Monday, December 30, 2019

Solstice Prayer, Laucini Peak, 2019

Here on the summit, bodies weary
And exhilarated, below this gorgeous sky,
Silver gray and grave
As Ireland in November, we ask

For clarity on this day of great
Darkness to know fertile
Spaciousness, the blazing hearth
Of our true home.

Help us to re-member this place
Of simple being, of ease beneath
The mountain of rock and moss

And sage, the quiet inside the clatter
Of habitual thought, the shimmering
Love welling up behind facades
Of seductive regret.

May we hold close, yet lightly,
Those we have loved, who
Like whispers in December wind
Have vanished and somehow stay

Bound still in this mystery of earth and sky,
Memory and breath, where wordlessness
Circles deeper, on and on and on:

Twin hawks dissolving into twilight’s
Golden arms.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

downstairs alone early
morning in the dark
house warmed by one
shimmering Christmas
tree, wrapped up
in my blue bathrobe,
sipping coffee and yesterday's
phone call, I am
a rich man.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

                HOPE'S CAVE

Swimming solo into the cave without food
Or a map, into the promise of nasturtiums
And quiet beyond silence, into days of boredom
Dissolving these nights of discovery where water,
Stone and the complete absence of light
Coalesce to scintillate a vulnerable hope
Birthed squalling, bloodied and beautiful,
Blind to betrayal, to nasturtiums,
To being hurried through darkness.

Monday, November 25, 2019

Liberation blooms in sustained fidelity 
to the Mystery of one’s own essence, 
to that quiet place where two sit together 
cognizant of death and obedient to Silence
while seahorses soar across blue skies
above a field spacious and green,
birthing surprise, thresholding joy, 
waking to laughter, fathering new life....

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Have You?

Have you every wanted
to wander inside

waterfall's beckoning glisten,
it's tumbling wonder and shine,

and like a tendril of fern
clinging to granite,

abide wordlessly within
these ever misty
effervescent insides?

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Heidi's Time 8:23-823

This time was hers'; this Phoenix address,
also hers' always.

All the way from the curb of tears
and dewdrops shimmering

on backyard blades of grass to the vacant
lot and scrawny palm trees

where her childhood home, now vanished,
once stood submerged in Arizona heat
that scorched sidewalks scraping
bare feet raw.

Now with sparkling eyes, toes soaring,
she visits dancing twice daily like clockwork

from the reliable home she'd always yearned for--

this numberless, spacious palace
of nowhere,

where she shall forever reside.


There are those who
would insist

that to make an altar
of sorrow and regret

and to bow reverently
towards those faded
flowers

is a profound mistake.

I, happily, am
not one of them.


Saturday, November 2, 2019

after lunch, walking
down to the lake
with the root
of so much,
arising....


Sunday, October 20, 2019


4 steps into a labyrinth of stone

(This spiraling space for not wondering why)

'amnesty' circles then lands on his shoulder

like a seahorse or angelic maverick 
suddenly wrested from cerulean sky

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Angelic Surprise

between the alpha and omega
of ocean's salt and spindrift

in sunshine spiraling,

lands an Angel named
Amnesty on his shoulder
inspiring

within this labyrinth
of memory, of stone,

on an Autumn afternoon
in sunshine spiraling..

Saturday, October 12, 2019


Morning Vision

Light on water
Shimmers silvery
Paint across
Translucent rivers 
Of dawn..

Monday, October 7, 2019


Real Faith
      is

knowing

in our deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever

       free
falling....

our hearts quiver 

like drops of precious mercury

as we,
     no longer hidden,

     descend

time and again,

into intimacy’s shifting
sands and the realm
of creation’s 10,000 things,

where still, supple
arms of uncertainty,

those seeds of mystery

that confound and delight,

befuddle and inspire,

river forth from
each spacious
and strange,

befriending moment.

Friday, October 4, 2019

Precious

Walking to the lake,
the root
of so much,
arising....

