Abiding

A river has a wellspring,
a river has an ending.
Even here, in this eddy,
bubbles are rising, falling.
Look carefully, the river is like you.
Everything is like you, wet or warm,
windy or solid as a mountain.

Look with disdain
at the picture of the world
you have been given.
Look with abandon,
in the way the body turns to stars
when it has been freed from captivity. 
Look because your eyes are here.

Look until the river shows you its name,
and why it cannot be spoken.

Madness

A young man showed me pictures
in a worn blue plastic book
of himself, at fifteen, lifting weights.
He was smiling then, and rippling
with his carved body and the bright stream
of his young, unworn and able mind.

Then, a picture at twenty.
Nine years ago,
when in his dream, he said, an angel alighted,
black, winged, and huge.
He said If I see him again in my dream, 
I will kill him.

I know what happened.
The angel suffocated his mind
and stole his smile and the light in his eyes.
He told him When you wake up, 
you will find yourself in hell.

Fire

Lines of fire run through my center.
Mostly, I miss them while I dream,
but they are always there, burning
the tattered little tapestry of me, but then
setting it alight with beauty as well.

The lines connect out of my head,
through my feet and palms and groin
to roots and leaves of great trees,
to the meandering rivers and streams
that write the fortune of the earth.

Therefore I am the earth, held by spinning lines
around the sun and galaxy, ever outward
to the edges of God's skin.

Tonight I let the fire burn
and it speaks no longer in riddles.
It tells me of the settling of dew,
a little sorrow for this ephemera.
It tells me of the current and the little spark,
like the preposterous courage of dawn.

Whom

Delight comes knocking
and who would not let it in?
Who would not see her
standing in the half light 
asking shelter from the wind
and offering you good dreams?.
But her embrace becomes
the want of another door to open.

Pain, rasping, comes to the step
and who would let him in?
Who would dare to face him
when he is this fearsome
even before he arrives?

Who would call on Rumi
to spend the night
and talk only of the world?

Residing

I want to be in the center
of the circle that you build
like all women, of spirit.
I'll be shaman or sachem,
or just your brave, sharing the pipe.
We both know the creator is round,
like a tree, or a lake, or a stone in the river.
We will bring others back home,
lead them to the green valley,
where it is good to begin.

Meat

My sons come over for dinner
It's black pepper tofu
and nuggets of deep orange squash,
prepared lovingly by my wife.
I am the only omnivore, a tuna
in sweet waving grasses.

Saturday

The couch hurts my lower back
on a lazy Saturday.
I forget to do enriching things like
writing letters, reading or guitar.
The watercolor kit sits in its case
since we bought it before vacation.
The paints are in their tubes,
ochre, cadmium, and Payne's grey.
They are bored, with sore backs too,
unable to get out and about, mingle,
and make something of themselves.
Why do I miss it, this wide world
full of the ingredients for creativity?

My second cup of coffee
inches off the table in despair,
and as it explodes,
the guitar in the corner
throws out a sympathetic twang.

Swift River

We belong out here, me and my wife,
her sister and husband, along the river
among hurricane pines, snapped saplings
that grow stronger and taller than oaks,
strong hemlocks halving the sunlight,
stone farmhouse cellars, dewdrop mushrooms,
profuse ferns, and a big pile of sticky shredded cones
chipmunks must have visited many times.

Our energy returns after weeks in the office
or in the house,
just a few hours outdoors
and we breathe like water, earth and tawny grasses.
Our eyes lift up into the sky, our bodies crack
like the grey boulders, our thoughts find moisture
and befriend the little worlds they find themselves in,
the dark under a stone, water trickling over moss,
the sweet smell of a blanket of needles.
We head for home, a little more wild,
bubbling.

Thanksgiving

Today I am grateful
for being slowly cooked until I am dead
by the flame of hunger within me.
Without that, I would be a bushel of dust,
a bushel of water, and a little wind,
and would have little opportunity
to know sower, sun, and reaper.

Sybil

My life falls gently into place at night
when I sit quietly,
the good far outweighs the bad
and while the poles may shift soon
I'm far too loved to be lost.

And so I am puzzled by my nightmares
although it may be true that they are not all mine.
My mother was Catholic, not me, and yet
sinful sirens, apocalyptic apparitions,
and judgement by fire leave me in such sweats,
my relief at finding my warm wife
in the worn walls of our bedroom is ravenous.

I have such bad dreams,
I've decided to take up arms
but am at a loss as to how to prepare.
Perhaps I have been too careful,
worshiping as I do Anatta, who of course
carries neither sword nor shield,
which I need on the journey
to the boundless country.

Ah, that's it. fool that I am
not to see that I am still part of a play.
In the next scene, I call on the Oracle
who speaks to me in needles of pine
which I collect, place in my pockets.
Right now, I am laying out my costume
and reciting my lines.
I will need to remember them,
rehearsal begins at moonrise.

