There Will Come a Time

(I know)
there will come a time
when it is time
to wander off.
Those around me
eat, drink, marry,
but I am no longer with them.

They don't yet know,
with the certainty I am coming to know:
that there will be a time to wander off.

The time for some, sooner,
the time for others later.
We do not know our time,
but suddenly, before us
a shining new sea,
a fresh breeze.,
and a little boat,
bidding us to sail.

Laying It Down 10/24/09

What is my life, my face?
Sometimes they weary me
just as the lives of others and other things weary me.
My house is a mess.
Things drop and lay there for months.
What does it matter?
Things are like leaves,
destined to fall,
to blow away,
to be absorbed,
to mutate,
and become dirt for the trees
to make more leaves.

What is this life
that I keep hammering on?
Adding a 2x4,
repainting the weathered wood.
Whose hands are these,
so busy?
Whose face is this,
smiling, frowning?
Does it laugh?
I'm sure it must.
Does it know grief?
I'm sure it does.
Does it like jazz,
and Paul Klee,
and Rilke?
Yes, and these are the yeast of me.
and I am the least of them,
and destined to become less,
and yet on the scales, we balance,
for now.

What is this life, my face?

Where others touch, I blossom.
And now, still and alone,
I blossom.
Oh, the green fuse that drives the flower.
How helpless we are.
How it plays us,
and then, oh, how we play ourselves.
What is this face, this flesh,
that I would lay them down with the leaves?
Who is this man, confused and
confusing , frustrated and
frustrating, enchanted and
enchanting, difficult,
trying, trying to be good.

More 2x4s, more paint!
The artifice sags, the man grows weary.
What is this life, this face?

Somertimes I would like to lay them down:
Let the late autumn winds
burst my doors and windows ,
sweep through this house of me,
pulling me into the whirlwind,
carrying me out
to meet the sunlight, the clouds,
the mist and rain,
the leaves and lamps,
shirts and shovels,
dust, sticks, feathers...
and me.
And then to lay them down,
element melting into element.
"Blend well and allow to cool"
says Autumn to Winter,
whilst the heat of me
dons a suit of leaves.

There are some processes
only poetry can describe.
This is one of them.

What is my face, this life?
The work of old age
is figuring out how
to lay it down,
and laying it down.
And what of this age?

Everything & Tu Fu 06/28/10

My daughter called to say she misses me,
a nephew beckons for a family get-together.
Up North, friends expect me for a wood-firing.
I have already begged off,
and here I sit, alone, in cool, green Inverness Park
with much to do,
with much to do,
with much to do,
and I don't know what to do.
And so,
I read Chinese poems,
translated by Kenneth Rexroth,
and find Tu Fu
"old, ill, and tired,
blown hither and yon,
lost between heaven and earth"
and see my face
across centuries and continents,
while yet another voice chides me,
"Boy, you just don't know"
and I don't, and
I don't know what to do, and
I am tired.

In West Marin 9/4/11

This old house is decaying, crooked,
but it overlooks the bottom of the bay,
where the tides come and go,
brown mud, then water, silvery blue.
The town has a hardware store,
a grocery store, and a bakery:
my trinity of human existence.
There's a jazz station on the radio for potluck,
and Pandora plays all I want to hear.
This is getting scary,
all my little dreams...
And while I am filled with gratitude and fear
I am already moving away
(though not yet in such a rush - oh that pecan sticky)
and I have to remind myself
that God, in his secret economy,
brings rain and sun
to the just and unjust, the good and the evil.
But leaves it to me to answer the question:
which one am I?

Outside the Cafe Roma (now defunct) (05)

Outside the Cafe Roma (now defunct),
a hearty breeze is pushing the leaves
around the sidewalk and into every doorway.
It's late summer, and the light
though heavy and warm, is looking
a little tired, a little hazy;
a harbinger, perhaps, like the leaves
of impending Autumn.