Sunday, September 15, 2019


                 A Question of Listening

Can you hear at the heart of our lives a ROAR incessant and blue,
a tulip of melody blooming wildly true, a voice insistent
as a Sunday church picnic of crazy desire, tearing and sundering

unseen borders holding our lives’ squandered fires by those asleep,
myopic and tamed who murmur and mutter in normalcy’s name
while ignoring precious earth’s possible demise, this scourge of warming,

of certain sea-rise, of blazing Amazon’s desecration as we kneel erect
in row after row of fresh-polished pews gazing away from life’s brilliance,
this river of music that shimmers underneath all scattered yearnings? 

When will we stop our anxious distractions and addictive chatter,
place both ears on her ground, stepping now into cool water
to fully awaken, to wholeheartedly listen and allow world’s
creatures and future to thrive and to matter?

She, although fading, still sings of hope in this stillness, sustains simply,
completely, as all flows humbly from wildness within her mysterious glistening.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Light wakes
the eye,

yet who
can tell
us why?

Wednesday, September 11, 2019


  In The Beginning Was Wordlessness---another word for ‘the radiance of simple being’

(recalling moments unheld by the apparently sturdy and connecting,
yet actually reality-distancing and limiting, sometimes skillfully crafted
yet always ambiguous, supposed scaffolds of language)

Mushrooms nestled and white on wet lawn

Rain splattered sidewalk

The thick-legged girl booting a soccer ball beyond the goal

A bird pirouetting along grass, worm-searching

The bench where we sat and where you’re not, now

Clatter of window shades in wind

Tingle of feet after today’s run

The presence of your absence this afternoon

This sensation in the chest, remembering painting together in the backyard

The memory of hugging Therese in her kitchen silently, forgetting
for a wordless moment other guests sitting around the table

Bougainvillea blossom on the running path, red with a white dot

The shine and shimmer of my grandson’s grin

The bird alone on a bare limb overlooking the lake

Thoughts of an underlying evolving energy prior to all thought,
perhaps the true source of what is known as word

Downtown Portland library in afternoon rain

Hummingbird arriving out of nowhere three feet from my face

The thicket quivering like silver in morning light at the park

The bald friend with cancer sitting next to his wife

A sense of not knowing and still stepping forward

This attempt to welcome emptiness in the gut, something vague
and hopeful, unwelded to language, struggling to be behind time

The poet’s longing to write what’s underneath words and before all images

A t-shirt waving, tossed by breeze on a patio chair

Sensing weariness in morning’s body, stepping out of bed

My desire to live for a time like the blossom on the path, wordlessly….

Monday, September 2, 2019

Real Faith
      is

knowing

in our deep
bones

through
   empty
       space

we are forever

       free
falling....

our hearts quiver 

like a drop

of precious mercury

as we,
     no longer hidden,

     descend

time and again,
unbidden and bidden,

into intimacy’s shifting
sands, these supple arms

of uncertainty and
this spacious,
strange,

befriending
moment

maple trees
   smack

  sky/torn

by whistling
   winds.


Bringing water
 to a thirsty melaleuca
   after coffee
    
      early morning’s
       easy pleasure
         in full sunshine.



Paradigm Shift, Twist and Shout

Instead of that afterlife idea
Espoused by some, if not many,
Or the equally believed articles of faith
In either a murky nothingness or a definite
Return to the planet as a new character
In a novel plot, I prefer to imagine

A grand room about the girth of Nebraska
That’s filled with the dead, the living
And the not-yet-born. This motley trinity
Sweetly shuffling together in stocking feet,
Sometimes raucously, at others' silently
Across a shimmering vast dance floor.

They’re telling corny jokes, laughing
And beaming in their wild inclusion;
Feeling so much lighter now, they twist
To Chubby Checker, fox trot to Sinatra,
And waltz to Mr. Mozart. Past hurts,

Let-downs and betrayals, injuries
Of all sorts one day surely to transpire
Are released completely here where
Everyone perspires scent of peppermint.

