the gulls have gathered / in Lac Sainte-Louis / as if occupying seats // in the auditorium / of early morning / for the sunrise show // they've paid their tickets / and now sit and watch / the sun break the horizon // its reflection resembling / a golden comet / rising from the depths // and who then am i / the unpaid usher / of the solemn occasion // or the human element // mostly unheeded / by both sun and bird // a strange intrusion / at the glazed margin / peninsula of being // observing but still asleep / only opening / one eye a little This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the sun an orange / left on the counter / i wake early with symptoms / from my breakthrough covid case / needing vitamin / c and spewing germs This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The shade is pulled above our bed, and through The silken hanging drapes the sun affixes Its beam to cast our shadows on the blue, The pale-blue, green-blue walls where color mixes With a vibrant painting painted by your mother, Of pink and white flowers in a vase That seem to be finale of some other Suspended history of time and place. Imagine Wallace Stevens played by Bill Murray and the emperor like a groundhog Finding his way over a distant hill For the first time after that repetitive slog Of doing time in Plato's illusory cave, Then waking up free, no longer a slave. screenshot for the sake of the lines: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

halfway to halfway / between winter and / summer according to lore // no sunrise is a good sign / no shadow's showing / and river's flowing This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Jesus in 1920 / was erected on the shore / in front of Saint Joachim / to stand there and herald the / freezing and the melting and / the seabirds celebrating / the hope of Jesus' shadow. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

Photos by Jonathan Potter ⓒ 20241. (7:20am) After days of gray and cold and no sunrise to speak of my beloved suggested I should look out the window. There, I was surprised to see, the sky was a backdrop of mauve, pink, tangerine, and gold.2. (7:23am) I hopped in the car and drove down Saint Charles Boulevard where the naked trees greeted the rising sun with grateful limbs spread out and their backs turned to the Tuesday commuters tinged in golden light and mauve.3. (7:26am) Then, lost, except a sliver, I drove till the searchlight sun pierced the trees from its orange waiting room in the clinic of solar psychology, spreading a carpet of light across the icy river.4. (7:27am) The sun alive and alert above the far horizon, a spear of cloudlight through it, a yellow beret atop its jaunty head, a jumble of orange shadows and light like layers of a dessert.5. (7:28am) A little further along I come to the memory of summer where the pilings of the yacht club meet the piles of stuff and things with nowhere to be stowed except in dreams of flying south in a song.6. (7:29am) The old convent on a point stuck out into the flowing river now mostly frozen reminds me of a time I tried my hand at monastic life. But the climax of the sun risen there I now anoint.7. (7:30am) The lion's mane of the sun holds this moment together. The turbulence of the joy above and the love below, with purple waves breathing in the wash of umber-orange everything and everyone. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

on the saint lawrence / the ice is forming / the morning gives nothing back // that the night withheld because / the day and the night / have this icy truce This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

If I were a bus driver And you were a skin-diver, Would you take a ride with me To the bottom of the sea? If I were a bus driver, Would you take a ride with me? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Should I wait for you or should I roll on? Will you, won't you, won't you, will you get in? You're looking at me like you think I'm kiddin'. If I were a garbage man Emptying your garbage can, Would you throw yourself away for me In spite of your family? If I were a garbage man, Would you throw yourself away for me? Tell me, tell me, tell me. Look into my eyes and do not fail me. Will you, won't you, won't you, will you say it? Love me with your body, mind, and spirit. If I were an artist And you were a florist, Would you let me Paint your flowers in the morning? If I were an artist, Would you let me paint your flowers in the morning? Show me, show me, show me. I'm an open book and you can know me. Will you, won't you, won't you, will you stand up? I am on the ledge, I need a hand up. If I were a bartender And you were a pretender, Would you pour a drink for me On our anniversary? If I were a bartender, Would you pour a drink for me On our anniversary? [click on the voiceover link above to listen to this song] This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

i. after completion exhaling the morning gray inhaling the thought of sunrise recalling consummation and the softness of the darkness the solidity of love the bright future laid out ii. extended family the strain of travel to you your welcoming preparations your father and your brother your buoyant cousin visiting we navigate together we begin to build a life This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

alternating snow and rain and freezing and melting infinitely it seems till this infinite now sees its shadow in a spring sunrise This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the bare ruined limbs / of these trees contain / hidden rivers of the sun // where shadows not yet begun / feed the dreams of birds / and their silent songs This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

i woke up at four / and stepped out the door / to meet my uber driver // who delivered me over / the river to fly / up to the sunrise This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The fog / Undid / The bag / The lid / Just long / Enough / To fling / The chaff / Aside / To show / The dead / The way / To rise / Through haze This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

if the sun were to rise and shine brightly without fail then its brightness might grow dismal in boredom so instead we get this gray loveliness This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the river and the sky are divided by a thin margin of the skin of a horizon and in the river the sky appears by and by This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

