you are the world beneath your own feet

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Mary Oliver

The world beneath your own feet.

Pick up the pencil. Open the notebook.
Find a new way to say it,
"The world is an island, green and beautiful
and tender, all alone in a living sea.
See how the water is blue-green and translucent.
Calm."

You are this island, you are this sea,
you are the world beneath your own feet,
and from your pencil come the storms
that fill the sky with a raw and naked power.

The hour passes as you write.

James Lee Jobe

A hundred thousand birds salute the day.

Christina Georgina Rossetti

Breaking bread.

Oh my poor son.
I am picturing you holding
a loaf of bread in your hands.
Like an old roman,
you are tearing off some bread to eat
and handing the loaf to me.
This, in the dining room
of the house where you grew up.
This, at the table
where we laughed through so many meals,
the way a family does.
Oh my poor son.
Now I must forever face the hard days
with you gone.

James Lee Jobe

Sonny Rollins Quartet - Moritat (Mack the Knife)

Where do poems come from? I can only answer for myself. From the pencil to the page. Or from my hand to the pencil. Or from my thoughts to my hand. Or from the universe to my thoughts. That’s it. The poems are a part of the universe. Just like us. 

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James