The World Didn't Stop Turning

The world didn't stop turning --
    the moon rose,
        the stars shifted --

but we were safe,
    drifting through time
        on our raft
            of that long embrace,

for a while
    really living,

just being there
    at the center of things

caught up
    in the trees and water around us

caught up
    in the only moment there was.


-Jim DuBois
Sept 21, 2000

It Was A Good Day

Going to bed last night,
I suddenly remembered
you, barefoot,
calmly leading the Clydesdales^*
out to the pasture,
while I ate mulberries
and watched
from up in the tree,
and later,
we ate red raspberries
off the vines
and talked about
how the world
keeps on giving.


-Jim DuBois
April 13, 2010

---

* a Clydesdale is a type of horse. They are very large and stocky.
Learn more about them

The Scent of my Childhood

Sometimes
I catch the scent
of my childhood,

in the swampy air
from the stream
down the hill,

in the rotting leaves
on the bike path
through the woods.

Sometimes
I catch the scent
of my childhood,

of the magic
that I had forgotten,

of the goodness
I used to know more about.


-Jim DuBois
Oct 22, 2009

Crows

But those crows
    up in the bare
                         winter trees

Reminded me
                    how to live:

Go somewhere,

Open up your mouth
            and make some noise,

Go somewhere else.

            Repeat.


-Jim DuBois
2000?

Overlooked

I hear there is more
    old growth forest left in Massachusetts
    than they thought.

In narrow bands,
    too high for logging,
    too low to clear for skiing,
        they stand in the mountains
            like they always have
                because no one had a use
                    for the place they lived.

And I want to look
    behind a person’s eyes,
        to the ruined landscape,
                to the left-over places
                of their minds
            just to see what
                is still growing there,
                    undisturbed
                        by the turbulence
                            of oppression.

Those places that went un-noticed
    by society,
    the places they forgot were there.


-Jim DuBois
January 20, 1999

(Discarded Left-over Abandoned Forgotten)Edges + Lost Places

                             vacant upstairs apartment
I broke into the

And crept out onto the roof

I kept thinking of
            the cracks in the sidewalk
            the grass growing in the alley
            the vines on the fence
                  between the parking lots

The forgotten places where
      two things border one another

The discarded, left-over space between
      one clear definition and another

Cracks
            Borders
                        Edges

The places people rarely look into
            like beneath the sofa cushions where the change collects

or
      the strip of trees beside the highway where I
found the skull of a dog
and undergrowth so thick
      you couldn’t walk through it


-Jim DuBois
July 20, 1998

Mt. Tom (Sept 17, 2005)

Wandering in the remnants of time
the rotting tree trunks
the glacier-strewn rocks

Lost in the aftermath of the past
the decomposing leaves
the cracked basalt boulders

Even the new trees
root
in the bones
of their ancestors


-Jim

Marking Time (April 16 2008)

Marking time
by people walking
by returned phone calls
by day and night.

Marking time
by growth of trees
by clouds
by the lifespan of the sun.


-Jim