the loop of living

(and chewing tobacco)

Photo by Shumilov Ludmila on Unsplash

Never slap a man who is chewing tobacco.

Will Rogers

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a lone goose passes by up above
and yells down at me

“hey! I’m up here, you know”

“yes, you are, and not a moment too soon”

some days are like that aren’t they?
the sun shines out royal
the music takes you and lifts you up
and every stray dog is your friend

some days even the goose is right on time

jobe

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Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.

Carl Sandburg

Photo by Elijah Austin on Unsplash

the loop of living lassos us in
a rope from the world that loops the sun
and is then looped by the moon

the orbit of round
the orbit of circle

together we roll
together we spin

jobe

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I love Victoria Chang’s work. She has a way of connecting time to endlessness, to the essence of being alive. This video has her reading 4 short poems that I found captivating, and it’s only 98 seconds long.

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To acknowledge death is to acknowledge that we must take another shape.

Victoria Chang

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I grieve alone before dawn, when my valley is still quiet beneath the blanket of darkness. I stare into the last fold of night until the face of my late son becomes clear, and then I listen until I can hear his voice again, And then I allow myself to break down, to fall apart. For a long time I counted the days since his death. Now I count the years.

jobe

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No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

C. S. Lewis

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