F-L-I-G-H-T

 moon—

when shock comes from the bottom

up, when the solid cliff

shifts,

and the only railing

is air

I have to pause

 on it

and it bears me until

my boot finds something

a little wider than itself

and then holds on

and says okay, it’s okay

now, you can

let go.

Who really believes,

ascending,

that they’ll fall?

  The climb

is hand over hand

pull up the knee

scrape the face of the wall

and purchase

a hold—

listen: a cascade

of stones tumbles

into the tide

far enough below

that living

is suspicious

and when I hear them

collect and then settle,

they are

a small flock

of plovers

pausing

Later I watch a gull

fall straight down

to the beach

and hover over the water

and then float on it.

What sudden surrender

allows a bird its air

and then, just as purposed,

its slip? 

But remember I am not a bird.

I am not even a moon

though I’d like to be

sometimes,

when cliffs let go

and I step out

into air…

I’m just too solid for anything

other than

falling.

And so I go back

alone,

when my children

aren't playing

below me.

I go to different,

higher cliffs.

Smoother edges.

I lean against bare

air

and feel absolute-

ly no resistance,

just solid

nothing.

the sea

 is a remote guess

below me

and a far off lobster boat

makes halos

around a buoy.

Gulls bob in the wake

of swallowed bait,

too greedy

for the next scrap

of gutts

to fly off alone

have you ever not

moon—

 

have you ever

not  written a poem simply

because you wanted

to keep it all

to yourself?

or keep its magic

from breaking

open?

and have you ever

let yourself

 absorb some

 of what you’re reflecting

just to feel it

take root

 there,

just there,

off a little ways

from dead

center

where you always wanted

it to be?

After Li Po's Bright Moon, White Clouds

Gazing down again to find the path 

I’d come, I found, finally, 

only a chill darkness…

But you met me just there,

and led me home…

                                                    Li Po

                moon—

won’t you share a drop

of tea with me?

I’ve been gifted

these brilliant

cups…

roses and china

a thin porcelain

of bone

they wait for your face

as on the surfaces

of falling

rain

unveil your cloud

there is enough

for all of us

the river rises

moon,

the river rises

in mist

behind  alders

and birch

while the sun,

open-mouthed,

spreads

the skirts

of the unharvested.

soon,

 the gray

that rises

 will vanish.

soon

the night

will vie

for its hours

 again

and all the sky

pass by—

it has been hot

these past days

and I wonder:

do the trees

miss the snow?

Do they ask

their cool

roots about

the silk of

the river?

and do the roots,

penetrating

    the impacted

 dark

ask their branches

about the sun

and the live flight

of birds?

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.