D. R. James, recently retired from college teaching of writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA, where they watch the birds and deer and from which they cycle the backroads skirting the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals internationally. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

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Now

Once upon a then not long ago
enough the nows became
delicious, and every other then
took on its flat feel of “My,
how I have wasted…” Yes,

yes, you are who you are
because of blah, blah, blah—
all that dullness, too, that
boredom. But now you can love
the nows, love those who

show you, look forward
to a better later, even risk missing
this now or the next. Today’s
faint sun struggles to cast
yesterday’s delicate warmth—

but because it is now
here’s its half-fazing glow
through filtering clouds
and its more mottled effect
on water and the water’s still

steady sound and this alighting
bird who fans the translucent
arc of her tail feathers
through which you can see
the occasion you call now.