Thursday, November 6, 2014

After talking with the poets




What are the chances, even in a small town,
of meeting the only car that moves on the street
at 4:30 AM, at just the driveway it wants,
and it having to wait

for you to pass. And a block beyond,
to meet another solitary walker
coming down the stairs you’re going up,
passing so close your sleeves brush—

who would guess, even in a small town,
in this world how close we all really are ?
                                                  
                                                10/20


**


Robert Lax says attention is holy
and that’s why we all want it.

And why perhaps, when we attend
to the direction our own attention has turned,

we’ll likely find our way
to where we’ve wanted to be

all along—it’s its own light.


**


Trying too hard to sing tires the heart.
Just hum—it’s still song…
                                                           10/21


**


To speak of god
is not to speak
as something separate,
but as heat rising moments

of touch, smell and tongue,
as sighted currents of light heard,
as thought-breathed sparks of awe
spoken as praise.
                                10/23


**


A love story…in words
that might be said, but need not

in the end meet the air
between your eyes and mine.
                                                10/25


**


“Who needs community”

raises question to statement
made to oneself
in solitude.


**


Calistoga

There’s more sky here than at home,
so light thins later, lamps lie latent

through rain-filled clouds
and the day stretches the pen’s strokes

beyond imagined returns

to turn fallowed textures of the known
to futures refusing definition.
                                                  10/25


**


To Lew Welch

This ring of bone,
this life of song
indeed suggests
no notes ever

gone wrong,

all that issues,
pure sacred name

received.
                            10/31





End poem, by Lew Welch, American poet

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a

bell does