A Year of Poems

-My Journey- and Yours

My little gray bus

Lights on every corner

Ribbons and streams

Down rush hour road

 

My two tree friends

With me at the stop

Ground-rooted

Leaning, winking

Telling the same jokes for decades

Unaware of stately leaves

 

Off goes that little toy bus

Blinking toward the bridge and gate, the drowned valley where

Once the mastodon and grizzly roamed

And sabre tooth cat.

 

That’s the simple story 

Of the morning you 

Drifted away. 

Your hands are warm

And

here is your shawl for your great journey

(2/07/18)

***

-on a figure we cannot name

It’s not a prayer

culture would not allow that

thought

across thirty thousand years

 

your magic worked

grain

and seasons

and laughing babies

water to drink in cupped hands

cool earth

-enough for everyone

 

Your garden on the hillside

-still there.

image of venus de willendorf, which was banned by Facebook.  Image by Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

(3/02/18)

***

-Poem Looks Back

 

This poem points north to the Sierra

It stops overnight in Hangtown

It pans for gold to send home to Mother

Suddenly snow!

 

This poem of shallow roots

fire will burst the seed next spring

That’s the promise

the old saw

 

But right now

this poem waits

patient as that snow- crowned Sequoia

or sharp as a hawk

one whisker then–

Pounce!

 

foxes romp on the property of this poem

great horned owl unseen on its branch

There are bears in the backyard of this poem too

 

This poem is a coyote loping down my street

It’s snow at low elevations

It’s a weather map

this wild poem staring back

(2/28/18)

 ***

-Pacifica

 

Those rocks out there

Dark heavy fixed

Waves crashing

Unmoving

And cloud

And mist

My problems are gifts like these

My life is solid as rocks and air

I’m a flying fish!

(We don’t have those)

We do have light

And the singing whale

 

Which instant matters in this?

Are you the

Armored crab, bejeweled, emerging,

Or a great grey gull on the lookout pier-

 

My problems are gifts like these.

(2/16/18)

***

-mind prayer

 

In a minor battle

involving

words in a confined space

and that robin singing on his branch

it might be the lord god singing

you don’t know

I surrender

 

(3/07/18)

 

Perhaps it goes like this:

 

-ask the robin

 

a question of

words revolving in a confined space

that robin singing on his branch

might be the lord god singing

 

you don’t know

 

willfulness

and emptiness

I bring you

little bird

 

the mind is everything

are you listening little bird

 

you bird have the gift I lack

 

I sense it I know it

 

your holy chirp is practically the only

sound

my thoughts

not existing

 

how beautiful is the fog on your green bank your chirp ripples in a pool of morning shadow /all this dancing on the ocean’s edge

not far from here

through pure repetition I’m learning

bare trees sky of pewter

imperfect scrawl of trees

 

say it again robin

where it all comes from

where it all begins red breast

I know with your word

it’s spring

 

(3/8/18)

 ***

 

Consciousness of ocean and bluff

and tectonic plate

Consciousness of night

illuminated remote

Consciousness of trains

and stations

of warm scarves

of the light on roads and houses

of the natural darkness of being

Consciousness of Spirit sight and sleep

of prayer

and of simple awareness.

***

 

 photo Joseph Greco sonomanews.com

“Where Are You Now?” 

 

(Anne Watts tells of an LSD experience, with her father, philosopher/teacher Alan Watts, back in 1970s Marin County, California. At one point in her hallucinations, he asked her, “Where are you now?” “Under water,” she told him. “And then,” she said, “there he was.”)

 

“Where Are You Now”

 

in silence

exceedingly expressible

 

walking underwater

each step

buoyancy and gravity

 

You’d spread the wings of kimono

billowing

and fly for one step

 

and then another

 

Forget breathing

yoga

silly nonsense

 

every ancient object

drifting

 

from the submerged altar

Vallejo

at queer angles:

 

The Chinese vase

floats up

The scroll calligraphy

sculls away

Your brushes adrift

out of reach

 

Ashtrays, accoutrements

There they go

 

Manuscripts all mixed updrifting

Everywhere and everything

floating world

 

Your kimono won’t stay put

your hair dancing sea weed

 

no words whatsoever

Houseboat Vallejo:

It’s a gas! It swings!

 

Where are you now?

In the Great Circumference with no Center

aquarium without walls

 

So we say:

 

There walks a master of Zen–

Daughter of Zen also–

two feet off the ground

 

(3/10/18)

(for Kay K)

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Where Are You Now?” A Poem a revision

 

(Anne Watts tells of an LSD experience, with her father, philosopher/teacher Alan Watts, back in 1970s Marin County, California. At one point in her hallucinations, he asked her, “Where are you now?” “Under water,” she told him. “And then,” she said, “there he was.”)

walking underwater

each step

buoyancy and gravity

 

wings of kimono

billowing

one step

and then another

current not resisting

 

Forgetting breathing

yoga, beloved nonsense

 

each ancient object

drifting, rolling

 

tumbles

from the submerged altar

Vallejo

at queer angles:

 

The Chinese vase

floats up and up

The scroll calligraphy

sculls away

Your brushes adrift

your fan out of reach

and circling

 

Ashtrays, accoutrements

There they go

 

Manuscripts all mixed updrifting

Everywhere and everything

Floating world

 

Your kimono won’t stay put

dazzling urchins and anemones

Your hair, dancing sea-weed

 

No words,

Houseboat Vallejo:

It’s a gas! It swings!

