Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Mockingbirds

This morning
two mockingbirds
in the green field
were spinning and tossing

the white ribbons
of their songs
into the air.
I had nothing

better to do
than listen.
I mean this
seriously.

In Greece,
a long time ago,
an old couple
opened their door

to two strangers
who were,
it soon appeared,
not men at all,

but gods.
It is my favorite story--
how the old couple
had almost nothing to give

but their willingness
to be attentive--
but for this alone
the gods loved them

and blessed them--
when they rose
out of their mortal bodies,
like a million particles of water

from a fountain,
the light
swept into all the corners
of the cottage,

and the old couple,
shaken with understanding,
bowed down--
but still they asked for nothing

but the difficult life
which they had already.
And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
clapping their great wings.

Wherever it was
I was supposed to be
this morning--
whatever it was I said

I would be doing--
I was standing
at the edge of the field--
I was hurrying

through my own soul,
opening its dark doors--
I was leaning out;
I was listening.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Affirmation After Evidence It’s Still Kali Yuga

It’s still true what he said long ago,
the world is upside down.

But the trees are not upside down,
nor the grass,
nor the breeze,
nor the hills,
nor the sea,
nor the stunning, constant sky.

And even cities, at 3 AM
when the greed-spigot’s shut off
and everyone’s gone
somewhere we can’t see—
or silenced by snow—
can be places of silent wonder.

Although when we walk here
we must bring with us
the freshness of a higher realm,

let us not forget
there are allies,
many quiet,
steadfast allies.

- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

What Work Is

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labors, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

All night at the ice plant he had fed
the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
stacked cases of orange soda for the children
of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

with always two more waiting. We were twenty
for such a short time and always in
the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded
by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

for there was no such year, and now
that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds,
wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
The ice to standing pools or rivers
racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose
between the thousands of cracked squares,

and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
I give you all the years from then
to the coming one. Give me back the moon
with its frail light falling across a face.

Give me back my young brother, hard
and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
for God and burning eyes that look upon
all creation and say, You can have it.

- Phillip Levine

[Larry Robinson]

August

When the blackberies hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody own, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is; In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Lemonade Stand

When I was six,
My Mom promised to help me set up a lemonade stand
to sell lemonade to the big boys
who played stickball in the street
in front of our house in Granada Hills.
But in my excitement
I peppered her with
too many questions."One more question. . ." she warned.
A minute later I lost my lemonade stand.

Since then
I have never been much excited
about anything.
Never desiring anything with much ardor,
never feeling anything with much pain.
Accepting only things which came easily,
which seemed to be
overly exciting women
and underly exciting jobs.

I became a Buddhist
because Buddhists
are supposed to eliminate
all desire and passion,
which is very easy for a guy who lost
his lemonade stand.
But my Buddhist soul
longs to be a Catholic (Italian!)
or Jewish (Paul Newman!)
or even a Texan (Caballero!).
I want to sing arias
outside my Italian girlfriend's window.
I want to dance to Hava Nagila.
Also with my Italian girlfriend.
I want to ride a Palomino horse
across the Texas plains,
the breasts of my Italian girlfriend
pressed into my shoulders.
Sadly, my songs, dances and rides
were done with insufficient passion and excitement.

There are worse things
than losing your lemonade stand.
But in my dreams
I'm on my deathbed
a pink plastic hospital cup
full of the holy yellow elixir
falls to the floor,
and in my dying breath
I utter the words,
"Lemonade stand..."
My Italian girlfriend
wailing by my side.

- Greg Kimura

[Larry Robinson]

The Phone Call
I can hear words in your breath,
words alien to any language
but audible as you sleep.
Sometimes you will speak words
as you dream,
but tonight it is the breath itself
that speaks a sustained prayer
from your breast.

Morning, and your side of the bed is empty.
I stare at the impression your body has made
wondering how long
before I too, fell into the vocal chamber
of a dreaming flesh.

Over breakfast, pouring coffee,
buttering toast, we make small talk.
When the phone rings
it is I that get up to answer it.
Your sister in tears on the line.
Father dead, massive stroke,
in the background,
the sound of weeping relatives.

I look across at you,
as you sip orange juice.
Now I remember the words
of your breath last night.
How you were not praying
but chanting a spell against
the coming of the dawn.

