DAH

DAH

UPON THE FINGERS

Upon the fingers

of my left hand,

I count my wishes:

Peace. Love. Shelter.

Water. Food.

I sing, clearly, vibrating

and expanding my heart

with contentment.

Each day I attempt

to laugh

a little more

while holding smiles

of others

in my arms.

Day after day

I whisper to our injured earth,

apologizing for our human clumsiness.

I live counting the leaves

on all the trees

— every leaf is my cousin.

When autumn’s rain

brings them down

I will bury each leaf,

reciting one word: Love

— only to water them with my beautiful tears

and bless them with my vigorous pulse.

Later I will press a fallen leaf

in between the pages of this book.

Years later I will come back to it

as if an angel sleeping.

I AM THE POET OF DAWN

This is what I say when light breaks through dark:

O beautiful world, there are light-drops in your eyes

and bird-songs in your ears, and

in morning’s rising waves, creation’s graceful stream

moves her tender sex into first light

where dreams expunge their bedlam. O dawn.

O sweet fragrance. O glittering beams. The vast place

of your mystery, of your body returning to me, is myself

gathered as earth, water, air and spirit:

I see the wondrous green grass, the leaves that are

not alone, a white cloth of clouds, the moon fading

back to its beginning behind the night.

I see insects questioning nothing and shadows forming

themselves. I see the moment in its whole action neither

in a hurry nor moving slowly, and the sky’s blue breast

so easy and calm, so patient and true. I rise

into the stretched-out swells of light, into phase

after phase of truth and passion, of peaceful emotion.

I AM the poet of dawn, the cock that crows hot

and hungry, the blood fibers of fire, of sunrise,

of splendor and beauty. I hear life stretching, whispering,

waking up, grasping and holding me, pulse after pulse,

my body warming up, my eyes filling with colors and shapes,

and longing for the day’s cosmic circuit to flow in and out

of my radiant bones, blood and muscles. I AM everything

dawn is: the chill, the heat, stillness, quietness,

the rising, the pulsing. O climax! I AM all of this.

OCEAN MEDITATION

When the ocean lifts her waves,

standing, as if searching or holding

the smallest molecule of air, I cannot

help my innocence or the wild howl

from my soul

because a part of me, as if lost,

returns or longs for the ocean’s

breath, her leisurely jellyfish or

the chatter of dolphins. And up above

the misted light sees

the wind-streaked salt rising

with a motion that shapes

liquid spirits before me, simple

and eyeless. I sit and watch

the ocean throwing

one wave upon another

at the air, one joint-less

element to another, both

holding then letting go.

DAH

DAH: Dah’s seventh poetry collection is Something Else’s Thoughts (Transcendent Zero Press) and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Singapore, Philippines, Poland, Australia, Africa, and India. He is a Pushcart Prize and  Best Of The Net nominee and the lead editor of the poetry critique group, The Lounge.  Dah lives in Berkeley, California, where he is working on his eighth book of poetry.