 |
| —jo'b |
hooded apparition
the bed still warm
the field strung with dew
awaiting your return
which always only just begins
not ready yet
for the full face of day
savoring this ache
the closest thing to love
I should have suffered more
when we were lonely
on this earth together
just before sunset.
 |
| jo'b |
 |
| Galaxy Messier 51, the Whirlpool, 31 million lightyears away. Stars are formed in its arms. As seen by the Hubble Telescope. (NASA) |
 |
| jo'b |
Twang of the long spring
And the screen door's downbeat,
A choir of geese, loud and low
Above the baring crowns,
Mission rocker creaking oak
To hush this weary body down,
Woodshed filled for the dog and me,
So let the fall be done,
Coyotes yipping in the dark,
So let the winter come.
 |
| jo'b |
Nobody in sight, no road and no structure,
no right angles, no plumb and no level,
just a few flowing lines in fading starlight,
just a soft wind over unbroken horizons,
just you and just me in a continuous present,
no future, no past, immortal for a moment,
our brief eternity.
 |
| October Moon —jo'b |
We belonged to the moon
and barely survived it
before they taught us
the iron distances of time.
Another winter comes around,
I wonder how you've changed.
Fiction flares in the dark.
I build fire, after fire, after fire.
 |
| East |
 |
| — jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
Circling the sun, endlessly spinning
in infinite night, searching for others,
others like us, like us but better,
searching for life more advanced,
wiser and kinder, rational and peaceful—
such is our hope.
So much empty space,
cold and dark between fires—
yet surely, surely,
from what we know of infinity,
others surely exist, those are the odds—
but lifetimes, lifetimes to reach.
May we be what we seek,
endlessly spinning, searching
for others like us, if only
just down the road, wiser
and kinder, circling the sun—
alone together, for now.
 |
| — jo'b |
How briefly
we flare
on this old earth,
How quickly
our tracks
fade behind us.
 |
| — jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
Flat on the ground
under the billow and drift,
losing my grip on the earth,
consciousness rising as heat,
scattered galactic,
knowing for an instant
the freedom and release
of going atomic,
levitational peace,
recombinant.
 |
| jo'b |
I walk the field.
I write my lines.
Orion leaps from the woods
And over the world.
I bolt the door.
 |
| 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
 |
| jo'b |
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.
 |
| jo'b |
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.
 |
| jo'b |
The hard angles of reason
Acute in this billowing world
Where our hearts cloud our minds,
Our beautiful flaw.
 |
| 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.
 |
| 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.
 |
| jo'b |
 |
| 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
 |
| 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
 |
| 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
 |
| Paris, 2010 - jo'b |
 |
| Upper Turkeyfoot, 2025 - jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
That is no country for old men,
The young in one another's phones,
The comment-crowded screens,
The AI-addled dreams,
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of undeveloped intellect.
Man is but a paltry thing,
An old Perfecto on a post, unless
Soul clap its hands and play, and louder play,
Pandora, aged watchers under stars,
—Those dying generations— at their song,
Wizened rock-'n'-rollers
Limping off into the trees
Of drug-dimmed memories, some
Still strong enough to raise.
For cameras everywhere, a fist
In late defiance as they go, or to imagine so,
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
—a riff on W. B. Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium, with profound apologies to the great poet
 |
| August in UT - jo'b |
Your sighing gives you away
You weren't meant to fly
 |
| Kill Devil Hills, NC - jo'b |
with yourself,
you can't shake it,
who you are
and what you want,
bruising yourself
for what's hovering
just out of reach,
dark and yearning,
aesthetically adrift,
flooded with words
and no place to stand.
You won't fake it,
give in to the urge
to drive toward the sea
until you run out of road,
climbing a dune
to lean on the wind,
salt mist in your lungs,
a continent at your back,
and open before you
the unbroken curve
of the tides, to launch
in the screams of gulls.
 |
| Detail of a photo illustration by Ashley Z.Boon |
 |
| Near the Salisbury Viaduct on The Great Allegheny Passage - jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
night crawls out of the woods
you did what you could
you tell yourself
expanding with the dark
 |
| Duck, NC, 10/14/14 - jo'b |
Did you feel it
in your heart
the warming tides
that pull us out
the swells
that lift us up
unable to touch bottom
and how much longer
can we swim
parallel to shore ?
 |
| View from the center - jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
in the wind,
writing down
the whispers in the trees,
seeing what's not there.
Are you thinking of me, too,
the way we were,
even if the future
lies behind us now ?
Thunder shakes the ground.
 |
| jo'b |
 |
| jo'b |
Why so fast, I ask myself,
Leaning back on slower time,
Arms extended, lungs filled,
Floating on summer while I can,
And the day gains a certain eternity.
With looking,
Standing around,
As the poet said,
With your arms open,
Everything
Comes closer.
Make your own list.
After Mary Oliver's Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?
 |
| jo'b |
considering the vanishments,
when the west opened at sunset,
as it often does,
and we were reminded —
the isolated now
is what we have —
how we treat each other,
and dogs, and birds, and grass,
whirling through enormous night,
the quality of that,
and gone.
