 |
| 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.
