Free You
Free You
How will I free you
from tedious city life?
Read Basho’s poems
Grapes
When the grapes are ripe,
I miss you, dead grandfather –
then the first snow comes
Marsh
By the tidal marsh
the wind whispers words of salt –
crabs hide in the ooze
Lustrous
Sky like a bottle
what grapes can match autumn’s light
in lustrous sorrow?
Whisper
Like the sweet whisper
of last year’s cherry blossoms –
this fog on the sea
Chuckle
Morning is cloudy
not yet does heaven’s black bull
chuckle with thunder
First Leaves
First leaves of autumn
drifting like boats of burnt earth
on a sea of green
1972-1973
April 4, 1996
lost worlds,
half remembered passions,
spring’s first plum blossom.
Instant
One spring instant holds
a thousand years of sweetness,
both bee and beyond
Hills
Hills climb to the sky
drop to their knees by the sea,
hold millennia
My Death’s Horse
I am my death’s horse –
it rides me over the hills
to canter the beach
Spring Hail
Spring Hail
Spring hail beats leaf drums –
sunshine yellow skunk cabbage
glows up from the ground
Bloedel Gardens, Bainbridge Island, Seattle, April 19, 2008
Point Reyes Moments
Wind Combs
Wind combs wildflowers
on the hill’s spine by the sea –
if my hair could bloom…
Tamales Point
This spring spectacle –
millions of bright flower eyes –
every year, just now
Tule Elk
Tule elk, near color
of milk chocolate, moving
easily uphill
Twin Towers
Twin yellow pockmarked
morel towers – how eagerly
my eyes pick them out
Tree Peony
The tree peony
sheds huge white petals – a tent
going to pieces
Ransom
Ransom
I’m lost in my words –
only my words can set me free –
I can’t play ransom
Happiness
The blue sky shimmers
amid wind blown leaves of green –
such is happiness
On Black Lake
White swans on black lake,
white dogwoods blooming on shore,
white dog by my side