 

Where are you now?

In the Great Circumference with no Center

aquarium without walls

 

lecture about nothing

delivered in silence

 

So we say:

 

There walks a master of Zen

Daughter of Zen also

two feet off the ground

 

(3/10/18) for KEK

 ***

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-houseboat-hosted-jack-kerouac-maya-angelou-artist-residency

***

A Brautigan Dyslexicon

Sometimes when I’m reading the words in their rows and columns become

machines, intricacies, stars

celestial mechanics

the words in their syntax

become woodblock prints

carved impressed lovingly stamped

with God’s exact pressure

with God’s many names

Sometimes when reading

words become water

patiently lapping the margins

Sometimes when reading

I remember our scripture

I can walk in the road of each letter

and rest under the tilted curves of your syllables

***

–Receptivity

 

If you can’t find your poem

Find your center

There are windows there;

Open them let what’s outside

-enter

 

It’s been raining all night

simply breathing

you have all the grass and trees and the earth all yours that’s inspiration

-conceiving

 

Can’t write a line

Find your feet

–then find your mind-

Your hands to your fingertips have a sense of the present time

 

Can’t do your work – don’t be deceived:

Locate your outer senses

-and your inner sense

Receive         (3/14/18)

 

Seagulls

 

This morning it’s seagulls in the great predawn darkness

 

In the foreground windows flickering

stained glass of flat screen light

 

Rain drops car doors prayerful

sky streaked with the colors of devotion

Transit card in hand I’m ready

 

In the background of actuality seagulls …the aural pulse of ocean rolling-

crying out the daily bread of earth.

 

That’s too much-but say it anyway.

Everything you need is here

 

(3/16/18)

-Artisan Bird

 

Artisan bird

hammer and tap

your song

planing its surface smooth

 

observing blueprint sky leaf

considering a stolen twig from our garden

 

artisan bird

songbird adjustments

melodic

random

but repeating:

 

turn the wheel exactly

of your chatter

across eucalyptus

and Monterey pine

 

cones also crackle

in the warming sun

 

artisan birds

intent

with surface sound

 

rustle chip and whistle

the architectural intention

the nested gestation-

your tooling jig

and coping crown

 

Beadlike precision also

with turns and ornaments

in flight and alight and song

 

artisan bird

full throated

craft birds sing a

contemporary piece

a surface

with wedge and awl

makes a subtler call than wind

and scrape of distant traffic

 

Artisan bird

little chisel and scratch in your chirp

with Proportion

and Dimension

The perfect valuation

of space- that’s the sound of your song

 

Here on my perch

eyes closed

sun warmed and listening

I hear but don’t see

your process

 

4/22/-18

 

-Don’t Worry the Sea

 

Oh mind of mine you know

the ocean speaks in sentences

the rolling sea

its pulse and purity of line:

it wears down the problems of its rocks to a mineral essence

 

Day and night the ocean worries its stones into vague shadows

or shallows of sand up close where the surfers are

while farther beyond vision

jellies and sea weed ride for a million years happily amid

the colored pebbles

of its thoughts

so

 

the sea carries forward problem into solution

Perhaps there is a mind there

like mine

plying forward falling back

 

 

(5/3/18)

***

-awaken to peaches

 

awakening an appetite

the peaches you bought

 

those peaches

are luminous

in a glass bowl

 

contained:

the smallest hungers of life

the peaks of interest

 

first,

peaches

then

 

drying off after a shower

 

the something within looking out

while you brush your hair

looking

 

not for a reason to live exactly

but for life itself

-that is life itself;

 

appetite is a blessing

a promise of fulfillment

those peaches will be

perfect

 

let the anxious heart awaken to

what all those painters know

that truth is truth

and peaches will be good with honey

 

and yogurt

 

which it just so happens we have.

 

a mourning dove likes to visit the little

rock pool in the garden

just outside the window

-there it is

 

it comes for the fresh water in a bowl of broken shells.

 

as the hummingbird, the nectar

so all my morning prayers and answers

 

8/25/18

 ***

 

-Bluebird Transformation part one.

 

saw a bird on a

live oak tree

 

Your globe of green

an interlaced orrery

that is your universe at the edge of an inland sea

we observers, my Ingrid, cousin Lauren and me

 

Then you appear- slightly acrobatic-from branch to tuft of grass

you dive

tumbling landing breathless

-ecstatic

 

And all we knew was…

 

…You’re blue.

I mean, really blue!

 

Not soldier-blue: you are bluebird blue

 

Russet red and bluebird blue

My bird book says that’s the sky in you

 

Noble blue

Authentic blue-

Of course that’s it

Western Blue is

Truly Blue!

Girls with skinny arms swinging from a live oak branch

don’t bother you,

untroubled Blue

 

and that jellyfish in their little pail

surely won’t surprise you,

Blue

 

The three of us at a picnic bench were watching, too

 

Bluebird knew what bluebird knew.

 

5/11/18

below, the bluebird tree, at China Camp, Marin

 ***

 

***

Evening Poems