Barn Owl
—Poetry by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe
—Public Domain Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe
“We’re not looking for ‘I’ poems.” Outside the sky is the color of an old dime, and it is rather cool for May in California. Doves land on my patio and eat the bird seed that I left there for them. Every poem is an ‘I’ poem. Every last one of them.
Orb Weaver Spider
I talk to my son in dreams, because only in dreams can we speak with the dead. We embrace each other and we say the words, as we once did when we were both awake, when we were both alive. And yes, I know it isn't real, but what else do I have? Dreams, like life as it once was, as it will never be again.
Green Lacewing
The dead of COVID-19 visit you in dreams and ask you to remember them, to remember their names, to remember their lives. Morning comes to you, and these dreams are forgotten. You awaken each day to a feeling of sadness, a dull emptiness. Morning does not come to the dead of COVID-19. Nights come and go, and you are, in time, full of these forgotten dreams, forgotten names, and everyday the number of COVID-19 deaths grows. And friend, night does not come to the dead of COVID-19.
American Kestrel
The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never quite do the thing that needs to be done.
You try to explain something and find that you can no longer speak, or perhaps you find some odd phrase stuck in your mind and that one phrase is the only thing that you can say. No one in the dream can understand you.
The streets are almost familiar, but not quite right, something about them is off, like returning to a city where you once lived, but now many years have passed. Much has changed. You can never find the place you are looking for.
The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never quite do the thing that needs to be done.
There is a lover for you, but you never make love. Or perhaps someone who is dead in your waking life is there in the dream, and seems to be well; you are glad to see each other. Neither of you mentions the death.
Time passes. The dream changes, grows darker. There is rubble in the streets, buildings are in ruin, it is night. You are doing a job that is both familiar and unfamiliar, and you cannot actually complete the work.
The lime drops to the floor and rolls under the table; you cannot reach it. It’s just that kind of dream. Whatever you want is always just beyond your reach. You can never quite do the thing that needs to be done.
Yolo Bypass
All of life in a single blade of grass; a universe that is vast and green, rooted here in the rich soil of my valley. Life. A blade of grass. The universe. The Sacramento Valley. Tell me, friend, how sweet is it to be alive?
______________________
Today’s LittleNip:
The secrets of living welcome us like bees, like honey. Will tomorrow come? And if it does, will it come for us?
—James Lee Jobe
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It’s another Saturday morning, this time the beginning of Labor Day Weekend, and James Lee Jobe has sent us poems about dreams and bees and that single blade of grass. Thank you, James—and don’t forget that on Fridays, at 7:30pm, there are video poetry readings by Davis Poet Laureate James Lee Jobe at james-lee-jobe.blogspot.com or youtube.com/jamesleejobe.
Tonight, 7:30pm, tune into the final Mad Mouth Poetry Reading coming out of Davis, presenting Black Poets Matter with Marvin Jordan on Zoom. Info: www.facebook.com/madmouthpoetry OR www.facebook.com/events/292855168665665/?active_tab=about/. Zoom link: us02web.zoom.us/j/84225455829/.
______________________
—Medusa, hoping to find those bees tomorrow ~
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.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry!
