I once wrote the words to a song.
It's about a man climbing the bell tower
of an old country church
to be with his beloved - the stairs are missing.
I find them in an old notebook.
I can no longer recall the melody -
yet another poem, with the rest.

boarding a freighter in san francisco harbor

destination kobe

best described in a longer poem

where the city itself longs for the sea

with childlike longing

the journey best in stripped down journal entries

about rest of crew and assignments aboard

but also and more interestingly about the historical development of buddhism

in china and japan. chan/zen.

myths of the mountains. animism. grace and gratitude at a dying animal.

a she-fox sneaking in at night in the guise of a beautiful woman.

man sleeping. man and woman an altar.

poems to robin in a temple garden. pleiades chanting

my words above.

my eyes follow line upon line
strips of white in between
strange voices, stretches of silence

I hear them too

they lead me away from my peers -
in among the trees
birches breeding close to me.
knowing all along i can always return
although it won't be the same

                               *

still we go willingly where silence takes us
as cracks open - briefly -  
in all the talking we do

She's on her way
out tonight,
all dressed up;
heart dangling
round her neck -
bare, stripped

of all but childhood
moments, held up glistening
to the light;
a weight moving about
as she hurries down the street
to the bus stop,

making her aware
of what she has
to carry, what there is
to hold on to
when so much is lost
with the rain
down the grates.

She can see children playing
twilight games,
but she's not a child:
her feet are not naked and sore,
no scrapes on her knees
anymore. She carries her pain
in out of sight places.

As we're born
we all lose something
of the ones we were.

Somewhere there's a picture of me
before I was born. My face
in shadows and yet
it seems to beam back
at you. Hands resting
on my belly. I can see you
thinking: "SO BIG!!
Must be a boy in there".

It's a strange story,
it has a beginning
but no end;

it opens to a city street
but there are no people:
empty canvas of a street painter,
hot-dog cart untended.

What kind of story is this
where nothing ever happens,
what sort of tales, these,
that won't walk you
to your mother's house.

It will capture your imagination,
just you wait and see.

They're playing in the snow:
two little girls - sisters -
and a father.

I'm drawn to the window
by their laughter.
I'm left standing,
motionless, in a room.

The finishing touches
to a snow man.
The finishing touch.

As she traced a path
in the palm of her hand
she felt sad for forgotten
     things
lost hearts, lockets
and misplaced gloves
left like dying moths
in light too rare to remember.
She picked up
where she left off
and went - with blessing -
into white winter streets
step upon step
soon forgotten.

There are many different kinds of door.
Some open, some close;
some leave you standing
outside in the cold.

There are days in life
that move so slow
and days you wish
would never go.

There are moments,
truth be told,
when your heart opens
as she closes the door.

I've decided to end my life
he wrote in a note
and pinned it to
his laid off clothes.
It isn't as bad as it sounds.
He turned up three weeks later
in Singapore,
alive and well
if somewhat confused
and dehydrated.
As for where he had been
he wouldn't say
but to those who knew him
his smile
meant that something had changed.

As snow fell upon them
they were nothing but children
hard at play
reconstructing a school-yard:

a broken window
and through it's brokenness
tiny voices, farther
and farther away.

As much as I try


I can't forget


those summer nights

when the sun shines through

on the lithograph of John

in his cave on Patmos

you should probably go outside

the park is nice this time of year

don't forget to lock up

the thief cometh

Being a poet since eleven or twelve
it's not easy slipping
into the skin of an anti-poet,
see through such eyes
the truth
in a different light,
a different beauty
as close to ugliness as your lovers breath
     is close to you;
taking up residence in a brain
emitting images
as absurd as life itself.
I have no other recourse
than the slitting of my wrists.
Whatever flows out
is what you'll read.
Not that anyone reads anymore.

As I ask her to stay all night

                               she says

Where do you think this is going

I tell her I know exactly where this is going

I think she likes to be reassured

Carolers down the street.

He always went the other way.

Chimes of silent bells;
tongue taken out
or covered in felt.

And when people told him
to buy the ex-wife a fine wine
he went with wool socks instead.

Except the first time they made love
on a wintry day like this
snow falling as he came down.
There seemed to be music
coming from deep within
the winter clothes
of Christmas shoppers
and as they passed
he bid them Merry Christmas
and it was as though
they were somehow pleased
to hear it.

She said she hadn't been sleeping -
bad dreams: her Jack Russell
getting lost in the fields.
And it's almost harvest time.

I said, half jokingly - only half,
it's your maternal instinct
kicking in. She laughed.
I guess she's still that young.

i too would go
to japan before
the war in asia

short poems written and published
under my own auspice
haikus only at the end.

fall in love with shizumi
as a girl, before i knew her,
loving her til death.

ice-cream shop, run
an ice-cream shop
with her, and i

don't even like ice-cream
all that much

In her parent's attic we find
a drawing she once made.

Drawing of a child,
it shows the world
after it's done. Day
warm with sun,
on the skin of lovers;
rocks alive, as you or me.

It's all reminiscent
of an R.S. Thomas poem,
and I tell her so.

It will be the last thing I say
as the one I once thought I was.

She points at what
has escaped me
all along, and says:
"This is your heart.
I colored it, to my liking."

So, that's how it all began.

On this morning
bleak midwinter of '44
in Heart Mountain, Wyoming,
heartland of America,
Nyogen Senzaki Sensei
performed to his makeshift
congregation of interned Japanese
and Japanese-Americans
the duties of a priest.
He chanted sonorously
mindful of the dark outside
the mirror-like windows
of the barracks. "Wonder
of all Wonders. All beings
are Buddha, endowed
from the start with wisdom
   and virtue."

What can be added, what
taken away, we will never leave
this place, it lives in us
like a mother's embrace.
They thought with one mind
quietly and not without sadness.

When it was all over
they had tea
and went there separate ways.

On this morning.

In the attic we come across
winters long gone. By light
from a bare light bulb
we learn what life makes
of children all grown up.

Once, in my youth,
I won the Kentucky Derby.
The man who rode me now dead, I'm left
with an indifference to all things
but hay for the horses.

My heart is too big
to hold god,
angels maybe,
dark-skinned,
with ragged clothes,
but not god.

Alone in His majesty,
it would be a waste of space,
and we should take care
to make of his gifts more than that.

Where are we to go
on Sundays
from now on, you ask?
Well, you could come to my house,
and I to yours. Or, if that won't do,

we'll build a house from the ground;
and it will be just a house, a house
without memory, without beatings
and cold stares.  Flowers
in all the windows, growing up,
blessed with restlessness.

At night, the house
in darkness,
the sleepers
restless, at the mercy
of their dreams,
or no dreams at all,
sleeplessly wandering the halls
like Father Christmas;
a sip of whisky's better
than cookies and milk,
still, it won't work,
problem is, under the tree,
there's a present
with your name on it.

When Marilyn said
to Norma Jean:
"You have to go
out of your way

to save me",
she spoke
from a place beyond
all those years.

As cars rolled by,
the shut window's
distant mirror-eye,
they saw themselves,

in flashes, move about,
like faces
of sorrow and joy
changing places.

And the motel-sign said: vacant.

I'd like to come along
to your mother's house
on the night of her death;

it hasn't happened yet,
but when it does,
we both know,

you'll need someone.