no less a flicker

than passing thoughts, but tangibly so.

**

And…

implies connecting and also connection,

it implies greater numbers of, and so,

addition, so then, progression

and causation, relation and variety—

it implies abundance…

and so in such a world

might well then serve

the preferred expression

of gratitude, of praise

and of prayer…and…

**

And

the deep

silence

bottomless

well

embodied

here

in this one

sustains

forever

resonant

tremors

of our

collective

living-dying.

**

John Muir Wilderness

                   Fleming Lake--Elevation 9,700 feet

The mountains here drop their shadows

just as the rays of the coming sun begin to arrive,

water offers ripples to the first gentle gusts,

and pines ruffle and wave. To follow the urge

to sit at the edge in a place like this is an act of faith,

a free-fall ride on the wakes

of star-streams—birds swoop and twitter, answers

brittle and fall, frames and reference shift

to the boundless possibilities of the humbled few

who discover the truly praiseworthy.

Here, it’s not asked, how old one is,

but exclaimed: How far we have come!

Here, the wise are those who hold their tongue.

Listen to the rest.

Friend to Friend

Arrogance—yours or mine no difference—

always misguided, rarely instructive of anything

other than itself, and often simply meanness

cloaked in good intentions,

like building character, in someone else.

Though at the lake that day, it clouded

crystalline waters so, what might have been

rebuke, instead glowed with the clarity

of genuine kindness, a flash amongst shadows,

not so much unexpected, as from one unfamiliar,

now known from the inside, out—a gift.

**

We cannot know for certain,

but the effort, beyond all reason,

the effort so fruitless reveals nonetheless

continuous, even uncalled for delight

and richness—reason enough then,

reason enough.

**

Take your teacher by the throat

and listen—it’s the gurgle

that’s most important.

**

We think

as we live, the promises

we make ourselves, vows,

intentions, grand plans, sweeping vistas,

like so many heart-felt leaves blown

to tremor, even before their saying is done—

bud to spread to color to mulch,

all returned to the earth sustained

and richened within the blanket embrace

of the myriad workings of the sun in its sky.

**

Place specific, local,

as in heart beat—how the universe conspires

continuations of each and all throughout their time,

questions of purpose, intention, of direction,

value added, or allowed, all implode

right here—seamless, seem-less wholeness,

each complete in place and time, rightful roles

forever fulfilled—inevitable—amen.

**

They say, just before death arrives, life

sometimes surges, energies push the furthest

reach, new horizons replace the old, space awakens,

shadows fall, imagination stretches to follow the light

to the other side...

**

In the steadied silence of a Sunday morning

begun before the promise of a spoken sun, the roses

on the altar slump, and the two of them, cloaked in clouds

of circling smoke of incense burned to dust,

take their turn to cry—for Buddhas forever gone

and for those about to come.

**

The way it is

There are times when, despite myself, I raise my voice,

when the thrust of my heart pushes through the words and past,

leaves them limp on the empty air, only to fall

to the floor, ill-spent.

And I know, it’s the breath

that words ride that makes them all they are

and its absence that undoes them.

I know.

**

On trust and praise

It’s the urge to engage through syllable and sound

the shadowy horizons of awareness

not simply our own.

It’s the desire to use all that we have

and all that we cannot hold, to articulate the wish

that we cannot speak.

It’s the depths of our need, though not so clearly seen,

to affirm the connections, to return as community,

as is already given.

**

Thresholds of sorts, arise

as we identify what is no longer essential.

Letting that go, of itself lightens

the next step and wherever it may lead.

**

As the chest rises and falls

almost imperceptibly, we conceive

the body alive with the flow of breath—

Buddha’s Name as utterance

makes real the potency of language

as a vehicle of awakening…

NamuAmidaButsu

**

The desire to make something happen

will make

something happen—while all the while,

the world

inevitably delivers

the inevitable, 

making us wonder,

perhaps,

which end of the effort

we’re really on.

**

The ancients speak

of clear and certain vision

amidst that most certain ambiguity

that is the foundational reality of our humanity.

How to live unruffled in a ruffled universe?

Allow each answer its flutter

before letting go…

**

Morning fog rolls in over the ocean

that lies west of here,

shoulders inland hills,

then tips and pours toward the bay,

leading puffs tinted pink.

