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A nembutsu poem, for Al Bloom
There's nothing
quite like home.
The door open
to sounds and smells,
to shadows and hues
as close as skin;
at times, to the soft comfort
of longing.
The door open,
home works.
It works every time,
for every need,
in every way,
even in the dark.
Traveling
different roads
works too,
cause we all have home.
See, there, as you step:
the path, the gate, the door.
Granddaughter, while you were sleeping.....
I brought you with me this morning, early.
Light was there, but sun remained silent.
Moon watched, showing only part of its face.
I stopped and cupped a flower;
its petals, almost imperceptibly,
whispered cool damp into my palm.
Encouraged, I spoke your name to the mountain,
aloud, along the path,
into butter sweet grasses,
to the morning air, and again.
Birds demur at such times;
but they always hear.
We breathed and remembered the waiting.
As is only fitting, sun comes in its own time and in many voices.
The blessing came first to my turned shoulders,
then in spreading gold across the hills
in new day:
India Rose.
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Where time lives...
I followed time the other day.
You know how it is
when you think you've forgotten.
Well, actually, it goes home.
And you can follow.
Love grows there.
Like I said, it was as if
I'd forgotten, kind of sitting there,
and I caught it
resting just on the edge of shifting light,
in the turn and flutter of leaves, a swaying branch.
It lives too in the clunk of plates
set on the table, the bending waist,
out-stretched arm, in the release
of finger tips.
Totally indiscriminate,
I found it on my own lips
and on yours too, in our voices
and even in the words rolling off
into new ideas
and into that silence
just above skin browning in the sun.
It was there
in shuffling bare feet,
a bent knee, in a touch, a returned gaze
and in the quickening breath
before tears.
Oh, and in smiling eyes too.
So I followed it home.
You know, you can do that.
It's a place where love grows.
Where time lives.
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More Poems by Jerry Bolick