On the road, October poems

Petals signal 

the report held

by nectar

until hummingbird comes

to take it all down.

**

The latest jolt along the nearby fault 

shakes many of the photos and paintings

to crooked, lines faulted to disarray, breath holding, 

tentatively waiting for a second, a tremor at least, 

though neither come to grant that odd relief—

                                                      

in the moment held, we draw together, wide-eyed, 

then part with a sigh, 

the collective stretch to straighten again 

that which we still believe 

we have control of.

**

—To Rome

Passing date-lines in the dark of night 

speak of little more than discomfort, fatigue,

until the barest hint of blueing in the blackness

and a soft spread of ribboned pink 

that lifts the slowly lightening sky

to reveal a vast range of clouds

beneath which Europe sleeps.

**

A poet speaks of knowing the self

as the galaxy might know it, before

notions of birth, before definitions 

crimp being’s random edges. 

First thoughts of this, of course

take wing; but truth be known, 

these feet find comfort most surely

on the ground,

which at any rate might well be

where the galaxy sees us too, 

along with the ants, the roaches

and other beings gravity burdens.

**

Life lessons, learned over local wines,

both red and white: dust is a fool’s worry,

settling only on those who are still.

**

—Sicily

The coastline runs generally north-south,

a “W” opening eastward toward Italy’s boot, 

away from an unseen Etna. From here though, 

two small volcanos, unmistakably so, and,  

two rather suspicious mounds. 

And although, from time to time, 

the unseen Etna spews smoked reports,

locals feign disinterest.

**

—Taormina

Upon arrival, Etna, of course, a shapely shadow

of grey darkness parting broken clouds and plumes.

But, after all, just a distant passing freeway visage. 

The strongest roadside impression is a tangled mass

of exposed lava. Sicily: lava. Well yes, but, 

the deeper migration is the push and call, the shift

and the rise of plates: continents, meet here, 

mark here: 

on the crests looking out, looking down, 

the Ionian Sea, the upward claw, some eight-hundred feet 

of unrelenting green

and on the waters’ surge, the stories,

of shattered dreams, of landed voice, of scattered

but continuous song.

**

Native to Italy, the Stone Pine forms canopies,

bent and forked branches umbrella 

in bunches of bi-needled fascicles 

and cones, 

the one aside our patio hosting climbing vines 

and dangling tendrils—silent chimes that bounce 

on the rush of the sea’s breezes, puzzle the ears, 

please the eyes.

**

The center of Sicily is hills and rock, mounds

and bluffs; promontories dominate rolls of green,

scattered stretches of dirt-bound brush and lazy valleys:

citrus, olives, almonds; stone fencing and homes; 

cattle and sheep.

A joyous drive from Catania in the east, 

to the Valley of Temples, on the southern shore,

where notions of hours, stories of miles, fall silent. 

Centuries of remnants of myriads of dreams 

of multiple peoples, kept in the watch of unchanging 

hills. The reaching limbs of ancient trees still listening. 

The barely whispered wishes of lichen covered stone.

**

Buddha’s name finds my lips

on the pre-dawn streets of Matera.

Pigeons flutter up from the stones.

It’s not so much being Buddhist,

I’m thinking, as living deliberate the breath

that burns from beneath the soles of the feet.

**

—On the way to Lecce

a plateau we’re told, 

crossing from Alberobello, over the boot

to the instep, half to toe, half to heel.

Cultivated fields, straight walls, 

never-depleted stones.

Here the vines, there the trees,

grapes, olives, muscled trunks,

doubled and twisted and ridged

with years. 

Promised cherries, not seen,

neither yet the sea. 

But that dark grey bird, again, 

white under-wing and tail, again,

just there, over the fields, 

that bird again.

**

—Lecce

The moon is less generous at this hour.

Shadows cast about from street lamps, greetings 

exchange in lowered tones, all in deference 

to some unspoken order of things,

**

Legs stretched out

in a way that eases a sore knee,

pen raised above a blank page,

under a mind with nothing more to say

than just that, the effort to reach beyond

such un-telling moments

simply falling right into them.

Unable to gain traction enough 

to figure into play some imagined future,

I’ve the sneaky suspicion

I’m experiencing now. 

**

—The courtyard in Sorrento

Where do haiku hide

and why does the pen tip point,

asking the flowers

on the trellis on the wall,

the vines, the petals, the leaves?

**

—Naples-1

Our relation to the entirety of the world

around us: immediacy, intimacy, such that

it simply is—immanent, taken for granted, taken as.

Life-death, sure. Ideas. But more so, 

the moments’ movements across the page.

The answer living gives of itself at work 

among the beings and things that make it

what it is.

