they are in love with their phones

Will no one count the molecules?
How many specs of dust are in the world?
How many drops of water are in the oceans?
How many breaths have been breathed
by the primates since the beginning of primates?
How many breaths by the amphibians?
Will no one count the molecules
and report the number on the evening news?
How many dogs have set off at a run
the second the car door was opened
and they saw the green grass of the park?
O my son who is now ashes, I just don't know
how many songs have played on the radio
or the number of hairs on the heads of the senators.
And I don't know how long this grief will last.
Probably as long as I last.

_____

You could ask me why I live in this hot valley,
and I might answer by telling you
that it gets so hot here that everything slows down,
that even my heart grows quiet and still.
And I often need just that.
Slow, dry heat. Walnut groves and peach trees.
The sound of the water sprinkler at dawn.
I live under a canopy of pine and oak.
I live in this world, and the valley is of this world,
and for me that world is slow and warm.

_____

Maybe it is a garden that has been let go,
and some of the flowers or vegetables or fruit remain,
but only just some, and weeds are now thick
and dead leaves cover the broken bricks
that long ago were laid to edge the garden,
and tools have been left out in the weather to rust.

And maybe it is a lawn where people once sat
and chatted or strolled arm in arm
smelling the fair fragrance of nature,
and today there is naught but the odor of mold
and decay, fraught with loneliness
and an empty sort of solitude.

Maybe it was and now it is not,
but nature will prevail in time
and create a third thing, wild and alive,
and I know that I am not needed for this,
the world goes on without requiring a witness,
as it always has, and so I am free to walk away.

_____

You can follow the moon, it's one way to end up in the sky. On the street people walk like they are proud Of their clothes, like they are in love with their phones. And in the fields the plants are telling each other Stories that they learned as seeds and roots. Time is a hammer, beating a bent nail straight The way that old men do, trying to save a few pennies. I am almost a pauper, close, but not quite. There is the moon, rising in the purple sky, And by God, I am going to follow it.

James Lee Jobe

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Zen is really just a reminder to stay alive and to be awake.

Peter Matthiessen

______

If a thing loves, it is infinite.

William Blake

_____

All the elements for your happiness are already here. There's no need to run, strive, search or struggle. Just be.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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james