the rivers of birth & death

Snowflakes first bless and then join the swift river. First snowfall on the upper Yuba.

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One river is birth and the other river is death; look for me at the confluence. I’ll be there; passing time, enjoying the water, and scribbling down these ridiculous poems.

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A homeless man at the shelter, his mental illness causes a rage to boil over, and he ends up back on the same hard street. Again. I know it has to be, but how long, I wonder, until his sunrise? Where is his warmth and his tiny comfort?

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A young man on the downtown sidewalk. Homeless, alone. He appears to be the age that my late son would be. So cold, this wind of January.

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A foggy morning. The wisps float over the cold and empty field.

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Entering their 70s, my wife and her high school girlfriends, class of 1967, still love to gather together. Their love for each other is a warm wind across the sand, a sunny morning. Recently I told them, “You all get lovelier every year,” and it seemed to me that they thought I was being silly or flirtatious. I wasn’t. Truly, each of them is beautiful. Golden. A warm breeze across the sand. A sunny morning. Time is merely the jewelry that adorns them, it is their lives that shine.

                         —for The Elites—

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Winter dresses in gray and blends in with the chilled clouds. And shivering in their grayness, the clouds bless the winter sky.

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When I die, let me sleep in the rain that falls on the trees, in the rain that falls on the ocean. Let me sleep easy in the wetness that brings life to the earth.

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Does a life have color? An identifying sound? Passing geese honk in the gray winter sky.

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james lee jobe

(Previously in Medusa's Kitchen)

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Joshua James, COAL WAR

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Vincent van Gogh

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

Dalton Trumbo

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.  

Howard Zinn

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jlj