Thursday, November 30, 2017

           Old Time Religion

I don't know for certain if there is a God
or god or goddess or pantheon, if you will,
of skyward or earthbound divinities,

or an abyss of nothing and randomness
waiting for us nonchalantly 
at the bottom of it all,

but I do know when time and space
are savored open-heartedly and slowly
in this stew of experience we call life

it doesn't matter to me what's ultimate or not,

besides last night's surprising rain and today's
blue dome shimmering overhead and those kids'
from the neighborhood gleeful squeals

wildly announcing that all is well in playful
sweet song on the park's moist and glistening,
green grass.
       Heart of Sacrifice

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

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

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,

the true heart
of his teaching.

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

he makes everything
sacred.
      still LIFE

a plateful of citrus fruit
sits flush on the smooth
tan table.

eight happy fat heads
convened in quiet
for art

speak in tart tongues,
tasty and wakeful,

tingling what’s fresh
for today’s born-again
taking and making.

these orange and yellow
orbs plus one ancient
brown brush

create a lush
fragrant painting.

several lazy planets
in contemplative play

pig-pile their colorful prayer
perched on top

of a poor vagrant’s
mystical table.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

                           Homewards

I have feared that gone are the days of magic and mayhem,
those hot summer eves when hordes of kids in the street  
squealed after supper, played hide and seek and kick the can
as the orange sun sunk under the West Hills, and those July
afternoons hitting the long ball, rounding the bases,
heading for home.

Then come with me now to a cave door bouldered shut
at top of a field in midnight’s hushed hour, entering cool earth
with purpose, inching downwards we’ll move into the presence
of past where much may be found.

As we step into a moist grotto, grip this pick-axe
left here by Rumi the poet, grab its ash handle, feel the heft
of the tool and your sure strength as well.

Swinging it boldly groundwards, you pierce the dirt floor
where pottery shards and tourmaline nuggets gleam
in darkness like boyhood’s baseballs hidden
in Mrs Tupling’s sacred rose bushes, that off limits
garden where only your eagle-eyed mother
could find the lost leather orbs.

I towel sweat from your brow as deeper you dig.

We gaze up through black air at intricate patterns of boxwork
embossed over centuries, minerals designed to drip from above
and lace the cave’s high ceiling as each drop of fluid
builds a home bit by bit,

a crossword puzzle completed by perseverance and grit
over time, like a family becoming its best and real self
by naming and honoring every one of its ancestors.

Breathe in this still feeling, the quiet structuring
of earth’s bloodstream, listen closely, offer your attention
as Chippewa Indian spirits whisper their lives underground.

Their birchbark canoes glide across infinite lakes where wild rice,
walleye and northern pike lived freely together in four seasons.
They gather in homes warmed by bright fires until the white man’s
ominous coming, the violent intrusions, theft of their homes, rape

of their women, children ripped sinfully from green northern forests
to schools of strange religion, brainwashed and flogged in God’s name
for singing their own songs.

Now you must reclaim and carry their history with yours’
along with their grace and wholehearted embrace of living
while the pickaxe reveals their wisdom, bravery and pain,
their powerful knowing earth-sky’s continual flowing,
these true connections between the deer, the fish and the people,
the shine and flowering of present, future and past.

With unburied stories of long time and Great Spirit in our bones
and our hearts, we’re now ready to move upwards, slowly re-enter
the world of daylight, crawling then walking in reverent footsteps
of silence.

Blinking our eyes as we bathe again in gold sun, we return
to the street in front of our house, now back on the playfield
near the comfort of front porches, summer suppers, baseball bats
replacing pickaxes, with hope of ecstatic home runs mixed
with worry about a prickly neighbor’s forbidden rose bushes.

Wistfully we smile with vague memories of beautiful ancestors
and strange patterns of minerals in squares, faint echoes of sore hands
and stiff shoulders, yet we rest in satisfaction for such gifts
received from the sacred work underground.

On the street where we live we hear our chums' teasing and laughter,
the sharp cracking of bats as horsehide baseballs gallop far,
soaring through air, sometimes plunging into thorns
of pink flowers to disappear in an instant, then reappear
when uncovered by a perceptive mother.

These days dazzle like shooting stars blazing and bursting
from time’s horizon where our hallowed forefathers and mothers
illumine our lives completing the circle, thankfully returning us home 
with magic, mayhem and mystery through sure-footed knowledge 

of the four directions immersed in all seasons, their centuries
of courage walking with and for us, gifting us, warming us homewards
now and forever, with this amazing, ancient open-hearted love.

