Doubling down...

  —Doubling down

“I have no philosophy: I have senses.”

                           —Alberto Caeiro

Emily Dickenson

tells us, “by slant,” of possibility,

tells us her way, without telling us ours.

**

It’s the weight and heft,

the mass of earth

these hills present

to ocean-born droplets

that gives rise to fogs

that billow the ridge

we watch day-to-day,

we earth-born,  

in the time we have, 

adding our own 

wetted words.

**

in company with the world about us,

of the world we are about, sustains myriads

of particulars giving way inexhaustibly to more

name upon name calls out through us its sound

    “In an instant all my doubts

     and the gloomy mist

     of my confusion

     vanished.” *

owning nothing, owned by nothing, year-long

days open un-tread ways, and we care

to try

and it occurs to me with morning

how carefully I attend the words of a man

who tells me he knows nothing

how we guess our course to catch no more

and no less than 

movement

and with movement, the way of the world, 

we learn to figure our own arrogance

which world takes for granted

and moves us along

just that way

anyway

**

Unable to capture the sun’s revolution,

unable to count the beats of my heart, 

how foolish to think I can plan 

much more beyond 

where I tentatively stand—it’s my feet 

that will find what’s best from here.

**

The road-work guys rattle late morning air 

with signals of ongoing repair, subtly, steadily

accentuating my inability to negotiate the distance

to the kitchen, without stopping to bow to the pain, 

deepening lessons of pandemic isolation, conditions

accrued over years, demanding attention, now, here.

**

—After Mikret Kebede

This poem,

     “It acts out of the act of silence.”

words are acts of silence, rising out, returning to

the never-diminished well of the welling-up

of itself of words

intuition-lifted learning articulating presence

not quiet

each resonant sound returning

its silence

—song hints at this, literacy affirms it

**

Meanderings while on pain meds

—Life’s Deliverables

Birth. Pain. Death. 

Three lights. Birth-Pain-Death-birth-pain-death-birth-pain…..living/dying

threads of dynamic, ever-changing fabric-flow of earth-existence-in-cosmos, 

a wall-less all —three lights of myriads, named lights—name too, your own

fabric-flow energies charging life’s deliverables, as we live them

over fifty years since I cleared out my father’s dresser—t-shirts, under-ware, 

socks, matches and condoms—condoms? Dad? only forty-eight, 

his eldest grandson’s age, 

Mom younger, 

sure

how vivid these things so close to him became then, how real to me, only 

in his absence—a handful of his tools, still at my work bench,

still coming to my hands

as with the knick-knacks on Uncle’s mantle, became so curious—once invisible,

becoming so personal to him, his, but only when he’d gone

life’s deliverables, so readily ignored, until not

high mountains consistently call—the weight, the work, the legs—everything carried 

is all you have—when tired rest, hungry cook, make due—bed, shelter, sleep

conditions at hand, as delivered, determine, tell, direct, restore—the immediate, 

the intimate--forest, rock, dust, lake, stream, stars—all the breathing

doubled over on the floor to relieve the pain, running a finger 

along the dusty shelf, thinking how much in our home 

I’ve ignored so long

unavoidable pain, unexpected gift—immediacy, light, clarity 

aging skeletal and muscular ecology beginning to stress, weaken—deterioration

and herniated discs can equal unimaginable pain 

lightening-bolt illumination, flicking threads, flash opening into its own letting go

in the midst of which I wonder aloud, how can others, who live with this, daily, 

how  they do that—threads realized 

at seventy-seven continuing to pretend to add yet another ten—birth opens 

life’s process of dying into the new, into new—no death, no life

 

threads that flow the forms that friction the stitch unfold the light 

that enables our seeing what we don’t see

for our failure to attend our living-dying

doubling down in covid, bowing to the unimaginable, the loss, the turmoil, 

the challenge around us, the glow of threads and links, tails of collective truths, 

of our living-into-dying, and the dust-covered joys just lying in wait 

at our finger tips

  —From Cid Corman

          With so much

          personal

          sorrow,

          how take on

          the world? Clear.

