From the train

The whole shebang is rattling, wildly whistling,
streaming up the coast past glassy ponds,
along the ragged margins of the fields,
through gaudy autumn woods where every tree
is set in perfect place outside the windows.
Out there the world’s a picture book, a story,
and we the watching kids behind the glass,
in thrall to every landscape shape and color,
thinking that we define by all this moving.
Imagine, though, if we could be out there,
and stopped beside some russet-colored oak,
to sit and be a stone instead of traveling;
how all things else would feel like Irish dancing:
spiders, hawks and clouds would circle us,
stirring and jigging round our settledness,
until we’d have to see those thousands leaves themselves
are falling down the autumn air
that seem so fixed as we come flying through.

Specifics for my architect

Blue lupins and a grasshopper buzz,
pool for swimming among frogs and fishes,
thousand-year-old trees to walk among,
a whole sky view,
plus some essential poverties of winter:
stripped trees, dry grass, cold.
Breathing waters of a clear creek,
(many mossed and tendrilled banks),
yellow lichens on dry cliffs,
and cool rocks to rest on when the mind
begins to babble.
A niche for books and wild music,
writing table big as a cellar door,
and a view of valleys where cloud shadows
caress the sprawling curves of hills
like dark hands over the soft fur
of something outstretched, sleeping.

Contemplating work in old age

Each dish I know, and touch as I touch
my own hands and face, the forks know me,
the bed’s opening and closing is part of a story.
When I tend the garden, the garden
tends me, and when I go inside,
my pockets filled with oranges,
juncos’ and bushtits’ conversations
still fill my mind.
I am so happy to be able to work, to act, to do.
I love to touch, pick up and move things.
I love to go up and down the stairs.
I feel so lucky to be digging up the iris,
sweeping the walks, plowing garbage
into the mulch pile. What a great life,
to be still living like this!
You might call it work. I call it a fortune.

July in Boulder

Thunderheads every afternoon
but no thunder,
the heat presses up
from the garden.
No rain.
The old pines totter,
the pond's bullfrogs,
hidden under lilies,
dig into mud.
Drought. Waiting.
Endurance.
We put on hats,
pull weeds from the path.

When rain comes
thundering down the mountains'
granite shoulders,
it breaks in a rush
on the red roof,
pours over,
and the garden, flooding,
streams into the pond—
and is quickly
over—as if it hadn't been—
except for pines,
blue spruce and willows
dripping—
and oh,
here comes the moon.

Angie Boissevain, a retired Soto Zen priest and teacher, has lived a lifetime in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has always cherished the quiet spiritual power of words, especially as found in poetry.