july into august
leaves dance with breeze
with broom and me but none of us
wants to follow
**
to understand
live quietly
read after working
the garden
scribe poems
pulled from tangled roots
**
a pause to consider this president
because ten words of vocabulary
might suffice ten second
attention spans
but when three of the ten are
I ME MINE
peoples’ lives are diminished
far more than 1/3
far more than those
simplistic three
**
perpetual suspension
stable instability
we are
often
both called
and urged
but is
the point
in the
end to
arrive
**
the night before this words slowed
to stop
a teacher somewhere said to sit
the way earth takes pain
as leaves to let it there
to hold to grow
in light of the myriad dreams
heavens wish
for the wholeness of us all
listening sitting
in moon lit breezes
of awakened joy
**
to climb a thousand feet is no small matter
for old legs that somehow nonetheless
find themselves again lingering in fogs
along the road along the ridge giddy
in the belly at the aloneness of it all
where rock and dust walk the whole
of the distance to where
eyes no longer see
a thousand feet into chill
into the fluttered caress
of summer fogs
**
up sonoma way just below
where river begins reaching west
shiloh district cemetery
takes mid level fog
august mornings listens
to low flying geese
and the quiet pass of herons
gates are locked after dark
ample space left to the side
for walk in’s i suppose
and beyond the chain link fence
to the far side of the grounds
horses graze swish their tails
just above
where heaven meets earth
**
reciprocal fields of energies
animate even what we call inanimate
routinely carry unimaginable depths
of detailed movement anyway
makes one wonder wonder the point
of distinguishing one
from the other
**
chia tao speaks of the abode
of unplanned effect
where self encounters ground
before intention's disguises
that place where choice comes
to rest
**
windsor
wisteria takes the fence along the ditch
aside the road
in waves of curling tendrils
and clustered purple white petals
blown to erratic dance streams
on traffic breezes
that work this favored thoroughfare
to highway one oh one
fresh corn sells down the way horses
and ponies graze the cemetery holds
what quiet it can
and wisteria
whatever hand is offered
**
a volume pulled from the shelf opened
to a page of light lifted breath
from another time
breathe together its further fullness
now and here as ours
**
the shower
the women gather
this afternoon to celebrate
birthing
and all that flows
from that not for men
but to follow
at the edge
of knowing the gladness
of true center
**
earthlings if
the universes
and all they are
were not exactly
the way the are
right now
we would not be
think about
this guidance
not so much to figure out
but to learn to follow
the how already there
**
many seem unable to engage
a given moment without calculating
reason or weight
pre perspectives
often cut to the quick
by quiet eyed revelations
of often unexpected
equations of love
why I don’t salt my food
**
choreography that suggests
to hold what it wants to show
fails its own test
by virtue of beauty’s movement
every step requires trust
only the next step carries
**
earthling i wouldn’t say
genetics doesn’t go deep
but that we don’t follow
deeply enough why
insist so on being
apart from
**
that sakaki fellow nanao his first name
first language nippon followed by biology and stars
not to mention self taught english and a smattering
of what he calls desert rat
that sakaki sat in caves sometimes sustained
by who knows what and green tea he said first
slow down second do a good job
