While I Was Waiting for You

By Joel Weishaus

While I Was Waiting For You is the expanded and revised edition of Joel Weishaus' Collected Poems, Feels Like Home Again, published in 2014. The present volume includes thirty poems since found, and an addendum of six very early poems. In this volume of poems made between 1965-2000, Weishaus addresses his experiences in San Francisco during the 1960s and 70s; a journey to Japan in 1968, building a Japanese-style garden in California, a one-year hermitage in a mountain cabin, and living in northern New Mexico. These poems form the foundation for Weishaus' later work, including his celebrated Digital Literary Art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legacy Book Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223651659

Book preview

While I Was

Waiting For You

Complete Poems

1965-2000

Joel Weishaus

Legacy Book Press LLC

Camanche, Iowa

Copyright © 2023 Joel Weishaus

Cover layout by Kaitlea Toohey (kaitleatoohey.com)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, re- cording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN: 979-8-9874823-0-8

Library of Congress Number: 1-12888658487

Books by Joel Weishaus

––––––––

On The Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing (Editor)

Oxherding: A Reworking of the Zen Text (With Prints by Arthur Okamura)

Bits & Snatches: The Selected Poems of Sam Thomas

(Editor)

Woods Shore Desert: The 1968 Journal of Thomas Merton

(Introduction & Notes)

The Healing Spirit of Haiku (With David H. Rosen and Arthur Okamura)

Feels Like Home Again: Collected Poems Reality Dreams: Diary of a Poet as Ghost

Jungian Arts-Based Research and The Nuclear Enchant- ment of New Mexico (With Susan Rowland)

To those Wonderous Beings who appeared, and continue to appear, in these poems

And, as always, for Susan

Contents

East to West

Under the Rain in Brooklyn

And Still They Keep Coming

O Charlie Chaplin

Met Her in Provincetown

In the Dead of an Army Night

I Am Awoken to a Night as Walking

The Birth of Popeye

Forever Angel she will die

Even the Dead Have Potential

Summer Lightning Hastily Exposes Negatives finding them still too black

Old Injin he was

Marilyn

The Body

Like a Child in Hand

Friday the 13th

Words for David Meltzer

The Wooden Bridge

Northern California Amateur Hard Court Tennis Finals: Women’s Singles

Introductory Speech to Arrabal’s Automobile Graveyard

Cats Scratch the Door

Mountain Haiku

Mt. Tamalpais: 4 a.m.

Even On This

July

Signs

Chinatown

Fisherman’s Wharf

Telegraph Hill

Grace Cathedral

Zoo

National Cemetery

Eucalyptus

Poem for Pets

Empty Bench

Japan and Home Again

International Dateline

Strong Shit Smell

Hilltop overlooking straight irrigation ditches and fields—

Shiroishi 8 a.m.

The World

This Night’s Visitor

Five Panels from the Monastery of the Pond Dragon

Change Trains at Ofuna

Kita-Kamakura

Yasaka Shrine

Upon Seeing a Victim of the atomic bomb

Every Morning

Night at Sea

A Sailor’s Lament

Can Feel Land Close

South of Portland

Feels Like Home Again

California/ New York/ California

Four Portraits from Grosz

Fly Smiles

Lucky Cat

Waking in a Field at Night

Earth Waits

Leon the Lama

Gātā for Margot

On the Green Pond

Sam Taylor Park

Redwood

Gesture

Touching

The Carpenter

At 2 p.m.

A Good Place to Work

Three Death Valley Poems

Eight New York Poems

1.

a woman bejeweled with dog’s

arf arf arf, little legs straining

to reach beyond her leash.

On Carmel Beach.

Behind Her

Sign in Pacific Grove

You Sing in Me

What Sneaks Past

O Woman

How Did I Know Her?

Never a Fraction Apart

The Pact

Like a Chinese Sage

The Coffee House

In The Arbor

Sam the Sufi

Helen’s Cat

Trying to Forget

First Autumn Rain

Arrived

Steps

The Japanese Garden

Introduction

Spring / Summer

Clearing the Ground

Laying New Pipe

The Bridge

Feeling for Stones

Rock Garden

Spreading It

Hacking It

Scrounging for Stuff

Lunch Poem

Laying More Pipe

Michiko no Takumi

Mosquitos

Touching It

Black Soy From Hong Kong, Preserved Shredded Mangos From Taipei

Sono Tsukuru Kami

Bamboo

Before Crossing

Autumn/ Winter

That Autumn

Gathering In

Walking On Waves

In the Rain

The Woodburning Stove

Wet Leaves

The Tao

Against the Grain

Red Sun

What’s Out There?

Wild Garden

In a Piece of Jade

Barking At It

Bent Nails

Sliding

Last Touches

Fallen Trees

One Week Before Spring

This Garden

Afterward

Hermitage Poems

Introduction

Autumn

Taking Stock

Economy

Konocti

On Stream-On Line

Bear Doctors

Hung Up

Through My Childhood

My Friend

Useless

Trees

Brushing Them Off

Museum Peace

Losing It

Winter

What I Said

Plumbing It

Winter Branches

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Christmas Visitation

Splitting Between Drops

Three Winter Haiku

Fetching the Mail

Mind of Flesh

To Gun Me Down

Body Count

Moth / Spider / Bat

Snapping The Light On

With The News

Old Prayers

My Body

One Apple

Who Survived the Winter?

Spring / Summer

Five Spring Poems From Po Chu-i

Pollen Pods

Maybe a Flower Sneezes

Earth: A Basket

Two Tall Men

From Where I Stand

Three Insect Poems

What I Can’t Say

Back Again

Battle of Bloody Island

Breathing Free

In the Kitchen

Curing it

Plans

On The Move

New Mexico

Climbing Above Santa Fe

Yes

Santa Fe Baldy

Just Trees

Prickly Pear

The Grateful Dead

A Letter to Lukos

Pecos Transformation

Shadows in a Field

Wild Crab Apples

A Heart for Rudy Jimenez