          Bow, be-

          side me. Must

          as we will,

          share it.

The next move...is morning's

Relationship true to the teacher never severs,

is never dormant nor forgotten; 

even in sleep it rises, light-shown  

shadows remembered.

**

“As a poet and contemplative” is the way the author speaks

of Merton, saying

Merton’s lived life was in essence the crux of his “dialogue”

with Eastern traditions,

the conversation of spirit he valued so; yet, says the author,

he neglected to formulate, didn’t bother to frame

“a systematic structure” 

for this “intellectual and existential 

spiritual journey,”

which to me means Merton’s natural inclinations 

moved through him, moving him through

the world listening deeply— 

structure-less, open, kind, caring.

**

The Ohlone peoples see Hummingbird

as the primary purveyor of unrestrained life-spirit,

unapologetically riding its own pointing desires

wherever led, no illusions of longevity;

each touch telling its own fullness,

each leveraged wing springing wide the next, 

questions of self, or of other, 

simply not keeping up.

**

—to David S.

After so many years of distracted attentions,

of inattentions, of demands for immediacy 

I accuse so many others of, 

I turn in your pages 

slow as a dusted arc of trail that slants a canyon’s edge

to roll that open taking-in of silence’s quiet entry, 

so sudden as to startle recognition of kin, of kinship 

so certain as to pause every question before 

any fumblings at the lips.

**

Injured hip, old hip, ligaments perhaps—all

likely yes—if not heat, maybe ice—and the wife

complains too, of some stubborn old man, 

and I say what he says, that everyone’s stubborn 

time to time—I mean, he said, look

at sunlight’s insistence 

at the shade-covered windows.

**

Sun’s light unfolds through the window, over the desk, 

down along the floor and climbs to quiet rest on the leg, 

on the hand with the pen, on the papers there—

the warm-glow touch of knowing morning.

**

I’m here, so I speak, I write—they said,

and so say I—what is poetry, what the poem, if not 

the gleam and recognition in the working of words 

in tongues given, what we freely reap there.

**

Sunlight dapples the window.

Diamond shaped layers of dust-glow, 

shadowed forms of trellis-caught light

that allow petals and leaves along the fence

venue enough, distance enough 

to quiver under the strokes 

of passing breezes.

Even the sound of a workman’s hammer-fall,

restrained.

**

The sun reaches in to play

with the white page, blue lines.

Shifting halos illumine whispered secrets,

the glow of softly held wrinkles

giving way before the advancing edge

of silencing shadow,

the surface face, crisp and sharp 

delineations, hovering,

the almost indiscernible marks

of deeper inclinations

at work.

**

It occurred to me the other day

at the keyboard, at an email, 

that I’d written really a letter,

an intimate telling to another

that I’d initially taken to have been prompted 

by longing for connections somehow gone, 

missing in the all-consuming isolation, of late,

of solitary heart beats, 

only to recognize now, 

it’s the resonant pull of shared strands

that allows the heart to allow the fingers 

to speak.

I may well write for myself, 

but sure and real telling is always told

to others, there hearing.

**

After all these years

and all the ways of knowing you,

the words still can’t catch up.

**

Fog lies along the ridge-line in layers 

thick to thin, east to west, to disappear 

behind slopes of grass and scrub—

wind-rushed limbs and wisps waving 

in space held distant quiet 

by smudge-discovered windows,

seemingly not there, yet somehow between,

yet still within reach 

pulled close 

through words.

**

—Where I go, when gone…

The first light to break free from beneath the east

stretches a sighed touch so fair 

as to almost be breath making claim 

by simple presence,

the slopes signaling response with a silent cough 

of marbled clouds

just above their offering 

of woven trails.

In the Sierra, these thousand-foot hills

wouldn’t merit measure, 

but here at the edge of the bay, 

are mountain,

freedom at the door, calling 

anyone willing to wake, 

to turn an ear, 

to step.

**

**

—From Cid Corman

    “With so much

     personal

     sorrow,

     how take on

     the world? Clear.

