LATEST POSTS
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On counting cairns
Tomorrow my son moves back in
bringing inexhaustible items
in large clear sacks
that swallow the floor
like jellyfish claiming
the soft sand along surf.My younger son’s things,
and his girlfriend’s,
are piled up in the corner.Constant piling, constant shuffling,
constant marking the month,
then the term, with a new pile,
papers to toss, clothes to sort,
receipts crumbled under sunglasses,
sacred marks.In the next month of marking,
all will be swept clean again.A flood will gush through our house
bring muddy stones, weeds, branches,
bits of river life, imbue the air
and then just as quickly the rain
will come down in torrents,
wash it spotless, leaving
no trace of their ever-presencebut just a sterilized hold,
unwelcoming to even us.Thus the marking continues,
turns round on itself.
Piles self-generate,
river swells, rain cleanses
again. We count the marks,
are drowned, parched
in turn, again. -
Nighttime flight to London
i.
you call it an expanse
but I see the rivers,
no whitecap flecks,
just warp and weft
of current
slicing though floes
in their jagged way
and I ask
how they snake up,
crisscross, with tides
bulging under them allii.
I can see them now
the chunks of wave line
that seem like
quilt ridges
defining the shape
of the blanket
over your lapiii.
perhaps they are clouds after all
and not the ocean moving,
and rather than looking down
and drowning in fear
I should look up and wave on
the broad flow of sky above,
and welcome the ridges of shade
that cool and protect -
It is no wonder
Is it a wonder that I am more drawn
to watching the birds flit
than to reading your words, again?
You would not blame me I think.They dive in the mist over loch and glen,
feathers soaked from the constant drip.
No tree a harbor, being waterlogged as well;
some find cover under our eaves here.But refuge does not satisfy long.
They are out afresh, turning, curling
over the grass, skimming the ponds,
picking up new syllables, dropping commas.You cannot see their strain,
but when they come in for shelter,
I hear their tiny lungs heave.
Then they abandon their pens, lift off again.—-
Loch Tay near Killin, Scotland, avoiding my daily poetry read. -
Buddhista 3
It is a miracle that you survive
day after long day in the cold,
under rain, through whining wind.Once, as snow fell, a smirk
edged your lips but it slipped under
by the time I looked firm.I ask, are you a ghost?
Yet day after long day, you hold steady,
build moment after momentin your heart, storing each millennium
and then washing them clean
breath after steady breath.I observe everlasting
gazing your way, a mirror,
mortal, aching.I take in one whole day
and bring it now to you
to launder. -
Buddhista 2
You sit on the stump of the old willow
where last stood a luxurious swaying,
deep shade for hot summer days.Sun falls bright upon your head,
your joints ache from prayer
or thought or long yearsof passive watch over this small yard,
the squirrels that make their home
in the stretches of the elm,the myriad birds flicking water
in the fountain. You rest,
I toil —I remove weedy barriers
to your eyes,
open vistas for mine.We dwell upon one another,
me in my creation,
you in yours. -
Buddhista 1
I will buy for you
a cedar box, red,fragrant when rain falls,
broad and steady,and plant it
near the crocuses and the daffodilsthat were tossed among fresh sprouts
of day lilies, and in time,that will sleep under the vigils
of June’s deep clematisand our red-then-green-
then-red-again maple.And upon it
you will wait and pray,your flowered necklace
never wilting, your hennaed handforgiving each day
its storms, its whipsof wind, its white cold,
its dying, its deformities,its birthing, its longing
that swirls on end around you.
Poems from in between 