Monday, November 27, 2017

     Sunday Morning

A single crow caws its cry of dawn
as the neighborhood awakens,
takes its Sunday yawn.

My head groggy, thoughts thick
and slow as churned butter,
body dense, shoulders tense,

and why wouldn’t this be
the fact after a week such as this?

Yet guitar music floats
into my little home, fills
this brisk air on the lazy deck,

where I’m cozy warm
in my favorite sweatshirt.

A spacious sky
silently overlays
all the day today,

even the still, dozing street
blinks, then starts to smile 
in its tired morning stretch.
     Listen….

Evening opens, then falls,

soft as rosebushes
the color of dawn,

everything here gleaming

like hidden seed of pearl
discovered by divers

on a woman’s silken
skin quietly sleeping,

like stars at midnight

she shimmers,

she glistens,

Sunday, November 26, 2017

                    Tzintsunsan

the Aztec village of Tzintsunsan sits on the edge of a lake
where time slows to a golden hum

and the colorful vibrations of hummingbirds
are flying songs that glow of men fishing for food 

in wooden boats made from pine trees 

in the mountains nearby,

and of beautiful babies born of brown Indian mothers,
swaddled in straw, asleep on small beds made from reeds
dried in Mexican sun, grown in dark mud underneath

this living water, amidst echoes of greedy Spaniards,
foreign marauders paddling murderously across 
their once placid lives, yet these violent wrongs 

could never drown out all on this lake 

who glide calmly and strongly in deep silence 
forever across such shimmering blue waters.
darkness blankets

the alley outside
as one earthen bowl of bananas
dozes inside,

six curved yellow sleepers
spoon on the table, they’re
joined at the tip,

seem to face and retrace
my soft lidded eyes.

when piano-playing like smoke
curled in the cave
of the next room
entrances my mind,

you nap on the stub
of a sofa

dreaming,

whisper a sigh…..

Friday, November 24, 2017

                         Homewards

I have feared that gone are the days of magic and mayhem,
those hot summer eves when hordes of kids in the street  
squealed after supper, played hide and seek and kick the can
as the orange sun sunk under the West Hills, and those July
afternoons hitting the long ball rounding the bases
heading for home.

Then come with me now, if you will, to a cave door
bouldered shut at top of a field in midnight’s hushed
hour, entering cool earth with purpose, inching downwards
we’ll move into the presence of past where much may be found.

As we step into a moist grotto, grip this pick-axe
left here by Rumi the poet, grab its ash handle, feel the heft
of the tool and your sure strength as well.

Swinging it boldly groundwards, you pierce the dirt floor
where pottery shards and tourmaline nuggets gleam
in darkness like boyhood’s baseballs hidden
in Mrs Tupling’s sacred rose bushes, that off limits
garden where only your eagle-eyed mother
could find the lost leather orbs.

I towel sweat from your brow as deeper you dig.
We gaze up through black air at intricate patterns
of boxwork embossed over centuries, minerals drip
from above to lace the cave’s high ceiling
as each drop of water builds a home bit by bit,

a crossword puzzle completed by perseverance
and grit over time, like a family becoming
its best and real self by naming and honoring
every one of its ancestors.

Breathe in this still feeling, the quiet structuring
of earth’s fluids, listen closely, give complete attention
as Chippewa Indian spirits whisper their lives here underground.

Birchbark canoes glide across infinite lakes where wild rice,
walleye and northern pike lived freely together in four seasons,
until the white man’s coming, the violent sinful intrusions, theft
of their homes, rape of their women, children ripped
from the green northern forest to schools of strange religion,
brainwashed and flogged in God's name for singing their own songs.

Now you must reclaim and carry their history with yours’
along with their grace and brave wholehearted embrace
of life while the pickaxe reveals their wisdom and pain, 
their powerful knowing earth-sky’s continual flowing, 
these true connections between the shine, the flowering 
of present, future and past.

With unburied stories of long time and Great Spirit in our bones
and our hearts, we’re ready to move upwards, slowly re-enter
the world of daylight, crawling then walking in reverent footsteps of silence.

Blinking our eyes as we bathe again in gold sun, we return
to the street in front of our house, now back on the playfield
near the comfort of front porches, summer suppers, baseball bats
instead of pickaxes, hopes of home runs and boyhood worries
about a prickly neighbor’s forbidden rose bushes.

