For Joanne

First snow has hushed the highway,
yammer of distant coyotes
comes to us as brittle and sharp
as icicles dangling from the eaves.

Without thought my mind
links the stars and traces
the ancient outlines –I read
Orion standing roughshod

on snowy Pine Mountain.
No going back—once the dots
are connected, those stories
are etched for the duration,

the stars never again a random
scatter of pinpointed lights.
The same for speech—
we come into this country wordless

to find everything already named
and so contained by its appellation—
once the red and white fruit
and sweet juices becomes apple

it never reverts to owning itself.
But not so, the name for you.
Since first I learned your moniker
ten thousand times you burst its bounds

George Singer was a Zen Buddhist monk for several years in his twenties. He was a professor of special education at UC Santa Barbara. He writes about how he tries to let the ways of his senses (heart, and brain at times) let him live more deeply as life is more tenuous and miraculous with the gradual onset of age. At seventy-seven years old, Singer is just getting started.