if your plate is empty
~from california's big valley~
left in green silence the field fosters
this emptiness that we creatures know
a void that covers the sound of our footsteps
as we creatures ease through the tall grass
in crystal clear moonlight we are home
-jobe
How many deaths of other people’s children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and supposedly at peace?
-Wendell Berry
The pilgrim moves with a gentle grace.
His eyelids are the door to the other side,
the astral plane. His flesh
is the iron that the angels beat
into a fine steel for swords,
swords that fight the darkness,
swords that shine like a kind thought.
And behind those eyelids, his eyes
are starlight, moonlight, sunlight, dreams,
compassion, and mercy.
The pilgrim moves with a gentle grace
through this world and the next,
through the days and nights of time.
He moves, and he does not stop moving.
He does not return.
-jobe
CAGED BIRDS
Time and again
You, too,
Must long for
Your old nest
Deep in the mountains.
-Ryōkan Taigu (1758-1831)
The dog head rises into the sky. Is it a balloon? We watch from a low place on the earth as it rises into the gray sky and is gone. A dog head, gone to heaven.
-jobe
If your plate is empty, bring it to me, and I will fill it. Should you be cold, I will light the fire. When the day is hard and heavy, return to me here. I will carry the burden for as long as we both shall breathe. In this life I will take your part, you do not walk alone.
-jobe
A Dent in a Bucket
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
a woodpecker
answers from the woods.
-Gary Snyder
My choice, if I have one, is to live like rain, bringing life, covering the earth, covering everything.
-jobe
links:
Spells for Dread, a poem by Cynthia Hogue
If I Was President, a poem by Hamza Mohamed
Before you go back indoors tonight, look up. A (video) poem of mine.
Carpe Capulus. (Seize the coffee.)
I have always loved flora and fauna, and local flora and fauna has always popped up in my poems. Now, looking back over the last 25 years or so, I see a lot of various types of pines and breeds of owl... and I do love pines and owls. Digger pine, Jack pine, Ponderosa pine, Bishop pine, Barn owls, Burrowing owls, Great horned owls, Western screech owls... all popping up one at a time, here or there. Other critters and trees, too, other course, but more of these. I live across the street from a big park and sometimes I go out at night to listen for this one particular owl that, I guess, lives over there.
Thanks for reading this!
-jobe