Plain as Day

Bleak though it seems
like a nightmare we just can’t shake
every morning it’s still there when we wake:
a presence like heavy wooden doors shut so tight
no crack lets in the light.

Avarice advancing like a plague,
Its logic is a racket of arrhythmic drums.
Among the complicit, wrongs compounded bring silence.
Among the aggressors, invasions of liberties invite cheers.

The doors are bolted heavily across the span. 

Bleak though it seems
from inside a darkened chamber
we who love know there is a beautiful world beyond this.
Since together we have knowledge, strength, and leverage,
we lift the bolt and swing it away.

Bright beams of light, almost blinding, give way to clearer vision
to see again the world we knew,
still green, and blue, and ours, and true.

Look to the sky and see the arc of the moral universe which is long, but bends toward justice
plain as day.

Sunlight

Sunlight captures and conditions the color of the air a certain way sometimes 

and a moment I recognize having sensed in my childhood comes forward to meet this one, all the same moment, timeless 

and future retrospect is with me too,

it is a through line of my life

nameless, quiet.

I am not ahead of myself,

I am not catching up

I am not waiting

It is all one moment:

that yesterday 

this now

daydreamed future

when it happens 

just like this—

naturally, reliably

present

familiar, like a place,

comforting, like a friend—

I smoothen like the sunlight

as it sets shadow on a building, or flower, or hillside, or bench.

Always there comes the point 

where my attention is drawn away

dissipating to distraction

until another stay.

Jeanosullivan 08/26/2024

Repair

Sometimes whatever is God

is like a shiny vein in a rock;

a different shimmer

part of the way the world shapes itself.

Walking over stones

I am drawn to take a closer look at one

and pick it up.

I find where cracks had begun,

repair

using Nature’s elements and techniques ––

water, wind, heat, cold, light, darkness,

pressure, and time; 

something other, yet same, wonderfully becomes integral, holding together

what was about to be broken

but wasn’t.

O Foxtail

O foxtail, 

in your own way 

pretty 

as a rose—

just please

stay out 

of the 

dog’s 

paws

and

n

o

s

e.

Rediscovered from April 3, 2019

Bee Here Now

I watched a bumblebee

in the paloverde tree

sampling sugars from small yellow flowers.

And for a while

there was no history 

except as regarded the lineage of the bee.

March 15, 2022 (rediscovered 2024)

Herewhere

A casual coffee meeting for a job candidate, get to know you kind of gathering.

We started talking about names, and how three men in the office are named John, well, one is a Jonathan.

Somehow the question of Beatles' names came up:

"Yes," said one person, "there is a John... I don't know the rest. Wait: is Ringo one of them?"

Cognitive dissonance

How old am I?

One of the other Johns, a week older than I,

we made eye contact checking our internal calendars

for historical structure and context:

Are we set in another column now?

How could the Beatles not have carried over?

They made guesses at the other Beatles' names.

John said, "...Paul... ..." which led them to...

naming the Spice Girls.

I exclaimed:

"George Harrison!"

(There is no comparison).

"Georrrrge..." one said; the name had struck a familiar chord.

The madness of this world aside,

the plastic and the politics and the

unrest and forced emigrations and the

hashtag me too men and the 

murderers and the 

people taking selfies with wild zoo animals and getting mini-mauled and the

dictators and there

is a lot to know about this world

and much to keep track of 

and history to know.

Children, listen.

Once in a great while,

chance meetings can make

relationships that fall into place

with such grace

as to bring something wonderful

beyond measure.

March 11, 2019, rediscovered 2024

Gift from the Gray

Toward the window:

what is that funny sound

crackling against the pane

it taps in rapid staccato

what phenomenon? It's the rain!

It seems that I forget it happens

between dry lengths of day to days

and even as the clouds gather

habitual thinking says

expect nothing. So joy ensues

when the song begins--

clapping introduction to a hymn 

of falling, refreshing

rain.

Let the 

soothing 

soak 

in.

(From the Found Poetry collection, From March 3, 2021)