A smile rides home
with me
after five days
of coastal backpacking
with old friends
and family.
I approach my single
man’s cottage,
know loneliness
is near,
nearer.
Is now.
What vast sweep
this feeling has,
how rich with fear!
I let the waves tumble
and tumble
me into the sand.
Finally,
cast ashore,
I rise
naked
in the sun.
Joined now by a Japanese
women’s choir, our drums
weave voices and bodies
into song.
When we thunder an ancient
Hokkaido fisherman’s
chant, another voice
rises, sings with us—
of our fathers
who fought
on bleeding islands
under the rising sun.
We yell, stomp
our feet, haul
the catch of fish
and smile
at our children,
who dance and hoop
the sea’s energy.
For decades
I’ve returned
to this rocky outpost,
sat beside this lodgepole pine,
gazed across Rosario Strait.
With wife, daughter,
subsequent lover—
now with only
this borrowed dog.
Sun blurs my tears
into star flies
that moisten lichen,
and call forth a trumpet
of Canada geese.
Somehow
it all makes
sense.
Orcas Island
Mindful of the tide,
thoughtful of the dark,
daily schedule patterned,
I avoid accidents
and ecstasy.
Still, I dream,
and know the chaos
of not
knowing.
The sparrow
may sing
at any
moment.
(No. 6 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
Old Schmitty was 88 when we met, back when
he used his last two working fingers
to peck out short, dense treatises
on love, nature, kindness.
We’d unpack his thoughts for hours
searching the Yeomalt beach
or watching the Sound from his driftwood wicki.
I lived just up the hill,
and I’d find him whenever I came looking,
on the beach or by his […]
When the call of the flicker
on a lonely ocean beach
is heard in my belly;
When above and below the heavens,
only I am the world-honored one,
having nothing to do with myself;
When flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle dove is heard
in our land;
And when the time I am most […]
