Threads

**

When lingering fatigue is simply given in to,

allowed, sleep willingly makes over our way

to its own, and rest finally takes root. So it is

in youth and in old age, 

though the cycles implied not only differ,

but for the latter, tend more and more to baffle,

which I’ve begun to realize is directly related

to the diminishing power of denial

to have its way, 

which leaves those of us now in an aging way

simply with the way it is.

**

The continued utterance of prayer-words,

mantra, if you will, 

a run of syllables, song or chant, 

even if denied as such, 

a handful of chosen words 

that of themselves uttered

trace the contours of the individual 

immediacy of finding one’s self as is, 

within the gifted arc of ancestral breath

that reflects, time and again,

the be-storied and unrelenting acceptance

to be heard there.

**. 

                                                                     

I can’t say I remember who said it

for me, but said why I study 

is to better understand what I’ve seen

and heard and thought and otherwise

experienced, so that thanks can tip

the end of the pen to show on the page

the teachers to be recognized as such, 

those threads in the weave

of this joyous way 

of the student.

**

—Ode to the folding chair…

Agape’, love in action

in the arc and swing of the folding chair

unfolded,

back and seat readied, 

legs claiming the certainty of place

in time-shown need.

Family, community, fellows.

**

Even in early February, 

morning lets light earlier, and evening

allows its lingering, 

more room perhaps for cold

to have its time before spring begins

to beckon,

though even so, I’ve seen 

on sunnier days, scattered blossoms 

smiling on the slopes, in certain trees, 

and seen bulbs sprouting vibrant green 

from beneath the moistened earth,

and not to forget 

the handfuls of words 

here and there heard humming 

melodies of the perennial.

**

Where I come from, Friday comes for us

with its own feel, young or old, working, school, 

or not, comes a momentum’s surge at shore’s edge,

readying to spend the whole of itself

in the simple slide and spread of elation let go,

even if negative, even if only implied, 

seeming innate to the species, traced in the collective 

of cells, molecules, atoms—but actually, really, old story, 

told and told, agreed and passed down as true, 

to successive generations of the unsuspecting “we,” 

many of whom individually

will let pass unnoticed

tonight’s full moon. 

**

“Awareness of disappearance,”

the poet’s utterance

Not nostalgia, not of cycles

native to us

Not of blood or age or birth or death

but awareness of loss of 

the native

Of petals, roots, paw-print, of leaf,

of language,     of peoples

Of ways close to earth and sky who care, 

are cared for in return 

Loss of ways of seeing, of being,

for nothing more than

convenience, greed

Awareness of intentional erasure 

**

I’ve never seen myself as standing out

from whatever stream flows

about me—have been fortunate, loved,

have learned and continue to learn

through listening.

And although the moon tonight

is so bright, only Orion holds its own

in what seems a lonely sky, 

the moon still meets every eye,

holds every palm 

open to it.

**

—Porgy’s Dharma

      “I’ve got plenty of nothing

       and nothing’s plenty for me.”

                                    

point me to the countless teachers’

names too bountiful to recall

where communities of living 

abound without boundary

where

there’s nothing to sell

no want to be sold

no treasure 

 that can possibly be held

**

Cutting between the playground and the school 

down the street from our home, opens a view

all the way to the expanding financial district, 

downtown San Francisco, and the SalesForce Tower, 

a rude reminder of this neighboring proximity, 

this morning catching the rising sun’s brightness 

from the east of the bay 

and beaming it straight down that channel, 

right to where I stand—an amazing sight, 

indeed; but in the end, all the sun, and all the rest, 

as they say, mirrors and tricks.

And glancing over my shoulder, the moon, 

still high in the sky, appears to concur. 

**

It’s visceral, unmistakeable—at first, just a stirring,

deep in a dark-clouded sludge of dormancy, then sparks 

and charge that ignite the turn into sun-drenched daylight, 

that revives.

Dramatic, perhaps, but the feel, for sure, of that instant 

when winter’s grip slips from body-mind like brittled skin,

and nakedness greets the gentle breeze inherent there.

And the world, as perhaps it is for Brother Bear, 

the world re-presents itself in all its glittering entirety.

What a time to be alive, indeed—and too, 

what a time to die.

**

We planted this almond tree by the fence

along the street in the front, in a year gone now 

from memory. Each year since, the almond 

is always first to bud to flower, never forgets.

**

Nothing comes today 

that piques the pen’s fancy,

but I push anyway,

pressing the final pages

of the journal for clues,

whatever it was that freed

the morning of its earlier weight

seemingly having lifted with it,

traceless—no mist, no smudge,

no place to place even a single word,

other than the foregoing, of course. 

Winter poems

  “I don’t want to know how I write poetry.”

                                                 

                                                           —Margaret Atwood

And if, as the teacher says,

it’s language that speaks,

then all we have to say

is hear-say.

**

In the winter here, along with the rains

and brother chill, coyote bush pushes buds

to blossom, tiny bursts of fine-white plumage

that join the redness of bear berries in the rise 

and swell of the hills, singing promises 

of nourishment—all of this and more 

taking me in, like a cousin with a key, 

roaming in and out unannounced, 

as if having never left.

**

Only a few days since, and the rains, for us,

now seem but a dream. 

And those streaks, pink, gauze-like blushes, agree, 

claim their cloud-ness to the entirety of the sky.

But the weeds, the weeds remind us

that our feet were not first to meet the earth 

and do nothing for anyone’s thirst, 

remind us that the roots, though unseen, 

aren’t anyone’s dream.

**

Oh, the ball dropped, I guess,

a flickering to the side of the room,

the small group of friends, good food, 

empty glasses.

But it’s that fulsome knowing

that speaks to the love that holds, 

that has held for so long—it’s that 

that brings us over, once more.

