after a day’s break,
rains return
winter wet
and chill
and deeply held dark—
after a day,
rains return
**
holding the pen above the page,
thought tracing breath-hovered edges
of not knowing
when it will fall or why…
then this
**
outside the window,
rain-soaked light, wing-fluttered winds:
a hummingbird
**
revisiting Suzuki’s writings
on Shin,
the almost unbearable beauty
of straight-forward logic
naturally stepping into
breathlessness
**
Owl calls—
my shadow falls
forward
to the street,
head and shoulders
ahead of me—
the owl calls.
**
red to white to pink
morning skies smudged
with lingering darkness—
learning to paint: a different world
**
they call it losing your temper—feels to me
like I’ve found mine, alive and well,
just waiting to be wakened
**
as if out of a cloud of the long-deemed forgotten,
an aging voice, remarkably recognizable, reminds you
of just one of the many kitchen tables
that always had room—the knowing tone
of love’s resilience, lasting flutterings
of open handfuls of who’s
who brought you
to who you are
**
—south-east ridge
those of us who walk
its one-thousand feet
call it “the mountain”—hawks
mostly just call, invisible
in the currents
up there
**
sitting with a murder of crows
on the rocks on the ridge—
they don’t seem to mind, but I look east,
not to the west with them,
thinking they’ll respect me more
if I do my own thing
**
the skunk spills
out of the mouth of Castanos Canyon
to cross the street—stops,
raises its tail, then reconsiders…
I’d like to think it was my smile.
**
The ease with which light fills
every new crevice left by the rain
re-phrases notions of reclusive life—no,
not that, but a quiet one, to be sure,
suits us.
**
Thursday unfolds
from under passing trails
of storm-trends
as if everything that’s happened
was then, and this now here holds
all we’ll ever need—scrubbed streets
and sidewalks, patio stones,
the revived green of bulb-stock
and the ever-surveying sky
all agree.
**
sitting in rain-dampened dirt
to sketch and paint the wall flower—
there in mixed winter greens
on the hillside,
just one more ingredient
**
—unattributed notes, found in my notebook:
“…the constitutive force of nature is
…the undying…truth beyond appearance”
and in fact, per Heraclitus, “appearance
even constrains truth.”
**
the blossoms along the fence
do their breeze-dance—beautiful
as they are, the best they can do
in its music is to wave
**
primary colors, just that, all else
coming of that—
even the sharpest syllable is ever only
a pause—and,
after the period, the whole whatever
that comes next
**
speaking first,
the duck then wings
daybreak’s welling light
above the lagoon
**
nearing eighty, the memories, so many
words, bubbles and froth—but the stream,
real as steel
**
doves
don’t show themselves—sky
so cold, so clear
**
To stay
straight lines
need stiffness,
need stiffness
from others too, to stay
straight lines.
Circles stay full and rounded
all by themselves, for anyone
coming around.
**
Night showers
permission the pause
before growth.
**
—the ancients knew
not much, a few hours
is all it takes, if that, and earth
takes you back—a step maybe,
even on cement, in earth’s open air
does it—but dirt, ground’s dirt beneath the boot,
pushing at it with the hands, your fingers,
the smell, the feel, lets you know,
after all is said and done,
it has never left, and neither will you
—namuamidabutsu, namuamidabutsu