- Eric Ashford

[RexCasteel]

This poem could easily be read aloud, irreverent and hilarious.

There is also another way...

Lemonade Stand

When I was six...

There are worse things
than losing your lemonade stand.
But in my dreams
I'm on my deathbed
a pink plastic hospital cup
full of the holy yellow elixir
falls to the floor,
and in my dying breath
I utter the words,
"Lemonade stand..."
My Italian girlfriend
wailing by my side.

- Greg Kimura

[Larry Robinson]

What Were They Like?

Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
Did they use bone and ivory,
jade and silver, for ornament?
Had they an epic poem?
Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
but after their children were killed
there were no more buds.
Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
it is not remembered. Remember,
most were peasants; their life
was in rice and bamboo.
When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
When bombs smashed those mirrors
there was time only to scream.
There is an echo yet
of their speech which was like a song.
It was reported their singing resembled
the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.

- Denise Levertov

[Larry Robinson]

Our Valley

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

- Phillip Levine

[Larry Robinson]

Epiphany

Just as I gave up waiting
and turned back to tend the fire,
the full moon rose over the Mogollon Rim,
sending a flashflood of light
racing up the narrow canyon.

Sometimes the distance
between the ordinary and the sacred
is no greater than the width
of a moonbeam.

- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

You and Art

Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face—
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Shop



Lightning falling on the helpless,


a surge of pearl out of the rock

covering the rock, this life torn into a hundred pieces,

and one of those pieces a ticket

to let me back into my life.



A spirit world divided into eight sections, one a scroll.

Eight scrolls in the parchment of your face.

What kind of bird am I becoming, kneeling like a camel,

pecking at the fire like an ostrich?



You and I have worked in the same shop for years.

Our loves are great fellow workers.

Friends cluster there, and every moment we notice

a new light coming out in the sky.

Invisible, yet taking form, like Christ coming through

Mary. In the cradle, God.

Shams, why this inconsistency

that we live with love,

and yet we run away?

- Jellaludin Rumi

(tr. Coleman Barks)

[Larry Robinson]

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light

- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

Inventing A Horse

Inventing a horse is not easy.
One must not only think of the horse.
One must dig fence posts around him.
One must include a place where horses like to live;

or do when they live with humans like you.
Slowly, you must walk him in the cold;
feed him bran mash, apples;
accustom him to the harness;

holding in mind even when you are tired
harnesses and tack cloths and saddle oil
to keep the saddle clean as a face in the sun;
one must imagine teaching him to run

among the knuckles of tree roots,
not to be skittish at first sight of timber wolves,
and not to grow thin in the city,
where at some point you will have to live;

and one must imagine the absence of money.
Most of all though: the living weight,
the sound of his feet on the needles,
and, since he is heavy, and real,

and sometimes tired after a run
down the river with a light whip at his side,
one must imagine love
in the mind that does not know love,

an animal mind, a love that does not depend
on your image of it,
your understanding of it;
indifferent to all that it lacks:

a muzzle and two black eyes
looking the day away, a field empty
of everything but witch grass, fluent trees,
and some piles of hay.

- Meghan O’Rourke

[Larry Robinson]

Ode to the Fish

Nights, when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions
barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.
I look out the black window into the black night
and think about the fish stirring the ocean.
Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash
churning the water to froth,
whipping up a squall, storm of hunger.
Herring cruising, river of silver in the sea,
wide as a lit city. And all the small breaths:
pulse of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,
frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing
green with the glass shells of diatoms.
Billions swarming up the water column each night,
gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor
that powers the world, whirring
Mixmaster folding the planet’s batter.
Shipping heat to the Arctic, hauling cold
to the tropics, currents unspooling around the globe.
My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,
and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:
keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides—
opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.
Only the clock’s sea green numerals
register their small changes. And shadows
the moon casts—fan of maple branches—
tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs
a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic
ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,
I could swim through into its thousand pound heart.

- Ellen Bass

[Larry Robinson]

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

End of Summer
An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

- Stanley Kunitz




[Larry Robinson]

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!
- Hafiz

[Larry Robinson]

I've Broken Through To Longing

I've broken through to longing
Now, filled with a grief I have
Felt before, but never like this.
The center leads to love.
Soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.