Smells of freesia and alyssum swirl,
Entwined with tendrils of night-blooming jasmine
Kissing pregnant air; my lips can feel babies
Kicking in the joyous twirl.

Even wallflowers blossom in this sparkling air.

When I’m quiet I hear our breathing softly wafting
As we spin and sashay round 
And round without tiring
To lift each other up in tender spirals

Streaming high and higher—
Beloved past, bright-eyed future
All embraced by those now present,
Without clocks ticking.

And everyone is gleaming….

Saturday, August 31, 2019

at a poetry workshop when

one squashed teardrop
streams her face

then falls
underneath
the floor

where hands of light
from a clock called
  
grief is a river

gleam all night

Friday, August 30, 2019

Drifting back

Eyes closed
Body still

To where
This whole
Thing started

(I know not how)

You’re carried forth

A newborn star
Mystery’s thrill

Into future’s web

This eternal now

Tuesday, August 27, 2019


   The Walk

Knowing her is a slow cautious
walk, a grasping then a stagger 
up a tenement stairwell
in dim light,

where smell of patchouli sifts
still air and scrawls of graffiti
are engraved everywhere.

Each step arduous, harder
than the last, uncertain
if these cold stones can

hold the weight of my desire,
the freight of untamed worry,
my need.

Finally, breath heaving mind spinning
        I find her faded door:

a paint splotched wall at which I stare
and stare, bolted tight inside and out,

I ask you my hidden witnesses---
was she ever even here?


Do not squander
these blossoms

quivering in
afternoon light

but gaze down often
onto this path

of blazing color
strewn before you

with thankful eyes
with simple heart.


   Waiting In Vain

Steam rolls off the first cup

of black coffee as women’s
voices rise from next door,

then in a moment, evaporate.

I’m waiting for my muse,
she’s tardy, AWOL for days,

on another bender perhaps,

or at best lazing in a field
of desiccated summer grasses
and 50 year-old palm trees

stunted and sparse, lousy
minimalist art at canyon bottom;

she’s dozing now, dazed in the heat
beyond reach of this pen, this vacated
page, this man’s bland mind, pondering

meandering onwards 
as the chipped cup cools,

begins its further dwindling.

Sunday, August 25, 2019



Another Soft Landing

something shifts
in the cool bed
as early light wafts
through window smudge.

quiet overtakes herds
of wild garbage trucks 
and hoofed horned creatures

of his wayward imagination
in the alley back of the building
as he begins to budge

and a clipper ship drifts
from sleep’s foreign horizon
to enter calmer waters
of this shallow harbor.

one by one,
his warm feet step
without thinking

or looking back
onto shore's floor
towards the tiny kitchen
and coffee.

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Sunglasses meet
morning fog


to obscure
blue skies,

still, sight soars
towards unseen

space

from bleary
open eyes....

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

wearing sunglasses

morning's fog
obscures blue
skies

while sight soars
towards the great
unseen

from your weary
trusting eyes....


echoes crash
off memory's cliffs
within
our body's breathing
wearing sunglasses
in fog
your vision
clears

Sunday, August 11, 2019


I Give You A Poem That Starts With Cliché

We all die. And whether I drop

Down to the asphalt like a shooting
Star, one moment here the next not,

Or fade in a soft coasting towards
The great below, a rheostat of life
Dialing into darkness beneath breath,

Or perhaps disappear like a melted bank
Of tired ice and rock
Slogging into April puddles,

Today running a hot trail near home, the satisfying crunch of gravel and dirt
Underfoot, and then suddenly through sweat-drenched eyes

Seven jacarandas revealed and shimmering in a motley row,
Wild life smiling for no reason 
Underneath springtime shawls of purple snow.

Saturday, August 10, 2019


  How Evolution Might Work    
    
Can you hand your feet over to an untrodden road,
wander and wonder, meander beyond
your grandparents’ immigrant lives?

