Wet boots caked with mud.

7.12.2025

Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.

Mary Oliver

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This is not my Jeep. I saw it parked a couple of blocks from my house. I do admire it, hence the picture. It has a functional sort of beauty to it.

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The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never do the thing that needs to be done.

You try to explain something and find that you can no longer speak, or perhaps you find some odd phrase stuck in your mind and that is the only thing that you can say. No one in the dream can understand you.

The streets are almost familiar, but something about them is off, like returning to a city where you once lived, but now many years have passed. Much has changed. You never quite find the place you are looking for.

The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never do the thing that needs to be done.

There is a lover for you, but you never make love. Or perhaps someone who is dead in your waking life is there in the dream, and seems to be well; you are glad to see each other. Neither of you mentions the death.

Time passes. The dream changes, grows darker. There is rubble in the streets, buildings are in ruin, it is night. You are doing a job that is both familiar and unfamiliar, and you can never quite complete the work.

The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never do the thing that needs to be done.

jobe

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Chocolate, a poem by Jinhao Xie

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Late winter. Northeast Texas. 1970s. (a haibun)

Chainsaws roaring in a thicket to cut a right-of-way for power lines. We took the trucks through muddy fields until they could roll no farther. Then, into a wood thick with trees, we carried the tools the rest of the way. It rained, it stopped, it rained again. Cold. Wet boots caked with mud. Wet cigarettes. The trees were mixed; bois d'arc, oak, elm. Down closer to the rain-swollen stream was a stand of willows, bent with age. A hard north wind. Still, for the harshness of it all, there was something beautiful - the clear sound of a woodpecker at work. But then the chainsaws were fired up.

after the storm passed
even the sun seemed cleaner
clear sky — a clean world

jobe

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Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as time.

Thomas Carlyle

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A quarter ain’t what it used to be.

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Today, early morning meditation, then

I added supplies to the local homeless shelter,

read a poem at a public function,

and took my sweet wife out to lunch.

The sky was winter-gray, but still beautiful,

and the cold air on my face felt like being young again.

Which I am not. Split-pea soup with bacon for dinner.

Then maybe some small poems in my journal.

What will I dream about tonight?

I'll tell you tomorrow.

jobe

If they get it, they get it. If they don’t, don’t worry about it.

B.L. Kennedy

Bari Lewis Kennedy, 1953—2024

PAINTING WITH WORDS

Some poet
Falls in the Sacramento River

I watch her lips
Turn blue

Form
Last
Words

A trick of nature

Maybe painting those lips
Will make a poem

Tomorrow
I will sell books

For food money

B.L. Kennedy

Don’t be in a hurry to condemn others because they don’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.

Malcolm X

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Singing before dawn with no one listening

it is so early that it might still be late
or it could be the other way around

time is an instrument that measures
something that doesn't need to be measured
it is well before sunrise and yet I am awake fully

I meditate focusing on my breath
not for very long, really
just thirty minutes

after that, coffee
and a moment or two outside to check the sky

a very old song comes to me
one that I enjoyed as a boy, and I begin to sing

jobe

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In the Mountains on a Summer Day

Gently I stir a white feather fan,
With open shirt sitting in a green wood.

I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone;
A wind from the pine-trees trickles on my bare head.

Li Po, 701—762

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Sacramento Valley Weather.

It is warm
where I live. In fact,
what I would call cold
might feel
quite pleasant to a lot
of this world's population.
Twelve days
until Christmas.
Zipping
up my light windbreaker
I head out into
the long, dark night
for a walk.
A waning moon.
Still trees.

jobe

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Her ‘n me.

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Prefer to be defeated in the presence of the wise than to excel among fools.

Dōgen

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Five dogs sitting together,
above them, empty sky.

jobe

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So far, so good. I appreciate that you have read this much. You could’ve had some pie and watched a BOSCH re-run. Thanks.

Some post are free posts for everyone and anyone. Others, like this one have some free content and some content for paid subscribers. More content is below for paid subscribers, including a Nanao Sakaki poem I stumbled across that I had not read previously. (Did you know that one of his books is titled, It’s Nanano Or Never? I love that.)

If you want to be a paid subscriber but times are tough, send a note. I can upgrade you for a year. Why not? Send me a note. Maybe things will be going better for you then. It’s what St Francis, Buddha, and Keanu Reeves would do.

Thanks!

jobe