Tuesday, July 21, 2015

June 2015

June 2015

Of wind and breath



As wind is to breath, breath is to wind 
and we in turn to the many things 
met along their way.


**


What is this

there that takes 
each breath’s empty end 

and lifts it to the next?


**


Children seem to know 
what we struggle 

to remember: a world created 
reveals the self 

who dwells there.


**


Each life’s living
moves beyond itself.
Each always more.


**


I’d vow to give up the nonsense,
but I’ve vowed before
so many things

that maybe nonsense 
defines them all—but, this morning,
a crow 

I could not see, but knew 
to be near, a crow unseen called
so clear

that any vow I might have made
brimmed to full
right there.


**


Hope has a role, I suppose; but gratitude offers firmer ground.


**


Legacy—what the poet said—

that things left behind
wake silence lain latent

in presences now gone.


**


She said, the world sometimes confirms,
mostly not; but adjustments, though fleeting, 
can be satisfactory—the secret: to not demand

so much 

that the unplanned 

can’t be enough.


**


The prayer flags are frayed. Sunlight splays 
the porch railing, lays along fingers holding a pen.

Blues pour from inside shadows, a dove calls
from shaded limbs, and that orange and black butterfly

holds the warmth of wooden siding. 

Colorado Springs means friends.


**


Stepping into the morning air, the limbs of the pine 
still, the sky blue, silent, he stops, breathes,

thinks of prayer, of the hum within the hush of himself,
of beginnings already begun, intentions recalled

and day already complete.  


**


And yet again another of the poets moves me to sentences
like these that pour from pen’s end to white and lined and dimpled 
pages creased by the weight of telling thoughts 

impressed—sprung organic from logic-sparked currents 
through tongue and fingers in directions well-taken to follow, 
if what we want to know of is ourselves in the world.

Listen here, watch just a bit more closely that guiding working 
its magic, even if seemingly silent, even when directed center.
Watch. Sentences rock.


**


The last day together tends to quiet 
the walk for the Sunday paper,
accent pancakes and coffee 
and make music of its own enough
to dampen the need to disturb the air 
that brims to full that hold
between us.


***




Taos to Santa Fe



Waking late 
in the darkened room, 

we crack the blinds to blue 
sky sun light 

and coffee 
garnished with powdered creamer.  

Beggars can’t be choosers, they say, 
and the Masters 

did not wish to be—what a fine way 
to start our stay 

here in Taos. We tell each other 
of our dreams.


**


Poet-teachers and what they’ve done with the pen
is not as compelling as what has kept it moving 
for them—I listen for that.


**


In the tangle of nerves that passes for norm, 
we turn another way, lean in to trace each shift full through 
to its end, to the next. Everything real is here.


**


Through the blinds I can see sunlight on shadowed leaves,
scattered spores of blue and the earth-toned stucco wall
of the living room patio faintly dappled.

Like trying to capture air in a screened box, we try to keep 
time, even when there’s nothing to hold, living as if 
loosing count of our heart beats 

means we loose life.

A teacher once said the depths of the natural functions
of all we are, of all we behold, are as deeply integrated
as impenetrable. But we can encounter telling glimmers,

if only we take them as given, and let them go as they will.


**


The Pueblo at Taos Mountain
has been inhabited since 1350 AD.

Those who live here now 
still drink Red Willow Creek.

And to the west, the Rio Grande 
cuts gorges into the earth.

Time is long here. Days hold everything.


**


Prayers for South Carolina

The Santa Fe River runs the city center
from east to west, reaching steadily 
for the Rio Grande which runs its way 

south—even before the smoke settles, 
televised pundits attempt to advise 
that guns are not the problem. 

But river banks reveal history 
as readily as day’s flows speak 
to current circumstance. 

Time listens to both.



**


     “From here on, 
         may everything 
                  be beautiful.”

The Navajo people
make morning offerings 
with words like these,

so I might sing with mine

of the aspen at the river
and the willow too,

of the juniper’s fruit
tangled in vine,

of the promise of heat
at water’s edge,

of reliance given
and of frequent touch.

May everything be beautiful.


**


Words reveal our conversation 
with the world—the poet’s job, to listen.


**


It’s July…the first…and

after morning’s walk, still within the reach of a single stick of incense, 
mind touching page, on and off, here to there, breath unlabored, writing. 

Coffee cools, the pen moves—questions rise, pass, rise and pass 
again—off-pink petals watch from along the fence.

Then, on my knees, sunlight whispers, 
across my hands a testimony, a record 

of personal witness. That all manner of meaning 

need only be taken as given.

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