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Joe Lamb

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Joe Lamb, featured reader, Writing through War workshop #1
February 21, 2016 by War Requiem Committee Leave a Comment

Joe Lamb, founder of the Borneo Project, is a writer, activist, Vietnam-era veteran, and arborist. His poetry and essays have appeared in Earth Island Journal, The Sun, Caliban, Wind, and other magazines; and included in the anthologies: The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: A Poetry Anthology, Robert Bly et al., editors, and Veterans of War/Veterans of Peace, (ed., Maxine Hong Kingston.) He lives in Berkeley, California. (Story Chorus)

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JOE LAMB is a poet, arborist, and co-director of the Berkeley-Borneo Big Home Project, a citizen diplomacy group for indigenous rights and rain-forest preservation in Borneo. He lives in Berkeley, California. (The Sun)

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Oh my Lord! This dude was SO hard to track down! I kept finding bits and pieces of info about him and another couple poems, but the only way I knew I had the right guy was because in the top piece up there it says his work was included in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. Interesting guy. Multi-talented activist. Very different from other poets I’ve put on here.

I really liked this poem because I have experienced it. Not the cherries part, but trying to analyze my dreams when I was 20-40 or so in an effort to find out who I was. Now, however, were I to have the same dreams, like his at an older age, it would be all about more mundane things. I wonder if that just happens as we get older? What do you think?

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Cherries

When I was five, we lived in Tesuque, in a mud house with walls two feet thick. I dreamed I was perched in the top of our cherry tree. Mom and aunt Owane paced in small circles far below. Cupping their hands, they yelled, “Come down. You’ll fall!” I watched the wind billow their long dresses, and soared to a taller tree.

When I was thirty, I remembered the dream.

When I was thirty-five, I remembered the cherries were thick, sweet, and yellow.

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Picture Source: Care