Nichiren, Izu Exile (1261)

Jogasaki

—lava fan of Ōmuroyama!

4,000 years of rain and wind,

wave salt and sun

to make towering Kesakake Pines,

knotted Wax Myrtle

and musk of fern and litter

of old, old wild cherries blooming

deep polished cleaves

of black stone spilling fresh streams

into cheek pink blush 

of barnacles in blue clean 

wash of shallows 

Futo town didn't spring up

but more flowed down

with lava spill around the older

Harai volcano

For decades fishermen in huts

on pumice cliffs

spotting Mullet schools,

flag waved signals

for boatmen to herd the fish to shoal

walking across land

that spread out like a wave

Jogasaki--

exiled monk

cast on wave torn jut

of cooled basalt prisms

a volcano offers more than molten earth

a love that smells of sea water

sleep facing south in october


so that when the cupped moon is low

great sweeps of the sky

are presided over by mute darknesses

and the Dog star weans the morning

for kalachandra

dark sky because 

the moon is with the sun

darkest when it's with whats lightest

when the dark moons path

sends it back to us with light

it's as a smile on the evening

CHARLES,


       The gulls are howling over Fort Sq.

       Its worse than you probably imagined

       About how vast and tiny can a world become?

       At least there're still the wild cherry trees
             along the roadsides
             the dark rocks in Lanesville
             and the sea
             as willing in its depth

       I wish that sunlight, and what was said about it, were enough

       The gulls are screaming on the briny wind
     
       You could hear them
        clear across
               the harbor

                                                                                     August 4th

                                                                                                 '16

     

     

   

continuations of a cloud theme


a heat in June
brings butterflies to the city

give your ambitions
the patience of clouds
--lightness comes to
those who wait around for it

the air not in the shadows
of buildings or trees
keeps hot in the high June sun

like butterflies, the heat
and clouds
     change every time
     the wind touches you

WALKING IN SPRING FROM RAICHO GUESTHOUSE

TO SEE THE WATERFALLS OF NORIKURA

the high snow well into spring keeps the gorges

below Mt. Norikura loud and rushing

to climb there you'll have to pass the wild azalea

and listen to a cuckoos drumming all morning

if the water-bananas are blooming keep your eyes

on the meadows for the pale flash of a Siberian Bunting

and just when your feet are tired of stumbling over 

knotted hemlock roots and up the birch lined ridgebacks

you'll come to rest under the resounding 

sun mist radiance and falling wind of Sobundaki falls

cleansed a little by the spray of Norikuras waters

you'll think fondly of starting home

may day



morning comes like a bouquet
of flowers hung on the front door

jasmine, rose
and musty eucalyptus

may day! may day!
all the light goes
back to one star flowering

may day! may day!
all the sounds go
back to one sound ushering

we wrap our colored ribbons
against the always turning year

                      as much as in the city
                      as deep out in the hills
                      or even as where
                      a lone bull rests
                      in the meadow
                      aglow with pale oxalis

                      the sparrows all are chattering
                      with the fervency of spring

BLOOD MAGNETISM



so long as the blood
keeps its course

how can we go away?

the hearts minerals
are paramagnets;

all it takes is a field

a field we've walked through
but don't know how to leave

the aching of pulling blood

from blood. its not a matter
of whose body it's in

where and what the mind says

but the dull, round pain
of magnesium and molybdenum

separating is that of trying our good-bye

in october i could see
the bones of autumn

death was with the eucalyptus
and the sun leaned into the beige
skeletons of star thistles

i suddenly remembered that
you are my sister when
the feathered seeds of coyote bushes
sailed past me in the clear, light wind

joinery in october

october

ridge

hip lap

purlin end

hafu boards

tsuka

demato rain boards

rails

door corner

windows and doors

bay 4

after so many years becoming
what i thought should come next
it was easy to lose track of the old quiet allies

the whole canyon shuddering
in the first moments of autumn

i saw that lonely old star
from the same place, on the same night
years later and realized that i feel happiest
when recalling winter

i should go back to seeing and speaking
with the harbor seals at shore;
their grey eyes and bodies the color of the sea

fever poems

o the blue wind mouth sky 

sucking on the earths tit again

i'm an old funny nobody

falling miles away on the hill side!

gotta make it to the big blue wind

up gallivanting thru the sucking sky

raven, who are you calling?

don't call the bad witch, its only a fever

besides, your face is snowy and grey

so no one can take you seriously

you, yourself come

eat these tomatoes from

my fever bent hands

now i hear the white falcon coming

should we linger through her fury?

                                                  o dark lady of the shadows

                                                  quivering in the locust leaves

                                                  the downright fact of it is

                                                  the deer refuse to be machines

                                                  what made me think i could solve this puzzle?

clear water : mattole poems


                                          "I feel like a river
                                                                a wide river in the morning
                                                                birds and fish over and through me"
                                                                                          ~Janine Pommy-Vega




a sink hole has opened up
where last winter David
buried his horse
--a form becoming void
   creating a void
three gullies north
dark stones are pulling
the ocean back over themselves
we all need a rest







                                     i should spend the whole day in the apple tree
                                     20 limbs of leaf and sun and wind and fruit
                                     can go a long way towards quieting the mind

                                     picking off the too dense or misshapen apples
                                     i want to touch every branch

                                     the deer come right up to eat the forgone fruit
                                     while i think of ways to respectfully
                                     get them to fear me