Wistfully we smile with vague memories of beautiful ancestors
and strange patterns of minerals, faint echoes of sore hands
and stiff shoulders, yet rest in deep satisfaction of such gifts
received from not to be forgotten work underground

On the street where we live we hear our chums' bursting laughter,
the sharp cracking of bats as horsehide baseballs gallop far
and soar through the air, sometimes plunging into perfumed
thorns of pink flowers to disappear in an instant then reappear

when uncovered by a perceptive mother. These days now
are like shooting stars from time’s great distances
where our hallowed forefathers and mothers forever brighten

our lives, thankfully completing the circle by bringing magic, mayhem
and mystery to us through their sure-footed knowledge of the four directions
and all seasons, their centuries of courage gifting us with open-hearted love.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

ARRIVAL

A window in my chest opens,
people below are reading
and thinking, occasionally
talking with one another

on green benches scattered
like rose petals across
a sunlit plaza, like fresh
sentences on first pages

of a novel where something
crucial occurs when least
expected.

A young girl, golden braids
flying behind her, scampers
giggling into a fountain

as two old men, canes at their sides,
cradling cups of espresso, together
nod toward the child’s delight.

Suddenly a breeze dances across
my face, turns this page

and you arrive
at my window,
smiling.
     Communion

First the rowdy adolescents
hit the sky--
three butterflies

spin, dive, and soar
in sudden flutters of ivory and orange.

Just below
their field of play
maturity holds sway.

Four diaphanous wings
touch stillness on a stem
the entire translucent
day,

as tantric partners
glisten and sway,

bravely dancing
with what’s been
missing, holding

your absence close,
      
        yet still,
          
             at bay.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Mindfulness of the breath,

a single leaf of the backyard
sycamore falling
into earth’s open arms

today. Sense
leaf’s texture
in time between two fingers

alive, pulsing
in the hearth
of afternoon light.

Being present in the body, sensing
muscle and bone, skin and sinew,

locating what is real
in this moment’s
simple physicality

this moment only
found again,
and again,
and again,

in the small passageway
of your shimmering attention,
forever returning

to enter the temple of being,
with a gentle shift
allowing

each tree leaf
feeling body
breath infused thought

an attentive spacious home
of quiet knowing,
accepting care.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

TRANCE-FORMATION

The Elk majestic
on a high green hill

gazes forth and far beyond
the world of form and fact,

while Snake beneath sheds
skin after skin,

is earthy, sensation bound,
simply silent, tightly coiled,

and solidly intact.
May the interval we call life
between the secure ground of your being
and the hope-filled sky of your becoming
emanate spaciously abundant blessings.

Thursday, November 16, 2017



                                The Voyage

I am
       meat
           for my journey.

This canoe made of birch and ancestors’ bones,
laden with fleece, apples and rye bread, stuffed cabbage
and coffee, a map of charred margins, a rusted nail
ripped from Jozo’s Bosnian home, a ring of blue

lapis my other grandfather, and a photo of lovers—
they’re smiling-- on a great canyon’s edge.

Voices shine friendly through rain-fall and fog across familial waters;
these here in stillness those already gone, while grenades of stars
volcano our love through somnolent skies.

We’ll glide in silence over depths painted with eloping and cancer,
maples and moonshine, soup pots and opera, berry pie ala’mode.

Through silver waters black mud this voyage continues its flowing,
             woven and nourished by dark bread and story
          of Jozo and Ana, Ruth, Langley Raymond and Norma
                    to whom I am now bowing,

                   You are meat for my journey.

      bedtime

Yes, the bed was soft,
like silk, last night.

Sheets so cool they could
have been water. The pillow safely

under my head, a reminder of all
that’s good in the world.

Tucked in cozy and warm
under a nest of covers,

these welcoming layers
blanketed my mind

from drenching rainstorms
of thought.

The body thankful as it leaned
into rest, the promise

of sleep’s quenching
replenishment

soothed like a friend
curving quietly beside.

As the day’s scattered
shouts diminished,

I fell slowly
down,

easing completely
into dreamtime’s
green earth

of the sweetest unclenching.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

                                 The Invitation

Slowly unbutton these pewter discs sewn to your shirt,
tear off your tattered tunic of fatigue and regret and step out
from these closeted depressions and longings into soft light,
out of petrified habits of waiting and wanting hid underneath stones
and lift each shy foot like a homeward-bound tune, start that green
dancing across fields of daffodil and rye, rest in the shade of great oaks
on hillslopes bisected by streams where dragonflies burst like sparklers in July,
where a family of buffalo feast on tufted sweet grasses, these burly brown
soothsayers shrouded in wool-shag back from manifest destiny at cliff’s edge,
hear them whisper at dusk into your thirsting ears, tales told of your one true nature,
your love of baseball, rivers that wander, music and fir trees, rainclouds of change,
maps of far places, your messy redemptions, circular pondering, these sudden
endings like earthquakes and eventual resurrections, friends you love who give
unearned exemptions, your trembling with joy and from half-buried shame,
now fully clothed in these hoofprints and heartbeats of our holy animal ways. 

