Praying for Merwin

 

—Poetry and Photos by Jobe, 

Davis, CA

a rainy day    gray    cold


drinking coffee alone by the window


when a lone sunbeam breaks through


hello world    I’m still with you


 

 

 

 

 

as mornings go   I'll take it


strong coffee    thelonious monk playing solo


and some poems by w.s. merwin


We lost merwin in 2019 at the age of 91


he’s been on my mind


the poetry    his work restoring the trees


restoring a piece of the earth


and his knowledge of the dharma


keeping his own practice


I turn off the music and close the book


I did my morning zazen hours ago


but another quiet time has come


I can feel it    my prayer beads 


and the loving kindness sutra  


I’ve worked out my own ritual with them


praying for w.s. merwin in the bardo
 

      (for w.s. merwin)

 

 

 

 

 

lazy man    I never put my hoses away
they lay wherever I drop them
I never bother to remember where either
I have spent my life walking around
looking for the far end of hoses
I imagine finches watching me    or raccoons
all of them thinking me a fool—
stupid man! he should put the hoses away!
well, to hell with them all
I don’t have feathers or fur
and I don’t go around judging people
with poems on their minds

 

 

 

 

 

dear snow geese     my old friends  
please cry out  
when you pass over on your long journey  
it’s like we are saying hello again

_______________

it’s been years since i’ve seen snow
decades I suppose
what I remember is perfect white flakes
falling from the winter sky
like tiny paratroopers 
clean and cool
when they land on your tongue
and melt
millions of little gifts from above 

 

 

 

 

 

one day     when we can remove these masks
please join us here     my wife and myself
in the empty house
for so long now the only laughter here
has been hers and mine
join us here that day
and we will all tell the stories
of life and death and covid-19
we will break bread
and once again friendship will grow

________________

Today’s LittleNip:

clouds that cover and uncover the moon
shadows move across the grass all night

—jobe

________________

Our thanks and welcome back to James Lee Jobe for joining us this morning, as he waves at the geese overhead and remembers those tiny gifts of snowdrops on the tongue. Don’t be a stranger, James; come more often to break bread with us here in the Kitchen!

Two events in Sacramento tonight: Chill Vibez free live band concert and poetry (Terry Moore) in Cesar Chavez Plaza; and Bethanie Humphreys and Heather Judy at Luna’s. Click UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS at the top of this column for details about these and other future poetry events in the NorCal area.

 

One of our readers wrote yesterday to say that he had stick figures in place of two of yesterday's marmosets on the Medusa post! Those dang critters have been up to it again—not the marmosets, the cyberbugs. I'm sorry if this happened to the post you received; I have no idea what to do about it, other than sigh and move on...

________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 —Photo Courtesy of Public Domain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Photos in this column can be enlarged by
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in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

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