                                     most likely i should go deep into the mountains
                                     where most things can be worked back into balance

                                     for now, i'll drop apples on their heads






Bear Creek needs to flow
back through the alder grove
with a better culvert
instead of crossing the road
in that awful gravel wash
to do so would "disturb
an existing community"
says Fish and Wildlife
one thats at most 6 years old

by the same logic
there should be no planting of forests
over the landfills because
gulls and rats live on our plastic

war seethes and money follows it
salmon burn in the hot shallow waters
they follow old, old river songs home






 
                                     swimming at the Ranch Hole
                                     back eddy where the cold water
                                     sinks and your toes stir it up

                                     river bar stones hot
                                     on my bare ass and grasshoppers
                                     hit me in the head

                                     i'd love to be here
                                     when the river swells
                                     or when the thousands
                                     of juvenile fish gather
                                     back at the cold seep
                                     in the rocks of the wing-dam

                                     but likely i will not be
                                     there is youngness in me yet and
                                     i am all too familiar with
                                     the flighty high that the
                                     first step in leaving brings

                                     stay here for me, river
                                     as if for one instant
                                     you remain unchanged
                                     i have nothing to do with you
                                     i should say it to the mountains
                                     but like me they are leaving too
                                     we're all always leaving
                                     i'll say it anyway
                                     but take me out of this, river
                                     stay here and the mountains you keep
                                     river, stay here








jane's roses


the whole day spent
pulling grasses 
from under Jane's roses

find a leaf 
trace it to the stalk
then stem   and tug

all day

the horses eyes 
following me
through the fog

Jane--
     how beautiful
     your roses each
     a different shape

    how they gather
    the mute light of
    a day in a cloud

    at sunset they glow
    the color of the blood
    they drew from me
    all day pulling grasses
    from their stony beds

    

Jane--  your roses!    
    on your hillside
    by the river
    at the sea









                                     it is not that there is nothing
                                     where we want a river flowing
                                     it's just the water is muddy
                                     as if some animal is crossing
                                     back and forth in a confusion
                                     like something could be learned
                                     on the other side
                                     and the footsteps stir the bottom
                                     to the murky edges

                                     its just that there is such thing as clear water
                                     that every stone and pulp of leaf
                                     and sunken branch and tiny fish
                                     can be seen with an unusual clarity
                                     and that the water magnifies whats in it
                                     that it spreads the light out evenly

                                     its that the water should be clear
                                     even up against the dark and tangled banks
                                     and where the tributaries cause cold riffles

                                     its that the reaches can be swum
                                   
                                     and all of it         
                                                            clear water






                                   

"for a moment" series, cont.





for a moment
at Mud Lake Ranch
the ospreys sang
to each other above
the wild morning glories

their calls reverberated
in a place i've only ever
seen the sunlight go










                        for a moment
                        i believed it to be
                        true that every poet
                        must at least for a moment

                        consider the grassheads
                        bowing in the wind










for a moment
the earth was enough

even the giggly young girls
admitted that something had
changed in the psychedelic dusk

a river could be loved

how close?

              only the thin

                            morning fog

                                         on your body

                                                               of water

Dan Brewer

from The Eel River Love Poems

sleep above the lower river




does the river shine all night?

even after the moon
stops lighting Tit Hill
     and the zodiacal light
     rescinds from the
     estuarine mouth

the river shines into night

Mars caught in the
Virgins ear of grain
   Arcturus always tickling
   my eyeballs,    checking
every hour,           its true

the river shines all night

in and out of opiums sleep
and the clicking of midnights insects
   the valley is a dark groove
   waterway subduction slit
--i'll love the river if i have to

the river shines all night

waking,
    fog bank doming
    Prosper Ridge
rolling over in the morning
a two-point yearling, eyes at mine

"the river shined all night!"

rise with sun-up dewy white
    fog comes inland
    to stick its clammy fingers
    in the valleys, snuff the river
'til the sun, elucidating air from cloud;

the river shining in the light

the longest dusk


the light's become so
good at lingering
~westlight backshining
   the ridge trees, slowly

at this hour

buzzards wheel
to find perch in particular limbs,
flap noisily, settle and become another shadow

squirrels make ways back
to their cluster-nests for
the evening and crows
above say,

"go home!"

they dare not caw when
the owls wake to hunt

the wind keeps pushing the mountain;
dry grasses lay down on the flanks of Barnabe




     of all the ways to see it
     i keep coming back to the wind

     when you sit out until
     all we think of as still commences
     quivering in the subtle dusk
     there is no way of saying exactly
     when the night begins

i long for the cool dimness
of morning when the sky
is the suggestion of light
and everything appears
to be inhaling

what is it that
desires this attention?
surely not the worn body
or the mind all soft
in the warm bath of dream

that i rise from bed-heat
into chilly grey air to sit
with nothing but the
flower of day
--the soul must exist

should it not follow winter that
i wake my body in the springtime?

i want everything i do to be
a walking into a cold river

i choose to believe i keep
the sunlight that torches my skin

could it be that we are accumulations
of the wind and history?

a gust the size of galaxies
still moving the tiniest leaves

coincidences are just the
enormous wind remembering itself

coincidentally what passes thru my ears
the hawk considers its keenest tool

it is summer and my body, awake
is an accumulation of all the sun that's blown

it is the function of time to rearrange
familiar things until they are unrecognizable

i cannot remember something;
just the wind forgetting itself