Poetry Archives - John Kobara

The Price of Love

November 15, 2021

Are we grieving what we lost more than what the person we grieve has lost? I have tried to be more attuned to my expectations of others life expectancies. “You must live longer for me.” “You should have lived longer for me.” What a crazy ego trip.

Grief is deeply interwoven into our life path. As we mature, we understand our own mortality and the mortality of everything around us. As we accept these lessons, we hopefully savor and cherish the brevity of life.

Ready to go

July 28, 2021

Always have to be ready to go What do we take with us? What do we have to show? Leaving is never easy Our luggage

Back to whose normal?

April 14, 2021

Most of us are trying to avoid the phrase, “return to normal”. Even newscasters, pundits, leaders of all types are making awkward statements about “a partial, a semblance, a return to some normalcy….”

Part of this recognizes the mountain ranges of reality that now exist between the valleys of our ignorance.

Our collective awakening, our shared despair, guilt and confusion make a return to “normal” impossible.

These powerful forces and circumstances have brought us to this moment, to this place, and we can never go back.

Emptiness that Fills You Up

February 17, 2021

Our self-imposed busyness makes us blind to what is in front of us around us and above us. We are on a mission, so focused and yet so myopic. We feel handcuffed by the time warden, even though we have the key.

This is something I have been working on for decades. Still a hack in progress. But I changed my sleep patterns, found a meditative routine, and continue to cultivate small plots of time to re-plant the fields.