I Just Close My Eyes

jo'b  

 

Haven't stood in the sea since before COVID,

but I visit often, I can be there anytime I want

when a southerly wind is sighing in the oaks,

I just close my eyes and listen, I just close my eyes

and hear the rush and wash of the surf at my feet,

I just close my eyes and feel the cold ocean

and the sand between my toes, I just close my eyes

and see the band of Venus over the edge of the earth,

I just close my eyes and feel the salt spray on my cheek

and the sunset on my back, I just close my eyes,

and I sense the warmth and the breath

of the absent souls that make my heart ache for the sea.

Because It's Still Summer

jo'b     

It's not too late.

Light from the low sun

like a sheet of honey over the fields.

A swarm of dragonflies

hunting over the yard,

after mowing, in the silence,

the rattle and glint of wings.

The feast continues.

We touch each other

to prove we are still here.

Tell me it's not too late.

—with two lines by Ocean Vuong

Solidago Days

jo'b   

Dew-strung and crowned with dawn

no one could find us

in the goldenrod field

as we had wished,

listening to the bees

chanting as they worked,

our pantlegs tucked into our socks

sprayed with Permethrin

against the stark truths of the world.

The Mind Floats Free

Working at the keyboard

the mind floats free

through the kitchen door

and over the fields

 

where last she dreamed

she was picking blackberries

her fingers stained

and where we gave

her ashes to the wind.

Nepal

jo'b     

                    

Another thousand sunsets               

                    in my feed               

                    May the Earth survive               

                    our extinction               

 

Unsettled Time

                              It's been a long time

                              since time

                              driving backward from the capital

                              living in reverse

                              returning

                              to the shade of the woods

                              sibylline leaves tumbling

                              up to their branches

                              raptors overhead

                              northward tail-first drifting

                              September going clear

                              and blue again

                              our souls intact

                              at the edge of consequence.

—with two lines by Ocean Vuong

Old Friends in Late Summer

                                  Speak to me of change

                                   and I will listen,

                                   both of us

                                   steadying ourselves.

                                   No one else is coming.

The Volatility of Consciousness

jo'b   

Grass mowed,

I fell asleep

in a chair by the well

and awoke with the sky in my eyes,

realizing as if for the first time

I'd never see her again—

one moment we were discussing

Yeats and elderberries, and the next

I was alone on a dirt road

in a nest of modified illusions,

facing the savage god of the future—

but it was only the FedEx driver

pounding down the road,

raising yellow dust.

Too Much to Think About

jo'b   

It is needful

to have night

in one's body.

It is hurtful

to be right.

—Robinson Jeffers was right.

Reading Robert Lowell at Night

jo'b   

               Nights are troubled times—

               faint visitors unbidden,

               wraiths, the should-have-beens,

               await to meet me in my dreams.

               I am too much alone,

               too unforgiving of myself—

               soft music fills the void,

               and reading sometimes helps—

               Sometimes my mind's not right,

               as Robert Lowell confessed,

               but still I would not say

               that I myself am hell—

               Quickly yet how in the dark

               I'm back in my childhood bed,

               pillow wrapped around my head

               to keep the shouting out,

               the insults and the breaking glass,

               the one-man show at 3 a.m.

               In the great relief of sunrise,

               soundly in first light I sleep—

               late to bed, and late to rise

               keeps this man healthy—

               if not wealthy. if not wise.