unprecedented grace

“The stream is always revising.

 Water is always ready to learn.”

                          —William Stafford

**

loved words, a handful,

counter-balance to the noise

that says nothing sound

**

—after Kerouac

swimming in a “lake

of light,” we wonder when sun-

rise will bring the day

**

In the sun-warmed car,

others passing. the pen feels

to touch the pages

of myriads of scratched sounds, 

caught and trickling

slides of words risen to lines

that trace the mind’s run

in a world on fire, the coals

of the heart the heat

of the unquenchable joy

lifting to the pull of air.

**

the small black bird tosses itself, 

three times arcs and hovers

flutters and drops

to a catch and a swoop

to up again—three times 

till lost

among the homes and trees

and horizoned hills

that somehow remain 

unmoved

**

I truly do try

to believe most most everything

I say, and then some.

**

Winter’s shortest day,

that one long with lingering 

dark, is when the ground,

leaf-covered and cold with rain,

dreams with us of coming spring.

**

Moon, half and high, fills

the clearing skies, just as we

fill drying streets.

**

—12/24

the new year

doesn’t know

its a new year

anymore than

my body knows

past birthdays—

and spring’s seeds

ride rain’s drops,

hide in snow-melt currents, 

not caught by numbers

—so spring doesn’t wait, 

so neither will I

**

first, those old zen poets,

then William Stafford, who offered

nothing definitions can hold, who defines

by doing and not looking back, trusting

that where our words are, the world is 

always and too—and if that’s not grace,

I don’t know what is

**

I’m my mother’s son

in that my life’s heart rests best

in our days at home.

And like my father’s restless

feet, mine gain strength returning.

**

Bared fingers turn to

nubs, rain rolls down the jacket

and storm-drains gurgle.

Some determined leaves, bright reds

and deep oranges, hang on.

**

Didn’t know it then,

but I failed Zen from the start—

it was never first.

But that first chant, family 

sleeping, Buddha’s name, with tears.

**

a stretch, early walk

in departing rains—coffee,

wrinkled page, scratched words

**

I think I told you

once I visited Ryokan

at Mount Kugami—

thumb-nail frogs guard the path there,

and my thumb blocked my selfie.

**

All thorough learning,

seems to me, includes return—

who returns matters.

**

—Shelf-life is a universal phenomena…

have you..I have not

ever met a noun that stayed

fixed—why is it then

that we struggle and strive for 

continuity,

consistency, conclusion—

who points us to these dead ends?

**

Last day of the year.

Last morning cloudless—naked

trees lace the cold sky.

**

A surveyor’s pin—

on the street point around which

entire worlds turn.

**

—Stafford, on making poems

even when product

is dispensable, process

remains precious

**

—1/1/2022

The sky looks the same.

Sun glints in east-faced windows.

Rooftop frost will lift.

delights and surprises

the red blossom,

the sea of tangled green—

even bamboo holds its breath

**

who’d have thought—three lines,

barely phrases, holding worlds

wriggling with life

**

with only us two,

the house is pretty quiet—

but then she leaves

**

In the end, each word

is a bow to winds borrowed,

returned in saying.

**

Our feet, the earth feels,

but won’t take in without rain.

Either way, no sprouts;

even after years, no fruit.

Yet, somehow, we get to stay.

**

Barely 4 PM,

the sun meets the horizon,

falls below, while chill

slinks away with the shadows—

all this snubbed by evening’s sky.

**

Nailing the metal

Mariachis to the porch rail—

memories secure.

**

“The voice does not belong to the speaker.”

                       —an Igbo Elder

Word in world connects

reaching in with reaching out—

breathed intimacy.

**

A woodpecker pecks

at morning’s silence, trying 

its best to fill it.

**

illumined

through the opaque plastic 

chisel handle

the plywood

table top glows

with thin window-let light

**

the old translator

said his gods lived in the folds

between the petals

“lean closer,” he said, lean in

for the listening returned

**

everything has edges

beyond which

where poems lurk

is always a reach

**

silent

the bird flashing past

outside

calls me there

to hear what’s being said

**

sun pulls

leaves lift

breeze slips

by

**

Those many-petaled flowers

the wife tends, so soft pinks and blues,

drop all browned and dried

along side almost ripe 

tangerines—and it’s dark at five.

**

so certain their commitment

to planet as they find it:

unquenchable: weeds green it…

**

Street covered in gold,

yet that one leaf waits to fall

until my eyes lift.

**

There’s a certain quiet rain brings,

breaking silence already there,

making morning 

from what was

to what is.

Last night you asked me to sing

and nothing today is the same.

**

Have you ever heard a love song

in a tongue you don’t speak?

Words turn in voice turned by words.

What more is there to look for?

**

The moon cuts its arc

in the south aside a star,

singular and bright,

that holds each evening’s sky

as its own, but this.

Hanging a bit west, my guess

is it will out-wait the moon.

**

I can see then

the desire

to keep open

the means we use

to make our work.

