for the poet then, morning prayers
in three tongues
make good first breaths richer
music heard
and birds turn
in answer
**
For me, sips of bitter black
at dawn, and scribbles
on wrinkled pages
can turn entire days
known in light-glow.
**
Morning shadows slowly reveal the slopes.
Sun-chased fog reveals the ridge
that reveals the horizon that hides
the Pacific
that waits in distant quiet.
**
Early light tries,
then wrinkles
grey.
**
Looking at the sky
instead of the rotted trunk,
woodpecker, quiet.
**
just above the ridge,
illumined halo-whispers
of ocean-lifted fog
**
Sometimes I tire
of tiring, of trying
to out-think aging.
Then, sometimes
I just give in, let rest
take the lead ‘round the circle.
**
The moon returns
with clear night skies
showing less
than whole.
**
After a mile
or so, the new boots, the feet,
mark the places they meet,
while walking names them.
**
Here we are in March rain-drops,
where spring reveals its dreams
and winter just winters.
**
Cleaning up the house,
the bathroom, floors, some dusting—
a way of saying
I’m still alive.
**
If we speak
the truth of
our living,
others see
their living
there too—we
see there then
each other
in ourselves.
Speak true.
Make peace.
**
After the night’s rains,
on the back-stairs cherry tree,
its first blossoms.
**
There are mornings when the mind
begins to see
well after walking begins
what the eyes have been seeing
all the while
—and we’d speak here often
of waking or of sleeping,
of what’s been missed
in the gaps, when really it’s nothing—
no thing is left out or behind, nor trails
any other ever
in living’s wholeness
with dying
—it’s the carrying flow
that counts for everything—
all seeking, all
ever sought,
right here—
when embraced,
embrace back.
**
—Oh, those poetry quarterlies…
and the clubs there—oh I’ve learned, indeed,
and pondered and considered
but in the end, the language and its love
is no more the possession of presumed experts
than it is of mine, and for this, one and all,
we can celebrate, we can sing…one and all.
**
California golden violets
east-facing slopes
green-wet grasses
**
What of the silence
when really listened to—slowly
expanding embrace, soft newness,
allowance, permission, unrestricted,
uncluttered whispers of…Yes.
**
On east facing slopes
poppies too bloom in spring grass,
no doubts, no questions,
just poppies doing poppies.
Life—mine, yours, theirs,
moves this way.
**
At the crest of the hill
the sky opens suddenly above
the bay, the distant city
spreading
and this singular life sees
so much more of itself..
*
**
***
“Nothing can be done
but in inches. I write out my life
hour by hour, word by word…”
Adrienne Rich
—“Incipience”
“I have no teacher to learn from
and no students to teach.
There is nothing except…
stars twinkling in the sky.”
Haya Akegarasu