It's a busy morning at the Roma,
including, I note as I leave,
a girl in shorts, scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Outside, I put on my backpack, pull my bike from the rack,
take a few steps back for one last look at her lovely legs
-and trip,
my bike and I, in a clattering pratfall.
And in front of everyone!
There is a small field of grace
just outside the doors of the Roma,
it won't stand for that;
and the distracted monk receives a swat from the master.

Spanning Time

In the early seventies I crossed paths briefly at Gavilan College with a Japanese student named Sam. He did not speak English very well, but was writing poetry in English. At a get-together off campus, he handed me the poem below, which I present here verbatim (I include the salutation, which he added at the time). Somehow this poem survived the chaos of my life at the time and found a place among my own artistic and poetic detritus. Every few years, I run across it again and never fail to appreciate its sincerity and its truth. Need I add that at the time, I did not appreciate what I was given...

Dear Fred,

Let's have a dream once a day!
working, again working, we go out,
enjoying, again enjoying, we come in,
studying, again studying, we are still,
if we lost the sadness far away.

Let's seek something on how to be tomorrow!
asking, asking to ourselves what we are,
thinking, thinking again what we can,
praying, again praying what we can't,
if we were modest enough, honest enough.
This is our quest,
to reach unreachable star.

Let's make something for our life!
polishing up the skill, morning,
touching the spirit, afternoon,
cooking the gourmet, evening,
if we were craftmen.
Whether be genious or not,
it's our pray, it's our dream.

Let's sink into the bottom of life!
whatever we may say or do,
because we know what we are,
because we know what we can, because we know what we can't,
Life is beautiful, we should know.

SAM

Cry 120810

Beatles: Here comes the sun king...weeping
Kind black man on a TV commercial...crying
Syrian Internet magazine about Jesus and a village where they still speak Aramaic..crying

I don't cry every day, it just feels like it.
Sometimes it feels like I'm coming apart. Sometimes
I think its making up for five years of Edna
struggling with cancer

I am so dismayed with myself
I am so angry
I am so sad.
sometimes it feels like I am coming apart
and its OK

Abundance

God produces abundance.

some will be eaten

some will fall

Point Reyes Morning

Telling

Telling you these things
is like telling a thunderstorm
that it is a thunderstorm.
What does it care?
Like the thunderstorm,
you are a force of nature.
And I am a rock, the field of grass.
You move by,
leaving me wet or dry,
hot or cold,
and you move on.

The Blue Light of Early Morn

Watching the blue light of early morn,
I lie quietly in bed,
hardly drawing a breath,
and think about life;
how I'm tired,
and don't belong anywhere.
And suddenly my lungs pull in a deep draught of air -
Oh! The body persists
and I must go on for now,
watching the blue light of early morn.

Another Morning

It's going to be one of those mornings:
Jazz on Pandora, cup of strong coffee, half a loaf of French bread,
and I can't find the *#!! peanut butter.

Dead in Minutes Meditation

Sometimes my God seems far away, and I think:
that's why he sent Jesus; to be closer
to us and for us to feel closer to him.

The Muslim reports that God is as close as your jugular vein.
The Christian says God is in the breath.
The arguments don't amount to much.
Cut either and you're dead in 3 or 4 minutes.

A Small Collection of Poems about Trees

Trees
by FS

It's a bad time for trees;
a secret half locked deep in the ground,
an aerial half vulnerable to the whims of arrogant men.
A seasonal diaspora of seeds,
their only defense;
when the Many seize the late summer winds
leaving the One behind.

Library
by Louis Jenkins

I sit down at a table and open a book of poems and move slowly in to the shadow of tall trees. They are white pines I think. The ground is covered with soft brown needles and there are signs that animals have come here silently and vanished before I could catch sight of them. But here the trail edges into a cedar swamp; wet ground, deadfall and rotting leaves. I move more carefully but rapidly, pleased with myself.

Someone else comes and sits down at the table, a serious looking young man with a large stack of books. He takes a book from the top of the stack and opens it. The book is called How to Get a High Paying Job. He flips through it and lays it down and picks up another and pages through it quickly. It is titled Moving Ahead.

