it's possiblie, isn't it?

moon—

it’s possible, isn’t it,

that while you’re

coming in,

you’re going

out, that what we

see is already

a memory, a deeper

forgiveness of passages

than we could ever offer

a brother or a sister

or a friend who feels

slighted by us, by

our same arrival/departure,

whose time

is never ripe,

who wave while we drive

away and say

there’s always

another time.

For clarity I read Dogen—

about his coming in

and going out,

and listen:

All my life false and real, right and wrong, tangled

Playing with the moon, ridiculing the wind, listening to the

birds…

Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow

This winter I suddenly realize snow makes a mountain.

All along I’ve not known

if I should be relieved

or hurt by their absences,

their choosing

to stay away.

But I’ve seen enormously

beautiful things:

a tree trunk elephant trunk

a hovering hummingbird

a squash blossom

a granite gray dragonfly

a stock still (nearly)

pink bottomed sky

a cup of King Cole

tea with a beloved

 soul…

Beautiful things.

Amidst the ridicule

and cruelty and passive

absence,

all your moons, all your seas

rise up out into the day

into the night and lay

themselves bare.

moon—

I am opening my eyes.

What salt and water

falls out of them…

Please, you decide.

I am too shy

(and somewhat startled)

to turn and face

the blind, the silent,

the open mouthed

crowd.

Pause--and,---Hum

moon, 

this morning,

with so many openings,

it’s hard to choose which room

to be in—east and five a.m. pink

or west and the shadowed fore-

ground of this garden

 where hummingbirds

 have finally arrived. 

Before it’s well into dawn,

 I’ve propped my body

and a long lens on three books

 to pause, ever, at the dulcet

sound of this bird.  Beyond:

robins, thrushes, gulls.  Or

yesterday, one of a mating pair

of bald eagles, watched

from the town

 dock, awed and longed for. 

But these lithe furies,

little red-bibbed darlings

have my full focus

when they flit in and out

of the frame of the stairs and railing.

Secretly, though we'd rather

 majesty, our hearts dart

like such flight, a chit-wish

shot through the needle-

beak like, well, nothing’s

coming to me now, but it might

show up later, an image

to hover around

this cylinder of sweet

water, when the sun's

finally above enough of the channel's

lighthouse that now there’s no choice

at this point—

I think I can get everything,

I think I can click and click

and then wait and wait

 and wait

until I lay it all down,

caught and flown in all

this rising light

until it's just sun,

just sugar and water,

just day, unfolding.

though day

moon

though day, though

 morning rising,

 you,

scooped rind,

hide in a plainer sight

than were you

behind a cloud.

Under you, I’ve pinned

 laundry

to a line.

It sags heavy

toward the grass.

Yesterday the skeletons

of dead trees rose

gray from the ageless

cliffs she and I

walked on.  Rooted

driftwood, they poked

the sky, old islands

I never remember

being green.

But what does ageless

mean?

This morning I woke

from a dream,

and a rim of liquid green,

as seen under water,

hung around my eyes

 like this line

of whites, wet and heavy

in the shifting wind.

It hurts

under the curve

of my left breast, moon.

Where you are now

you’d fit there

perfectly.

You’d dry what’s been

 rinsed and pinned

in the calm or the wind,

what blows between me

and three gulls

who glide above the line

and disappear into the bones

of other old spruces.

They'll never pass by

again.  They never have to.

They’re

not pinned to anything,

wind or rain

or age.

Meet me, please,

when it’s evening again.

When the dark is a pitch

from those old driftwood

trees.  Tuck beneath

my electric yearn

and grow full again.

today you've written me

moon, today

you've written

me.   And because

you see it all,

even before

the ink moulds

 the page, even

before the pen rises

 between your fingers

you already know

what it is I’ll read.

You already know

what I will read tomorrow

or next month

or never ever again.

It’s Braille

 in my muscle

that you’ve touched,

that you never stop

touching.  It makes me

wonder if the blind

can read something

so often their page is worn

thin, and becomes a tree again,

and a root, and earth,

and sky…before any of it

was born.  What is it like to be

written already,

   waiting

for the fingertips

to touch the mountain

or the mouth, and feel

for the first time,

the song that's composed

their lung?—

Can I be the fingers

and the hand upon you, moon?

Can I touch and touch,

soft and perched

like the blind and then write

the alphabet of you,

in two pairs of three,

graded or raised

 

all before, all after,

all right now, always, always

going smooth,

vibrating, a-b-c-d

all of it,

infinitely?