Wednesday, April 22, 2015

And what's more...



What the moon shows 
is less than whole, 

what it thinks, 
what it might if it does, 

only the bluing sky knows.



**


After Whitman…

April 4 
up at 4 

with morning 
lunar eclipse

with stars

on earth 
with all of you

casting shadows 
made by sun 

on moon 
casting back

luminous light 

let go



**



This

Good questions. He said they were good—this off-duty teacher
and old friend—but held too tight, he said…and with that, the habit of it
lifted in the drift of the lightness of its own seeing

to flutter and settle and to lay again right there
where it lay before. Now new.



**



Everything needed 
to get there
is already here.

You’ll see.



**



local time— 

from where the morning moon rose above 
the house across the street, 

to where it sits in the dark along the ridge 
as seen from the back deck, each digit, 

every turn, a mark in the stream of the arc 
left behind




**



Real things as they are, tell of time. Sunlight
moves through secluded rooms as readily 
as over the globe. Stillness is only so 
in relation. And only for a time.



**



                     “The page simply can’t register 
                          what the voice is saying.”—William Everson


There’s more to it than the linear—there’s saying, there’s
the saying aloud of prayer, of name held as sacred, 
of song as sung on air as taken and as given, 
of doing as living fulfilled in that register 
unreachable in the page.



**



Light learns and relearns 
the surface of the earth, 

which responds inevitably
and in kind.



**



Let’s not forget, she said. Let’s not
let things go, fall apart, simply because 
we’re old, and because that’s what old people
do—let’s not forget what we’ve loved we still do 
and show it, best we can as always we have,  
by paying attention—let’s not forget.



**



Home is where we are remembered,
even if we have not—original trust regained
without ever having been lost.



**



If every act is a cause, shouldn’t we then…
take a moment…



**



Without the precise, the particular, 
where would we be, how would we speak, 
of what, to whom?



**



Compassion is not a feeling, after all, 
but action, acts within and for the world, 
without the help of self.



**


We’ve got a nest I believe, 
under the eve above the bamboo
outside my window—

recent recurring flutters 
tell me so—slight shadows 
in the top right corner

leave branches to bounce 
and quiver, 

almost like wind passing through, 
innocent breeze made cover 
for more fruitful endeavors. 



**



April 14th

Looking out at 
that scraggly plant 
we hoped would screen
passing foot traffic. 

Enquiring eyes in floating heads 
that seem to pry 
privacy open, to reveal
me, to you. 

All those eyes, looking
through those beautiful
bell-shaped blossoms

that hide nothing.