We are moving ahead very rapidly now, through a second growth of popple and birch, our faces scratched and our clothes torn by the underbrush. We are moving even faster now, marking the trail, followed closely by bulldozers and crews with chain saws and representatives of the paper company.

(for more: http://www.newsfromnowhere.com/louisjenkins1.html)


Trees Lose Parts of Themselves Inside a Circle of Fog
by Francis Ponge

Inside the fog that encloses the trees, they undergo the robbing of their leaves...Thrown into confusion by a slow oxidation, and humiliated by the sap's withdrawal for the sake of the flowers and fruits, the leaves, following the hot spells of August, cling less anyway.

The up and down tunnels inside the bark deepen, and guide the moisture down to earth so as to break off with the animated parts of the tree.

The flowers are scattered, the fruits taken away. This giving up of there more animated parts, and even of parts of their body, has become, since their earliest days, a familiar practice for trees.


Pears
by FS

As I walk an aging, yellowed moon
through the levee poplars,
the pears in the orchard below,
the pears no one wanted or bothered to pick,
have at last agreed to a mutual separation
from unsympathetic limbs
and are falling to earth.
My nose discovers an earthy chemistry now quietly at work
on their ancient starches and sugars -
the chill night air is sweet with pear wine
and sour with pear vinegar - it's all a matter of time.
Soon enough, these pears will find oblivion
beneath a blanket of gold and russet leaves,
and next spring help fuel the tender but insistent grasses
sprouting like new hair
from winter's bald pate.

Why I Weep

I weep because you are so close, and
I weep because I am so far away.

Wet Morning

Mountains smeared across the window glass.
The far shore obscured by mist.
Clouds hang low, snagging in the trees,
branches drip, rain in rain.
My thoughts are slippery from all the water.
Do I go? Do I stay?
The answers run off the grebe's back
and are lost in the sea.

Turned

Damn it!
The world has turned again
and I am suffused with anxiety.
Sure, I can deal with it; live through it.
Done it for almost 50 fucking years.
I just wish it would leave me alone;
the fear is useless and
it has stymied the best of me, and
the best in me, for the better part of my life.

I don't think its a lack of courage, of taking a stand.
The Buddhists would love the reason -
there is no place to stand,
nothing to face, nothing to fight.
How do you stand up to nothing (even as it destroys you)?

I see that I have claimed the world has turned.
That is incorrect. I'm sure its me.
Like a kaleidoscope, rotated by an unknown hand,
and, in an instant,
all things are shown in a new perspective,
in which people, light, and love advance or retreat,
or later, as it seems in this state, never were.

Do you wonder why I reach for your hand?
Do you understand how your warm leg
thrown over mine, your hand on my chest, or
your face pressed into the side of my neck,
brings them all rushing back, brings me rushing back?
At least for a time - a sweet, precious time.
Do you know, love,
of my infinite gratitude?
Do you know, love,
of my infinite fear?

Who Else Would I Talk to?

(a few bars with Rahsaan Roland Kirk's circular breathing)

Some days there is nothing to me but fear and dread,
Some days I grow tired of being a fatalist.

All of us intent;
looking forward,
solitary headlamps peering forward
into the darkness of eternity.
We have ears, but do not hear;
questions, but afraid to ask.
But there is one who listens.
Who else would I talk to?

I guess I've led a sheltered life,
and so only now felt felt the touch of death,
whose metaphors abound:
it's bony fingers tighten around my neck,
the tumblers falling into place one by one,
The slot machine suddenly lining up
cherry. cherry, cherry...
You think to yourself,
they never do that;
I'm never been that lucky
No. Its something else:
betrayed by the flesh. Oh,
there is no doubt,
the flesh betrays us all.
It's easy enough and doesn't need
the thirty pieces of silver.
Still, it wakes me up early,
my feeble brain struggling
to throws it's simple net around eternity;
my halting voice
with a question or complaint.
But there is one who listens
while all of us intent...
Who else would I talk to?

