Settle

Spring peach sky 

Glows above the stalwart

Hedge of evergreen 

A stripe of fading pink

Rises to meet 

Infinite sky

I say

Change your view 

Sister, live

This changing life

It shimmers, 

Burnishing to gold as it deepens. 

Going

Move into this last
Evolving stop,
The frame where you think
This or that has to be
Any particular way at all, 
It doesn't, in spite of
Figuring out the feelings
Behind all of this


What is
I seek 
So easily the loss,
So far the homeland,
So ache the universe;
Comes 
So humble, humanness, 
So close, love, 
Distance now no measure,
The way of living in this life 
Another chapter, verse,
Reel that flickers image 
Onto an old unknown.


Still, absence has a funny way,
Perhaps it just comes
Somehow full circle
It is what love looks like,
Even though the landscape 
Changes, is enough.


Lately, searching, letting go,
Lately there's been enough of not. 
Sometimes distant 
Regions, breathing strange 
Exotic life are best just so far gone, 
Knowing that in spite of 
Vast and time and memory
Nothing changes. So

Sail then, into the end, far times; 
You will find the precious way, complete. 

Remember that. 
It's hard to say, or see, or share, 
But let it be,
As something deep 
That makes some 
Perfect sense
Arrives.

Rear View Mirror

Don't need to cry anymore

The world keeps whirling 

And we do the best we can.

All it takes is each

One voice raised up,

And then just let it go.

Yesterday, or

Maybe a lifetime ago, 

I watched the changing 

Sky and thought

High, up there, beyond 

Where I am

Is where the sense 

Assembles.

Balance

Watching, earlier, the

Mystery of water, mercurial

And changing, I then later

Remembered noticing

An orange-gold quarter moon

Teasing further west 

And lowering into the 

Clear night, so

Glorious the black,

And as I closed into my eyes,

A star shot across this sky.

Jumping from reverie 

To that rarest of reminder,

I breathe in gratitude:

This infinite vast place is

So alive. 

  

Running Ahead of the Avalanche

For Gary

We can decide
That there is nothing to be done.
It is too late.

My friend, though,
Sprints into the terrible and rich
Unknown. 

It is the end, and we
Know this, but he
Engages and survives; meanwhile
I park my angst
Because there is nothing I can
Do, and now, the smallest steps,
The smallest sighs,
The smallest promises
Are as big as the world we are
About to lose
And so, for him, I do not stop.

The Rubicon of Inertia

Thinking through some trouble tonight

I thought, you’ve lost your wildness, sister,

You stopped there at the

Edge, and let yourself dwell in some

Universe not of your own making.

Gradually, as the constellations

Appear the way they’re supposed to,

I think to myself, well then, cross the river.

Shifting

It's pretty dark,

Still some light in the west;

I see the Evening Star,

A satellite maybe,

A couple of planes going into the 

City. I see the Dipper arriving, 

Which one I'm not sure.

I welcome the constancy of land and 

Sky, and my knowing.

Having such a terrible time, though.

I do not like the years.