Taliban

My friends have all gone crazy,
returned to alcohol,
or lashed themselves to irritability.
They are like the Buddha statues
blown up by the Taliban.
In their youth they were carved
by inspiration and persistence,
stood out in noble relief from the cliff. 
But they grew tired of that serene nobility
staring at them every day
while they were taking up
the subjugation of nonsense.

Baruch

She died yesterday and will be buried
in her traditional way at sundown today.
She was irritable much of her life,
yelled about the potatoes if they weren't right
in the middle of our meal out,
did not want to see me until I was a Jew.

Oh but now I remember.
Her family was torn to pieces in Russia.
Her blessing as a young woman
was only a little chicken fat once a week,
but with it she could make a few potatoes
dance like they were at a wedding.

She grew kinder and weaker with age.
She accepted me at last for who I was,
divorced, older, stronger, and a stranger.

Today I pray for her as a Jew,
for the broken flowers of the Testament,
for the good of the house she made,
for her kind and obdurate daughter,
for the wandering we all share. 

The Path

The river is blue-black,
bubbling with whitecaps,
running downstream like me.
Lean ducks land
in the water's lean hand
while underfoot dry sticks snap.
There seems so little fire
under this brief pot,
but at least out here
the fat burns
and the flame licks higher
into a grey blue day.

I kick up little stones on the path
as I and the path meander.
I rub the ground like a low cloud
I exhale the last of ire,
rub my heart with sweet cinders.

To Everything

One November
I found a very slow
preying mantis
in the frost
on the bushes
in front of the house.
When I was young,
they seemed bigger than me.
Green, fresh, and strong,
like summer.
Now I see
the compass of their season.

I have lived
for fifty-two summers
with enough brains
to wear a coat in the cold
but not yet enough heart
to don the wrap of Ecclesiastes.

Prayer III

To bend a note against the air
with ribbon of throat and tongue
or electric string of a guitar
under sky made blue by sun

is almost all I want, this warp
in the fabric of myself, like crow
in the tall pines at noon,
to owe my voice to no one.

Of course I sing and play
so poorly that I mostly listen,
but now at last I hear what matters
and do not ask for what is missing.

It is not a coincidence
that I pray in harmony
with the sounds I most love.

Alms

Your T.S. Eliot book
lies quiet and new
like a fresh white egg
on the mottled windowsill,
a birthday gift from my son.
Already a month ago
your smiles over candles
sank into the west.
It's a new printing,
The Waste Land, 
a scattered prophecy bound
as the water of life
that goes tumbling over
and about the life of us
so quickly now, and yet
you pause and dream with me,
inhale the dust
that tends to gather
wherever there are things,
and be with me, my son,
the world, however thin our wings.

Drought

On a thick syrup mountain
I see brambles roll by
and through an amber haze
I love them for what they are,
but I will not trade bodies with them.
Later, ants take away the honey
leaving only what is dry of me,
and I become a bramble.

Here, today, the world
it is evaporating, and for that,
I walk with the wizened
but I will not trade bodies with them.

When I am gone
I will wish that I had.

Cruise

I am teaching mindfulness at a psychiatric conference.
I am beset by worry and then it happens,
the video skips at part of a scene,
a boat leaves the dock We're constantly marinating in corrosive hormones
a boat leaves the dock We're constantly marinating
a boat leaves the dock in corrosive hormones
but then suddenly
I am floating free for a moment
I have no work to do,
even the great screws of the mind
that turn my propellers
in this sea
let go of their rust.

Intuition

You are teaching again
at our little Buddhist group,
of noticing.
In the Friends Meeting,
in a circle of chairs,
four hundred miles
from where you came
to live with me here.
We were married by your teacher
in your meditation hall in Cambridge.
I hear her voice in yours.
I hear the Buddha's voice in yours,
the one about noticing warmly,
the little voice he heard in his head
when he knew that the Dharma
would be made into hallucinations.

She whispered to him
and pressed the seeds of the heart
into the lines of his palm.

Shimmer

I love you on this grey day
in the gathering weft of tears
on the slate where I chalk my joys,
your skin, the stayed lances
of the nervous natives you passed,
your chestnut eyes that today
I don't mistake for distrust
no, today I see them only reaching
to touch my eyes.

On this grey day I love you
with whatever must pass
in the mingling of joys and tears
on an equator, in a cardinal flash.

Impressionism

It is a perilous time,
full of uncertainty
where clouds rush by
without stopping to talk to the sky
and scurrying ants
fret about something so large
it pulls at the colony like
an invisible tornado,
this thing, this inevitable thing
that goes flying by an ant,
the tiny nerves knowing
the last leaves are falling
while the cities in our heads
know nothing but soap operas
except in dream,
where the actors begin to become narrow,
noticing the churn of the strange,
the brushes of god dipped in the wrong color,
pressing onto a fraying canvas,
about to make a picture,
about to be seen as one trembling whole
when it is stepped away from.

