Everything Sings

—Poems by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe

 

Making dinner while my pet birds chirp, chirp, chirp along with the music on the radio. Outside, a cloudy evening. The sky is the color of an old nickel. Inside, good smells, good sounds.

__________________

As I write, we are about halfway between equinox and solstice; does the raccoon in my underbrush know or care? With perfect Buddha-mind she scampers off under sweet moonlight to find something to eat. She’ll be successful, too; I scattered some treats for her just before sundown.

A water moccasin and a hummingbird are the same in the void. So are you and Jesus. Or even a pebble and Jesus. Lay down your thoughts and welcome the void. As a young man I wandered all over this country, it’s the same as having settled down in this valley for thirty years. Comparisons are useless anyway. Everything is equal in the void.

__________________

Left on its own, the Earth was pure. It was the minds of the human beings that fouled it. Our waste, our feces, and our balderdash. Our overpopulation that pushed all reason aside. Our greed and our wars. We covered the planet with corpses.

On its own, the Earth is a vast watershed, all life connected by flowing water. Life and water under an endless sky, spinning around the sun as the perfect universe expands.

Why worry? It changes nothing. Let me live like a bee, moving pollen from flower to flower. Without thinking. Just doing. Or let me live like the hive itself, working each moment in harmony. Days become seasons, seasons become years. What is time? Nothing.

_________________

And what is this life? What is this world? A thought inside of a dream. The reflection of a mirror facing a mirror. A kindness in the clothing of a hardship. Hope. Love. Possibility.

See the coyote bones bleached white by the sun; someone has ceased to live in the moment.

___________________

Leave words behind, leave James behind. You won't need them. Embrace the breath, embrace the no-thingness. Zazen, the zen sitting, breathing with the entire body, and also without the body at all. James, how marvelous is the emptiness, the vast nothing?

A scientist might say that flies do not sing, while a poet might say that everything sings. I just say that this is a brand new moment; how will you choose to spend it?

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Missing my late son, I honor his life with fierce tears and a deep bow among my fruit trees.

—James Lee Jobe

___________________

Many thanks to James Lee Jobe for the kindness of his poems and the photos he selected for us this morning! Make Kindness the Norm.

This afternoon, head over to Oak Park in Sacramento to the Classy Hippie Tea Co. on Broadway, 3pm, for the first ever Sex Positive-Tea Sex Positive Poetry Open Mic with Lauren Frausto. Then, beginning at 5pm, Sac. Poetry Center hosts its Second Sat. Art Reception for poet/artist Heather Judy. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating hands across the table and hands across the sea—

 “… breathing without the body…”

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.