It’s late October, leaves fallen from the almond tree,
burned beige, surround the stone Buddha,
a pond of rippled petals a’float on autumn’s earth.
Clear evening skies promise stars, darkening hills
begin to flicker lighted windows.
Kitchen sounds try their best to fill the house
not yet willing to let go its stillness.
**
Feet know each step
to be tentative. It’s why
they take turns.
**
—Some poet said
a poem works like gravity.
Is that because a poem slows and holds you
before you know it does, then while you read
or speak it, and even after you think
you’ve put it down, still does that ?
**
Dark falls on the hillside,
squeezes house lights
into being, along with the thought
of a cool glass of white wine.
What this has to do with autumn
and a steadily aging body
remains mystery.
But the wine was a good idea.
**
The lamp on the table aside the bed glows there
and in each of the two panes of glass
in the sliding window across the room,
mirrored against the framed backdrop
of hills and homes peering through
from the other side,
scattered distant windows
a’light
with the first rays of this day’s sunlight.
**
—The way
Even as a young man, pronouncements
and vows did not hold for me
as did the interior click of decision-done
intuition,
answer-rooted questions spreading light
around foot-claimed space,
breezes smiling the way, as always they have,
nodding the direction
to what’s catching your attention
anyway.
**
Like a leaf, I’m thinking it’s like a leaf, our life
as individuals, an appendage of intention extended,
extending, not so much held or holding, as stretched,
reaching out into all else extending there, larger intentions
curling in return, working reciprocal links—like a leaf,
not held, nor holding, but showing—
**
—Elections over, nothing settled,
I turn to the ancients for guidance
I’ve been looking to broaden the scope
of my own part of the conversation lately,
but seem to have lost track of where I was
in the process, and for that matter, what
I thought the conversation to be, much less
who might have been on the other side,
at the table perhaps, even in the room,
to think of it, whatever it was, which is
one way to say, I suppose, I’ve little more
to say any more, or so it feels.
Except for the words, that keep trailing through
of their own, that I follow, I do, more and more
believing they belong not to me, but
the 10.000 things the ancients spoke of
so often, that tell us of the world, of ourselves,
of what’s really going on.
At any rate, someone else will have to figure
whatever that other conversation was, its worth
to continue or not, cause this old man is going
for a walk, where earth’s arc meets the sky,
reconnect with what’s really going on.
**
—Connecting with Issa
Morning coffee cools more quickly
these early November days, surprises
seasonally done, subtle announcements
of arrivals already occurred—bare feet
noticing chills that linger.
Don’t know with any certainty of course,
but do suspect that scholars and even
we’ll-meaning religious types tend
to over-work things a bit, posit realities,
differences, not so much really there.
Issa, for instance, famed haiku poet,
in that year he traced in verse, is said
to have written of winter, but was alluding
to his later, last years, yearning for re-birth.
Well, maybe. But metaphor and allusions
are meanings read-in to words that don’t
themselves hold those meanings.
What we do know is that Issa curled his brush
through that year’s fall and into its winter, while there,
and that his practice, time to time, was to utter
Buddha’s name.
This is not to deny tradition, but to say, after all,
it was cold, he was old, stars were likely, and indeed,
the tradition, abundantly clear, as I’ve begun to see,
is this: Issa, it’s cold here too now, and quiet, the wife
still asleep. And though I’d thought to read, instead,
as always, as overtime, like you, I write, and grow old
knowing Buddha’s name.
Outside the wind blows. In here, both the coffee
and my feet feel the chill.
**
—the road to anarchy
can be quite quiet
I wake later now than when I was younger,
those many years of unyielding sense of purpose
slowly overtaken by life’s generalized plans, prompted
perhaps unwittingly by an inexplicable forgetfulness
a few years ago around setting the alarm, for a while
waking up pretty much as usual, until that slow
and subtle transition where force of habit morphed
into body-signaled needs, true movements, real,
like rain waters finding their way with earth’s surfaces,
mutual relations at work, determined by whatever
happens to determine them, all depending, always
working.
And for what it’s worth, over all, once you’ve adjusted
to not being adjusted, there’s no going back.
**
—Song for Hayden Carruth
And then there was, there is, Carruth,
wispy-bearded wonder with words that flow so
you’re forced to mouth them out, only to find
they’ve brought you there, he’s brought you again
there, to where he was, where he is—what the poem,
what the poet, is really about.
**
For awhile It’s been as if something
has been misplaced or the room changed,
rearranged, or the window streaked with rains
is dream and a bad eye getting no better
clouds haloes around where clarity once was.
And it’s been this way, muddled grey, all this time
before this morning, before this morning’s opening
sky lifted the world of its weight
and, left freed, let free, the world again glistened,
yes, again glistened true and close a remembrance
of the feel of that touch our words cannot catch,
the touch of the feel of the nearness of things,
the presence of things so close as to always
and ever be before
they come to be named,
words and names called forth therefrom
to affirm—to mirror, to echo.
**
Deciding to study
with Issa, I raise the pen,
take a breath.
**
The first of season’s rains
drive us inside to gather
with our favored blankets.
**
Stars hide in the rain,
but houselights on the hillsides
do a nice job.
**
Penning the final poem
on the journal’s last page
under fast closing eyes.
**
Trees drop their leaves,
we our words—neither remain
all that long—the most to hope for,
the best maybe:
fleeting beauty
noticed.
