a room defined by light

"I must dance now."

She says it without hesitation

as soon as the music begins.

She raises her arms above her head

and starts to move to the beat,

sometimes spinning or dropping to the floor.

She sings a little of the lyric,

and I realize that she knows this song.

I've never heard it before,

but she has,

and this is a song that catches her up

and moves her to dance,

my granddaughter,

three years old.

"I must dance now."

And so she does dance.

James Lee Jobe

            The fragrance of sandalwood and rose bay does not travel far, but the fragrance of virtue rises to the heavens. 

Buddha

            Supper was early, late afternoon, and long shadows swept across the room. The boy ate his potatoes and his peas, and then he ate the plate, the table and chairs, and even the shadows. He grew dark as the room grew lighter, then he was gone, and the room was empty of everything but the dear light. The light defined the room from then on.

James Lee Jobe

OSIP MANDELSTAM 1891-1938 Russian poet
-died in a Soviet work camp-

The Stalin Epigram

Our lives no longer feel ground under them.

At ten paces you can’t hear our words.

But whenever there’s a snatch of talk

it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,

the ten thick worms his fingers,

his words like measures of weight,

the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,

the glitter of his boot-rims.

Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses

he toys with the tributes of half-men.

One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.

He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.

He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,

One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.

He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.

He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.

Osip Mandelstam

translation by W.S. Merwin & Clarence Brown

            That I might let go of my judgments, how easily they come. That I might learn to respond with kindness and forgiveness, to people, to life, and to myself.

James Lee Jobe

John Coltrane, live in Belgium, 1965
About 37 minutes.

           That's all for this time. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to buy me a coffee, the link is below. 

Thanks, James