Early February, a Friday
I’ve got the day of the week right,
but can’t yet affix the correct number to it.
High clouds ride invisible winds,
streamed snatches of blue sky, rippled shadows
tracing the roughened face of the rain-soaked earth.
Dreams of names and of numbers
hold no more sway, yet none less here
than bird song or early buds.
Let them unfold in the music
that’s their very own, that carries them
all their way through.
**
…and bow…
They’re called “wall flowers,”
San Francisco region natives
that dot upper slopes
from early spring, or before,
when runs of warm clear days
break winter rains.
Four broad petals, innocent
shaped
as a child’s fingers might make,
white-beige
to soft yellow,
and a startling burst
of floral aroma
that says,
to only the closest nose:
that which seems
most unassuming, may be a signal
to slow down,
to bow.
**
“Everywhere is the silencing
of ideas. That is Buddha.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Wanting, in the morning quiet
of my study, to follow this,
and your voice speaks my name,
sets down the book, closes…
**
February first
The resonance of chimes emerges
from the peripheral silence,
presence alone speaking everything
of consequence,
before and after resting
right here in the pulse-beat of our veins.
Mythical vows of antiquity remembered
as if our own,
the gentle sadness and the joy
at having nothing, grants everything.
**
These winter mornings, the moon
stays high,
setting slow in the west
well after light arrives.
Night’s dew too,
lingers.
**
For David and Kaji
We swarm, we humans, we gather like gnats
in afternoon sunlight along the trail,
old friends and new
sharing stories of suffering and of healing,
here on the warm slopes
of the mountain.
Buckeye Canyon, 1/30/13
**
A tinge of normal
returns to our world. Once again,
you correct me.
**
Nanao Sakaki:
Turn off
the street lights
and
moon and stars
jump out
in all their glory!
**
The heart, trusted
like morning’s incense,
suggests a newness akin
to the shift from night to day,
returning remembrance wherein
nothing’s forgotten,
a turning over within
ever-arching horizons
of timelessness,
almost incomprehensibly tender.