**

The moon is full. Ghost-light

cast through west facing windows,

speaking a solitary tongue

darkness appears to favor, offers

softly lain shadows—a shared willingness

so clearly undisturbed by impulse

to explain, my breathing 

holds itself still.

**

To see through other eyes

the merged and merging becoming

meanings beyond meaning,

means, I don’t know

but what wonder tells me.

**

In the watershed of realization,

the streams are the manifestations

that will tell us not only who we are

and where, but how to go.

**

      “Mourning the broken balance, the hopeless prostration

           of the earth

       Under man’s hands and their minds…”

                           —Robinson Jeffers, “Day After Tomorrow”

**

Eternity stripped of the burden of time

opens to bottomless depths of finer and finer

subtleties of workings of dynamics of energies 

of realities beneath realities—in this mirror, 

everything, indeed, everything…

**

Were this a different time, I’d stoke the fires

when rising, greet the coming sun with its own.

Although the sun keeps the old ways, so far,

the thermometer’s switch is where it’s at these days.

So I do my best to do my part each morning,

reach to the far back of the breath 

for those songs so ancient

the source is one and the same.

**

Poetry thrives as that body of language

engaged with the world engaging it,

mutually responsive charges 

at play with the music 

that lingers the sweetness 

that simply cannot be caught.

**

—After Jaime de Angulo

We keep speaking of circles, 

when in fact speaking knows no closures,

multiples of overlapping parabolas

of interacting realities

speak our reality.

Solitude, think again, 

let’s say, of the stars, of the leaves,

just there outside the window,

the neighbor’s radio.

And thinking as such, or is it singing,

cry a cry of joy.

New mornings

                             “ It is all giving.”

                                     —Lung Por Ganhas (Thailand)

Should mornings like this one 

feel as if it’s all new?

I mean, a minute ago 

it just felt. Nothing special motions

through moments seeming familiar enough,

but for the suddenness of change

spread in the streets in the front of the house

with new light; 

or was it the noticing that was new, 

of light already there?

This way or that, the newness had its say

and pretty much 

said it all.

**

In the southern sky, above the lower lines

of the hills, thin slivered promises of the moon

wait the announcement of sun’s coming.

Here and there, lingering with me, handfuls of stars.

**

In nine months, almost to the day, I’ll turn

seventy-seven. Had I hatched in Japan, like Ryokan, 

I’d be counting seventy-eight, and like him, perhaps 

already be beyond counting. Either way, I’m clearly bumping

what once was the farthest away of the book ends. 

As good fortune would have it, although the wife reads me

like a book, I’m neither that, nor a story 

limited to a single shelf.

**

The joy of dharma-study rekindles

in the discovery of my life

in the Master’s words.

At the top of the pole, when I step off, he says:

“Dharma, fundamentally,

                       there is no such thing.” 

**

Christmas morning. How many?

Well, you know, more than memory—but of those

remembered, each different from the one before.

Rains take the first six hours of this one, then stop.

Light comes, clouds part, puddles glisten. I listen

to my own footsteps.

A single bird on a wire looks down

to my looking up.

A human approaches, passes, umbrella closed.

Mid-complaint, I check the weight of my expectations

and lay them down, turn home for hot coffee. 

And those cookies left on the counter,

that used to be there for Santa, 

are really mine now. 

**

There’s no discernible breeze, yet it feels that way,

open, unburdened, freed of the weight of things, 

yet present in the full delight of presence—non-clinging

connection, one might say, yet might likely not feel

the need to say at all.

Like that. Like clouds losing the heft of darkness, 

gaining the day without having asked. 

**

Fighter jets stretch tight-streamed runners

across morning’s sky, so clean, so high, so distant,

sound forgets its way.

“Implements of war,” our teacher said so long ago.

Indeed, indeed. Tools of destruction.

But that doesn’t explain the draw of the pink tinges

that hint the edges of unraveling plumes and billows

slowly losing their grip in the blue empty

anymore than the sun explains that glance

or the why behind the colors

that come of that.

**

No so much the world as I would have it,

though of course, but the world as it is

and the endless possibilities afforded us here

to do as we might do together.

**

When the song-words dance and flow

from your tongue, pass over your lips, ride the breaths

extending from the depths of your earth-pressed feet,

what do they say to you, what say 

of you, to yourself, 

that you might share—what language 

do think that is, and does that even matter

beyond its music?

**

The dough doesn’t rise, almost twelve hours,

it doesn’t puff or swell a smidgin. No life-signs, 

other than a rock’s (much to slow).

Flour. The stuff sounds, at least, like the desired direction.

Yeast, to me, is an insider thing, and insiders know

it means growth; also, fickle.

From the fridge, say the instructions, to “room temperature.”

Room temperature? What’s that? 

For those of us in the Bay Area a generation or more, 

there is no such thing. Except maybe what you feel 

when you strip off the layers you put on 

to protect yourself from it. That? 

OK, ok, so now in the central heating burbs,

I crank up the furnace, and place the covered bowl 

near a heating vent, in the hope that 

the hoped-for pastry’s pickiness can finally find 

its precious “room temperature.”

And try to be understanding. 

Updates to follow.

**

                  

Even when the path is no more than 

impression, it is no less a path.

**

What’s true isn’t at issue. All in the world,

inner and outer, are by their nature that way.

It’s what you think about it that speaks

of likes and dislikes.

**

Millions of little moves, day to day, 

among them our own, and even so,

it’s the water’s story that allows us to float.

**

As buddhist, I had to find my way out

of the temple, into nembutsu, to reunite 

the poet there.

The first was sharp, negotiated,

full with reasons; the latter is the soft lifting

of doubt, 

as subtle as suddenly felt pulse-beats,

and as sound.