Notes to myself--August 2013

Notes to myself—August 2013

To say “forty years” now is no stretch, saying Buddha’s Name, inside and out, steadily sporadically, at times spontaneously, one way or the other all these years, as so this morning along empty streets, nembutsu readily rides each breath through to release, leads place specific into this body-moment that leads to the unknown next, all held and all moved, single breath on single breath carrying living voice homeward.

My Dad used to speak of the “second wind” that long-distance runners experience, when body overtakes will and running turns into a kind of riding, a place of effortless confidence in something other—today it feels like that might feel, in it for the duration, never alone, somehow easy.

**

I’m American in the sense that I have no definitive link to any soil other than this, no family memory of any “mother land” outside North America. Whence then, the powerful influence of nembutsu ?

**

Reading selections from Albert Saijo’s, Outspeaks to the poetry workshop at the jail last week, the men loved the power and simplicity of his work.

Some have said of Saijo, an American original by my way of thinking, that he always looked both ways, then went straight ahead—by “both” they must have meant inside and out.

Saijo went from the camps into WW II, from the war back into his country. He traveled it. He chewed peyote, as I recall, sat Zen and fasted. In later years, he lived on the edge of a volcano (so as not to take up too much room). And although he eschewed literary recognition, he was a writer by vocation—all caps and dashes, no other punctuation. In  his own words, he wanted to be a “field preacher,” in the way of John Muir’s father.

And it works. I mean, I can only imagine a field preacher, but Saijo’s words are anything but indecisive—he was a slight man, small of stature and photos suggest, quiet. But his words, the thinking and passion that pushes them, are large and clear—no equivocation here—he knew where he was headed, and that’s where he went.

Look out, look in—then keep going. Kind of like a life of nembutsu.

**

Once a motel, the b&b sits off the main road below grade, under trees, adjacent wide spread ranch-like work buildings. Plentiful green and blue, a pleasant place, where water running through the walls signals the neighbors showering, and each closed door resonates through several units either side. But it’s quiet. And a slight adjustment to the vertical blinds on the sliding door, lights the room with morning, lets the ordered shades of beige pateo stones just outside extend a sense of comfort and calm, both sides across the sill.

I remember a journal entry by Cid Corman, ex-pat American poet living in Japan in the 1960’s, capturing the moments of an entire day as he sat overlooking the garden space outside his kitchen. He observed, and he wrote his life, the day unfolding in shifting tones of light.

And comments by William Stafford, on the way it is for him in writing. Not writing poems, but writing, the active engagement of giving oneself over to the process, poem or prose.

The difference between the two for Stafford is a matter of signals; neither content, nor form, so much as certain signals from writer to reader that a poem is underway; the lack of such, signaling prose—grammar, syntax, line length.

And for Stafford, the poem is not just about signals sent by the poet, but certain signals the poet receives and transcribes—a poem then is not merely personal statement or  personal expression; at its best a poem speaks to, speaks of, source rather than sender.

This subtle shift demands of the writer certain careful but easy handed attentiveness to his or her own intentions in order to determine whether the nature of engagement is prose or poetry, or both, and to send it out as best they can, as such.

The ambiguity here rightly defines the writing way Stafford enjoyed, as a humble one.

**

Shinran, prolific writer, unwavering in the certainty of the source of his liberation, at age 86, cites Honen: “ ‘Other Power means that no working is true working.’ ‘Working’ is the calculating heart and mind of each practicer. As long as one possesses a calculating mind, one endeavors in self-power. You must understand fully the working of self-power.”

Thoreau: “Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience. There must not be a particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we can listen, we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity.” 1-26-1841 And: “We are constantly invited to be what we are, as something worthy, and noble. I never waited but for myself to come around; none ever detained me, but I lagged or tagged after myself.” 2-3-1841

**

Awareness, inner and outer, careful listening, learning and consideration. Appreciation for all received; for the continued receiving, wonder and praise. And the personal determination to attend the quietude required to continue this way of humility and gratitude.

Borderless, boundless, all and ever-inclusive.

Every question, any question, indicative of too much self--Namuamidabutsu. 

Heart Beats

The Heartbeat Sutra—for Sandino,

                                                  July 2013

I’ve heard it said, Grandson, that Buddha once said,

as he sat at sun’s rising, that heartbeats transmute

and all else follows—and in that gathering

of waiting leaves, of night let go, Buddha paused

to watch the words and all they were

return to the wonder of beginnings,

then turned his hand to raise a flower 

to meet the gaze of eyes been raised

to meet the bluing sky.

