1.
People disappear like factory clouds
Slowly at first but now with the speed of a cloak
I am reminded that life is a dream, does dissolve
And sit at the window in shock staring at the smoke
2.
How good it is
For the body to cry
Until it becomes a lake
Into which the heart
(A dark lump)
Pulls the moon down
3.
At last I’m at the temple
Rid of all my problems
Quit of all my cares
The deep bell echoes
Fierce wind blows
4.
You and I quantify the moon
With our laborious breathing
We are calm
But so is death with all its valleities
People try to hold clusters of foaming crests
That’s why what’s dense desires description
For without our fists mists draw down
5.
Holy night and her ministers various days
Bold as thunder all heart a presence
Mind’s worlds twist what’s plain as hands
That doing well lack nothing in plain purpose
How will we be when earth’s melted and done?
6.
Snow has fallen on mountain paths
We walk as fast as we talk they swirl
Above the moon regrets us, creates day
We go out to collect it but rain
Amends our situation gives us a blurred moon
To laugh at pulling up our socks in mimicry
Of this moaning, running away, getting lost, raining
7.
Abalone hang onto rocks
Unable to speak drink
The air they breathe seek
Solace throw away a world
Know just rock’s edge
Mold their bodies tight with love
Pulse slowly there
They are human
Awaiting master divers
Swimming down to pry them loose
8.
I dream my mother’s face
As face of someone else, picture
In a foreign language newspaper...
Unhidden I have given up the world it’s cheap
But have not known it, wear worldly clothes
A fool pretending to transcend time which pierces me
9.
I push through snow my face is snow
Entire snow white surf on Kiso’s
Hanging bridge not a thing moves which is moving
A tool to open the danger
So deep I cannot see the bottom
10.
A man whose mind
Can’t see a thing in front or behind
Walks straight on into fog
As if leaping off the end of the world
In fact the next moment of fog
Also is a case of mistaken identity
In which neither front nor rear applies
11.
So bleak and lost shut up
By thick encapsulating mountains
No one around with echoing words
As noise to play against wind’s barks
That companionship that I crave word of
And here have...
Turns out to be monkeys shrieking
Distant and closely, cousins likely
12.
You are like the moon in distance
A great sphere of it from me like water
Sucked to the center of a funnel and down
If where you are in a place which is not there
You also see its serene light
Then you’ll also be here as me
13.
When I run away from pleasure as crime
I wonder what terrifies me to blend in
A little bit with warmth, to hold onto time’s
Not my lot so I’d you as winter
Any longer to leave, so worse
14.
Why when anyone who pledges grief to longing
Is anyhow suddenly swept away
In a wave of wanton lament
I who’d love to leave constantly
Keep getting time in handsful
Piling up in leaves between covers
15.
(to a pleasure woman)
In going from a speck to a quartz heart
I atrophy pleasure or gain...
Still no use in your stinging querulous
Gesture of keeping from me what you’d intend
For another by dint of cursory monetary affirmation...
In fact you’re drawn down in it
As blinds
16.
(pleasure woman’s reply)
I’m saving you because you’ve leased the world
From troublesome cementing affections
You’d latch to and close in
This is why what I withhold is like a treasure
Not gotten greater than had
17.
The last moment of life you’ll be awakened
By a companion who’ll turn all thought
And mode of feeling suddenly frozen red
Which I’d gladly welcome in you,
Sad cricket
18.
(to a deceased relative)
Before now you’d gone here and there
Up and down in cars
But where you rest in now’s not anywhere like
A set location, at edge of place
It whets the arch of distinction
Carrying place away from time and all beyond
Saying and sense
19.
After years together
Or far away our same set of eyes
Looked at moon’s halo all
We knew together simultaneous in care
Now seeing the dense black moon
As totality of mass for an unwise floating...
Otherwise
20.
(advice to a friend)
What you depend on’s lost each one
Close to you that is image in heart’s eye
Without which to go on’s not can be do
Black clothes of sorrow dampen in black for tears....
Suggest you plunge on in swampy Dharma joy
Quiet sitting now day by day
21.
(at a friend’s graveside)
This old field now gone to tangles of soured grass
In the one old tree snapped and bent
A dove coos for the gone one mate
Heart all chilled in dense awesome dark
22.
(second poem at friend’s graveside)
All of him’s gone that’s seen and can be
Just a word remains to shape my ear
Which I’d felt already suddenly in the bent bone grass
Left blowing here in bitter wind...
What I think about it is poetry
23.
Moon dips down below hill’s slopeline
Area of contention now vain, without shape
To distance of deep sky
I also see in this a kind of where to be myself
Soon and am willing
24.
Stuck on the pivot of my knowing well what’s perfect
As jewel gleam on crest of wave can’t be grasped
As mind’s light clear in glancing
Is neither so in me nor not so
Which I suffer
25.
Mind’s a sky not dark or light
Which appears within itself as moon
Gone in a limpid drab of flash
You can see as if slowly crawling to mountains...
West
26.
People who think Vulture Peak’s moon
Shakyamuni’s set from before
To be dreamed of now or adhere to rule or letter
Are themselves dim all the way to dark
27.
People who think there’s just one life
And be quick or worry here as this flesh only
Looking out for what’s desired according to thought
Are narrower than this tree without branch or twig
Their dimension cramped in on itself
Without fanning out or diving into time’s endless
28.
Many’s tender tangles words complications
And flights or rivalries endless repetition
Of running about shouting tasteless short-term slogans
And despair of future’s ever just conclusions
Would be practically unbearable
Were it not for all its flight
To hide out from itself in mountains...
29.
Mind of reality’s like a stream on top
Shallow over rocks at first then drop
In icy pools of endless depth
Clearer then though hidden
30.
Longed for guests
Who never arrived in ordinary presence to my mountain hut...
My disappointment equals glee in taste
Of happy lonliness
That brought me this
31.
When what’s expected fails
Or mind can’t seize on what’s to be
Expected grief rains down
Disorganized as cherry petals in this wind
32.
Both of us blown and bent getting up and down
Weakly hard hit by wind and other weather
Myself sick and young bamboo
33.
Moon passes through deep sky’s night
Like a robed judge on a bench demands respect
Points toward fair and deft conclusion I also
Seeing it have passed beyond myself
With somber like finality
This poem appears in Norman Fischer, Questions/Places/Voices/Seasons (San Diego, CA: Singing Horse Press, 2009).