Orion above
puddle-spotted streets—
winter’s early signals.
**
The wooden Buddha
holds still—that web, nose to finger,
just not a problem.
**
—Jack Dairiki
my architect friend
filled post cards both sides with signs
of his gratitude,
shared unfiltered wonderment
about the world he walked in
**
—life with Sandino
That youngest child
in our lives broke all the rules
at birth, continues
to do so—locking eyebrows
with uncertainties,
he probes with curiosity,
but closes with tough,
unwavering conclusions,
for all time: we learn
with the joy of the former,
sharpen our skills with the latter.
**
It doesn’t matter
what’s said so much as saying
what the words want to say.
It doesn’t matter
what’s said so much as hearing
what the words want to say.
**
It’s the way it is.
Some days, limbs and leaves ask roots
to say, all’s OK.
**
Walking, pondering
advancing age, my feet stop—
the hills are laughing.
**
Haven’t seen real rain shadows
in so long, had a hard time
finding my feet on the streets
in morning’s darkness,
bumped loneliness so hard,
it leapt to my lips and spoke.
**
Waves of winds and rains
carry through night
scattered thought-dreams.
**
Where winds couldn’t do,
rains wash long-needled pines clean
across wet sidewalks.
**
Fifteen-cents an hour.
First job, at Pat’s. Washed dishes,
learned too, to make change.
**
—Muso Soseki
That old poet priest
said Buddha’s Enlightenment
was his only home—
doors and windows left open;
entry fee, just your breath.
**
More and more, the rain,
after years of draught—if concern
is prayer, how we’ve prayed!
**
Windshield wipers wipe,
winds and rains bluster
—freeway’s center:
an oak leaf.
**
When it stops, leaves, limbs,
downed wires, gutter debris
and crows,
taking cleared skies.
**
Under just cleared skies,
we find the cemetery—
even more tears.
**
Poetry, that hum underneath,
tastes of rising traces of its own scent.
**
Hills still draining
what they can’t drink, flora stands
straight up, watching.
**
Slowing down to count
doesn’t change anything, and
why would it have to?
For those close enough to hear,
poetry happens itself.
**
The sky’s light glistens
in shards of stained glass—winds stopped,
I stoop to sweep.
**
Quenched cacti blossom.
From the storm of the decade,
these tiny petals.
**
Morning’s moon gets lost
overhead—shadowed footsteps
have other stories.
**
Soft pink in the east.
Christmas lights on my right.
Day’s light—year’s light.
**
Clocks, about to change hereabouts,
presumably changing life here too.
Other beings may notice the shift
—but the moon and the stars?
**
A rooftop glistens.
In the smallest breaks of clouds,
pieces of the moon.
**
Who besides yourself
have you read closely enough
to change your life?
**
The teacher once said
to study only dharma.
Misunderstanding his intent
as too narrow, the door closed
was mine—till now.
**
“The roosting bird understands the Tao,
sails don’t know where they go.”
—from Tu Fu’s “Six Choruses”
I won’t pretend to know others,
only myself, and that’s iffy, even, especially
maybe
as to the marks left behind,
and what might have been
different, you know,
which I think is likely nothing.
We do…in context—
who we are in the world, as is
then, there,
lessons breaking through
in their own time
to whatever who is then there,
which depends of course,
on contexts including age
but not to be deduced by age, which shifts
like everything else.
Others speak better to legacies we leave
than we do, and we can do
only the best we can do
at whatever the time.
Some lessons leave traces
the same as fallen pollen;
others, like farts,
just smell.
**
Reluctant, the sky holds its rain
but for large drops
splattered here and there
like so many bloated thought-stains
spreading clarity’s edges
over pages so sodden
they tear with light’s weight.
Dying well is life’s project,
intimate, crucial partners: birth-death,
sound and song, momentary snaps
of sense-energy floatings,
world’s of mystery’s musics.
