1
On my seventieth birthday reading Su Tung-p’o
in the predawn dark waiting for the first birdcall.
“I’m a tired horse unharnessed at last,” he said.
Our leaders say “connect the dots” but the dots
are the 10,000 visible stars above me.
2
Morning. Twenty-five degrees. Heavy frost descending
at 6:30 AM. The only sound the whisper
of green hackberry leaves falling,
a deep green carpet under each tree.
First bird, a canyon wren.
Sky azure, sun-gold mountain.
My ears not frozen shut,
my one eye open
to this morning in a cold world.
3
At dawn my mind chattered like
seven schoolgirls,
seven pissed-off finches at the feeder,
seven ravens chasing the gray hawk.
How to calm it down? Let the creek
run through it from ear to ear.
You can’t expect anything.
Even dawn is a presumption.
More raptors this year after two
good monsoons. I found a lush
and hidden valley I couldn’t bear
to enter today. It frightened me
as if it might be home to new species
of creatures God had forgotten to invent.
The old man is also a timid boy.
5
On solstice dawn I’m an old brat
lifting a hundred mental bandages.
Mt. Everest is covered with climbers’ junk
and a golf club was left behind on the moon,
the East suffocates in malice and the West
in pink cotton candy. Sixty years ago
my brother told me that the rain was angel piss
and that turtles might kill me when I swam.
The solstice says “everything on earth is True.”
6
Waiting for the light. I stand by her door
listening for breath. We’ve had 18,000 nights
but one of us will go first. The big moon
speaks to me with the silence
of a sleeping dog. First bird, the canyon wren.
I hear her say to her dog Mary, “Move over.”
Press the coffee button, December 24, with the moon
the bright eyeball of a god. For a couple of
million years people were outside
and now they’re mostly inside. Had Su Tung-p’o
heard of Jesus from the trade routes exchanging
gunpowder and pasta? He knew the true wilderness
is the soul which doesn’t wear
the old shoes of time and space.
8
I felt ignored waking up in the cold dark
and planned a parade for myself leading
the dogs, Mary and Zilpha, down the creek bed.
I wield my walking stick like a drum major
pointing out the earth and sky to the earth and sky.
The dogs like javelina tracks but cringe at the paw prints
of the mountain lion. Five ravens sound the alarm.
I never was the lord of all I survey.
9
Late in life I’ve lost my country.
Everywhere there is the malice of unearned
power, top to bottom, bottom to top,
nearly solid scum. Very few can read or write.
Lucky for me we winter in this bamboo thicket
near a creek with three barrels of bird food.
With first light things seem a little better.
Don’t probe your brain’s sore tooth in the dark.
Let your mind drift to the mountains
where migrants are doubtless freezing
on the coldest night of the year. The dogs
found a nest beneath the roots of a big sycamore
tipped over in July’s flood. The ashes of a tiny fire,
an empty water bottle, a pop-top can of beans
scorched by the coals. These dangerous people
whom we’re being taught to hate like the Arabs.
11
I can’t find the beginning, middle and end in the dark.
Will a kindly lightbulb help? Su Tung-p’o is dead
but I keep talking to him as I do my father
gone now these fifty years. I have no moves
left except to feed the birds at first light.
I have nearly lived out my exile, the statistics
say. Who knows what glorious wine comes next
in my sunny kingdoms of dogs, birds and fish?