my favorite leg

'Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.'

Robert Bly

Ghosts In Dreams

Nights where the dead come to visit me in dreams 

    like rain on a river 

    like snow on snow 

There was a time when they said my name 

    held me 

    told me their dreams 

Now they are memories of memories 

    rain on a river 

    snow on snow 

Ghosts in dreams

James Lee Jobe

My sixth leg is my favorite, I use it to hold my weight when I climb. 

My sixth leg, my web, the dead things that I eat. Life is an instrument of love played by a musician with immense talent, the chords are of the future and the past, the melody is of the moment. Death is an instrument, too. I have composed a symphony with dead flies. I spin chords of music into my web. I eat life and death and sound. 

James Lee Jobe

Louie Armstrong - What A Wonderful World 

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JLJ 

just the moon over the pines

"Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life."

— Marcus Aurelius

The internal clock of the valley ticks

Until the hands click onto ‘summer’

And so it is that an alarm goes off

And summer awakes with a yawn

The fields are rich with crops

And the towns seem 

Full of people in short pants 

Smelling of sunscreen

Sweating isn’t quite a hobby 

But almost

Perhaps you have noticed that as you age

Time seems to pass ever faster 

It’s true and we can’t change that

So relax 

Autumn is but moments away

-James Lee Jobe

by Shodo Harada Roshi

Everything is the answer

Nothing is the answer

There is no question

Just the moon over the pines

-James Lee Jobe

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May patience be our blessing. -JLJ 

the sun is calling us both

What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name?

Walt Whitman

Dan Mountford

Prayer is  a well-worn trail, a pathway from my true self to the universe. No, I don’t need a false god or a superstitious religion to pray.

-----

You want to pick up a lovely rock 

That is a pale shade of blue but you can’t 

The rock has grown roots like an old oak 

And has attached itself to the earth 

Looking closely now 

You see that the entire planet 

And everything on it 

Has become one sold rock 

Now your feet are rock too 

So is your body 

And you are attached 

Perhaps forever 

To the earth where you stand 

I am sorry but this where I must leave you 

For I am a busy man 

And I am not attached to anything  

-----

I am as wide as you dream me to be

I am as slender as one fine hair 

On the nape of your neck 

How could you ever fail to trust me 

Even now the sun is calling us both 

To come outside 

James Lee Jobe 

Zim Lin

A student once asked the spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti what his secret to peace and contentment was. He leaned over and whispered to the student: ‘I don’t mind what happens.’

Toni Bernhard

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Thanks, JLJ  

stop judging everything

Outside of books and talks, the greatest sermon is lived, not written.

Gary Gach, “Walk with Thich Nhat Hanh”

Reaching up 

So that my fingertips touch the infinite 

The emptier the sky 

The farther my reach 

Oh universe  How lovely you are

-----

A life spent among people 

But it is a valley that understands me 

Good flat earth 

Fed and drained by a river 

Like the blood through a man 

This man  With his feet on the good flat earth

     -----

Clouds that cover and uncover the moon 
Shadows move across the grass all night 

     -----

Stop judging everything, there is more to life than right and wrong. And stop arguing, are you so weak that you need to win all of the time? Relax, friend. Don’t just do something, sit there. Breathe and relax. Tomorrow is another day, and if it isn’t, if tomorrow doesn’t arrive for you, well, that’s alright, too. Try to remember, it isn’t your beliefs that make you a better person, it’s your behavior.

James Lee Jobe

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James 

learning to set some limits

The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion.

Bodhidharma

_______________

A friend so full of anger and judgment 

that is hard to be friends anymore 

trying to learn to set some limits 

to protect my soul from this 

walking in the park to clear my head 

to be present now 

meditation on the park bench 

a cool delta breeze blows across the park 

south to north 

up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay

from the Pacific 

from the Gulf of Alaska really 

coming around in an unbelievably huge circle 

one hundred miles inland 

to me 

it is a perfect thing 

cool 

fresh 

James Lee Jobe

juliana coles

I awoke to this life 07 November 1956 

in Baltimore Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay 

Canadian geese migrate through there 

I like to imagine them flying 

high above Saint Agnes Hospital moving south 

perhaps crying out even as I made my first cry 

at 4:16 am 

Two hours before dawn came over the bay 

The suffering of my mother

James Lee Jobe

_______________

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

Rumi

kevin young, oblivion

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James 

a mirror facing a mirror

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. 

