I stop at each blade of grass,
stare at each tree’s leaf’s tremble,
stir at your slightest touch—
I am a ghost lost in the wood.
(July 11, 2022)
-
There Then Here Now
by
I talked too much, saying little.
Then a decade of unbroken silence
followed without your laughter.
Yet, I still felt the silent traceof your fingertips along the length
of my bare arm, as you spoke.
Our intentions were never clear.Then we left, each to our ways;
and, I became a ghost to you.
(July 10, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: The Sacred and Profane
Summoned from Shaman Mountain
as his lover for the night, she steps
lightly from dream rising on waves
surging from a storm. The flowers
give way beneath the plum tree’s
branches; and, the scent of narcissus
lingers like the moon before the dawn,
as she wraps her thighs around his hips.
(July 7, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Practice
by
“If I knew what I was doing, I’d be doing it right now…”
—Radney Foster
Another morning sun trickles
through the cottonwoods. Today,
I have time to write. Instead,
I watch the cardinal pair twitter
from branch to branch, fluttering
like drunken dancers in love.
I have nothing to say; yet, today
that is enough. The cottonwoods
slowly clatter in the soft breeze,
while the grey cat purrs at my feet.
(July 1, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Samadhi (2)
by
Each day I shuffle about the house
lost within the duties of the day.
I wonder: all these poets with their advice
full of absolutes and disdain for others—
when do they find time to write;
to sit alone with their words;
to scrape the burnt rice from the pan?
(June 30, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Samadhi
by
In the early evening silence,
cicadas and doves, hidden
in the trees, whoo and trill,
as the sprinkler fans the grass
with artificial rain.
This is enough,as the sun tips the tops
of the tallest trees
with a light-green fire
before it sets behind the hills.
(June 24, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Who Knows?
by
While degrees
prove persistence
more than
knowledge gained,
one cannot pretend
through screams
and violence
to know anything.
If one attends
to each breath
and stumble along
the garden path,
one’s practice should be
enough; yet, life
disguises wisdom
in each rose’s bloom.
(June 23, 2022)
-
Ghosts’ Stories
by
The ghosts enter my dreams again. They dislike the arrangement of the furniture. So, they move the leather couch to the opposite wall, reset the clock, close all the doors, open all the windows, letting bugs get in, and finally turn off all the lights except the one over the kitchen table, which glows eerily as if in a noir movie from the 1950’s. I have to admit the new arrangement of the room makes for a better flow overall, yet something is still wrong. Although I see all of this, I am not there. I am somewhere else, disconnected from my life like a mirror. I try to speak, but the words come out backwards, the syntax jumbled and slurred. The ghosts look perplexed, but as an act of condescension, they don’t pay any attention to me. They serve themselves tea from a fine china teapot into matching china cups. They speak to each other nonchalantly, about memories I recognize as mine, but do not recall well enough to contradict the revisions they are making. After I wake, and then through the rest of the day as I wonder about the house, I pick up scraps of what was said, and try ineffectually to sew my desires back together as if they were a patch work quilt collectively stitched on a Sunday afternoon over gossip and prayers. Yet, something is missing: I think it might be me.
(June 18, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Loss
Together we drank and sang
into the night; we were true
to ourselves and each other.
Today, even the half-heartedare cut down by the heartless.
What chance did our song have?
Tonight in the distance,I hear a solitary flute player.
I think of you, and weep.
(June 17, 2022)
-
Ikkyu Reiterations: Every Atom of Me
Which side of an equation
creates the balance?
A young student struggles
with algebra’s abstractions.
A butterfly floats obliviouslyover a barbed-wire fence.
A peasant carries buckets of manurebalanced on a pole across his shoulder.
Which part of you is you,and which part is not me?
(June 16, 2022) -
Ikkyu Reiterations: Fight the Good Fight
by
The light fades again
across the mountains
outside the window
above his desk
where he reads
the old masters.
He looks up,
then, as if struck by a sword,
he furrows his brow.
But now is not the time
for blood to rain from heaven:
the war, as before, continues
unabated and unnoticed.
If he is to find purity’s root
within his world’s manifest divisions,
he must leave his comfortable chair
and charge into the heart of his war.
This must be done, again
and again, with an iron heart,
until he can laugh again;
and, the earth absorbs
the spilled wine
as if it were an apology
offered too late to a god.
(June 12, 2022)
-
wind through the piñon trees
by
talking to fellow Texans at the Grand Canyon
We stood at Yaki Point, silent, awed
content in the silence of the wind
through the piñon trees.
They walked up the trail behind us:
There are no words,she expounded as if someone asked.
(But there are always wordsI thought, even in the canyon’s silence).
Yet, they kept talking:how Yosemite is more Impressive
Oh, you have to go there
The hikes— so strenuous
We were so sore afterwards
Then they walked away talkingas if to someone else.
While the wind moved through the piñon treesfilling the silence they left behind.
(June 9, 2022)
