sounds and scents, cusp of September

remembering what you don’t know

Tomorrow is segaki,
the time to feed the hungry ghosts
open the door
tell the world good morning

Today two monks stir
at the mountain cabin temple  
open the door
tell the world good morning

Tonight we roast
pumpkins, stuffed like turkeys -
open the door
tell the world good morning

Tomorrow, a remembrance list -
ones known and ones not
open the door
tell the world good morning

This starless morning, snow
weights frayed prayer flags at the pub
open the door
tell the world good morning

Day after no day, the nameless ones
rest - more or less -
open the door
tell the world good morning
  

Any hour, remembering
stuffs the heart, just like pumpkins
open the door
tell the world good morning

rites of way

Two hundred years down the road
I take a right, stopping for no man. 
No traffic light blinks at me, even
in the dark. It is the first storm

after a million other storms, and
the traditional season for whining.
There’s snow in that rain, I smell it.
It’s the same water Joseph drank,

and sweated out climbing down
the trail to the Snake.  Evaporation
mends a multitude of sins, but not
necessarily all of them.  My great

grandfather brought Old Joseph hay;
my grandfather dined on fatal down-
wind dust from Hanford; my father
died under anaesthesia; my stepfathers

eventually could not be bothered. Planes
fly overhead, except when they don’t.
Two hundred years back down the road,
she took a left, and stopped for a man.

tenth month

all the possibilities -
only a winter moon in sight

the only day of summer

rank grass and weeds -

stumbling through
the only time there is

what flavor is your landscape?

the crashbang of wild onions
the keening of cous greens, a
tender shiver of miner’s lettuce - 

the rasty bitter of this, the raw 
straw of that - there are things
you can’t smell but your dog can -

the bitter shine of mouse pee, the
metallic spore of hunting residue,
a world of mess and residue. so -

what flavor is your landscape,
what raucous sound, what
symphony, beyond the bland?

it may be spring

digging wild strawberries and
picking up
cans,
debating the sociology of Coors and
Keystone and whether
genetic mutation
is the reason 

for twins and groupings
of muddy bottles in snow melt.

something has scratched around
the base 

of a bug-ridden 

snag.

all the while,my friend's dog
chases the same rabbit
around and around
and pretends
we are wearing
cloaks of invisibility
when called.
a stellars jay pretends to be a begging
redtail babe. all this and a three-weeks
great
horned
owl.