Notes for a Postpartum Letter

I
I'd like to leave this house of sadness,
as you, Edna, have left me and this world,
with so many things left unfinished,
and I, with so many things left unfinished:
Useless.

II
You were the opposite pole,
whose energy sent me out into the countryside and onto the river,
and when your energy faltered,
into the arms of Jesus.
Edna, my love, you have left me, and this world,
yet I cannot say "it is finished."

III
If I think of returning to places we once visited,
I am filled with dread and sadness
(I should look into this),
yet I sleep in the bed where you died;
my spirit sinks sometimes
when I return to that house and that room
after a long day at work.
Yet, for now, it remains my home,
a home of suffering and sadness.

IV
Edna, how could we live together for 27 years
and still know so little about each other?
I blush now with shame.

V
Often, when we tangled,
it was like arguing with a mirror.
You could match me fault for fault;
perfect point counter point.

VI
Now and then I pray at the couch
where you rested day and night,
and I can still smell the chemo
that that seeped from your poor saturated body.

VII
I remember putting a waterproof sheet on the bed
because of what I'd read about things the body does
when it expires.
But it wasn't real; I expected a miracle.

Bad Math

Edna, the loss I feel
just doesn't square
with the trouble we had
with each other.

Too Many Words

Sometimes there are too many words,
and the Muse, heartless bitch,
whispers in my ear:
"Pick out the ones you want;
we'll drown the rest."

Its the Weather

Its the weather.
Its the same old song,
watchin' it rain,
watch it rain,
watch it rain.
Somewhere there's sun,
somewhere skies are blue.
I'll be waiting,
I'll be waiting,
I'll be waiting
if not for God then for you.
Its the weather,
Its the same old song.
Watch it rain,
watch it rain,
watch it rain.
Time to call it a day,
say goodbye to pain,
watchin' it rain.
Its the weather,
its the weather,
its the same old song,
its the same old song.

Pas de Deux (dream)

I met a dark-haired woman;
she appeared suddenly,
as people often do in dreams.
She came close to speak low,
something cool and friendly in my ear.
I leaned forward to hear,
and my cheek brushed her bare shoulder.
When I raised my head,
our lips touched and held,
a kiss!
I nearly fainted from joy.

Sunset Again

Sunset again,
stealing my world
leaving me penniless.
Sometimes I face it down,
but the result is always the same:
empty pockets for the night.
And just before dawn,
takes the last of my mind.

Empty pockets,
they don't make the grade,
Momma may have
(but Momma's in a nursing home),
Poppa may have
(but Poppa's been gone for years)
So God bless the child that's got his own, til
sunset again
takes everything I gave.

Sometimes I stare it down,
but the answer is always the same:
Sunset again
and empty pockets for the night.

What Can I Tell You 10/05/07

What can I tell you about the sunrise?
A red ball slowly rising
behind the leaden tule fog;
the orange haze,
and above in the fresh blue:
the white surprise of a few clouds,
A flock of birds,
testing the cool air of a new day;
the trees, still, and patient for the higher light.
In a moment of distraction,
it will all vanish, and exist only as a memory.
What can I tell you about the sunrise?

Poem and Apology

Last we spoke, you asked my name
and uttered some words I took as praise.

Oh! 
...see how quickly the hungry trout
rises to the bait!

Trial and failure;
it happens again and again,
and somewhere a monk
rolls up this paper
and swats the inattentive student.

Teilhard de Chardin 10/26/07

(We were meditating on his eloquent statement
of consenting to be diminished in God as he aged and died.)
...
I watched my wife slowly die for five years,
Her death is a terrible mystery I cannot solve.
Her death is my Kaaba, I circle
in reverence and confusion,
anxious for revelation.
But no revelation comes;
the mystery remains.

