Homesteaders

jo'b

Our windows have been broken out                    

For nearly forty years                    

The wind blows through us                    

And the snow slants in                    

Each winter colder than the last                   

We don't need a forecast                   

Yet some of us stay on                   

Anchored by sunsets and ashes                   

Om

jo'b

  Out of black crowns

  Harmonics rising

  The vibrating moon

  Sanguine and whole

  Struck like a tuning fork

  An old man in shadow

  Tries to get it down

  Waning in indigo.

  

When

jo'b

Then walk the beach at sunrise

Wounded soul

Where there is no sea

Hindus and Buddhists

jo'b

We sat in silence side-by-side

and watched the sea collapsing on the bar,

and felt its strength,  

but dared not say its name,

accepting age and circumstance

and deep respect — too late for us.

Yet the tides that moved us then,

they move us still, on our separate hilltops,

clouds expanding over the valley,

ridge-to-ridge in this inverted world.

And if, as Hindus and Buddhists believe,

if there is a Next, I'll look for you,

and side-by-side we'll sit again

and feel this old earth roll.

The Way We Are

jo'b

 

The hard angles of reason

Acute in this billowing world

Where our hearts cloud our minds,

Our beautiful flaw.

Beyond the News

jo'b

  

Shaking off the apprehensions of the night

I step outside into the breath of morning,

crows croaking in a grounded cloud,

walnuts dropping in the yard,

beyond the news

in cooler mists and shorter days

with all the screens gone dark.

Or so I think.

My Country:: Version I

jo'b

Cloud and hill

     a place to stand

          head in the sky

               believing in the wind

                    that depth of sound

                    that force of consciousness

               still here

          still uncertain

     still waiting

for the miracle to come.

My Country: Version II

jo'b

 

Cloud and hill

a place to stand

believing

in the wind

waiting for

the miracle

to end.

Revelation No. 9

Brush & Ink Watercolor. Andre Pempvåc

The chickens

stalked about the room

like members of the family.

They stood and looked me in the eye.

They pecked my shoe.

Such is art.

—With a found poem from The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, August 8, 1845

Differently

jo'b

Differently is how we see

because we see ourselves

given space and time

          to look

                    to feel

                              to think

how it could have been

living in abstraction.

Viewing William Tell (1930) by Salvador Dali, National Museum of Art, Center Pompidou, Paris

The Minimalist

The longer I work at this

The smaller it becomes

Until there's nothing left

But love and death.

Go slowly, and be kind.

Ponds in August

j'ob

 

Scrolling through the photographs of twenty Augusts

So many mirages          Wordless, but not silent

Unless to say love          Unless to ask how

                    Something deeper

Unless to say poetry          Ponds in August

Performances          Under the surface