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