—Poems by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Public Domain Visuals Courtesy of James Lee Jobe
—Public Domain Visuals Courtesy of James Lee Jobe
Morning fog, cold air, then sunny later, with weak clouds. The Sacramento Valley wakes up like an old man. The bed is warm. He doesn’t want to get up, but groaning, he does.
_____________________
Wild turkeys wander on 8th Street,
No one asks why.
It just happens.
An opossum lived in my back a couple years
And one day disappeared.
Did he weary of valley life?
Summer becomes winter, and vice-versa.
Whatever your age, you’ll never be
This young again.
Nothing is permanent, friend,
Not even this.
_____________________
Wild turkeys wander on 8th Street,
No one asks why.
It just happens.
An opossum lived in my back a couple years
And one day disappeared.
Did he weary of valley life?
Summer becomes winter, and vice-versa.
Whatever your age, you’ll never be
This young again.
Nothing is permanent, friend,
Not even this.
After you died so young, life showed up at my door with a drill. Life drilled a hole in the pit of my stomach, and since then, little by little, I have been draining away. In the end, son, life takes us all.
When dragons make love, sparks fly. The moon, always a voyeur, watches without judgement. You can be a dragon, or you can be the moon, but friend, try as you might, you will never be one of the sparks.
“Getting old feels like a type of tired
That you can’t sleep off.”
I say that to a large Valley Oak
That is perhaps two centuries old.
Two hundred years of steady growth,
Sinking roots. Think of that.
The Oak ignores me, of course, as it should.
I expected no different.
And all of this on the equinox,
When day and night are of equal length.
“Balance is a fine thing, is it not?”
I say that to the Oak as well.
Once again, I am ignored.
Well then, I do have some work to do
Anyway. "Good day to you!"
The Sacramento Valley wind speaks, Putah Creek whispers, and the fields and farm lands listen intently. O dear sister, dear brother, will you not walk on and on through this valley?
____________________
We die, and we go under the ground,
And then one day we are the ground.
Or perhaps our ashes are put in the river,
Then one day we are the river.
That’s what heaven is.
There doesn’t have to be an afterlife
For us to go on.
Brother, sister, the universe is the afterlife.
And we are the universe.
_____________________
Today’s LittleNip:
Yesterday morning I heard two or three bird calls. Just that, no more. I felt the entire measure of life in those few sad sounds.
—James Lee Jobe
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—Medusa, with thanks to James Lee Jobe for reminding us that we are becoming, becoming, always becoming…
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.
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.