- Jellaludin Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

[Larry Robinson]

A Zero-Circle

Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.

We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we'll be lying.

If we say "No, we don¹t see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.

So let us not be sure of anything,
besides ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."

When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
we'll become a mighty kindness.

- Jellaludin Rumi
( Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
translated by Coleman Barks)

[Larry Robinson]

Translucence

Once I understood (till I forget, at least)
the immediacy of new life, Vita Nuova,
redemption not stuck in linear delays,
I perceived also (for now) the source
of unconscious light in faces
I believe are holy, not quite transparent,
more like the half-opaque whiteness
of Japanese screens or lampshades,
grass or petals imbedded in the paper-thin
substance which is not paper as this is paper,
and which permits the passage of what is luminous
though forms remain unseen behind its protection.
I perceived that in such faces, through
the translucence we see, the light we intuit
is of the alrady resurrected, each
a Lazarus, but a Lazarus (man or woman)
without the memory of tomb or of any
swaddling bands except perhaps
the comforting ones of their first
infant hours, the warm receiving blanket ...
They know of themselves nothing different
from anyone else. This great unknowing
is part of their holiness. They are always trying
to share out joy as if it were cake or water,
something ordinary, not rare at all.

- Denise Levertov

[Larry Robinson]

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Blackberry Eating


I love to go out in late September
among the far, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy black language
of blackberry-eating in late September.

- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

Blackberries by the Roadway

In scarred roadcuts
forgotten tracks
of some otherwise interested
caterpillar
lies the bramble

Sharp Himalayan spines
protecting the fruit
that comes wild
every hot September
from the thick stalked
wild blackberry.

Not wild, really,
imported and big berried
just as commercial strawberries
are larger and less flavorful
than their wild cousins.

But those big dull ones
you know
that grow big
in the center of the bunch
with their shiny, sour
younger siblings
all around.

Sweetness and hard seeds
and staining purple ink
a pleasure
to make
pope Innocent
blush.

They are only black
till you touch them.

- David Bean

[Larry Robinson]

When school or mosque, tower or minaret get torn down,
Then Dervishes may begin their community.
For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
And betrayal into trust
Can any human being become part of the truth.

- Jellaludin Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

Watching the Jet Planes Dive

We must go back and find a trail on the ground
back of the forest and mountain on the slow land;
we must begin to circle on the intricate sod.
By such wild beginnings without help we may find
the small trail on through the buffalo-bean vines.

We must go back with noses and the palms of our hands,
and climb over the map in far places, everywhere,
and lie down whenever there is doubt and sleep there.
If roads are unconnected we must make a path,
no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

We must find something forgotten by everyone alive,
and make some fabulous gesture when the sun goes down
as they do by custom in little Mexico towns
where they crawl for some ritual up a rocky steep.
The jet planes dive; we must travel on our knees.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Dakini Speaks

My friends, let's grow up.
 Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
 Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
 Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
 It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
 Let's grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
 But please, let's not be so shocked by them. 
Let's not act so betrayed,
 As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
 And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.

To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
 And her compassion exquisitely precise.
 Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
 She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
 This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
 Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
 We are not children anymore.

The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost. 
Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.

- Joyce Wellwood


I will be traveling for the next three weeks and largely incommunicado, so this will my last poetry post until mid-October. Many blessings to you all.
Larry

[Larry Robinson]

When school or mosque, tower or minaret get torn down,
Then Dervishes may begin their community.
For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
And betrayal into trust
Can any human being become part of the truth.

- Jellaludin Rumi

[Larry Robinson]

The Envoy

One day in that room, a small rat.
Two days later, a snake.

Who, seeing me enter,
whipe the long stripe of his
body under the bed,
then curled like a docile house-pet.

I don’t know how either came or left.
Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched
as something—terror? happiness? grief?—
entered and then left my body.

Not knowing how it came in.
Not knowing how it went out.

It hung where words could not reach it.
It slept whre l ight could not go.
Its scent was n either snake nor rat,
neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are opening in our lives
of which we know nothing.

Through them
the belled herds travel at will,
long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

Scars

They tell how it was, and how time
came along, and how it happened
again and again. They tell
the slant life takes when it turns
and slashes your face as a friend.

Any wound is real. In church
a woman lets the sun find
her cheek, and we see the lesson:
there are years in that book; there are sorrows
a choir can’t reach when they sing.

Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
places where the scars will be.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Faces at Braga

In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence

While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, "Will you step through?"

And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,

see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
then slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.

Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carvers hand.

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.

- David Whyte

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

[Larry Robinson]

Given

The trees presenting their offerings,
the rumple of weeds like children
hanging on the neck of the brook,
the host that pours through the city
are not merely here,
not simply stumbled upon,
I have given them to you.

This day, its delights, its troubles,
your whole life, your death,
this moment,
are not happenstance or imposed,
they are what I wear.

What you encounter in this world
is not here of its own accord
or for its own sake,
it is how I give myself to you.

- Steve Garnaas-Holmes

[Larry Robinson]

A Timbered Choir

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

The Monk's Robe

The push
The pull
The black garment must be
Just so.
A fold
A tie
Pulled across his
Strong back
It drapes
It flows
But still can't hide
The man
With a shaved head
And a clean heart
Who knows --
Karma is not the same
As destiny
And everything is
One's self
Who knows --
The body and the mind
Are one
Single thing
Yet if you love somebody
And separate
You will suffer.

- Doug von Koss
Abano Terme, Italy, November 1995
After a lecture by Tokuda Ryotan
Of the International Buddhist Institute of Latin America

[Larry Robinson]

Learning from History

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,
Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm.

They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said,
Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm.

I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream,
And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this?

They said, my poets, singers of my song,
We cannot tell, since all we tell you is

But history, we speak but of the dead.
And of the dead they said such history

(Their beards were blazing with the truth of it)
As made of much of me a mystery.

- David Ferry

[Larry Robinson]

Snowflakes

Ecclesiastes says “for everything there is a season.”
You say “It’s tax season;
it’s baseball season; it’s allergy season;
I’ve got to season the steak on the barbie;
besides, I don’t have time to change the world.”

Goethe tells us of the genius, power and magic in boldness.
You say “What can I do, anyway?
The foxes are guarding the henhouse;
the juggernaught is out of control;
we’re all just snowflakes in a windstorm.”

The mountain asks “Which snowflake, falling,
will be the one to send down the avalanche
to change this entire landscape?”

- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Cure

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney's translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

[Larry Robinson]

The Thought Machine

Its little eye stares “On” in its forehead
by its maker’s name. They say it anticipates
its memories and holds “Eureka!” tight
in little wheels so sure that all steel
hardens when incorporated in it.
The only Please it knows is, Be Correct;
but it can tolerate mistakes.

You tell your troubles to it, how your letters
all came back with no acknowledgment
and all you wanted was assurance all was known.
It tugs its collar; its little eye glows on.
You tell about the woman at the corner
ringing the bell to bring Jesus and his weather.
That is long ago.

You tell of the hill that never attracted the deer;
you think it frightened them, a fear place,
where you always had to go to listen—it was
for your town and for the world; it was for…—
and you are back there, listening again:
the little eye goes kind; the forehead
has the noble look that hill had.

And the world whirls into vision; in Tibet
a prayer wheel turns for you; an Eskimo
by such a northern fire lives that you live so,
touching only important things;
you see that all machines belong;
the deer are safe;
a letter has reached home.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a
card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy somethin
they will call you. When they wnat you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Parowan Canyon

When granite and sandstone begin to blur
and flow, the eye rests on cool white aspen.
Strange, their seeming transparency.
How as in a sudden flash one remembers
a forgotten name, so the recollection. Aspen.
With a breeze in them, their quiet rhythms,
shimmering, quaking. Powder on the palm.
Cool on the cheek. Such delicacy
the brittle wood, limbs snapping
at a grasp, whole trees tumbling in the winds.
Sweet scent on a swollen afternoon.
Autumn, leaves falling one upon another, gold
rains upon a golden earth. How at evening
when the forest darkens, aspen do not.
And a white moon rises and silver stars
point toward the mountain, darkness
holds them so pale.
They stand still, very still.


- David Lee

[Larry Robinson]

At a Certain Age

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: "That's me."

- Czeslaw Milosz

[Larry Robinson]

Please and Thank You

Gracias, Chacho, short all your life,

barrel-chested chieftan of the grill

on Mendocino Boulevard. Not the one

featuring soupbowl margaritas

and singles karaoke on Friday nights,

where a dog in a dingleball sombrero

urges us inside, ¡andale, arriba!