She left without any dramatic declarations.
I think she was surprised and chagrined
that her prayers, our prayers, would not be answered.
When that became clear, she faced it,
went to bed and quietly finished it.
I faced it with disbelief and anxiety.
It was only later that I also gathered in anger, sadness,
regret, and bitterness.
The disbelief ("help me in my unbelief")
rests on a bedrock sense of inequity:
It should have been me.
She wanted to live, she had reasons to live,
while I live as a hapless reflex, passing the time.
I am uncomfortable in this world,
as beautiful as it is,
and find people vexing.

There is nothing new in these feelings.
Everyone left behind has them.
"I hear you lost your wife" my voice echoes,
"I lost mine, too, just over a year."
(while inside, the time
has become meaningless.
It feels like it happened yesterday,
and like it happened long ago;
it never happened, it's happening now,
and it is eternal).

Her death is my Kaaba,
I circle and circle
in reverence and confusion,
anxious for revelation.
But no revelation comes:
the mystery, and I (for now), remain.

About Words

We are all poets here;
words, sentences, are holographic.
The light that your mind shines through the words
creates their meaning
Seen from one side,
perhaps they are a sliver
that festers under your fingernail, or
a dagger that pierces your heart.
From another angle,
maybe a ledge above the abyss
with a good handhold,
or not,
and you slip away, screaming.
But I don't want to create a compendium here;
we know that even one word
can be all things to all people.
I just want to ask...
What's your angle,
and have you calibrated your compass
and inclinometer?

"Huge Fire in Oakland"

"Huge Fire in Oakland"
the headlines proclaim
in large block letters
but briefly to my eyes
before the pages (and those behind it)
are crumpled and laid in the stove,
where, with some kindling
and a couple small logs,
they will soon provide me
and the room
with a cheery fire
and a modest measure
of welcome heat.

Pebbles in a pond...

The stone soon finds peace on the muddy bottom.
The bubbles vanish in a blink of the eye.
But the ripples...ah, the ripples
circle outward forever
in your mind.

Directed Meditation

Take 10 steps out the door,
in any direction.
Take a deep breath and close your eyes.
Slowly breathe out, open your eyes,
and describe the first thing you see.
My first breath met a wind stirring in the trees,
and my lungs caught it, billowing like a sail,
and I exhaled into night.
Opening my eyes, I saw
before the damp unanimous green
of the trees and grass,
a rosebush in bloom,
each blossom a flame
of cool desire,
and a silent cry of hope.

Sometimes I Wonder Why

Sometimes I wonder why
I don't just sink down into it,
without argument or reproof.
One man's life is as tedious as the next's,
when it comes to the material things.
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential... "
(summers in Rangoon...luge lessons)
Dr. Evil, how right he was!
Repetitive desires, repetitive disappointments.
How consistent it all is,
and how difficult to move beyond it;
or take much of an interest in pushing
this old clay into another shape.
God must be bored out of his mind,
having played this game for the better part of all time.
Or has he put us now on autopilot,
in that eternal 7th day; and now awaits,
greeting the saints,
saints with shining faces,
marching in and out through those flaming doors
every freakin' day of the year.

I'm Bad

Oh I'm bad, yes I'm bad.
I wear Hawaiian shirts,
BUT I TUCK THEM INTO MY PANTS!

Love

Love is a great bird,
soaring high on wings named
"he" and "she."
But this bird cannot soar as high
as the bird whose wings are called
"not I" and "not thou."

Apology

Sentences and paragraphs
we know most often to serve the purely utilitarian.
But when we see the poet's lines,
flush left, supplicants lined up in prayer,
we know we must seek higher ground,
and ready ourselves for the visits
of beauty, and truth, and love.

December 31

I sit crosslegged by your grave.
The sun warms my back,
a little breeze chills my face.
Its the last day of the year,
but it feels like early spring.
Ah Beloved, you left too soon.

Promises Kept

Tucked into a picture frame
that still hangs above our bed
(a watercolor from our daughter)
is a note I left on Edna's pillow,
early on in her last illness.
"Dear Edna" it exhorts,
"Let's grow old together."
And below she had answered
"Yes, let's!"
And we did.
But she grew old too soon and died
while I grew old and live
to wonder why.

