The burrowing owls stand and watch closely as I walk by; have I come to threaten them? No? This is the anxiety of death that we all know. The burrowing owls, small, colored like the earth, like the cold ground, relax a little as I pass. I can see this. O cold night, let them know peace and comfort, these little beings who look at me and think of danger.
jobe
No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.
Heraclitus
Blue skies, a stout wind. Cold.
A brand new day
that feels like a fresh start.
Like another chance at things.
—All of this while standing at the window
with my young son’s whispery ghost,
who smiles a little and fades away.
Leaving me there. Again.
jobe
A poem from T'ao Ch'ien
I live here in a village house without
all that racket horses and carts stir up,
and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my east fence, I see South Mountain
far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
returning home. All this means something,
something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether.
T'ao Ch'ien 369-427 CE
Translation—David Hinton
A homeless man at the shelter, the illness in his mind causes a violent rage to boil over, and he ends up back on the same hard street. Again. As a volunteer there, I know it has to be, but how long, I wonder until his sunrise? Where is his warmth and tiny comfort?
jobe
Seven out of 10 Americans are one paycheck away from being homeless.
Pras Michel
Where I walk, the earth
is blessed, the earth is holy.
That I draw breath, the air
is blessed, the air is holy.
For that spark of the divine, my life
is blessed, my life is holy.
Creation itself
is blessed, creation is holy.
For this day, for these blessings,
for this holiness around me,
I give thanks.
jobe
I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
E. M. Forster
Life in dreamtime. (A haibun)
It was an eerie dream, not uncomfortable, but strange. Judging by the clothing I was far in the past, in Europe. I was trying to tell people that it is alright to love each other, but because of the differences in language, I was failing. I was running out of time, it was almost time to return here, to the present. I felt frustrated. Finally, I got around the problem by looking deeply into the eyes of each person, one at a time. "Love is the answer," I said, again and again.
Leave hatred behind,
just embrace one another,
you foolish people!
jobe
A haibun is a Japanese hybrid form combining prose or a prose poem with haiku or a short poem. The form is a bit less complicated in English than it is in Japanese. The languages are so very different.
When I retired from radio I spent some time studying the form, and I wrote a group of about 2 dozen haibun. (I believe the word haibun is the same singular or plural. Feel free to correct me on this in the comments.) One was published on a haibun site, but I no longer remember where.
I remember the dream in this haibun clearly, even after a decade. As I woke up I was still telling someone that love is the answer. It shook me in a good way. I have read that everyone in your dream is you, or a part of you. It comforts me that somewhere in my psyche I understand that love is important, and that I use the information to calm myself. As a former boss used to tell me, “Step back from the edge, jobe.” And that is also good advice.
Thanks for your support.
jobe