poems of peace and love

Summer Peeks into Winter

What are you doing there, Tree?

Are your leaves gone?

Did they not nourish seedlings

because you were planted

in this soil beside the road

in this tended yard

where nothing grows

without permission?

 

Do you watch me standing in the cold

beside my door?

Do we both look through your branches

to the grey sky and think of spring and new seeds?

How is it that we are here, Tree?

We are handed down eyes that see and leaves that worship the sun.

Summer visits us, Tree.

In the cold wind she sings to trees

of saplings and babies and bees.

 

david michael jackson

……image from Abstract Original Art

 

 

 

 

 

Rich man and the company don’t pay
but they get to have a say
and the snake oil man
is in the FDA
and the car man
is in the EPA
and there’s a party for you and me
in the national parks
with the D O E
Forget the roads and the bridges too
We’ve got too much work to do.
Planes and tanks they don’t come cheap
Your freedom is there for us to keep
Pay the bill at the hospital
and don’t complain how business is run
You must give your flag your all
and you can keep your gun

…..david michael jackson

There I was
under the house again
crawling in water
toward a tiny stream,
a small waterfall
between a crawlspace and a wet hell,
because the commode is a water devil.
Feed me water, it says,
or take a ride to a gas station, friend!

I approach the leak,
crawling in a leak creek,
avoiding the call to the plumber,
between a crawlspace and a wet hell,
dragging my wet tools minus the one I need,
minus the one tool the plumber know that he needs,
or she, should she also be
crawling between a crawlspace and a wet hell
with the tool that
I don’t have.

I approach the leak,
which only drips at me now,
I approach with my vast knowledge gained from
minutes of watching videos, with my
shark bites, my compression fittings,
my torch, my solder, my flux,
minus that tool I missed in the video.

“Blast ye Gods of human plumbing distress I cry!”
as I turn wet and humbled,
as I drag myself
toward that small rectangular hole
at the end of a long dark wet
crawl, hoping nothing is moving ahead of me.
“Who needs a plumber!”
I call as I emerge
flat on my back exhausted in the sunshine,
and hear the words,
“I need to go to the bathroom.”

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First published as Plumber Poem by David Michael Jackson 2019
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Plumber Clarksville https://macplumbing.com/

On overcoming fear
under avenues
beneath dirt roads,
gravel roads,
tended by eternal chain gangs,
bursting into consciousness like,
a hazy memory of toil and sweat
put into words
and cast like a cane pole
catching the trees
and left there
hanging in the past,
a carpenter’s plumb
pointing to the earth.
On overcoming fear
for the future
growing like a weed
beneath the plumb
as it sways
in the wind
I do not know what I mean
I do not know what I mean
I fear what I mean may not be here,
may be poorly said,
the meanderings of a fool.
I must overcome the fear of being a fool right here
right now
and go ahead and be that fool
right here
right now
It’s so much more noble than the fear.
Striking out beats not going up to bat.