spring poems
—April-May 2018
sunlight—bellies—passing birds
**
Longing so for a compelling voice,
when all the while, there is one.
**
morning dew drinks
newly opened
lupine
**
The chattering mind
is just that—no more, no less.
At times it’s quiet.
**
I can’t see the smoke
from the incense, but no one
can say it’s not there.
**
Morning light makes its way
in ways words can’t follow,
except in saying so.
**
Buddha says
no place to arrive
is just where we want to be.
**
I don’t really remember
seventeen, but almost sixty
years later don’t feel my steps
that much heavier—stars
and blue sky seem always
to be sending enough.
**
Recognition isn’t just
what mind thinks; ask body
what it remembers, breath
what it can tell.
**
Once I sat where Ryokan sat, in foliage
so thick cicadas built castles there
and thumb-nail frogs guarded
the steep path down from the well
for the temple he cared for
when not busy finding poems.
I’ve wondered since then
if he looked where cicadas
pointed, or followed those frogs.
I know he didn’t look to poetry—
because he said so.
**
A busy crow rattles the morning so,
I close the window.
**
If realization speaks
unselfconsciously,
will we hear our own?
**
Breeze glides, freely itself this morning,
along with tips of branches,
some quivering leaves
and that openly resolute
window.
**
Miyazawa Kenji wrote
“a catalogue of what he saw
as he walked one day…,”
wrote of the timing
of bifurcation of rice
sprouts in times of drought,
of grey water, and
of waiting—
he felt precision always
requires a date.
**
These chilly mornings.
Without being told, I move
toward the sun’s touch.
**
Wisteria blossoms
beginning to dry, flutter
and glow to sunrise.
**
Go ask the scholars.
I know nothing of strategies,
just push the pen.
**
We breathe
despite transgressions
both large and small.
What does one
say to this?
**
What then, when morning walks
are of the past—well, will morning
still be?
**
brushed-red yellow roses,
clustered thorns
beneath a stained-glass
Buddha
on a white lotus,
shadowed
by almond branches
and a single leaf
falling
**
Buddha’s light
as walked
casts no
shadow
**
After Santoka
seeds dropped
sprout where they fall—
troubles upon troubles
**
The open journal, patient
till just now, the flower
on the altar—the books,
a bit out of reach, still
holding everything
they have to say.
**
Even with no rain, weeds pull.
But that lady bug
holds fast.
**
Squirrels get the almonds
this year without a fight, green fuzz
for the taking.
**
Haiku is honing
to the core what’s said, not
what one wants to say.
**
My son returned home
because all he sought was here.
His story is mine.
**
Which parent is it
that leans over the parent
leaning over the crib
breathing into the infant
life bearing words
so that, then, every word
is praise, every voice
the parent’s song.
**
Syllables are joint points
that enable words
to do what they need to do
to return to silence.
**
The poem’s function
is to reveal the unspoken,
give “way” to language.
**
And when Buddha’s Name came up,
he said, there isn’t any name
not Buddha’s.
**
a spot, a moment
on the hillside, sunlight
through the clouds
**
In a second, for a minute,
the neighbor’s chickens stop
clucking
**
unbidden doubts
like clouds
lift to nothing
when met aware
**
Light
is grace.
Be still
so as not to make
of yourself
something else.
**
Looking around the room
at the many books, stacked
and folded papers, wondering
what they’ve said over this time,
their silence telling me
that’s my story.
**
The anthology, that broader conversation,
indulges free association, encourages
distracted responses, often precipitates
longing for a table for two.
**
Words folded over themselves
with too much logic,
choke.
**
I reach for the pen because flowers
reach for sunlight—to live and to die
as flowers do…