Up before dawn

Before the bathroom mirror
I find brief repose,
and these words appear unbidden.
I note the stubble on my face
- though is scarcely compares
to the dark, latin growth
I see on my sons -
it's as if, last night, I had lain down in the forest,
and sometime before dawn
a light dusting of dew
had frozen on my face.

Some days I believe in these words,
some days I don't.
I only know to gather them quickly
before they are beaten incomprehensible,
or buried, or erased,
by the events of the day.

Grief comes sometimes

Grief comes sometimes as an eagle, fierce of eye,
captive in a cage too small.
And inside, I can feel those great wings,
beating against my ribs.

Or sometimes as a turtledove,
held within my heart,
whose fluttering wings
shake my very soul.

Beloved, when I think of you,
grief comes sometimes as a bird
and I wonder where I have left the key
that will set this captive free.

Theology Set

Theology

How foolish we are to deny God's grace.
Here we sit on the third planet,
with mass and velocity just so,
and spaced, just so.
And we call it Chance,
all the while resting easy
in the right hand of God.


Theology II

I am a planet in distant orbit.
My sun is Jesus.
His gravity and my mass
held in divine balance.
One atom's change
would send me spiralling in
to his all-consuming love,
or out into the Buddhist's void.
And I muse...perhaps being Jewish is enough.
(To which a friend replies "that's just because
you haven't met my Aunt Sophie")


Theology III

Ah, the fate of Jesus,
a prophet who eschewed earthly glory
(but who earned it anyway),
only to be flanked by others
claiming the right of dominion
or the right of domination,
claiming by blood, claiming with blood,
or claiming through blood,
a secure or ordered world
for the glory of God.
I say the wisdom of the desert fathers is enough:
Keep to the middle, walk to the side.


Theology IV

The Taliban shell the Buddhist statues at Bamyan,
as if blowing up rock
can destroy an idea.
Buddhist thought informed the Sufis,
children of Abraham,
who in turn, dancing within Islam,
love Jesus,who, in turn,
learned to love all.
Cannon shells, religious vanity, and fear (always fear)
cannot break this chain.

Paul Bley on the Jazz Sound

In describing how a jazz musician develops his sound, Paul Bley said: "You get the sound you hear."
The same goes for poetry.

Work in Progress

Early one morning, I was thinking of the differences between my wife Edna and myself, in regard to where we would live and how we would raise our children - and this fragment of a poem popped into my head:

"...to raise them as wolvces to live in a forest I had not the courage to enter."

Later, I had the following thought:

"...while you gave them a grace and gentility far beyond my rudimentary abilities."

People have always gone out of their way to tell us what good kids we have (they are now in their early twenties to early thirties). I have to agree, though I have the usual misgivings, occasionally, that most parents have. I don't know if these two fragments will ever come together in a formal poem, but didn't want to lose them.

Observations at 62

I
Its turning towards Fall again
and I can't decide
if I'm grateful for the change,
or tired of the repetition.

II
I smell myself
and its not too bad,
except certain places.

Invitation

You're invited to the feast.
The table's piled high,
the food awaits by day and by night.
What's your pleasure?
If you're tired, let someone else's fingers
feed you grapes.
If you're hungry, be a two-fisted eater.
Its OK! We're all here to serve.
Right now fresh fruit is being peeled;
the dirty dishes swept away.
Look!
Tiny birds chase the crumbs at your feet.

Pomegranates

You sat across the room, unknown to me.
And then between us
the cosmic axes and sacred geometries of space
silently and gently folded,
and collapsed.

From above, a branch laden with fruit descended.
And we picked each other!

At first we were hard and content within our skins;
then, swollen with summer's heat.
Finally, battered by a late autumn storm,
We broke against one another.
And found inside, to our surprise,
Sweet ruby kernels we could share.

The Arms of My Eyes

Out in public,
the arms of my eyes reach out,
and women suddenly adjust their clothing,
tugging this way or that,
to cover exposed flesh.
They don't know why.