not native fruit

farewell to summer 2010, bay area

how soft and moist
your breath
against my skin -
sixty-five days of fog and
rolling clouds touching
the tree-tops, silvering
the air
- and I breathe you in,
a summer's mild winter
clinging close
as a lover.

spring wind

it was a single city block
or two,
clean, neat and orderly,
set aside
as a memorial park
dedicated
to something of significance
that had happened long ago,
in revolutionary
philadelphia,
the park a place
of inexplicable peace
in the chaos of the city,
now its young trees
grown tall and stouter,
more steadfast
in recent years.
beneath a clear blue
cloudless sky,
dark narrow trunks
like upright soldiers
topped by bare branches
putting forth
new buds
of leaf
in the swift keen air
of Spring
(verging on a warmer
current, just),
freshening my mind,
and my heart lifted
as if on wings.

was that the promise
of you I felt,
way back then,
when I was young,
before I even guessed,
or imagined?

poem by hafiz

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE

admit something:

everyone you see, you say to them,
'love me.'

of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise,
someone would call the cops.

still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.

why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon
language,

what every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear.

(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

another day

another day
among the little houses
on the hill,
where rhyolite,
thrust up from dirt,
sparkles gold and white,
sparkles energy and power,
like bright granite of the sierra
reflecting pure light.
another day
of flat blue horizon
framed by red towers
like fingers
pointing to the sky.
another day
of air
charged with light,
changing light
and life.

silent eloquence by nina marshall

I fail to find a verb or form a phrase
that I consider worthy of your praise.
Does there exist sweet melody or rhyme
that’s fit enough to sing your song sublime?

In awe of you, the painter’s brush lies still,
the poet shyly puts aside his quill,
the violinist lays away his bow,
and flute sits breathless, basking in your glow.

Your silent eloquence sails height profound,
and conjured symphony without a sound.
With polished art, your glance articulates
the grace that elevates to supreme states.

My mind rests blissfully inside your silence
and radiates an inner soul alliance.

 

 

*     *     *      *     *
i try not to bother you all too much with my devotion to my wonderful satguru, amma, whom i dearly love.  but i just had to post this poem by remadevi nina marshall, who is herself a musician and a long time resident of amma's ashram in india.  not only is this a beautiful poem, but it expresses the spiritual intimacy that amma is capable of, and which each one of us feels, each in our own way.  i would not have dreamed that such an experience might be possible, and i truly felt as if i had found 'fabled gold' when i met amma.  that was twenty years ago, and the experience continues on.

mica

The streets were poor
And grease-stained,
Narrow, lined with cars,
And I felt I had lost You,
Or You never were.
The weight of your absence
Pressed down upon me
like a loss of air;
I couldn’t see
any future 
without Your light.
And yet, the brown dirt
Of the ground
Sparkled silver
With mica,
Promising
You.

working with the aged, by wendell berry

i work with the elderly and i liked this passage from wendell berry's 2000 book, Jayber Crow, on the subject of elderly customers at the barber shop:

"But I must say I always liked having the old ones around.  I sort of had a way of collecting them.  There was a long string of them who made a regular sitting place of my shop after they got too old to work.   I came to feel a tenderness for them all.  This was something new to me.  It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces.  They had known hard use, nearly all of them.  You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved.  Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis.  They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather.  The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstruck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned.  Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.” 

advent I, by adelaide b. vawter

darkness straining toward light
uncertainty yearning for meaning
sorrow quivering for healing
chaos clamoring for peace
loneliness longing for intimacy
anger seeking out justice
emptiness thirsting for love

prepare the way in silence
wait in joyful hope

he will come
    in the midst of travail

by Adelaide B. Vawter, the inner fabric of my life, Tulip Publishing, Berkeley, CA, 1990

storm

We moved
To where your strange maw
Opens to the sea,
Pacific.
We crouched down
On a hillside
In the dark
And let
The wind and rain
Blow over
In wide whorls
And waves.

Once in November
Forks of lightening
Speared down
Six or seven times
All around,
Unusual for here,
A bursting sound
And then
Blue beams
Arced up
Into the sky
Illuminating
Everything
In nightmare day,
The transformer, hit.

For a moment
Our rocking chairs
Ceased creaking,
The mountains
Drifted through
Our memories,
Dark and unmoving
And we waited
Without
Any other sound
Except for thunder
And a rushing rain.

Our chairs rocked slightly
While we waited
In the dark
Wondering
At where we were,
Disoriented,
Transmogrified,
In a weird dream,
At home.

apartment

i longed to live
in the upper story,
the attic loft
of that shabby gray and black
queen anne
on the northwest corner
of knox and queen lane,
set back from the street
among shrubs
on a smallish lot.

the scruffy weeds,
the magnificent trees
beckoned to me
to make art
in a hooded,
hidden place.
that solitude
called to me.
that creative attention
to present moment
seemed hyper-real.
(the most real)

i dreamed that
in every season
it would call to me
there,
yield images
i'd love,
and i would answer
in my upper solitude,
while poor african-american children
walked past on the street,
and poor white-mixed-native
women with hair-braids on top,
german-style,
tended their front-yard gardens.

that was all i wanted,
was that presence
to light and air,
some charcoals and pastels,
perhaps a few oils
and
an easel near the window.

that recessed window
under the eaves
looked out
on what?
on my life,
on the past,
the reflected history
of germantown,
or on its tatterdemalion
inheritors of that present day.

i didn't know
that window
looked out
on a future and a world
i could not then imagine.

and i looked out
that window
when, later
anne and howard
lived there
briefly.
how i loved their apartment.
that promise
of a life of music,
of pipe-smoke (howard's),
books (anne and her career in publishing),
cats,
and later children.
of college degrees
and maybe just
a little touch of marijuana,
a few psilocybin memories
soon covered over
by good quality knitted sweaters,
tweed jackets and ties.

a wooden-staired,
banistered walk-up
to a garrett apartment
in old Philadelphia
fueled my dreams.