On A White Day \ Corvids

Nancy: When "color" is defined as white and black and shades of gray, a cleft in the rock sheltering a streak of moss is astonishing in its brilliance.

On A White Day

With a brush and black ink

I might sketch the stepped ledge,

the frozen bay, even the spruce

that takes all the light into its dark hunger,

but could I ever risk that slash

of moss, the broken lip of rock

green green greenest green?

Alan: Sometimes poems write themselves in reaction.  This one did, to the lines quoted.

Corvids

    for DLB

          “two flapping, hoarse malevolent shapes – ravens for sure –”

Crow wakes me, early.

Raven soars, stately, mocking the eagle.

Jay mimics the hawk, crashes invisible gates in the trees.

Raven inspects my work-in-progress, spring and fall.

Crow guards me, warning of owls.

Jay chides me for keeping cats; jay chivvies the dog.

Raven sings to me, secretly,

singing the Dharma

in the season when everyone sleeps.

Bare Bones \ Wild Geese Crying All Night

Nancy: Winter's here, and yet memory provides the colors of summer. Instant replay on the pages of my mind.

Bare Bones

Remember the lilies?  Over there?

Warm sunrise, gold, dusk?

And on the fence to the west – there –

remember the roses?

Never mind that the bay

is more nearly blued steel than blue sky,

that the sky is as sharp as knives.

Someday these bones will rise,

and dress themselves, and dance.

Yes, they have.

Someday they will.

Alan: In winter, on calm nights, we know the Canada geese are out there on the water in their scores and hundreds.  Not seen, no, but heard.

Wild Geese Crying All Night

I.

All night, the music of wild geese

rises from spraddled, indeterminate bays,

casting the riddles of chill, woven, unseen tides:

antiphonal, convivial, conversational –

below the silent house, out over the back ridge,

through the comb of black trees –

ensembles, solos, choruses:

shawms and sackbuts in unhuman, ancient keys.

II.

When Shantideva offers to the Buddhas

“the endlessly fascinating cry of wild geese,”

I see them on nights calm as this,

flying swiftly above the high peaks,

their voices quavering from 30,000 feet,

remembering in hollow bones the new grass.

I see them falling like late snow on milk-white glacial lakes.

I see them settling their wings, becoming ovoid,

floating, their heads tucked in, at rest.

I see them waiting to be born again.

I see them home.

III.

It is so bright, we should all be outside on the snow,

looking up, straining to hear the miraculous, distant foghorn,

the hard, mute stars overhead,

feeling our bodies gathered, then lifted by the geese,

lifted and borne away on moonlight –

if only we knew the songs and the water’s songs –

towards Orion, his wavering sword,

and the farther attending spheres.

Enter Winter \ Walking In

Nancy: Suddenly, if not surprisingly, it arrives,  like the parade that you know is just up the road.  Some drama, some beauty, exciting until it wears out its welcome and we begin to count the minutes of returning light.

Enter Winter

with a sun turning, saying no

no, I’ll never leave you, tiptoeing

back up the hill

with a moon hanging sweet, yellow

as a plum in bare branches

with a tide flooding its sprills

and riffles through the poplar grove

with a proclamation: here

a small bird

black and white, is singing

a song of himself, here

in the scarlet brambles

Alan: For 12 years our road was impassible in winter.  From mid-December sometimes until the end of April, we’d walk, snowshoe, ski – whatever it took – dragging our groceries or clean laundry behind us on a sled.  No lights, no sound of traffic, just the land and water and the prayer of a small house at the end.

Walking In

Snow in our faces,

foghorn in our ears,

you a stiff child-shape

against the blank where the bay must be.

Fenceline, crazy leaners,

this is a long way in

for the bloodhounds of the snow.

The packed edge sliding away underfoot.

A tuft, here and there, dried spoor of autumn.

A rise, a slowing,

drift of spent wood smoke

from that hole in the sky

that must be home.

Waiting \ December Gifts

Alan: Alone, alone, alone... lonely.

Waiting

                         for Nancy

I expected you home

before now.  All that long way

from Halifax, the roads icy maybe,

and empty at night.

When does concern become worry?

Worry take action?

I’ve enjoyed my time here,

alone with one dog and two cats,

reading Ryōkan, gentle sounds of the woodstove

like his breathing of pines under Mt. Kugami

or drip of dewy eaves in the bamboo grove,

so long ago.

Alone enough.

Now the dinner I made for the two of us,

uneaten, grows cold.

Nancy: A year of gifts, a life of gifts acknowledged.

December Gifts

The tide in the high marsh,

the low sun, slow to stand over the ridge,

the sea smoke . . . 

I went out wanting the year to turn,

and turned myself instead, turned back

to today, glad to have received

water, light, frost blooming on dry stems.

December \ The Old Woman Refuses

Alan: Like the crows, we forage where we can, find what we can, and await the cold.

December

Grass

still green on the slope

where the sun finds it

despite the hard frosts

The crows

fly agape

each with a jammed-in apple

corking its caw

top-heavy with hunger

We have pawned the jewelry

the guitar and

my best coat

I have opened my hand

to what we have

to get us through:

a few dark seeds

a fleck of red

a little pulp

Nancy: Of course I believe words are magic, especially well chosen words.

The Old Woman Refuses

She won’t hear wind,

she hears the marsh grass singing

   songs, she hears sparrows

   sweet, sweet, sweet

She won’t say ice,

no, she says ephemeral,

ripples, mummichogs

She erases words,

leaves willow green, sap,

fiddlehead

If you ask her, “where are the birds?”

she will tell you they flew out

early and far, and are bringing

the sun from the sea

There!  she says, there,

that light on the ledge?

The Sun!

What Is The Sound? \ If The Light Wrote A Poem

Alan: So much comes to us when we are still and simply listen.

What Is The Sound?

       for Nancy

What is the sound

of one poem sitting?

sitting quietly by itself

in a notebook?

in a computer?

in a folder?

in a safe?

in a mind?

What is the sound

of one poem? many poems?

a lifetime of poems?

a lifetime of sitting

quietly, sitting,

looking inward and

outward, asking,

seeing, asking,

and emerging,

poem by poem,

question by question,

answer by answer,

or no answer –

What is the sound

of one lifetime? many lifetimes?

a safe full of lifetimes

answered and unanswered,

held and unheld,

released and un-

released?

What is the sound

of one poem, one lifetime,

released and rising,

floating away

into Time itself?

vanishing

into the sound

of Time itself?

Nancy: Say it – make it happen.

If The Light Wrote A Poem

It might write rough branches

smooth buds, glossy bark

it might write ochre

charcoal, lavender, ice

or it might write an old woman

sitting on a stone

    looking beyond the horizon

    looking ahead of the light

and it might scratch out December

and write cerulean instead, celadon

green on the rough branches

blue stars

sky blue stars in the grass

Back \ Shifting The Year Uphill

Alan: Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, “Every moment, wonderful moment.”  Easier to accept at some times than others, but well worth the practice.

Back

Until my back gives, I am immortal.

On my knees, I inspect my future home.

Rising, I am suddenly old.

Hobbling inside to lie down, I become a foundling.

So I recall that each moment holds birth and death,

and that both are framed in suffering.

You bring me tea, and I, grateful simply for kindness,

forget all wisdom, or why it was ever needed.

Nancy: If a poet can’t move the earth on its axis – who can?

Shifting The Year Uphill

so spare

the bay skimmed with ice

the apple tree empty

one small hawk haunting

the still air

and all the grey weight of

   the world notwithstanding

I brace my arms

my back, my long bones

on a shaft of light

and push