1. In the dark, the light Of my phone’s screen casts shadows Across my wife’s face. 2. Give them a platform To stand on, and they will show You how they can dance. 3. Substack is to X As New Orleans is to Hell As poetry is. 4. There are poets here But these Procrustean screens Cause their lines to wrap. 5. James Joyce could be here Gradually amassing His pomes penyeach. 6. Bashō writes haiku And posts them to a Substack Made of butterflies. 7. Sign up for a free Or paid subscription as I Migrate into sleep. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

montreal sunrise from my beloved's train ride through the snow to work she sitting there looking out the window and i looking through her eyes This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the cable bridge and beyond it the old railroad bridge and then the sun aswim like a memory rising through the cream in my morning cup This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

when i was a child i'd sometimes visit my friend's farm out past paha on the paha-packard road but never did we see such a sunset This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

High Drive's your best bet for viewing the sunrise In the winter months in old Spokane. The bluffs Stretch out below you with pines receding down To the railroad tracks and Hangman Creek, the highway That goes past pieces of my past, Spangle and Plaza and the rolling Palouse hills. This morning I look at the sky above those hills With changing colors that announce the coming sunrise And foretell a mostly blue-sky day though past, Well past, the point of freezing, when winter's bluffs In the seasonal poker game go down the highway With all your cash pocketed in the goose down. The truth is I'm feeling just a bit down With the winter blues and I wish I could wander the hills All the way to the border and find a hidden highway To make my crossing under the warming sunrise To where we'd have our house up on some bluffs Overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and boats sailing past. I wish I could seize ahold of our separate past And make it connect from here all the way down To the eternal verities where God or the universe bluffs Us into thinking there's gold hidden in the hills When in fact it's beaming down from sunrise to sunrise And it's under our wheels as we flee, paving the highway. What I really want is to be driving down that highway With you riding shotgun, pulling our trailer of the past Towards the new and long-awaited golden sunrise Of the mysterious future but filled up and weighed down With the fullness of our beautiful present, the hills Of Eastern Washington colliding with heaven's bluffs Where you and I will accept the morning's bluffs As the sky becomes an orange highway With coffee-colored clouds above the green hills Of the coming spring and the present zooming past. We'll drive that golden road all the way down To Pullman and beyond to an as yet unknown sunrise And I'll hold your sunrise hand as we recall these bluffs, The arrowleaf balsam down along the winding highway, Creating our own new past from these memories of the hills. Screenshot for the sake of the integrity of the line breaks on the small screens: This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

in the beginning of the day open your eyes and breathe in deeply and then let your breath out naturally as the sun rises This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the cold ground beneath my thinly shoed feet feels as though it could freeze me from the ankles up and turn me into a tree dreaming of the spring This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

I believe there should be a universal basic income for poets and that the definition of poet should include everyone. If there must be a test, let it be that you have the ability to breathe, either on your own, or with assistance. Let's call that a haiku and if you'd like to write an actual haiku then go ahead and do that, but, even so, you are a poet. If you are alive and sentient and can breathe then you qualify for the universal basic income I here propose. And what amount will this universal basic income for poets be? I say let it be equal to what members of the U.S. Congress are paid. We the people are poets, I say, and provide value to the world with each breath we take and each breath we release. So let the squabbling among the so-called poets cease and let the prizes and publications be used to line the cages of birds And let those birds fly free, too, yes, set the poets, which is to say, the people, and the birds, but the people, yes, set the people free. (And the birds.) This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the snow fell the sun rose the sky danced the trees dreamt the winter weathered This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the sunrise disguised as a veil across the face of god preferring to remain hidden before this minyan of trees their silent kaddish This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

southbound freight train crossing the river for several days the sun's not been seen i thought this morning would be the same but the bruises in the sky began to gather into a sunrise scene and the feeling of being battered began to feel like being alive till the sun blasted through these thick clouds like a southbound train with singing wheels . This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

this river brings time from the mountain streams irrigating the farmlands with the minutes and the hours of the dawns and dusks of eternity This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

sunrise hexagrams start my days even when there is no sunrise to speak of but only the dregs of last year's roses and this gravel road This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

The poem is based on a consultation of the I Ching which resulted in Hexagram #41 (Decrease) with lines 1 and 4 (from the bottom) changing to become Hexagram #64 (Nearing Completion). The syllable counts of the lines correspond to the numeric values (6, 7, 8, or 9) of the lines of the original hexagrams. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the dismal winter can be a secret delight when the fog settles and an inner warmth rises from the deepest roots to the highest limbs This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

sunrise from our pearl / district hotel roof / rip city crows cut capers / in the caterwauling wind / the sun coming up / a hail mary shot This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

pink and blue on the willamette river the cool-mild air of portland fills the lungs of the morning with a rain-washed clean emptiness and calm . This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

by the magic of flight we chase the sun subtracting time from the gold leaf ledger of the morning going west away from the broken day . This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

2024 This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

standing in front of / église saint-joachim / facing le fleuve saint-laurent // weirdly warm for montreal / this time of year i / hail the mottled sky. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe

the sun is born each / moment of sunrise / perpetually rising // the cosmic christ is rising / and the word made flesh / is just what we are. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jopomojo.substack.com/subscribe