No matter how

simple the count,

syllables count

just the same, but

do not count up

to a poem

which moves count beyond fingers,

to where whatever the count,

it drops away in poem

which to my way of thinking

leaves such objectives open to question,

and to my mind shifts the flow of words to

tongue, to lips and the ears, which

when caught there, tell.

Count as you will:

count requires time’s attention, 

includes breath-lettering sound

relationships, revelations,

callings followed in rhythms, rhymes,

extended tones and tellings

not otherwise known or heard

but for sounding 

of the otherwise unimaginable

eddying round the words embodied there.

Count as you will.

**

As an old white guy,

I’ve heard a bunch

of hateful stuff

and young and old have walked

otherwise with others 

a long way.

Ill winds come and go, all grit and dust.

Holding hands reminds us.

**

—Sixty years hence…

with Kerouac came

the dharma world and legends

of walking these states

clear across—diner coffee

and pie ala-mode

mapping movements west—desert

nights, headlights, roaming

dogs and police cars—I traced

what I could, filtered

the rest for the best for me,

for then, and for now.

And I remember who helped 

break open bindings, 

crack doorways not seen before, 

dream the never-dreamed:

real teachers: revealing their 

faults and imperfections too.

First principles

—as heard

        from the Singer-Seers:

   slow down,

                 stand still,

   listen:  here

                 is always here,

   never lost,

                 always finds you—

   what does this tell you

                 to sing?

**

Recent rains and sunshine

tempt new green leaves

the ground opens 

for hummingbird sage

**

Owl Canyon slow-rolls below a steep ridge to the east

that holds a stream and willows that watch over 

the meadow that floods in winter—the trail middles

a somewhat muted ridge, recognizable further up, 

where it drops to the west, where a smaller stream 

feeds a healthy Bay whose leaves release their scent

for even the briefest lingering glance.

Thelma and Besh used to live among the limbs 

just before the climb, in hill-touching oaks there,

where I stop to remember, to rest and to drink, 

and to watch the winds play.

Wherever attention takes you, a way to plan,

when you think you need—a practice even… 

but really, just living

    

   

    red-tail hawks, soundless 

       to all below

    

       —feathered secrets 

             sung to the wind.

**

Gulls don’t seem to care

he can’t walk to the sand’s edge.

Breeze blows just the same.

A couple secures their bikes

to a rack, drive off.

The old man in the back seat

watches, scribbles more,

scratches one page into the next,  

searching for a break in the pain.

**

From spine to right hip,

nervous nerves announce pain-strength—

waiting for zero.

**

Light shares with shadows

what can’t be said out loud.

**

Desk top reflections

welcome the light that washes

them clean—books akimbo.

**

Though pain can swallow us,

anger take our bones, our willingness

to hear, the teachers we can trust tell us

the world around us always knows.

**

The entire west side of our home

runs open to outside by windows

and glass doors and horizon-broken sky

that pours in, even flashing bird wings 

time to time,

runs like a line in a poem Whitman might make,

as if he and I were of-a-kind like that—

and I don’t know, but wonder.

Fully American, North American, like him,

to be sure, but how else like him, I can’t say,

though I’m feeling it’s more, fundamental,

you know.

So maybe, just maybe there is something 

that light-letting line has to tell me of myself, 

and of him, 

of us, maybe, 

or is whispering to the glistening trees, 

to the weeds glistening between the rocks,

growing so freely in the garden below,

maybe.

**

Birds, before twilight,

gather the tall poles,

watch hummingbirds 

work the flowered fence,

quiet streets still

in the false promise 

of light.

**

A walk to the corner, halting

here and there, like that black squirrel

crossing the street, tentative explorations

with and eye to caution.

My focus, the nerves in my hip. The squirrel,

I suspect, watching me, watching for cars,

is readying for winter’s coming.

Which one of us would you suppose

is better prepared for whatever it is

to come next ?

**

When people ask what I do 

with my time, I make small talk 

about gardening, working 

around the house—don’t mention

poetry, because most ask,

then, if and where I’ve published.

At that point, no point talking—

sweeping and shaping the mind

to conform with the heart 

are solitary pursuits.

     —as old Chia Tao says:

           The solitary bird 

           loves the wood;

              

           your heart also

           not of this world.

**

For the falling moon,

dark holds steady, offers stars

to the coming dawn.

**

Leaves let winds muse limbs,

let colors loose for earth’s flags,

borderless, boundless.

**

I’d recently thought

pulse-beats akin to sounding

coordinates—place

affirming a presence, there.

But listening 

lifts multiple resonances,

myriad here-nows

beating coincidentally—

not singular patters, a hum,

a thrumming, vibrant fielding

of connected voice

run through with electric joy

eddying about

constantly shifting 

tide-surge,

lulls laying low, lean

with the barest vibrations

of scents of light,

the lilt of shifting shadows, and

the unmistakeable, inescapable textures

of the knowing nearness 

of intimate companions—

the place 

of places dwelled in 

with others.

**

—illumined flannel nightgowns, 

shared smiles with the women,

the two who call me son—

unusually rich dream-life of late,

poems, insights too,

carry into deepened days

what some might call visions

—disturbed and brittled sleep

to be sure,

but some might say wakings