Jim Yerman Poems

There is a house across the street…
from now on I'll refer to it as she…
she's a house our family's loved..because we share a history.
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Parenting is like flying a kite…you do an awful lot of running around
using every breath you have to get your children up off the ground.

And you never feel prouder…remember how you grinned
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We've shown contempt for our Mother Earth…
We throw garbage on her beach.
Into her air
and land
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There is a Cherokee proverb that can lead to our success or our downfall
It tells of how there is a battle of two wolves inside us all.

One of those wolves is evil…an evil wolf who cries
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For many of us the holidays are happy times…it's when we smile, we laugh…we grin but for many others the holidays is when sorrow comes flooding in.

When the waters of sadness rise around them…as they are reminded of a death, they wonder how long they'll be underwater…how long they'll have to hold their breath.
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The other day while walking in the woods something occurred to me
"How much there is to learn, " I thought, "from a stroll among the trees."

Trees can teach us about beauty when we stop to realize
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I wonder about women...who work hard, who nurture, who give birth...
Yet they don't have as many rights as the men upon this Earth.

I think, perhaps, as the song says...Nothin' would be fina
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I wonder about the smile, how moving a few muscles just a trace
Can change our whole demeanor and put a smile on our face.

And with an endless supply of smiles and nothing for us to pay
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I wonder who to talk to, who to call or who to reach
To find out what's the cut off age for walking naked on the beach.

Babies are allowed to toddle, their nakedness uncontested
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I wonder as we watch our bodies age and our skin begin to wrinkle
Why does our smile remain enchanting and our eyes not lose their twinkle?

Perhaps as age engulfs us all, it is a basic human endeavor
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