The Road Home

Another work week is over
and I am driving home along
the highway that twists
because of the cool river,
and the ratio of trees to people
switches almost instantly
and the eels in the river go by
and they talk to the trees I'm sure,
the river joining in, bubbling,
about how they made the curve
that the road must take
and I hear them ask if I am listening
which I am because I know
that my sense of hearing
and every growing thought of mine
are made by the world outside.

Myth

Work looms, something might not work,
ribbons need cutting and I've no scissors,
the wellness of bodies is evaporating,
like big tuna and the ice they are packed in.
The only thing certain is worry,
successful, persistent and parasitic.

Lucky for me, I keep a little myth
wrapped up in a box on the shelf.
In cases like this, I take a little out,
make a dragon and knight diorama
and let the battle for the heart unfold.

No, I don't really have any myth in a box,
but even the idea of such a thing
is more real than worry.

Vow II

Marry me again my love
marry me every day
only you are my rising sun
that warms the wheat
waving on the plain of me
only you, you are the only one.

You open the vessel of my heart
and make sweet blood to flow again.

It was the Spirit that joined us,
and I bow to you, her jewel.
She made you in a rough furnace
as once in a rare while she might,
rare you are, as one mother star
in a frozen universe of night.

She left you warm and moist,
and when you are around me
I begin to be born again,
for I have been dry, covered in dust.

When you turn to me,
the pendulum shakes,
and the chant begins again,
the one I had forgotten.

Election

I am not sure I have been a wise leader.
I have put me in harm's way
with a vague and wavering foreign policy,
I have burned through resources
for short-term gain,
and overspent on the exploration of space.

Tonight I ask every cell to vote for me,
that despite the economic downturn
and the certain debilities of aging,
the threats from without and within,
that I hear you and will be a strong leader.

I pledge to take you as far as you can go
in this very life, to set the conditions
whereby you can grow, multiply, and do your job,
live to the fullness of your destiny
bearing the torch of a venerable life
and share the brilliant beam of the life of sanctity. 

The future will be difficult, this I can see,
where blind leaders bargain for Trojan horses.
I ask you, in this narrow veldt we breathe
to lend me your nucleus and vesicles,
your mitochondria. 

I am not asking a lot of you, 
I am asking everything. 
In return, I will lead facing the future, 
standing firm with each and every one of you
on the rich ground of the past we share
and walk onward, not without questions,
but with unswerving courage
and the magnificent awareness
that we are only here because of one another.

Dream V

I dreamed I found the jewels of dream,
honor, friendship, love, ecstasy, space,
the warmth of sun and wet of clean springs,
and the love and life of other living things
without the stones of legislation
or the vagary of decay.

Of course by degrees the goodness failed,
and not because of its establishment or lack
but because even in fantasy there is a space
albeit small, between the actor and the act,
and what things really are and what they seem.

The Wind

Somewhere, the wind waits to be born.
It is pale and cloudy there,
on a high and sharp mountainside
where it is not yet warm enough to move.

Here in the valley, the wind is blowing gently,
It is bright and clear through the trees
in the middle of the sun and earth
and apples sweet and blushed.

Tomorrow the wind will die
in the frozen eye of dawn
and I will wrap myself in a black shawl
and blow out a black candle.

I have learned the way of the wind
and hold her in the sail of my will.
Yet, like her I am only passing
and will write of me what can be read
only by
a winged and fleeting eye.

November

The north wind slides down
the hillside
like the last touch of father's hand
when he died,
through a cloud of white
his great hand on a white sheet
where the last of his blood
fled toward his heart
the way summer leaves
rush to the ground.

I am running to stay strong
in the change of my seasons.
After a half an hour
I can no longer bear
the bluster of each half lap
where the wind slaps
away the warm sheet I wear.

I pray to him
give me the grace
to praise the space
in which I can still run home. 

Special Today

Right now, sweet petals
of inebriating peace
drop with gentle kisses
on the outside of my cheek.

I've always been able
to find nutrition, somewhere
in an hour of day or night
at seaside in the clatter of shells
from the spreading fall of waves
or in the company of owls
in the fading crescent moon
or the popping of the sun
out of the mud of dream.
Yet there is a remainder
of a thing that is nowhere
and it is sharp like a knife,
bitter like chicory,
waiting
with the patience of the dead,
always almost ready to be served.

Day of the Dead

When you die they say
you get a bird's eye view,
looking down from above
at the mean and meager form
that is quickly cooling
from the inside out.
This is the extent of the report
but I suppose it goes on,
the dead seeing

more and more clearly with time
the fading of things,
the body mingling with earth,
families formed only briefly
and then taken apart
the way cells die.

But then, they must also know
that death brings space,
the space between fingers
with which we hold one another.

Wisdom is sometimes very chilly
when it comes to rest on you
from somewhere you cannot yet see.