"27 years ago I used to teach English at NMSU and write poetry when I had time. Since retiring, I get to write every day in my back yard and, afterwards, go get coffee with Jill, who’s been painting in her studio. That’s the sweet life we somehow lucked on to."
Self-expression
My sinus is raspy so I try scratching it
with the back of my tongue.
There’s a slight breeze in the leaves
that might be the culprit,
though who can blame a breeze
for blowing?
It’s like expecting a dog
not to bark.
Everything has to express itself
or how would you know
what or who they are?
There’s this poem, for instance,
trying to express whatever
may come to mind—nothing much
that I know of so far this Saturday morning
sitting out here under a tree,
but maybe the tree will help draw me out
with his generous “ululation,” a word
that popped up just now,
though I’ll have to look it up.
Here in the back yard, under the sun, a breeze
blowing through the leaves, sounds
of the town all around, you feel
you’re at the center
of life, your own life included.
The mysterious Life-Source, the identity
of which, or whom, people debate,
must, ages ago, have expressed itself
by creating what slowly turned
into the world.
To The Source Of Energy
Daily am I permitted to come out
to the back yard
where the familiar locust trees wave
welcoming leafy fingers at me
and make restful shade pools to enter,
dwell in, and allow the mind to extend
through the senses and word-thoughts,
pass through the permeable air and
out to the blue infinity
some mornings marred only by rag-bits
floating seemingly close enough
to grab hold of—
and let the life-moments pass
before me slowly enough that I may
consider, appreciate, and shape them
one by one to the contours
of the body and mind gifted me
by ancestors eighty-one years ago
in a hillside farmhouse across the Atlantic,
a body and mind since developed
to a full person, here expressing
his gratitude.
—inspired by Robert Duncan’s
“Often I Am Permitted
To Return To A Meadow”
