there is only now

4.1.2025 -- I detest April Fools jokes.

Think enough and you won't know anything.

Kenneth Patchen

Photo by Andreas Fickl on Unsplash

adam and eve left the garden
and then we humans destroyed it
building freeways and machines
humans stole time
doing away with the present moment
and replacing it with the past and the future
which of course are just lies
the garden is gone
and one day we’ll be gone too

jobe

A heavy snowfall disappears into the sea. What silence!

Zen Proverb

by Kawase Hasui, 1883-1957

---

they’re trying to be helpful but
they aren't
people say life gets easier but
who has time for absurd comments
in truth it might get easier
and then again it might not
and it doesn't matter anyway
that’s the future
and no one lives in the future
everyone lives now
there is only now
face it — own it — live in it

jobe

---

A poem by Sam Hamill

WHAT THE WATER KNOWS

What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive.
A rat’s as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world.
Still, the heart is a river
pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed.

It opens on a bay
and turns back upon itself as the tide come sin,
it carries the cry of the loon and the salts
of the unutterably human.

A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river
salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide
upstream until he disappears
into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains.

Lacking the eagle’s cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow,
where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow?
Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience
of young maple or what the willows confess?

Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves.
Listen to what the water says.
Wind, be a friend.
There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive.

Sam Hamill 1943—2018

Let go.
You'll be making space for better things.
You'll be making room to grow.

jobe

Andrei Codrescu of Romania is perhaps best known for his commentaries on National Public Radio, but his poetry, novels, and memoirs are so very fine.

---

the april wind
is stronger than the hummingbird
and makes her work hard
to get that nectar
some days life is such a chore

jobe

Don't seek, don't search, don't ask, don't knock, don't demand – relax.

Osho

Whisper. Whisper. Whisper.
As humans, we need a time and place
where we can speak the truth,
openly, uncensored, even when it is harsh.
Especially when the the truth is harsh.
This truth might be a poem or a story,
some news, or it might be a whisper
in the ear of a grandchild.
Whisper. Whisper. Whisper.
The grandchildren need the absolute truth.
We are the sunlight, the moonlight,
and the sadness in an old dog's eyes,
we must not hold anything back.
We dare not.

jobe

For many years, I thought a poem was a
whisper overheard, not an aria heard.

Rita Dove

yesterday morning
I heard two bird calls
that’s all — just two
all of the body of my life
was measured
in those few sad sounds

jobe

Clemente could field the ball in New York
and throw out a guy in Pennsylvania.

Vin Scully

Photo by David Sinclair on Unsplash

I never knew my biological grandfathers. Pedro Albarida and Elvin Jobe. They both died 20 years before I was born. I knew both grandmothers, Allie (Burchett) Wheeliss and Rose (Weber) Mahoney. Swell ladies, I loved them both. And so they both got remarried, and those two guys were pretty swell, too. John Wheeliss and William Mahoney. I loved them, too. Johndad and Grandpop, to me.

The 4 that I knew were truly decent, kind people, and I value the time I had with them. Johndad and Grandma Allie were in Point, Rains County, Texas. Grandmom and Grandpop were in Baltimore, Maryland. Having one parent from each place, I bounced around a lot. Beside the normal holiday visits, when summer break from school came around I wound spend a couple weeks with whichever set of seniors I was geographically closest to at the moment. I lived for that.

In rural East Texas, there were woods, creeks, a big lake, a little general store where you could run in barefoot and buy a pushup ice cream. Those orange ones. And sometimes my best-friend-cousin Eddie Jobe would be there at the same time. As boys we could run, explore, fish, and swim together. Tell stories late at night as the countryside played its nightly sounds. Later, as teens, we could search for country girls together. Girls liked Eddie, and I was a decent wingman. Pretty girls that said clever things like, “I been ta Dallas onest.” We were a Dallas boy and a Baltimore boy.

In Baltimore, there was a city that seemed endless to me as a kid, and as a teen I found it quite conquerable. My Baltimore cousins were there, my favorite aunt and uncle, crabcakes, Oriole games, and until 1964 a streetcar line passed by 2 blocks away. 15 cents for a kid. The streetcar barn was also in the neighborhood. They tore it down in 1966 when I was there for a really long visit of a couple of months. Bats were holed up in the car barn, and they went all over Irvington, our neighborhood. One got into a neighbor’s house and one of my aunts helped catch it in a butterfly net.

Between them all 4, they taught me a lot more than my actual parents ever did. My parents just told me to be like them. Right and wrong weren’t always involved in that equation. Or maybe it just felt that way. It turned out alright with my Mom & Dad, though. They were divorced, so mostly I only had to deal with one of them at a time. They never agreed on anything, so they didn’t really ‘team up’ on me. They are my how-not-to examples.

With the previous generation I learned honesty, kinship, how to milk a cow, and how to pick out good German sausage, among other things. Except for the cow-thing, it’s all been helpful.

Thanks for reading this. You’ve reached the paywall, paid subscribers can continue on. Paid subscriptions start at $5 a month. The next post, Friday the 4th of April, will be totally free for everyone. And large.

jobe