I mean the one up the block, across

from the Vista Motel, with windows

whitewashed against afternoon sun;

the one I bike to, thirsty in August,

from all the way across town, because

I have two dollars and still no job.


I will push open the door and walk

my bike into the merciful cool,

up to the counter where I lay

my limp dinero down

and ask your brotherfor the special,

con pollo y frijoles negros.

And if instead of a Coca-Cola

I fill and refill a plastic cup

with ice water while I wait,

because every nickel counts,

there is no problem with that.


No problem, even though

this sweaty, heat-pink gabacho

will never be poor, and knows

nothing of the last dollar;

even though my independence,

my desperation, is voluntary,

like a second language

I am ashamed to speak here.


I will lay down whatever

baggage I carry, and when

the food arrives, I won't know

why I am hungry, only that I am.

At the table I will feast, in bliss,

on a flour tortilla enormous with rice

and chicken and black beans, food

enough to live on. It doesn't matter

what makes us hungry, Chacho,

only that there is hunger, that there

is food, and that for now

I am a guest in your home

and I will eat what you feed me.

- Yosha Bourgea

[Larry Robinson]

Shopping
for my mother

Now that you are gone
I know what you have made me

shrewd hands feeling tomatoes
looking for flaws
pinching them till they hurt
(you never know what they try to sell you)
you never know until you feel them)

and your careful scanning eyes
on the tilted
gossipy
horizon

looking for the thing that is wrong
in hems, coats, facial tics
(you can't imagine what some of them do
you never know what some of them are hiding)

your world is bright and round
it has oranges, melons, flowers
and small repeatable scandals
like the neighbor, Mrs. Grey, who
beat her children on their bare behinds
in plain sight
and the drama teacher, Mrs. Rice, who
ran over a child and kept saying,
as they took her away,
all I will ever see is that little blond head

the voice that broke my ears
the arms that never held me

never mind that

it's your hands,
after all,
and your small, inquisitive eyes,

that take me shopping.

- Thaisa Frank

[Larry Robinson]

Better looking at a river



I think what interests in a river is

persistence in change,

something always about to have been

curving toward you.



Also trout.



I like the glimpse.

Or watching their shadows slide

sidling over gravel,

flukes and fins responding

but upstream head held motionless

by trouty practice or craft.



And it's nice to swallow river,

trickle down a different curve.

Also trout – cooked

since it's never too early to begin

where transformation is concerned



though I've come to see that

river watches keep no time

and early seems not far from late.



What interests in a river at first

is that thing of sneaking up on beauty, how it hurts,

then the one about time and death,

then the long cool drink,

then the trout.



I walk richer from a river

collecting lots of interest there.

And better looking, too, I think,

for it becomes me.

- David Oates

[Larry Robinson]

Where the World is One

My smallest grandson does not understand yet what big means.
Those chickens are big, and he is going so close.
Oh the imagination is a dreadful thing.
My neighbors’ grandson was pecked by a rooster.
Flew at him for no reason

That rooster was big! Tore open the back of the boy’s head,
He went to the hospital for so many stitches.
His father went for the shotgun and killed that rooster dead.

This story looms now like a storm cloud.

I have taken you to buy eggs with me,
And we were invited to wander
As long as we like, out toward the hen house.
All that clucking rocks you like a lullaby.
You run on your little legs that still wobble,
You love the indescribable crowing of the roosters.
All the chickens running free in the yard, all those
Silky reds and shiny blacks, the streaks of gold
Holding light, combs as crimson as blood.
Some hens scratching their beaks on the ground,
as if sharpening a razor on a strap of leather,
back and forth they twist those beaks.
You go too close, too close in your curiosity.

They flap their wings and strut,
While I try to look really big, arms out
As if they were mountain lions. You are so happy

And oblivious, living in that innocent space we soon
pass out of. Where there is no mortal wound.
It is a place like the Book of Revelation promises
Where there are no more tears and sighing,
And all fears are gone, burned away in a lake of fire

That burns away all but that connection we are still searching for.
I hear you laughing with delight. You are in the garden

I have left, and angels, we are told, protect
that garden with a flaming sword.
I can look back through you, but cannot go back,
and there is this terrible grief
that you will have to leave.
and join us here East of Eden.