**

—Naples-2

And then, outside, a bird. 

Above the thrum of air-conditioning,

over the workmen’s determined thumps,

amid scattered voices and scooter noise,

a bird whistles—not chirping, but whistling

in the cavernous, cobblestone-floored canyon

of the inner courtyard of multi-residence buildings.

In old Napoli, a single bird whistles, and we all 

raise our heads 

to hear more.

**

The empty bowl still holds the chill of cold milk,

now gone. Fingers wrap 

beneath and along smoothed curvature, 

touch 

the raised bead at the base, thumb crooking 

the upper rim, 

lingering satisfaction unwilling 

to let go.

poems ?

“Today doesn’t know what day it is…”

                                       —David Ferry

The sun has the hills now,

shade holding dark to the gullies 

and beloved pines, as tightly as I do 

the coffee cup, both of us nearing ready 

to give in to what the day may bring.

I’ve tended toward resolve over resolution,

the latter more public in spirit, more inclined

in my experience to fail to weather the inevitable, 

like the dew on the arms of the chair 

where I presently sit.

Resolve’s of interior, observed depths, tidal challenges 

and successes observed, digested and learned from, 

shared, or left behind, traces of celebration and loss 

rising to the movement of lines about the smile, 

around the eyes.

Like the ebb and flow of the ocean’s reach 

on the open face of the shore tells us 

of what cannot be readily seen.

**

—Firth Canyon, San Bruno Mountain

Though I’ve been here before, time to time, 

never have I come with the need so specific

to articulate the communally held silence 

here in this place of trees. 

Oh, the hills, of course, ancient bluffs 

of even more ancient seas, long-since gone 

and unimaginable—so many times 

with lungs afloat with the air up there. 

But this, this was different. 

And so with food and drink I come to rest 

near to an old bay tree among others, 

deterioration countered by new branches reaching 

out of its reclining side and up 

into the spread of sky above the canyon, 

a shade giving reach, to a sun-dappled village 

of foliage, swaying the inscrutable currents 

rippling and alive there.

The bay’s silent trunk spans the banks of the stream

now a’flow with the browns and golds of crinkled leaves, 

the tossed tumble of summer, soft-splotched kisses 

of shade against the gully’s downward run 

and a single slender gold-red leaflet that falls 

and settles aside the hand with the pen 

on the clean open page. 

**

Cutting away, pruning, you might say,

the foliage of a plant with a long-forgotten name;

removing its summer growth reveals beneath

the gratifying rock-work, one more 

long-forgotten labor of love.

“We did good,” I tell her.

**

The tensions of a restless, pretty much sleepless night

release through legs and feet into the street 

and the earth beneath, bedrock of the mystery

of simply walking its varied surface 

to feel the healing found there; 

everything ever, given without question, you’d think 

we’d notice it will last well after we’ve been, you’d think 

we’d turn its way for direction.

**

The stucco wall back the house where the deck runs 

faces the sun’s most westerly arc and stores its warmth 

well past its final descent, 

similar to, but for aroma and juice, the strawberries 

in the patches below—heat taken whole, so complete,

it speaks what pulse knows, even before fingers’ first touch.

**

To the ordinary, this is to the ordinary, 

so well-known it’s let to run unnoticed:

like sparkles on the face of a passing stream

we’re busily passing, even when not so busy at all: 

like the lips on the lip of a favored cup, 

its weight, the weight the hand wants 

for the coffee to round to spread 

the tongue to coax the swallow 

the next breath follows

to allow one more, 

once more, and again. 

All unbidden and unthanked, and the swell 

of inner warmth so readily given, simply taken, 

as is, unnoticed—what is it in human being 

that thinks a need to transcend 

all this? 

How fortunate then, that poetry, so readily, 

so often, and so certainly, 

returns us here. 

**

—The poet with a house 

                    on an outcrop of rock

True mentors are few, and found late

may offer, if not needed visions of youth,

the virtues then of reflective recognition

of the long-forgotten well done, may offer

the warmed hearth of unspoken kinship

that reignites original awaiting coals

at the depths of your own living, mirrored

in the words and the life of a fellow,

timely met in the breath-relieving beauty

of the inevitable.

**

—Monterey

It’s a motel room, no more, but

one with the added comfort

of second-morning familiarity.

The shower running behind the wall

behind my head, the convenient side table,

the easy remote

and then, there in the glowing gold curtain 

drawn closed before the window,

the bold cross-hatch of frame

shadowed with the curvatured calligraphy

of bunched leaves, 

an unremembered, unremarkable parking lot tree

standing just outside the carefully locked door:

unobtrusive hints from the just rising sun

that there’s more here than what has so far

met the eyes.