And so it is with you, in the ease and offering

of your infant sleep, the same

throb and promise.

As half-finished darkness holds silent the house

and all around us has paused,

the gentle curve of your open-cupped palm

reveals the assurance, the articulation

and the wonder of the beginnings

of our beating hearts.

**

           

Silence allows hearing,

stillness permits sight and touch

and the generous capacity to speak

enables navigation of the oceans of words

that define our humanity—left, right,

up, down, beginnings and ends—where

would we be without this ?

**

Turning in ever-tightening circles,

trying to site the source of the blinding cacophony,

I finally find its voice 

to be my own—and in this startling release,

relief and ease, begin to discern

its song…

**

flowers dance…

stems bend to winds

afloat with fogs

and dew

that gladly coat

the needled pines,

got drunk

on the breath of gods…

**

About attitude

Not so much to write poems,

but to write to see what comes—music or dissonance,

though not the same, are of the same mouth

and worthy of similar considerations.

Like time, the time to trace,

the time to witness the turns the words

will make to reach the page, line by line,

word by word, the world revealed, itself remade.

**

And of writing the day awake,

watching the light come in

where none had been,

unfolding across the sill

and on to the page poured over all over

with lighted words,

writing themselves awake

in the way of the coming day.

**

there’s been this voice

--all along I suppose,

         low-toned, unobtrusive, 

a most constant companion

         I’d taken to be my self,

and rightly so, I’d say—

but not the one I’d had in mind

**

Bodhisattvas everywhere

Slowly rising out

of the swirl of indecision,

of seemingly interminable

bait and switch,  to view

through the window

soft pink petals

atop stems some five feet tall 

and perfectly still, paused

as if to wait, to hear

my heart beat. 

This living...

This living…

June--July 2013

In the end, there is no answer,

only song—songs of momentums

of moments of resonance,

passing.

**

Awake

It’s not so much that “I thought”

but my thinking was such

that my living was so

that the world as it was

seemed a constant nuisance,

endlessly interrupting, forever

intervening in the story

in my mind.

Then one day, it got through.

And now I see the reverse is true.

**

Voice rides breath that ride winds that ride

seminal vibrations that sound—say the teachers:

follow just one thing, all the way through.

**

the depths of the working of breath

may only be discerned by mind made quiet

as it follows where it leads

**

Voice of course is breath embodied,

breath, the wind’s wish for a rounded earth,

whispered amongst myriads of limbs.

**

Poems in morning

And in morning’s quiet,

the house still, is only the chill

that drifts, that lets the window opened

feel the pass of night, feel the blessings

bared and at rest in the calm

of the heart at home.

**

the density…

of lived experience is such

that moments of clarity and calm

are like quiet clearings

stumbled upon in the wilds

—a bit of a stretch

to claim too much credit

**

Attending

After a long absence,

returning to work the garden

—it all comes back.

**

A scattering of haiku—for Fritz,

thinking of transition

Fallen leaves make the earth.

Ideas, seasoned by light,

cushion every step.

*

Mature growth, rich life:

always in proportion to

how well we let go.

*

Cautionary: trees

sometimes hold their leaves too long—

like us, still survive.

*

Age gifts pure practice,

ready or not. No cushions,

no bells. Only change.

*

Even seclusion

is in relation—how else

to breathe, but for leaves.

**

In the meadows of Lyell Canyon, Yosemite

July 2013

Promise floats in the air here, lean, immediate,

without presumption; and this high mountain dirt,

rich, abundant meadows spread wild with color

for any who will come this far.

Chanting ancient songs across these meadows looking out

at glacier-covered peaks, seems more than just appropriate, more

like an act of the wind, itself lifting voice above the stream,

through the grass, into the pines and along the rock-faced ridges

at rest at the gates of heaven.

Humility sprouts in all who plant their feet here, even for awhile,

unfolding on the breath before thought, as natural a grace

as the cloud-traced contours of distant glaciers,

wind-blown, light filled shadows

passing among myriads of hints

of healing and wholeness.

**

Mornings

he sits at the altar,

incense wafts,

breath settles, light falls,

wonder unfolds

to sustain

like the pulse of the out-stretched hand

that pulls forth the praise that follows the prayer

that opens the heart,

that gentle persistence, the softest scratch

that pulls each page, as it pulls each breath,

to the fullness of its turning.

**

July 4^th

The Big Dipper,

large and low in the North.

Here in the South, we too get up

in the dark, to pee.