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

C'est La Vie

Paris, 2010 - jo'b

It all seems backwards now,

How it was then,

What should've been the beginning,

Instead was the beginning of the end—

No magic for us in The City of Light.

C'est la vie.

Ah, but life is simpler now,

Though maybe sadder than before—

No reason to pretend—

And just as beautiful—

Goldenglow against the cellar door.

Upper Turkeyfoot, 2025 - jo'b

 

Boomers in Byzantium

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

Haiku to Self

August in UT - jo'b

 - 

 No use to pretend                   

Your sighing gives you away                   

You weren't meant to fly                   

Vaguely Unsettled

Kill Devil Hills, NC - jo'b

Out of harmony

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.

Back from the City

jo'b

Back from the city

Riding 'til the fireflies rise

Closer to heaven

Out of the Fire

jo'b

 Then I watched her go

 Centripetal adagio

 Nested in the dew         

Room

click to expand - jo'b

The dignity            

of open space.      

The value              

of the long view.   

Graves Beside the Trail

Detail of a photo illustration by Ashley Z.Boon

Swallows banked and dove

over the abandoned field

steeped in briars and asters

tall as the family stones

children and spouses

slowly eroding.

The stones shared an age

in evening's pall—

nineteen twice.

We stopped to watch

as if we wouldn't forget.

Uno vida. Uno vida.

Near the Salisbury Viaduct on The Great Allegheny Passage - jo'b

In the Void

jo'b

no human sound

night crawls out of the woods

you did what you could

you tell yourself

expanding with the dark

Undertow

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 ? 

Desire

jo'b

Some nights                    

are longer                    

Some hearts                    

never rest                    

Thunderheads

View from the center - jo'b

  

The day was my mandala.

I began at the perimeter

and worked my way in,

first light like a ghost

in the woods to the east,

last light like coals

behind Laurel Ridge.

At the center I sat on the hill,

the dog snuffling deep in the field

where goldenrod shook,

swallows diving and looping above us.

Awe billowed into the sky.

Limned as the towering clouds,

I sat with a life at my back.

I wasn't alone.

Feels Like Rain

jo'b

Watching shadows

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.

Catalpa

 

jo'b

          

I am blurred at the edges

Both of us

Deep in the shadows

Reading each other's minds

In the animal heat of July.

The old catalpa stands guard

Everything else a mirage

Except what's imagined.

Why So Fast?

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.

The Choices We Made

The long, backward reach

Of memory, our phantoms

Revisit us now.

Goldfinches, Fawns, Neighbors from Afar

jo'b

 

Never done

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?

The Isolated Now

jo'b

Not yet too late,

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.

Zazen After Sunset

          Dark enough,

And a young moon fresh in the glimmerdim.

          Late enough,

And the fireflies, risen from the grass, constellate the trees.

          Still enough,

And you, too, risen from yourself, untranslatable.

          Free enough,

And no longer fastened to a dying animal,

                    As in the south silent lightning pulsed,

                    And caught the heart off guard,

                     And blew it open.

                   

          

—ultimate lines from Seamus Heaney's Postscript

         

Mt. Union

Come closer and listen

Watching the theaters of evening

With the lowering sun at our backs

We could rest on this hilltop

Growing smaller and farther away

Forever

Instant Coffee

Counter shadows

from a higher plane,

the sill, the field, the past,

unexpectedly,

the smell of morning coffee

with the children still asleep,

our modest aspirations

just beyond our reach,

yet it was we,

and it was home,

and it was family.

Intellect alone

is bloodless company.

The Weather at Eighty

Rain in the distance

drawing nearer

one ridge at a time

Another friend has died

we've seen enough of rain

pooling in the fields

Rain in the distance

drawing nearer

one friend at a time.

Click Bait

June sundown in Upper Turkeyfoot

Nothing

     for TikTok today,

Nothing

     for facebook or Reels,

No double-jointed shenanigans,

No faceplants, no ballbusters,

Just the red fox

     slipping into the weeds,

Just the long-legged turkey

     fleeing into the barn,

     scattering cats,

Just the big red sun

     dropping into the trees,

Just my own echo

     when I call in the dog,

Just me again

     with you on my mind.     

Gravity

Everything,

we've learned,

falls apart.

Forgive us then,

if near the end,

we fall in love.

Each Other

Hale-Bopp, 1997

 

You saw it too  

 the comet  

its double tail  

even in daylight  

We've never said so  

to each other  

but it's almost enough  

the could-have-been  

How We Do

Fox with a wing in its teeth

vanishes into the fescue.

There goes its white-tipped tail.

Moments later

it's like it never happened.

Ride on.

Unconditional Love

I pinned my laundry to the line

and stood in the storm-watch wind,

luffed and transported

into Grandma's backyard

under buffeting sheets

and Grandpa's workshirts,

blue arms waving,

"Carl" winking in an oval,

Grandma leaning out the kitchen window

in the smell of baked cherries,

waving me in with a smile,

the long arms of my workshirts

rising and falling in the wind.

Vista

Cash Valley and The Narrows, MD, as seen from PA

Stopped by the long view

and by the silence

when the wind drops

we are reminded

that the quality of life

depends on the value

we place in each minute

and that the sacred

lies in the ordinary.

Existing

Rolling back, 6/2/25

 

We were wary of the past

But now we are different

Beautiful moments

Can grow out of listlessness

Pausing at sunset

We felt the earth roll

Everything a little slower

All of us free to change

Artists

Here on the dirt

Under a trammeled sky

Suffering sanity in solitude

Working to leave

A record of raptures

Against the prospect

Of ultimate combustion

Souls like contrails

Scattering over what remains

The beauty of fire

Civilizing the ground.

The Omnipotence of Dreams

1.

Just you

Just me

As we sometimes imagine.

2.

The risk of exploring

One's private reality

Is that you might not

Find your way back.

Perfecto®

In the freedom

                    of the woods

An aging eccentric               

                    effaced by time

                    in black leather

Wears his Perfecto®

                    without explanation

                    for the night in it

Condensing his lines

                    without the necessity

                    of making sense

As if the dark language of love

                    were still in use

                    and native speakers

Took notice when even the owls

                    went silent.

—The Schott Perfecto® is an iconic American motorcycle jacket banned for a time in the fifties as a symbol of rebelliousness, still made today in the USA, and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as important to American fashion.

Dead Calm

Dead calm in the garden

after the night's wild storm,

poppies frayed in the darkness,

and the power out again.

I check my phone— still no reply.

I've taken friendship for granted.

Now all is blind silence.

—With three lines and a title by Carmen Boullosa,

translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee.

Heaven

I awake late

Warm and safe

You are here

Dissolution

And then it was over

powerfully

close lightning

shaking the ground

and we were changed

this strange empty freedom

the shiftings of the sky

the joy of surviving

the calm

of nowhere to be

content to wait

for a darkness to lean on.

Husbandman's Dream

 

You drifted in

through a broken window

and leaned against me,

changing my balance,

and I fell among hooves.