Just another day
in the pandemic. We have
lost count of the dead.
We bring the children
to watch the swans in the cove.
So big and so white.
The children laugh to
see them stick their long necks in-
to the dark water.
We’re forbidden to
say goodbye to the dying
or to see them go.
On the breakwater,
the winter sun at high noon,
the light strips things to
transparency: soul
reading the bright page of keen
attention, there is
a forgetting of
self, cold, my presence, there’s just
the flowing passage.
Into the glister
of the cove two ducks disap-
pear. Just about o-
vercome my eyes tear-
up and I lose track of them.
I leave them to it.
It was I pulled from
the cold as the tern broke through.
I saw it coming,
cruising and spindling
above the cove, shouldering
the light as it crashed
through and rose instant-
ly. The beauty of being
pulled into the light.
I did not ask for
it, I’ll take it, not as sign
of anything grand,
the cloud doubled in
the dark Bay waters, brighter
there than in the sky,
the empty mind re-
minded how ordinary
such transformation.
Cold wind all night long. Now I see the mountain.
I heard it before
I saw it, two swans rising
into the gray, a
rush, a gush of air
as the great white wings spread out
and up and down and
up, water falling.
I had been missing you and
for a time the void
of your death filled with
tremendous white confusion
in the empty cove.
And that arrest keeps
me moving through the winter’s
dark, open spaces.
It begins to rain.
The luminous autumn clouds
over the water
drain of light. I wave
to the old woman who minds
the plantings and paths,
though as Buson says,
I’d rather end the year with
Basho on the road.
It gets dark early
so I leave early to see
the swans in the cove.
This is new for me.
I’ve loved and been loved and no
longer seek the one.
There are many paths
to being, being has many
names, still I love to
see these two swans in
the gloaming under the pier
being together.
When it snows the geese
leave woods for open waters.
Their obstinate stares!
Simple minded, I
recognize myself when they stop
me on winter walks.
What keeps me out in the cold?
The open waters.
