A Life in the Mountains

from the public domain

A diffusion of rain.          

I walk the woods without shadows.          

The war goes on.          

I live among deer.          

I wondered if sparrows no longer twittered.          

Then I realized I was going deaf.          

I wrote a poem of three lines.          

That was all I had to say.          

I must finish the chicken coop.          

They're knocking plates off the table.          

The body grows weaker.          

But gazing at the mountains stays the same.          

Thirty years since I've seen you.          

And I still see your tail lights going over the hill.          

The mind moves as slowly as a cloud.          

But a cloud moves on.          

                              —adapted from The Life of Tu Fu (712-770,AD), gleaned from his poems and translated by Eliot Weinberger, New Directions, 2024.

The Legend of Magic Water

jo'b

                   

The wind I see you there                    

That shakes the hemlock arms                    

And fells the paper birch                    

Across the melting drifts                    

The mists I hear you close                    

That sleep among the trees                    

Ascending in the trunks                    

The gaze you touched me with                   

A light that brings the flood                   

On sugar sugar days                   

A rising of the blood                   

The Comforts of Winter

jo'b

         

                    Now with enough

                    firewood to burn

                    until swallows

                    weave over the field,

                    seasoned cherry and oak

                    burning hot and slow

                    with a few unexpected sparks,

                    like the love of old friends.          

—for GK and JK

The Tao of Today

jo'b

                          Today I shall try to think

                          of the small as big

                          and of the few as many,

                          practicing eternity

                          while I am unwinding

                          somewhere in between.

—after a poem by Philip Schultz

Solitaire

jo'b

 
                    To walk the field at night

                    is to hurtle through the universe

                    and it's quite a ride

February Thaw

jo'b

We measure our lives by our joys. -- Thoreau. Feb. 23, 1860

I let the fire go out            

and opened up the house,            

invited in the wind            

and stepped outside,            

the road now bare enough            

to ride, and that I did,            

shouting out to neighbors            

mucking out their barns,            

stubble showing in the fields            

as snow recedes, and I            

was happy to survive,            

blinking in sunlight,            

yet something was still missing,            

something weather only can't provide,            

something... something more,            

but what?            

Answers, I suppose.          

Infidels

jo'b

In the vast silence                       

On a hill muted with snow,                      

Transient belief.                      

Earthshore

                    'Tis the sound of the earth

                    I hear in the spruces

                    as much the rush of the sea

                    as my own breath

February Hilltop

jo'b

Standing with the wind

stinging my face,

I listen for voices

across untrammeled snow

in fading light.

The valley fills with night.

Healing the Blind*

jo'b

The wind wanders off into the next county,

Snow devils lie down on the hill,

The sun moves low and weak through the trees.

The world is frozen, empty and still,

But the heart is blooded with thunder.

Write me a poem. Tell me what's true.

* — St. Valentine was martyred on Feb. 14, 270 AD, for continuing to marry young Roman men despite the emperor's order against it,  preferring single men as soldiers. While captive, the young priest,  to prove the power of Christian faith, cured his jailer's daughter of blindness. The night before his beheading, he wrote a note to the girl and signed it "Your Valentine." So goes the story.

Midwinter

jo'b

                    Before the fire

                    where we once sat

                    I open the vents 

                    and hear the flame

                    throbbing in the flue.

 

Domestic Tranquility

Never lost.                                       jo'b

I love to get things in the garage

where the UPS driver leaves them—

books, vintage Carhartts, poems—

sacred stuff I keep to myself,

except for a few old friends,

in this uncertain season.

I also love a good storm

when everything stops,

snowbound and out of touch,

the road drifted shut,

snowshoe weather,

a welcome peace, except

now for the satellite-cluttered sky,

now for what we all carry,

now for the watchers.

These few uncultivated acres—

I always figured if I kept them safe,

if I kept them truthful,

if I kept them simply mine,

I could go wherever I wanted

and never be lost, living a tranquil life

in its final chapters, embracing naivete´,

oblivious to the algo.

I was wrong.

Heed the call.