THE NEWS

THE NEWS

the world is such a busy place
the days bulge with things to know
dangers stalk us every second while 
beautiful clouds drift overhead 
lovely birds flying beneath them

we are delighted

then shaken by the racket 
of the riot of the world we’ve created
ceaseless and 
ceaseless and
behind it all – the news 
the story the what’s what
the screens we watch it on the screams 
that warn us the feeds that flicker the chats that chitter
that tell the story that never sleeps

of course it never sleeps

someone’s always up with the sun or hidden in dark 
doing what they do with always someone else
watching someone listening finding out being told 
digging it up reporting it repeating it lying telling hoping pleading it
and all of us other someone else’s standing by
mouths gaped open like beaks of baby birds
waiting for the words of the worms of the world 
to be dropped in poured in shoveled in day after day

while the clouds are always drifting away

morning into night and back again 
the sun flashes through them 
the moon glows like a pearl behind them 
in a dream we heard about 
somewhere recently sometime 
it’s so hard to keep track
there’s so much else 
always going on
in the news.

Bill Jeffers
6/29/2022

---

IT’S DONE

This rough month’s almost done.
And even though the birds still
call loud and lovely every dawn,
same as they did the month before,
the sun is hotter now, 
knives sharper, 
words harsher,
holsters heavier, 
and women 
suddenly find themselves
no longer free 
to make their own hard choices.

Bill Jeffers
6/26/2022

---

LET ME 

Let me tell you
Let me tell you this 
Let me tell you this is what
Let me tell you this is what you
Let me tell you this is what you should 
what you should say think believe expect hope dare

Let me tell you
Let me tell you this 
Let me tell you this is what
Let me tell you this is what you 
Let me tell you this is what you better 
Let me tell you this is what you better do

Let me tell you
Let me tell you this 
Let me tell you this is how
Let me tell you this is how it
Let me tell you this is how it’s gonna be

Bill Jeffers
6/26/2022

---

I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO LOOK

My eyes don’t know where to look today.
Just from this chair on my porch looking into the back yard
there are too many things to count, 
miniscule to massive, some animate some not,
each one something with a name, a story to be told – 
of origin, past, future, what’s happening as I watch.
Add to sight, the sounds that all this makes and more. 
Then, wind on skin, the sun’s insistent pressing,
the held feel of the things of the world.

Living in this world might actually require 
more learning what not to notice
than what to pay attention to.

Otherwise, we would be a world of humans
frozen at the thresholds of our homes each morning
gaping at the teeming world in awe.


Bill Jeffers
6/30/2022