     Bow, be-

     side me. Must,

     as we will,

     share it.”

Is it time yet?

Sun’s first touch tells

and day unfolds 

about that.

**

Doing poems, I’m not so certain how,

works for me like air does 

body’s needs.

**

The poignancy of passing moments, fleeting time,

need not be explained. The old live it, young

fight it—it tastes of meaning.

**

Along the ridge line, 

whispers of last nights fogs

hint at heat’s demise.

**

The poem signals

our having received:

**

The poet’s experience

is the illumination

language allows.

**

The clatter of our own voice

can confuse our hearing

of others’ asking.

**

—for Dominic Barter

        “Resistance determines 

     all that happens next.”

Engagement is the mother

of transformation, vulnerability

her sister, question her lesson,

uncertainty her only answer 

and experience the linen 

she wraps us in.

**

That we stand

is evidence of the given.

Shelter need not

block the light.

**

Nearing summer solstice,

grasses have browned, scrub and oak

deepened green, blossoms fallen

and trails gone hard.

These canyons have names

that cling to the tongue

like lovers. A handful of flora, 

scattered birds, berry-filled scat 

tell of themselves too.

But the most common language,

the trusted currency here 

is presence, 

exchanged for wonder.

**

To determine

is difficult.

Age, quiet anxiety

combine, times

deepen discord

to angst—blue skies

flash stiff winds,

fogs and low clouds abide.

It’s difficult to determine

which that blows is strongest,

where the dusts will fall.

**

The surgery is simple,

“unremarkable,” as surgeries go.

Pandemic times demand drop-off,

and a return home to wait the call.

Still in the quiet light before sun 

or breeze, long thin branches sparse in leaf arc 

the sky’s pull above the still silent earth.

Deep-throated purple-centered blossoms 

openly wait. 

A single hummingbird, a shadowed flash 

of touch, then gone. 

The unnameable longing stays.

**

Outside the window,

there just now glistening

through the bubbled glass

hanging beneath the trellis

beside the bamboo, sun’s light,

slipped above the neighbor’s roof

to rush to add to the beauty

the wife foresaw

when hanging it there,

a fleeting, but certain 

smile. 

**

**

Emigrant Wilderness, California

—north of Yosemite

Tomorrow is summer solstice.

Yesterday, the Sierra high country met two old men 

head-on, shattered expectations of bodies too aged 

to go the distance gracefully.

A morning and afternoon of rest finds us 

in a rocky meadow under darkening skies,

waiting the stars.

Old men don’t argue, they adjust.

Backpacks traded for day-packs, 

we hear the lakes waiting, just need to learn 

what the mountains have to say.  

**

Dozing this afternoon

under a stand of tall fir

at 8,400 feet,

it’s my own breath that jars me

to return, a seed

on the face of the earth

floating in space,

given, as with all other,

place enough to be.

**

—Multiple centers of intelligence…

the rocks, the mountains, critters and trees, running water,

the breezes along the crests, open sky, distant peaks,

granite beneath the feet, the heat, the chill

at sun down, the promise stars deliver

**

Mosquitoes linger as best they can

in the last chilled moments of summer solstice.

Pink clouds scratch at the west, and this light holds,  

so, so long, before giving day to dark.

**

Jerry reads aloud from John Muir, who was here, nearby, in his time,

his journals of poetry-prose transcending linguistic limitations

in streams aligned and imbued with nature’s “manuscripts,”

lines of nearly inexpressible awe, the ecstatic praise 

and prayerful generosity of unhindered spirit, a free-fall will to live, 

and the living inherent there.

And so it is, on this, the last of our nights of this time in the mountains.

Singular scattered trees among thick forest stands catch light’s last

from the west, that works the openings with all it has, 

the all they most willingly take.

And come too, a time to refigure. Not so much coming years, 

as the attitude with which to engage whatever it is that does come, 

to come to that uncentered, unhindered, so as to constellate with, 

to come into touch with. 

That living. It’s time.