Can you allow intoxication to enter your life
in rain-sifted moonlight glazing your face
on that spacious trail ahead where a silver

stream roars unceasingly, pours over granite
and sandstone as July’s sun sings high above?

Your bronze skin warmed by this path and by strangers
with dogs, backpacks and tents upon whom you gaze
softly, sometimes befriend;

warmed too by your triumphs and day’s hidden dangers,
the copious blunders you’ve agreed somehow to shoulder,

this burden of tiredness followed by shimmering mornings
when you breathe easy and slow, when you’re heartened

by dark coffee in a blue tin cup, a stand of birch trees
in breezes swaying, two squirrels that levitate up
a thick Douglas fir.

Air tingles and sparkles as you shout out a tune found
in your dreams, then bloom into daylight stumbling
and flailing, soberly cavorting along this stone river twisting.

The world’s become your tavern where nothing’s wasted
nor cloistered, and you a drunk thanking his ancestors,

even making friends with old failures and angers, aging
towards mercy, towards stillness, giving and growing.

You’re a sunburnt monk of evolving surprises, a mad
Bacchus dancing in thirst-slaking moonshine, savoring

every slip-up, each step and each stagger,
every well tasted sip of Life’s river flowing.



After the storm
subsides a pungency
of sage arising.

A cold steering wheel
grips my aching thoughts
and hands.

All the self-control required
to drive tonight
on that salted solitary road

when your missing voice
and silvery hair, warm

hand in mine, remembered
taste and scent

across these many months
and miles
still such sadness holds.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

         transparencies

carried by life lightly we become
transparent as a glass of cool water
illumined in sunshine, a child’s
giggling lifted by an evening breeze
from the house next door,
butterfly wings soaring
through backyard bushes,
or the way the convicted killer
discovers mercy gazing  
towards his victim’s spouse
before he leaves this earth.

Wednesday, August 7, 2019


       Heart of Sacrifice

They say Jesus became Christ
when he squandered himself
completely, dying into
a living miracle of creative surrender.

Heart cracked so wide open in love,
like a rabbit crushed suddenly

by a marauding 18-wheeler
outside a juke box rest stop
somewhere in Nevada

where chaotic airborne sagebrush
and toxic dust storms of greed,
fear and craving clog

our lungs
our vision
our life

but can’t stop our astonished
wounded faces

from yearning
and searching
everywhere for him

and the true heart
of his teaching.

And how, like a meandering
river woven from blue sky,
empty desert and galaxies
of kindness,

he makes everything
sacred.



I wanted something, I wanted. I could not have it.

As close as that pint of ice cream here right now in the freezer, the kitchen
15 feet away. Instantly, she’d felt like home.

No, her third floor walk-up apartment in a strange yet strangely familiar
part of the planet on a chilled November day felt like home.

The small kitchen overlooking a church and field, the warm bath after the long flight
and an hour driving to her town through drizzle past bare trees, then trout with beetroot
soup, cherry wine and homemade chocolate cake for our first dinner, how tall and pretty

she was in person at the bleak Eastern European airport that reminded me of a rust-belt
bus station. We hugged and I thought “I’m glad I came.”

Here in Loreta’s small home, comfort and belonging were redolent of family holidays
when dad remained calm, even friendly, unusually tender.

Weeks later, buying the card for her downtown, I felt awkward and numb, standing in line
with laughing school children buying afternoon snacks, old women purchasing chicken
and onions for supper. Then the long walk over the blue bridge past the funicular and up
the steep hill one last time; placing the card on the kitchen table, later on a couple of drinks

our final night while she sat across the table and watched patiently. No, more like she tolerated
my wish to have a beer at a neighborhood bar I’d read about in the 'Lonely Planet' guidebook 
to Lithuania.

Two weeks’ later my new underwear and socks bought for the trip, forgotten 
that final dark morning in a dresser drawer next to the new bed that we never 
slept in together, arrived in a brown envelope at my mailbox, a small candle and note 
tucked within, something about keeping the light.

I dished up a big bowl of gelato, not sure I kept the candle.