Monday, November 13, 2017

For Quincy, Number 2

Nobody….

not these squirrels dancing
and prancing out on their limb

nor the kids frisbee-ing sky-high
on the wide sandy beach

nor the big bowl of ice cream soaked
in caramel just beyond reach

nor the bright Autumn colors
of maple trees lining 8th street

nor the fat Hood River apples we
picked on Sunday pre-Halloween

Nobody Mr Q….

has cheeks as sweet,
as undeniably cute,

as do you!

Friday, November 10, 2017


           CHRIS

My brother has 8 or 9 teeth,
about 1/4 of his hearing,

a lifelong love of booze and drugs,
old Mercedes, gaudy turquoise bracelets.

His rages sudden and wild
crash like Niagra Falls crackling
at night in an electric storm.

He lives in a small home smack
in the stony middle
of the Oregon State Penitentiary.

He lurches when he walks,
almost feral, grasping
for himself alone.

Our history isn't easy nor
a simple story, my recoiling

from Chris, his jagged
wounded ways, our bonded
perils, the earthquakes

and volcanoes
shrouding
our tender hearts,

is visceral, automatic,

an addiction of my own,
perhaps.

maple trees 

 smack

a torn/sky 

whistling
in wind.
             Swelter                                

Maybe rain will fall one day onto
these shopping malls without roofs
and these desiccated lawns.

And then you might return less aloof
with a bracelet of green jade
on your right wrist—

that wrist like a tiny bird carries a nest woven
from surprise and robust quiet ripenings,
your favorite calling cards.

Then the ocean’s play with spindrift and wave,
children in the sand, might make sense,

boiling and singing again
beyond the buoys bouncing orange.

And then hope like a slender dancer drunk and lusty
in her evening shall arise like rainfall
at your gypsy wedding.

And then, and only then, New Orleans’ funeral marchers
shall swagger down Bourbon Street single file
on a day of glass glittering like gold teeth.

They are soaked in light,
their rowdy music spills over, 
gorging us, drenching us
in powdered sugar

and chicory, everything’s become
such a gorgeous rag-tag swelter.
Weather Report      (for Kellee)

I want to rain/storm
your entire body
with care, subtle misting,
wild torrents.

Drench your explorer’s mind
with dew that glistens,

kiss your rainbow hair
through every weather

in every forest, under
every waterfall we
can find.

Listen to you sing bits
of English history
from your strong
Celtic heart,

straight and feathery
into my good ear
like a newborn lark,

like a dark cloud
spilling scintillas

of light into pails
of pure dawn.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017


       Fluent, Obdurate

Watch the river: it’s a torrent downstream.

A fluency of tongues penetrates
then liquifies our liminal umbral.

You swell like a pregnant animal,
clamber up steep embankments
towards the strange city above.

Sparrows and herons fly through mist
with blue wind on the wing drifting
upwards, they move past mountain ranges
further away.

In the humid night air your voice meanders
around, then right through me,
although the day we met may yet disappear.

Oleander washes the evening awake and fragrant 
as distinct, floating voices
distract our six senses.

Crowds of rocks settled down on river bottom
don’t easily move under acres of water.

If a flood from the uplands smashes fast
and strong, these stones of memory
may tumble and roll.

And our time together, solid but weightless,
dissolve into clouds of scattered feathers
or few grains of fools’s gold.
     Neighborhood

My neighbor’s front door groans
open, then 

their screen door clangs 
shut

while a birdcall, an airplane
landing, and the wooden

mobile out the kitchen window 
form a musical mélange.

Voices of children
soft, below me
in the alley, 

far from forlorn,

sing everything
Autumn.
  The Dance                                                                                

Oh tangled death,
I have come to see
on these steamy

sidewalks past
the midstream
of my life,

we were always,
                always dancing
                             in your spiny arms.

Those tangoed nights
of trance flirting
with illusion’s
flimsy daughter,

smoke-grime on her
tavern window
did not curb
                     your hidden
                     stepping.

                  Yes, we are dancing
                  even now while
                                                your rhythm ripples
                                                        on and on

through this stained-glass
dappled darkness...