Wednesday, August 19, 2015

July 2015


July 5th, Sunday

Each day carries the one before
into the next, leading expression

never entirely its own, but its own enough 
to claim, beginning to end, 

both date and name.


**


July 6 is a Monday here,
breaking light and fog and dew

that lay a sheen on streets
that whispers passing tires wet,

careful too, to not say more 
than what’s known.

And what if we could live
like this, caring enough

that patient readiness 
becomes the mark of wisdom

and the insistent voice,
the cut of doubt.

And what if we could live as if
democracy’s mark

were an attentive ear?


**


International Peoples’ Tribunal 2015
   
Heart is to breath as breath is to voice as voice is to story.

Nations purport to be of laws, but people are always of story. 
Spoken and sung and listened to,

we overlap, we make peace, open avenues of justice
and heal

telling our stories as heard, we learn beyond
where pencils break, where boundaries fade.

Singing our stories we lend of ourselves our hearts
to song as heard by hearts 

already there; telling our stories 
we hear our healing together;

speaking our stories we dream of the dreams
that only our hearts can hold.

Heart is to breath, as breath to voice, voice to story

and story to remembrance of our original intention.




**


For Janet

They’ve begun
to slip in now,
flutterings 

passing through 
suddenly emptied skies,
signals 

of those gone
with the years
we all follow.

God’s speed
old friend’s
little sister.


**


I pray,

I think, 
sometimes— 

though some 
say one 
ought not 
have to, 

it’s not 
like that 
for me. 

For some-
times one 
might feel 

thanks in 
order, 

for things 
received 
from no 
one in 
partic-
ular.

I do.


**


As humans, others’ loss and suffering can become our own,
if we let it. If so, is this burden or opportune; if so,
what does this say of the state of the world
and the hearts that range
in and about it?


**


religion, politics, poetics

I put my trust in LIFE—all caps—
and return my living to this LIFE 
without limits

which unfailingly enfolds all things,
all beings, as worthy
in themselves.

I remember and return to this
because of all I don’t know,
can’t ever know.

But for this: aggression, yours
or mine, cannot be trusted;

suffering ought never
be ignored;

and solidarity means the movement
of the voice of tenderness

toward and among us.


**


After William Everson

Craftsmanship
is knowing when
to stop, 

how to leave the words 
at the gate of the silence
where poems reside.


**


Cid Corman said,

“If this is divinity,
best make the most of it.”







John Muir Wilderness


**
Stepping out into night air 
to pee,

the Milky Way 
arcs across the sky so high

only dew-light falls 
far enough 

to touch. 


**
And finally we see them, this morning,
three young bucks, who’ve spent their nights
in circular sweeps of needles 
under nearby pines 

that seem to have protected us all.

Long deep nights, sleepy mornings 
of musing and the slow promise 
of coming sunlight—together.


**
Sitting on the western shore of Steelhead Lake,
watching the curved cirque of rock that tops
at 10,600’—there this morning, small fish

break the surface with muffled plops, muted peaks
burst with the first catch of sunlight 

and a hushed silence 
tempts the waiting voice.


**
Winds come up around 5:00, well before dinner, 
temperatures drop in chill enough 
for jackets and caps

and the moon moves over the ridge, behind the trees, 
to hide till stars come out—so slow, the turn here, 
so slow.

You have to be here to hear it. 
But you can actually hear 

who you are.

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