1203. Years Later - David Palmer Grenell

In the dusty triangular attic

a box of old school books.

Inside, a worn volume of poems,

a page turned down at the corner-

my father and I, meeting again,

depending on The Red Wheelbarrow. 

1202. Love in A Flat - Lauren K. Alleyne

 

after Dean Young

Dean in a story about Coltrane:

how one time in a recording, he hit

a wrong note—a real clam.

In the second take, he hit it again,

this time harder, longer.

The third time, it became the heart—

the sound all the other notes wrap themselves around,

a different understanding of the melody—

the song beneath the song: the stubborn beat

holding up the heaviness of flesh.

1201. For Guy Davenport - Wendell Berry

Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years,

the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

and the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,

the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing. Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy. The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others held.

In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining

joining each to all again.

and then we turn aside, alone,

out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

1200. At McClure’s Beach, Point Reys National Seashore, California - Ann Fisher-Wirth

       I would ask my family

Wait for a foggy afternoon, late May,

after a rainy winter so that all

the wildflowers are blooming on the headland.

Wait for honey of lupins. It will rise

around you, encircle you, from vast golden bushes

as you take the crooked trail

down from the parking lot. Descend

earth’s crest, sweet winding declivity

where California poppies lift up their

chalices, citrine and butterscotch,

and phlox blows in the wisps of fog, every

color of white and like the memory

of pain, and like first dawn, and lavender.

Where goldfinches, nubblins of sunlight,

flit through the canyon. Walk one by one

or in small clusters, carrying babies,

children holding your hands—with your eyes

your oval skulls, your prodigious memories

or skills with the fingers. Your skirts or shirts

will flirt with the wind, and small brown rabbits

will run in and out, you’ll see their ears first.

nested in the grasses, then the bob

of fleeting hindquarters.

Now come to the sand,

the mussel shells, broken or open, iridescent,

color of crows; wings in flight

or purple martins, and the bullwhips

of sea kelp, some like frizzy-headed voodoo

poppets, some like long hollow brown or bleached

phalluses. The X X birdprints running

across the scalloped sand will leave a trail of stars,

look at the black oystercatcher, the scamp

with the long red beak, it’s whipping along

in the courtship dance. Look at the fog,

above you now on the headland, and know how much

I love the fog. 

Don’t cry, my best beloveds,

It’s time to scatter me back now. I’ve wanted this

all my life. Look at the cormorants,

the gulls, the elegant scythed whimbrel,

do you hear its quiquiquiqui

rising above the eternal Ujjayi breath,

the roar and silence and seethe and whisper,

the immeasurable insweep and release of ocean.

(Ujjayi breathing, or "victorious breath," is a yoga technique involving a 

gentle constriction at the back of the throat (glottis) to create a soft, 

ocean-like, or Darth Vader-esque sound as you inhale and exhale 

through the nose, fostering focus, calmness, and deep diaphragmatic

 breathing during yoga or meditation. )

1199. For A Wedding On Mount Tamalpias - Jane Hirshfield

July,

and the rich apples

once again falling.

You put them to your lips,

as you were meant to,

enter a sweetness

the earth wants to give.

Everything loves this way,

in gold honey,

in gold mountain grass

that carries lightly the shadow of hawks,

the shadow of clouds passing by.

And the dry grasses,

the live oaks and bays,

taste the apples’ deep sweetness 

because you taste it as you were meant to,

tasting the life that is yours,

while below, the foghorns  bend to their work,

bringing home what is coming home,

blessing what goes.

1198. North of San Francisco - Yehuda Amichai

 

    Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Blochr

Here the soft hills touch the ocean

like one eternity touching another

and the cows grazing on them

ignore us, like angels.

Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar

is a prophecy of peace. 

The darkness does not war against the light,

it carries forward

to another light, and the only pain

is the pain of not staying. 

In my land, called holy,

they wont’t let eternity be:

they’ve divided it into little religions

zoned it for god-zones,

broken it into fragments of history,

sharp and wounding until death.

and they’ve turned in tranquil distances

into a closeness convulsing with the pain of the present.

On the beach at Bolinas, at the foot of the wooden steps,

I saw some girls lying in the sand bare-bottomed.

their heads bowed, drunk

on the kingdom everlasting,

their souls like doors

closing and opening inside them

to the rhythm of the surf.

1197. A Man and a Woman Sit Near Each Other - Robert Bly

A man and a woman sit near each other, and they do not long

at this moment to be older, or younger, nor born

in any other nation, or time, or place.

They are content to be where they are, talking or not talking.

Their breaths together feed someone whom we do not know.

The man sees the way his fingers move,

he sees her hands close around a book she hands to him.

They obey a third body that they share in common.

They make a promise to love that body.

Age may come, parting may come, death will come.

A man and a woman sit near each other;

as they breathe they feed someone we do not know,

someone we know of, whom we have never seen.

1196. Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (Excerpt) - William Wordsworth

                                        And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

and rolls through all things.

1195. My True Home Is Cold Mountain - Han Shan

The Tientai Mountains are my home

mist-shrouded cloud paths keep guests away 

thousand-meter cliffs make hiding easy

above a rocky ledge among ten thousand streams

with bark hat and wooden clogs I walk along the banks

with hemp robe and pigweed staff I circumambulate the peaks

once you see through transience and illusion

the joys of roaming free are wonderful indeed 

1194. The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune - William Stafford

Wisdom is having things right in your life 

and knowing why.

If you do not have things right in your life

you will be overwhelmed:

you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.

If you have things right in your life

but do not know why,

you are just lucky, and you will not move

in the little ways that encourage good fortune.

The saddest are those not right in their lives

who are acting to make things right for others:

They act only from the self—

and that self will never be right:

no luck, no help, no wisdom.