Wade in the Mill River

2 chipmunks, a duck
and the second wade in the Mill river
of the season.
Now, waiting
for almost anything
to happen.


-Jim DuBois
May 14, 2010

The Other Side of Familiar Things

I took
  a path

I knew
  by heart,

but it
  was overgrown

and I got lost

- just enough
to come out
20 feet
from the
old trail entrance

and there
was
a beautiful old
stone wall
with a drain
through it,
a lost bit
of the old
state hospital
which I
had walked by
for years
and never known.



-Jim DuBois
Sep 25, 2013

Nowhere

A great place to sit
and watch
a lot of people
going nowhere.


-Jim DuBois

At a Loss

47 degrees,
I guess I'll go appease
my restlessness

I'll go get some floss
since I'm at a loss
for what to do


-Jim DuBois
April 6, 2013

Sometimes - eBook

I have a new poetry book in eBook format, available on the iTunes Bookstore for $2.99.

It is a collection of early poems by me, featuring themes of love, loneliness, space travel and spirituality.

Many of the poems have not appeared on this blog.



Get a copy.

Or view my all my books, eBook and print, as well.

First Walk Back

First walk back
  from Florence,

March, spring

fragments, regrowth


-Jim DuBois
March 10, 2013

Wading Through Time

Wading through time
    like drunken soldiers,
killing time
    wasting time,
    like totally wasting it, man

Like some kind of
        Lazy heroes


-Jim DuBois
2004?

Enough

Far enough
Wide enough
Long enough

enough

Expansive feeling of life
at the railroad bridge
over the Connecticut river


-Jim DuBois
April 14, 2010

Real Moment

At home,
new paintings, drying
under new drop-ceiling
next to new windows.

Outside,
me, wandering
catching the last of the light
almost aimlessly.


-Jim DuBois
March 25, 2010

Wandering in Other People's Memories

This broken twig,
that muddy footprint --
these show the paths they took
to become themselves.

Here is the campground of her fearful heart,
there is the happy hillside of his youth.

There is the pizza place that still serves
    hot hope for the future,
here is where she buries her forgotten days.

This is the trash heap piled high with
    unsent love letters.
that is the wasteground where time
spent waiting for things ends up,
and little yellow flowers grow.


-Jim DuBois
2004 ish

Outside in the Night

                        our carefully laid structures
            crumble under the pressure
of their own improbability.

Outside in the night, the trucks rumble by
            shaking the foundation,

innocent of our passion,
            oblivious to our wandering thoughts.


-Jim DuBois
'96 and today.

40 Short Poems

I put together a book of some short poems (many of which aren't on this blog). Now you can get a printed version of my work.

40 Short Poems

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?

What To Do Next (Jan 11, 2009)

"I'm a free man
and it doesn't matter
what I do right now,"
I thought to myself
and it completely
left me stumped
about what to do next,
so I stood on the corner
by the car place,
spit into the snow
and watched the shiny fringe
flutter in the sun.


-Jim DuBois

Desire

Sometimes desire is so simple:

wanting to go walk around
in the fading light.


-JD

More Hobbies of an Unemployed Poet (May 21, 2005)

I guess I'm
collecting feathers
again

And aimless moments.


Wandering in the lost places
again

like the hillside below the abandoned state hospital
and the broad empty lawns of Amherst College.


-Jim

Hobbies of an Unemployed Poet (c. 2000)

Looking for change
Beneath pay phones and parking meters

Sweating shirtless in the sun

Hanging out in parking lots
    and on sidewalks

Abandoning practicality
    to study the mysteries of
        life and death,

Abandoning practicality
    to study faith.



            - Jim DuBois

Nowhere to go at 11:42 pm (June 14 2006)

Nowhere to go
at 11:42 pm.

Walking through an empty
Smith campus,
I pretend that
because there is
a locked room
where I keep all my stuff
my life is under control
and held in check.

What if all meaning
is artificially constructed?

I head out
towards Stop & Shop
to get some
cinnamon gum.

     -Jim

Deer Antler (Dec 25th, 2005)

Wandering lazily
in the field by my parent's house,
I found a deer's antler
in the snow.

Half an hour later,
after a slow search,
as I composed in my head
a poem about how
what luck brings you
you can't seek deliberately,
I found another antler.

     - Jim