Category Archives: Poems 2016

CONTEMPLATION

Posted on October 22, 2016 by | 1 comment

 

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There is no urgency,
no destination worthy
ignorance along the way—

even on the familiar
road, nothing stays
as it was—and probing

eyes never quite the same.
All the assumptions,
short-cuts to conclusions

we claimed as instinct
that never were:
laziness and wishful

thinking, yet
we blaze away,
unload both barrels

trying to eliminate
our smoky confusion.
We will get there

soon enough. Make
each moment rich
as a Chinese poet.

                    I venture no more than a low whisper,
                    afraid I’ll startle the people of heaven.
                         – Li Po (“Inscribed on a Wall at Summit-Top Temple”)

 

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘Shine’

 

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JUST ANOTHER SISYPHUS

Posted on October 21, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

December 10, 2015

December 10, 2015

 

1.
Small at first, rivers spill
High Sierra snowmelt,
water pure as it will ever be

falling to the call of gravity
and time’s relentless roar
over granite smooth, worn

by cataracts and cascades
dressed in rainbow mists
ascending to the whispers

among a million pines—
a timbered mat of arrows
headed to the sky.

2.
We have been there
in our perfect innocence
before our courses

changed the world
as it changed us.
I think it was the waiting

for the war I never served
that made me see that
spilling the blood of boys

could not kill ideas
or forever eliminate
a differing philosophy.

3.
Like water pooled
I am damned again
in someone else’s business

at the whims of men
I’ll never understand
beyond their lust for power

and their addiction to greed
while dancing to the tune
of men and women working

with their heads and hands.
I stay the slope and cling
to the sound of the river

chasing lyrics on paper
since the war—poor poetry
released like mist ascending

to the muse that must
report my plodding progress
to goddesses and gods.

 

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NOWHERE PEOPLE 2

Posted on October 20, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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                            another heaven and earth, nowhere people know.
                                   – Li Po (“Mountain Dialogue”)

We are the nowhere people blessed
in nameless places where waves of gold
glint off grasses beyond long shadows

that stream downhill at dawn and dusk,
beyond the instant politic of greed
that lusts for more power over

humanity: all the great hearts secreted
away, shared in private moments as if
outlaws. We are the nowhere people

living an ever-changing dream
of the old ways practiced season
after season, as easily forgotten

as fading chimney smoke—
our ascension from this earth
that flesh cannot escape.

 

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A WONDER IS WHAT IT IS

Posted on October 17, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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                                        and what’s the work?
                                                            To ease the pain of living.
                                        Everything else, drunken
                                                            dumbshow.
                                                                      – Allen Ginsberg

I have no appetite for news, yet addicted
to reason less obvious
than the Emperor’s latest haberdashery.

Coffee conversation stops
to the quiet glide of a Cooper’s Hawk
beneath the roof overhead, limp legs

dangling, quail warm before breakfast.
She has chosen the four of us
to interrupt, to remind of naked grace

in a profane world—to ease the taloned
hold of the drunken dumbshow
before we hay the cows

and we feel blessed
for prolonged moments of wonder unwound
to remember who we are.

 

 

‘A WARNING TO MY READERS’

 

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HALLELUJAH

Posted on October 15, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

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Out of the southwest, wind
down the dry draw damp—
dust devils dance across
ground grown bare by cows

meeting near the water trough
with the run and buck of calves
finding all four legs to stir
hope for nothing certain:

this first chance of rain.
Time may seem to fly
now that we are older,
or plodding slower shade

to shade with less idleness
to fill with complaint—summer
long and hot, but shorter than
our partnership with drought.

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘local’

 

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GOLDEN RULE

Posted on October 13, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

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I would like to say that thinking
like cattle is preferable to humans
who need immediate answers

and science to prove them right,
whose urgency demands action
and reaction until the herd’s

thundering hooves stampede
the earth into atomic dust.
Cattle would not press any matter

enough to destroy themselves,
but rather play domestic than wild
given time to weigh your wishes.

Making sense of them you must
be cordial, shed your fear and anger—
try to remember the Golden Rule.

 

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TO A POET

Posted on October 11, 2016 by | 2 comments

 

My reading slow, I hold the sounds
scratched on paper, hear a song
that draws me near, behind your eyes—

ten thousand rivers fall in moonlight,
all the stars like cold fire streaming
from the mountains and you are there.

Beyond them, beyond you and I,
we cannot hear or see, even in daylight,
swept up in the Canyon Wren’s cascades

falling into pools lapping mossy rocks.
My empty mind is full with your eyes
on paper I can revisit any time of day.

 

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BULL OF THE WOODS

Posted on October 10, 2016 by | 3 comments

 

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He wears his father’s stamp
at five weeks, biggest bull calf
in a family of cows and babies

ready to hold his herd against
anyone of any breed
at first light crawling out

from under the black screeches
and howls of darkness beyond
the moving shadows of a half-moon.

We are born with it, you know—
instinct deep within the soft marrow
of our bones living with wild

uncertainty until our fathers
return home. And we will follow,
watch and try to help them work

all day long, learn what we have yet
to grow into—and sleep bone-weary
with pastoral dreams of peace.

 

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AFTER BIRTH

Posted on October 9, 2016 by | Leave a comment

 

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We come naked and wet
into a place knowing nothing,
blood stirring cooler

under rough tongues,
familiar reverberations
of outside sounds

clearing our coats of afterbirth,
cleansing the scent that draws
the cleanup crews on this earth

hungry for work, before
we ever nurse, before
we stand and step

up to the plate, fill ourselves
and face new lessons
best we can. Slowly we learn

to keep the faith
and our opinions
to ourselves.

 

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THE WORK

Posted on October 6, 2016 by | 7 comments

 

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                                        I realize that in terms of body and spirit,
                                        body grows sick while spirit’s immune,
                                                  – Po Chü-i (“Climbing Mountains in Dream”)

Like a wall, hooks in hand,
I’ve scaled bales of hay stacked
too far off the ground to fall

for nearly fifty winters, boot toes
feeling for a crack and hang
while synapse talks to flesh—

a longer conversation now
for this ascension. I can fly
in my dreams, scramble

like a squirrel up a tree.
Awake: my spirit intact, in touch
with heart and mind’s belief

in these old knees they will escape
after the truck is loaded, cattle
fed—when the work is done.

 

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