Sea Dream

We drove to the beach in a long low convertible with wide fins,

Past flat-roofed houses the colors of shells fading in the sun,

And swam alone on a peninsula of white sand.

It felt real.

Turquoise waves rolled in from the point much like this world,

I swam without tiring, the swells lifting me, I was of the sea,

I knew the water, its currents and tides, its depths and its distances.

You called me Fish.

Indigo to Flame

From day to night and back again

I traveled through the orbit of the moon,

Indigo to flame and back again,

Immersed myself in endless space,

From head to toe and back again,

Returned to solitude but not alone,

For I have dreamed my way to Eden and come back again, 

And now i will my heart to waiting like a stone.

May Among the Living

We walk among sentient beings

With respect for the coming-of-age.

In Morning Mist

Water falls from tier to tier,

The sound of it in mist

With sighing doves

On the path skirting the trees,

Paved with white violets

Closed through the night rain,

Opening now in his caution.

Memory fills the fields,

And the haze on the close wooded hills,

And the sky that engulfs him.

News in May

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After rain in the twilight,

Under the weighted leaves,

Peace comes dripping slow,

Common firsts of the woodland

The truest events of our lives.

—with a line by Yeats

Zazen

Long view of the valley

Through a curtain of light.

It is possible to know

Happiness alone.

Native Born

   

Sitting on a stone by the frog pond

Long enough and still enough,

As if I belonged in this midst,

Indigene, part of the system, as if

I understood my place in the hierarchy

Of life on earth, which is to say,

Less sure the longer i live, but accepted

By the rest of it, by the golden-irised frog,

By the lily pad drinking in one world,

Breathing in another, by the stone

With the sun in it, by the water itself,

Grateful,

For where else in the universe,

And most astonishing of all,

With you to tell?

Old Windows

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Windows in the bottom of a barn,

Frames in decay and caulking like chalk,

Evening so quiet, just the doves and the ghosts,

Drawn to old windows as if they were portals,

As if we could see what lies ahead, but all

We can see are reflections of what's at our backs,

Except where the glass has been broken,

And there, only darkness, there, only night

Beyond the jagged now,

So maybe we have.

The Test

Fresh May, computer off,

And off we go to watch the woods fill in,

The delicate, first-tinting of the tossing crowns,

The earth wearing its new aspect,

Smelling rain on the wind, and all the land

Eager for that music, rain's diminished chords,

Wondering if we've made the right decision,

The choice to turn away, if even for an afternoon.

We have, we have, remembering the poet's line,

The decisive test is joy.

—Last line by Brazilian poet José Oswaldo de Sousa Andrade