you will always be young

I was down by Putah Creek

where you once swam with your friends.

I held my face down low, by the surface of the water,

I was still, I was silent,

and by doing that I could feel the universe move again,

the way it did when you were still here, alive.

I couldn't stay, there was much to do,

but for a moment you were back with me.

you were splashing and laughing,

and floating on your back. You were young,

as you will now always be young.

My face was low to the water,

and the universe moved.

Then I let your ashes go into the water,

and watched for a moment as the current took them.

And then I walked away, and I didn't look back.

James Lee Jobe 

If you don't need a new technique, then what you're saying probably isn't new. 

Philip Glass

South of the North, yet north of the South, lies the City of a Hundred Hills, a poem by Aaron Coleman

In her eyes, a field of wheat. And in her heart, the bottom lands of the Missouri River. Wheat and river. Her hands can be as strong as iron, or as gentle as the birthday wish of a child. Often, when she tells me some long story that doesn't seem to have an end, I float downstream, past the wheat, past the iron forges, and past the birthday parties where the children run and laugh. Her heart, her eyes, and her hands, my friend, are here with me. Wheat and river. Here. 

James Lee Jobe

Poem of the week: Small Change by Carole Satyamurti

In the end these poems and prose poems return to silence. Silence is the beginning and the end.

James Lee Jobe 

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves. 

Dalai Lama

John Lee Hooker & Carlos Santana, THE HEALER

When confronted with darkness, walk straight in. The light isn't behind you, don't turn around, it's on the other side.

James Lee Jobe 

Like happiness or peace or calm, paradise is not found by looking for it. Instead, it comes upon us, or we put ourselves in the right place where it can visit us.

Pico Iyer

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James