respect the dead & pray for peace
as if the shadows of the dead for a long time were hovering above*
respect the dead, even when
your body is full of crows, and coffins
line the bitter streets like people
waiting for a parade to pass by
respect the dead, even when
your body is full of snow and
the sidewalk inside you is impassable
tonight the crows are cawing
and the snow is thick
hold your hand out in the air, watch
the snowflakes land and melt
on your warm skin
respect the dead and pray for peace, just
drop to your knees and speak your truth
when the sun returns again, you
and the crows will be far away,
but the snow and the dead will remain
jobe
*the title of this poem is a line from Georg Trakl's poem 'In Hellbrunn,'
translated by Robert Bly
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
Clarence Darrow
Winter, dressed in gray, blends in with the chilled clouds. Shivering in their grayness, the clouds bless the winter sky.
jobe
People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.
Rogers Hornsby
Dew Light
Now in the blessed days of more and less
when the news about time is that each day
there is less of it I know none of that
as I walk out through the early garden
only the day and I are here with no
before or after and the dew looks up
without a number or a present age
W.S.Merwin 1927-2019
William Stanley Merwin was quite a fellow. He won the Pulitzer prize for poetry twice, was the 17th Poet Laureate of the United States, and was an advocate for peace his entire life. In 2010, with his wife Paula, he co-founded The Merwin Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving his hand-built, off-the-grid poet's home and 18-acre restored property in Haiku, Maui, Hawaii, which they turned into a lush heaven for rare palm trees, one of the largest and most biodiverse collections of palms in the world.
The Merwin Conservancy is on Twitter, with some assistant doing the tweeting, and when I was also on Twitter, we followed each other. Sometimes when I would Tweet something about poetry or nature or Zen, there would be a comment like, “Bill says he likes this.”
To say I admire the man is an understatement. His work and his values were tremendous.
wild turkeys wandered on 8th Street today
tomorrow – who knows? maybe 5th Street
no one asks why – it just happens
there are wild turkeys in my town
and they go anywhere, everywhere
a raccoon lived in my backyard for a couple years
and one day disappeared
did it die or merely get weary of suburban life?
summer becomes winter, and vice-versa
time passes as it will
whatever your age, you’ll never be
this young again
nothing is permanent, not even hell
jobe
This a photo of a few of the Davis, California turkeys. I have had to shoo them away from my car so I could go to work. My understanding is that there are three flocks around town. Every November I threaten to eat one of them. I never do. Maybe 2025 is my year.
The best way to thaw a frozen turkey? Blow in it's ear.
Johnny Carson
How old am I now? Am I an old man? There are a few years in my life that I barely remember. I have no idea how many places I have lived or how many jobs I have held. Yes, I am old now. What does it matter? As I write this the afternoon shadows are slowly stretching across the patio, and I can see my wife trimming the jasmine. Lovely.
jobe
The Orphanage, a poem by Darius Atefat-Peckham
Topless Modeling on New Year’s Eve, a poem by Eileen G’Sell
A nice rain this morning in the Big Valley. Slow and steady. I have lived through enough drought years in California to appreciate this. My lemon tree, my peach tree, my apple-pear tree will thrive. Our reservoirs will store next summer’s water. People will swim, camp, and visit Yosemite. The ski resorts are doing good business right now, as rain in the valley is usually snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Our big crops, tomatoes, pears, and grapes will have the water to match the sunshine that is coming. The cycle of a year goes round as it should.
It doesn’t rain here in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Valleys in the summer. Winter rain means a lot, you know.
During the drought we had back in the 1980s Gary Snyder, poet and student of the Sierra Nevada watershed wrote that if one looks at California’s great interior valley over the last 20,000 years it’s the dry years and droughts that are normal. Not the lovely wet years. The wet years are generally the exception. The last couple of centuries have been a bit wetter than usual. I like Gary, but I sure hope he’s wrong about that. (The man is almost never wrong.)
My wife, the lovely Alexandra Ping-sheng Lee-Jobe, is out for coffee with a friend. I am having coffee, as well, sitting in the dining room my dog and my conure. My dining room opens out to two patios, one on either side. I can sit, sip, and watch the weather all day.
Thanks for reading the book of jobe. Your support is appreciated.
jobe