- Judith Stone

[Sara S]

Well, this reminded me of the family story (I was too young to remember) about when one of my parents' roosters pecked me in the butt; my dad didn't take the time to get a gun--he just ran out and wrung the rooster's neck. Don't imagine that he got very poetic about it, either.

Sara

Where the World is One

My smallest grandson does not understand yet what big means.
Those chickens are big, and he is going so close.
Oh the imagination is a dreadful thing.
My neighbors’ grandson was pecked by a rooster.
Flew at him for no reason

That rooster was big! Tore open the back of the boy’s head,
He went to the hospital for so many stitches.
His father went for the shotgun and killed that rooster dead.

This story looms now like a storm cloud.

I have taken you to buy eggs with me,
And we were invited to wander
As long as we like, out toward the hen house.
All that clucking rocks you like a lullaby.
You run on your little legs that still wobble,
You love the indescribable crowing of the roosters.
All the chickens running free in the yard, all those
Silky reds and shiny blacks, the streaks of gold
Holding light, combs as crimson as blood.
Some hens scratching their beaks on the ground,
as if sharpening a razor on a strap of leather,
back and forth they twist those beaks.
You go too close, too close in your curiosity.

They flap their wings and strut,
While I try to look really big, arms out
As if they were mountain lions. You are so happy

And oblivious, living in that innocent space we soon
pass out of. Where there is no mortal wound.
It is a place like the Book of Revelation promises
Where there are no more tears and sighing,
And all fears are gone, burned away in a lake of fire

That burns away all but that connection we are still searching for.
I hear you laughing with delight. You are in the garden

I have left, and angels, we are told, protect
that garden with a flaming sword.
I can look back through you, but cannot go back,
and there is this terrible grief
that you will have to leave.
and join us here East of Eden.

- Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

October

O hushed*October*morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed*October*morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day.
At*noon*release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with*frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost -
For the grape' sake along the wall.*

- Robert*Frost

[Larry Robinson]

October Arriving

I only have a measly ant
To think with today.
Others have pictures of saints,
Others have clouds in the sky.

The winter might be at the door,
For he’s all alone
And in a hurry to hide.
Nevertheless, unable to decide

He retraces his steps
Several times and finds himself
On a huge blank wall
That has no window.

Dark masses of trees
Cast their mazes before him,
Only to erase them next
With a sly, sea-surging sound.

-*Charles Simic

[Larry Robinson]

In Praise of Earth

We kept on dancing last summer though the dancing had been called subversive.
We weren't alone at the end of this particular world and knew
it wouldn't be the last world, though wars
had broken out on all sides.
We kept on dancing and with us were the insects who had gathered at the grounds
in the grasses and the trees. And with us were the stars and
a few lone planets who had been friends
with the earth for generations.
With us were the spirits who wished to honor this beloved earth in any beautiful
manner. And with us at dawn was the Sun who took the lead
and then we broke for camp, for stickball
and breakfast.
We all needed praise made of the heart's tattoo as it inspired our feet or wings,
someone to admire us despite our tendency to war, to terrible
stumbles. So does the red cliff who is the heart
broken to the sky.
So do the stones who were the first to speak when we arrived. So does the flaming
mountain who harbors the guardian spirits who refuse to abandon
us. And this Earth keeps faithfully to her journey, carrying us
around the Sun,
All of us in our rags and riches, our rages and promises, small talk and suffering.
As we go to the store to buy our food and forget to plant, sing so
that we will be nourished in turn. As we walk out
into the dawn,
With our lists of desires that her gifts will fulfill, as she turns our tears
into rivers of sweet water, we spiral between dusking and
dawn, wake up and sleep in this lush palace of creation,
rooted by blood, dreams, and history.
We are linked by leaf, fin, and root. When we climb through the sky to each
new day our thoughts are clouds shifting weather within us.
When we step out of our minds into ceremonial language we are humbled and amazed,
at the sacrifice. Those who forget become the people of stone who guard
the entrance to remembering. And the Earth keeps up her
dancing and she is neither perfect nor exactly in time.
She is one of us.
And she loves the dance for what it is. So does the Sun who calls the Earth
beloved. And praises her with light.

- Joy Harjo