Somewhere there is an edge to all of this

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

 Mary Oliver

Portrait of Pere Tanguy
Vincent van Gogh

The lone hunter stalking the lone deer. Just past sunrise. The sound of a footstep snapping a twig.

*

The rain muddies the far hills, and in the mountains, snow. Down here in the valley the creek rises and feeds the river, which rises and feeds the lake, and then the lake rises against the dam. Downstream past the dam the low places flood, all of the flood gates are open. People watch the water rise with worried expressions.

Somewhere there is an edge to all of this, down in the Delta someplace, right where a slough washes against some reeds, and from all of this energy, the reeds sway in the last bit of wave, all of that energy waning at last. A heron wades in, hungry. A fish has made a ripple, or perhaps an air bubble has risen, and the heron goes there to check it out. It is a long night, wet and cold and full. Finally, the storm passes.

*

In the dream years have passed  

and my late son who died so young 

looks about 50 and is going bald 

and I am furious  

“you faked your death  

you hid from us all these years  

we suffered”  

he smiles and holds me 

and I know it is just another dream of him   

he really is dead    

and I suffer all over again 

and weep on the shoulder of my dead son    I didn’t know that I could grieve in my sleep

James Lee Jobe

Yokoyama Taikan

"Time goes from present to past."

Shunryu Suzuki,

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James