Rengetsu’s Rabbit

making a path

across the wild grass

she cuts calligraphy

now, now, now

I am here

like the stars

here, yet, yet

long gone

now this, old age

where white grasses crackle

in a frosty wind

At Shevlin Park

the Deschutes River

makes a turn across his own Burren

one he’s been carving out for centuries

slowly, with ice cracking tiny chunks of rock

slowly, chiseling with water flow

little pockets echoing duck quacks,

animal tracks, then water plants

and me, like a leaf here and gone

downriver

 to the vast Colombia

downriver

to the wide-open sea

Moon Psalms

the night is not empty

it is full of white deer

floating moon psalms

sent to comfort me

and to praise love

the love I sent them

passing through the garden

the love I’ve had and still

keep close

and momentous tides

pulled by the blue-white moon

so close, so gentle now

heat searing the earth -

spitting perfume at the sun 

one pink lily

Running with Rilke

 from Love Letters to God

“You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark, I am forest.” Rilke

……………………………………………………………………………

1.

I believe in Soul

the great ocean of it

married to life

shining out

everywhere

A soft April rain

          whispers

          remember

          remember

          remember me

LC

……………………………………………………………………………………………

2.

Two tiny shards of a broken dish

fit into one

Minoan flower

that ancient artist speaks

through the dust to my soul

LC

……………………………………………………………………………………

3.

Silence is a gift of unheard music

a baby joy without words.

Who can net the connectedness of everything?

…its strange mortal-eternal dance?

LC

………………………………………………………………………………………..

4.

in Baltimore, a soggy August day

hot sidewalks hissing a mist

lights just beginning to come on

a dancer

jives, turns, writhes and leaps

higher, then lower, then higher

all the way to the bouncing stars

if she comes back

she’ll never be the same

LC

………………………………………………………………………………………….

5.

Evensong in my cathedral

where the saints are all those I loved

enshrined in their own music

a woman-god service

teaching surrender, fearful

or fearless, just letting go

into who knows what

a servant

going in peace

LC

The Curtained Moon

The curtained moon throws

golden patches across a dense dark

as a lonely dog opens his heart

and howls his baritone line

under the coyote pack’s

falsetto cries that rise and fall

into yips and baby barks.

Night weaves it all together.

with the choral ode of frogs

and the far, far away whinny

of someone’s horse and farther

off into the vastness of so much more 

that we can’t hear.