Matsuo Bashō

Are you worried 

It changes nothing

Better to live like a bee 

Moving pollen from flower to flower

Without thinking 

Just doing

Or live like the hive itself

Working each moment in harmony 

Life within a cycle

Days become seasons 

Seasons become years

What is time  Nothing

**********

And what is this world 

This life 

A thought inside of a dream 

The reflection of a mirror facing a mirror 

A kindness in the clothing of a hardship 

Hope  Love

**********

I live in the Sacramento Valley 

With the river and the creeks 

The farms and orchards 

Spread out across the flatlands 

The sky is so endless 

That I wonder how the universe could be larger 

But then I am the universe 

I am the valley 

And they are me 

We are one 

If this life started over 

Back east where I was born 

I would come here all over again 

Home is not the place where I came from 

Home is the place 

Where I am one with the world 

Here

James Lee Jobe

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals.

Pema Chödron

Valzhyna Mort, Belarussian I

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THANX- JLJ 

the children of science

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Albert Camus

Like the children of artists and leaders 

We have protested long and loud 

Raising the voice of dissent 

To stop wars and ban bombs 

To ride ourselves of nuclear reactors 

For people to stop shitting on other people 

We need improved and free education 

Free healthcare 

To do away with fracking and clearcutting 

For everyone to have shelter and food 

We are the children of truck drivers 

And senators 

The children of science 

And goddamn you 

You better listen 

__________

At age 67 my skin flakes away 

Right around the bridge of my generous nose 

I can lightly touch a fingernail to it 

And it flakes away like tiny bits of snow 

It’s ok with me 

I understand 

Beneath my flaky old skin 

Is the hiding place of my ghost 

And he is waiting for my life to end 

To finally flake away 

So that his life can begin 

__________

Who poisoned the sky with the language of hate?

Poisoned the earth and the sea?

The language of hate

Is yet another pandemic.

And citizen, it spreads like those germs

That you breathe.

James Lee Jobe

ZZ TOP - Blue Jean Blues

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saluting a crow

With every act of giving we weaken the power of grasping. The Buddha once said that if we knew as he did the fruit of giving, we would not let a single meal pass without sharing it.

Joseph Goldstein

Could it be that the empty universe 

Was dreaming 

And it dreamt up a fiery hand 

To cast out the dust that led to us 

A thought in the darkness 

To toss the stars across the void 

And bless them 

With a spark of life  

James Lee Jobe

Antonio Mora

A large rather old looking crow caws 

And a wind sweeps through my valley 

Not everyone gets to have that kind of power 

Watching from my patio I salute the crow 

Who caws again 

And flies away 

To rejoin the rest of the world

James Lee Jobe

Loss itself is not a gift; loss is just loss. Pain is not okay just because we can grow from it. We never need to be blown apart just because we can learn from the act of piecing ourselves back together.

Teri Dillion

Tarfia Faizullah, 'Speculations About I"

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crops growing under warm light

"A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open."

Frank Zappa

You must have taken the wrong road 

You have arrived at a place where people eat filth 

And live in pens 

Like pigs 

The smell is terrible 

You want to go back the way you came 

But the road has one-way traffic only 

There is no going back 

You can stay 

Or travel on 

Those are the choices 

From the pens 

You are called by naked people 

Covered with their own mess 

One of them knows your name 

And says it again and again 

Returning to road 

Feeling lost you slowly begin to walk away 

First the right foot 

Then the left

Then the right again 

Sunlight filters down through the branches of the trees

Sunlight beautiful and warm

James Lee Jobe

Francesca Woodman

No one to be seen

And no one to see me

This valley farmland goes on and on

Peace

The sun at noon

Crops growing in the warm light

As far as the eye can see

James Lee Jobe

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James 

like tiny paratroopers

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

Bodhidharma

____________________

Why waste this last sliver of the moon

walk with me across the empty field

cast off your sorrow

and I will cast off mine

there might not even be a tomorrow

James Lee Jobe

photographer(s) unknown

It’s been years since I’ve seen snow 

     decades I suppose 

what I remember is perfect white flakes 

     falling from the winter sky 

     like tiny paratroopers  

clean and cool 

when they land on your tongue 

     and melt 

     they are millions of little gifts 

     from above 

James Lee Jobe

Yusef Komunyakaa reading the poem 'Facing It'

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain

____________________

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-James