For a dear and beloved friend in San Francisco, who was ordained into the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi on August 10 of this year.

WRITTEN ON THE WALL AT CHANG’S HERMITAGE

1.

It is spring in the mountains.
I come alone seeking you.
The sound of chopping wood echoes
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stormy mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I become like you,
An empty boat, floating, adrift.

2.

In spring mountains, alone, I set out to find you.
Axe strokes crack—crack and quit. Silence doubles

I pass snow and ice lingering along cold streams,
then, at Stone-Gate in late light, enter these woods.

You harm nothing: deer roam here each morning;
want nothing: auras gold and silver grace nights.

Facing you on a whim in bottomless dark, the way
here lost—I feel it drifting, this whole empty boat.

  — Tu Fu (712 - 770), Chinese Poet of the Tang Dynasty.
  — Translations by Kenneth Rexroth (1) & David Hinton (2).

THE WEAKERTHANS - OUR RETIRED EXPLORER
(DINES WITH MICHEL FOUCAULT)

Just one more drink and then I
Should be on my way home
I’m not entirely sure
What you’re talking about
I’ve had a really nice time
But my dogs need to be fed
I must say that in the right light
You look like Shackleton

Comment allez-vous ce soir? Je suis comme ci comme ça
Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica

Oh, I could show you the way
Shadows colonize snow
Ice breaking up on the bay
Off the Lassiter coast
Light failing over the pole
As every longitude leads
Up to your frost bitten feet
Oh, you’re very sweet

Thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida
But I must be getting back to dear Antarctica

Say, do you have a ship
And a dozen able men
That maybe you could lend me?

Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica
Oh Antarctica

THE WEAKERTHANS - WATERMARK

I count to three and grin.
You smile and let me in.
We sit and watch the wall you painted purple.

Speech will spill on space.
Our little cups of grace.
But pauses rattle on about the way that you cut the snow-fence,
braved the blood,
the metal of those hearts that you always end up pressing your tongue to.
How your body still remembers things you told it to forget.
How those furious affections followed you.

I’ve got this store-bought way of saying I’m okay,
and you learned how to cry in total silence.

We’re talented and bright.
We’re lonely and uptight.
We’ve found some lovely ways to disappoint,
but the airport’s always almost empty this time of the year,
so let’s go play on a baggage carousel.
Set our watches forward like we’re just arriving here
from a past we left in a place we knew too well.

Knew too well.
Knew too well.

Hold on to the corners of today,
and we’ll fold them up to save until it’s needed.
Stand still.
Let me scrub that brackish line that you got
when something rose and then receded.
Hold on.

You have to love the weather in Utah … especially during T-Bird’s favorite season.

80-degrees yesterday on my commute home … snow today.

Sigh …

What a wasted weekend. Friday night was wonderful, but I slept in yesterday (sort of … got up at 5:00, went back to bed at 8:00, then got up at noon), expecting the storm to roll through yesterday, and the weather to clear up today so I could go skiing

But no … the storm decided to hang back, and not roll in until today, and while I don’t mind skiing when it’s snowing, flat light, wind and face-stinging ice is not my thing.

This is the side of “sprinter” that I’m not fond of. I don’t mind if it’s 60 and sunny one day, and 30 and snowy the next … but this 40-degrees and rain shit in the valley has got to stop.

It makes recreating extremely difficult.

Thursday’s early morning storm provides the inspiration for this week’s edition of Poetry Friday.

Spring Snow  

A spring snow coincides with plum blossoms.
In a month, you will forget, then remember
when nine ravens perched in the elm sway in wind.

I will remember when I brake to a stop,
and a hubcap rolls through the intersection.
An angry man grinds pepper onto his salad;

it is how you nail a tin amulet ear
into the lintel. If, in deep emotion, we are
possessed by the idea of possession,

we can never lose to recover what is ours.
Sounds of an abacus are amplified and condensed
to resemble sounds of hail on a tin roof,

but mind opens to the smell of lightning.
Bodies were vaporized to shadows by intense heat;
in memory people outline bodies on walls.

  — Arthur Sze (b. 1950)

From The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998, published by Copper Canyon Press, 1998. Copyright © 1998.

Short bike ride yesterday, in the cold (thankfully not raining or snowing), and while I expected it to be difficult since I haven’t thrown my leg over a saddle since December; I did not expect to struggle on a mere 1/2 hour ride.

Then off to party at Jennie’s last night, meeting up with many friends who I’ve not seen in several weeks … completely brain-farted Nancy’s name, which was quite embarrassing; a total synapse mis-fire (or non-fire).

Late start this morning, drove up to Solitude for a couple runs off Eagle Express, and a couple of runs off Powderhorn. Was completely not feeling it, so gave up early and came home …

Definitely not in a good mind-space this afternoon …