Be up and be now
the weather insisted,
eyes open are best
to meet the maybe.
But the chair is sad
at last, and all the books
have read me blind—
am I only the echo
of what someone else sang?

2.
How the sand piles up
along the shore,
so clean, so clean!
as if it came from heaven
and the ocean keeps it pure,
I dreamed I was bringing
clean sand to the shore,
my gift to the weather
of what things are.

3.
Live by quotation
the way the Japanese
know where words come from
on their way to being said.
Live by creation, God-like and fresh,
live by rotation,
spinning in place
to keep singing in form,
live by donation,
give everything away.

4.
And still the radicals
cling to the characters,
images persist, their linger
is our language too.
Who first said ‘you’
and what did they see
with their startled eyes,
the very first stranger,
the other, the god?

5.
In the climate of repose
is there only one of me?
It’s morning, can’t I wake up
another in me to share
the burden of light, the quest
of outward, the same old new?

6.
You can tell I’m frightened,
anyone would be
who was me. And you there
with these words on a page
or screen before you,
don’t you feel a little edgy too?
When you’re reading
you never know what’s coming next—
just like morning on an ordinary day.

                                      11 August 2020