**

Just imagining what might be underway here,

moving into the late seventies, with perceptible,

if not inarticulate-able, passes of sheer light-glow,

almost as if the closer I get, the thinner the veil;

and so I keep meeting myself in the otherness

that surrounds breath after breath, each time closer,

each engagement an all so obvious unfolding

of the obvious, so gently satisfying—oh, 

to be sure the old stuff kicks around as before,

but wonder, and awe, quietly the joy, showing

their rooted narratives, make the strongest hum 

of harmonies, underlying, and I’m feeling 

like a flower fulfilling its bloom.  

**

Even at noon the sky is grey, the hills

their summered brown, and on the slopes below, 

the brush advancing green. Tell me,

open-faced window, what more waits

with the smallest steps through the closest door,

what more might well be there,

waiting to hear its name?

**

I can’t say, wouldn’t say, of this day’s first light,

that it creeps the earth; the quivering quality

of iridescent presence behind the trees,

though quiet, is quite clearly unrestrainable, 

a glittering intensity, that, whatever the distance 

the moment opens, leaps that instant full to its mouth

in unquestioning kiss, in kind:

see there, the slopes’ gold grasses, the leaves,

the windowed homes a’glow and gleaming,

the city’s distant visage of now blazing towers.

There is no “creeping” here. 

**

The high cover of easy grey reaches well beyond 

the bay’s edge, to meet the horizon 

in the stretch of morning’s most easterly spread 

of salmon-glow, there and then swallowed whole.

  

**

Outside’s pale dull light seems an almost settled

residual, something’s past left to random breezes,

disinterested leaves. Yet, the window’s open crack

admits somehow a hum of rhythm discernible

enough to be caught at the scratch 

of pen to page, a reunion of that 

never rendered separate, 

a homecoming of wonder and praise

inconceivably complete 

from the start.

**

Rain clouds bend and bulge

over the bay, bringing grey light

memories of you, bringing texture,

they say, coloring the moments

called now. But what intimate reach

is there in these wet streets

that touches your place

in my heart?

**

Light again brings pink.

Clouds are there, puffed

backs to the sky.

They whisper.

But I,

standing here

well beyond hearing,

wonder out loud.

**

At this stage in life, to say

it’s all always been one flavor

or other of wonder, at this stage

of a life makes, makes it feel right.

**

—The redwood

The great tree among others reveals

two-feet of flesh thick, life-seeking vessels

thereunder sustaining, and beneath, 

there the solid core, the all of this, seen

through the burnt and hollowed door

of scar of a fired past

and singular will.

**

—Celebration

Orion, faint and high above the cold

along the streets, recalls the deep canyon chill

of redwood forests two days past, 

the span of time there not a weight to bear,

but a boundless mantel of community.

Willing presence, the only requisite, 

my seventy-sixth year turned there:

a drifting bit of illumined dust 

freely floating.

**

October’s first affirms

the calendar’s call for fall, 

crisp and clear suggestions

of change waiting nearby.

**

Life as it is here with this does not so much unfold 

as pour and spread whispering strokes

of opening lightedness in contrasting shadows

that cast to vivid shapeliness that which speaks

not of definitions, but appreciations, and awe,

that readily subsume intimations of anger and fear

or dread—softnesses that neither deny the abrupt,

nor need it in order to thrive.

**

Thinking of the masters, or some, in their way

kept their poems clean of doctrine and dogma,

used ordinary language, everyday speech

to convey Buddha’s message to ordinary, everyday

folks; an admirable art on its face, but 

more recent thoughts, alone, wonder of what seems 

unnecessary, of whiffs of doubt and mistrust of the given 

and spontaneous root-source in the kosmic-ocean 

of human experience extending words—and I urge 

of myself a use-less speech, where language leads 

the free-form dance of body-mind-voice, 

where ocean’s waves and currents cover the tongue 

with words that splash its vital surface, reflect

each resonant circumstance of each 

and every happening—

where we listen and we watch, where we swim 

the metaphors that carry, stroke on stroke, 

and go on: 

a flower doesn’t try 

to entice the bee, it flowers.

The bee knows nectar, knows to touch, each and another,

over and again. The bridges that link are step-less, 

the links dissolved in the doing. And words, words

are spent on tongues, nourish the ears 

to allow us to see, help us to reach,

into ourselves and out to the world to affirm 

that ever in-determinant matrix 

that obtains and sustains.

**

The sun’s light tonight

touches but half the moon’s surface,

the rest, dim shadowed silhouette

barely visible against darkened skies,

yet definite enough a telling arc

of perpetual story

to arrest, even a moment,

the frenzied staccato

of our time-warped eyes.