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  1. TopTop #2611
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    We Breathe You


    There was a curious dusting of a talcum-like substance on my car one morning last week.

    I drove away. It flew off, disappearing into the air.

    Then it came to me.

    The fires.

    The terrible, terrible fires reducing your homes, your towns, even some of you into fine ash and carried on the wind thirty, forty, fifty, miles off.

    We read newspapers, see the pictures and videos, wring our hands and pray.

    My wife put together blankets, pillows, food and water.
    “Paper says you can leave them at Community Market. They’ll get them to the victims.”

    I couldn’t get into the market’s driveway for the long lines of those dropping off their boxes filled with concern and love.

    Heard that I could take the items to a union hall – “We hopped to get enough to fill a semi truckload,” the man at the hall said, “but we got that on the first day, we’re sending another.”

    So many good people.

    And the ash of your homes, towns, of you - we breathe it in taking you into our bodies - you literally become us - streaming through our hearts.


    - Armando Garcia-Dávila
    Last edited by Barry; 09-21-2015 at 11:53 AM.
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  3. TopTop #2612
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Moonless Night, Tomales Bay

    bioluminescence – n. the emission of light from living organisms



    I set out upon an indigo bay
    in evening's spare light,
    yellow life jacket and red canoe, frail
    against the muscle of dark water.

    Pushing past the island
    of cormorants and gull,
    each stroke ignites ripples; oars
    dripping with minute life.

    An intimate, star-petaled sky
    scatters its glow upon the sea.
    Darting fish set a thousand blazes
    and the spill of Milky Way
    makes horizon meaningless.

    Dazzled, I slip
    beneath the surface,
    the slide of my body against
    the tide trails a comet of living light.
    I stroke through
    shimmering swells,
    a second heartbeat.

    Lit from inside, my hands open,
    reveal the gold coins, passage
    to life's unknown edge.
    I am not yet ready to spend them,
    but if I were, this might be the place,
    purified by fire and water.

    - Susan Lamont
    Last edited by Barry; 09-22-2015 at 12:27 PM.
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  5. TopTop #2613
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fall Comes to Healdsburg


    Fall arrives, time’s most favored season—
    at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist
    so that I no longer need to know who I am

    I return to the hills and the great presences—
    light, heat, clouds, the bull pines—
    to recover for myself the purity of the falling world
    to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence

    I read the calligraphy of the oaks against
    the fading skies, the grass bending in the meadow,
    the last robins— I am a circle reaching
    the first place for the first time—

    in youth among fall leaves I refused
    to acknowledge the ancient writing—
    that the basket of summer empties, that
    the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds—
    and yet I stood among fall leaves overjoyed
    with the beauty of loss

    now I stand on autumn’s wooded knoll
    that my life too may vanish
    that night may fall into the earth’s arms

    time is calling her trout
    from their playgrounds in the sea
    to river mouth, and redemption, and fury—
    for it is by means of the long delay
    that we come to the righteousness of passion.


    - Lee Perron
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  7. TopTop #2614
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    September. At the Lake


    In early June the lake is new.
    Glaciers on the granite rim melt,
    rivulets of ice-clouded water gush
    down lime-streaked vertical walls.
    It is alpine here
    with an awareness of snow in every cloud,
    even on brilliant blue warm days.
    At dawn, wood smoke rises from chimneys.
    Campers awake chilled, don sweaters,
    brew coffee, greet the morning, wait
    for voices rising up along the trail.
    Youngsters arrive to scramble over boulders,
    climb the cliffs as a test of themselves,
    hesitate, then dare the perilous leap.
    They fling themselves airward
    and the dark lake swallows them in a bellowing splash
    until they emerge, gasping.


    Throughout the summer, we make the pilgrimage,
    yearning to recapture a dream -
    these cabins, cold lemonade at the store,
    black and white photographs of a time before the road,
    a pristine world that once was, everywhere.
    The long, endless days stretch toward autumn.
    September. The quiet time.
    Nothing left to prove, no need to hurry.
    The lake is its own slow clock.
    It mirrors leaves glowing gold and red.
    Trout rise in spreading circles,
    aspens shiver dry and sound like
    a memory of rain,
    jays and squirrels grow plump,
    and one last trickle winds its way
    from the peak to the lake
    playing brook music on the water.

    - Elaine Watkins
    Last edited by Barry; 09-24-2015 at 01:02 PM.
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  9. TopTop #2615
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn

    The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
    as if orchards were dying high in space.
    Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

    And tonight the heavy earth is falling
    away from all other stars in the loneliness.

    We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
    And look at the other one. It's in them all.

    And yet there is Someone, whose hands
    infinitely calm, are holding up all this falling.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated by Robert Bly)
    Last edited by Barry; 09-25-2015 at 03:34 PM.
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  11. TopTop #2616
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Relax

    Bad things are going to happen.
    Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
    and your cat will get run over.
    Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
    melting in the car and throw
    your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
    Your husband will sleep
    with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
    out of her blouse. Or your wife
    will remember she’s a lesbian
    and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
    the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
    that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
    every four hours. Your parents will die.
    No matter how many vitamins you take,
    how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
    your hair and your memory. If your daughter
    doesn’t plug her heart
    into every live socket she passes,
    you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
    the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
    and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
    There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
    When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
    and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
    And two mice -one white, one black -scurry out
    and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
    she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
    She looks up, down, at the mice.
    Then she eats the strawberry.
    So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
    in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
    slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
    and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
    Oh taste how sweet and tart
    the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
    crunch between your teeth.

    - Ellen Bass
    Last edited by Barry; 09-26-2015 at 03:09 PM.
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  13. TopTop #2617
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Way It Is

    There is a thread you follow. It goes among
    things that change. But it doesn't change.
    People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
    You have to explain about the thread.
    But it is hard for others to see.
    While you hold it you can't get lost.
    Tragedies happen; people get hurt
    or die; and you suffer and get old.
    Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
    But you don't ever let go of the thread.

    - William Stafford
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  15. TopTop #2618
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eclipse


    Hey, the moon doesn't care

    and the clouds don't either.
    It was just by chance
    that the veil lifted
    and there she was
    small round inscrutable
    high away up in the solstice sky.
    A different color,
    yes, a little rosy like they’d said,
    but only a little,
    otherwise not so very different
    from any other midnight moon.
    Then the cloud curtains closed
    and I went back inside.


    It was tempting to personify,
    but I didn't.
    It was just by luck the mist drew back,
    just by chance
    the rains held off,
    and when I felt that friendly
    though distant moon saying
    “Hello, how do I look like this?”
    it was just me making it up.

    - Julia Bartlett
    Last edited by Barry; 09-28-2015 at 04:40 PM.
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  17. TopTop #2619
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Holy Longing

    Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
    because the massman will mock it right away.
    I praise what is truly alive,
    what longs to be burned to death.

    In the calm water of the love-nights,
    where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
    a strange feeling comes over you
    when you see the silent candle burning.

    Now you are no longer caught
    in the obsession with darkness,
    and a desire for higher love-making
    sweeps you upward.

    Distance does not make you falter,
    now, arriving in magic, flying,
    and, finally, insane for the light,
    you are the butterfly and you are gone.

    And so long as you haven’t experienced
    this: to die and so to grow,
    you are only a troubled guest
    on the dark earth.

    - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    (translated by Robert Bly)
    Last edited by Barry; 09-29-2015 at 05:21 PM.
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  19. TopTop #2620
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Momentary Creed

    I believe in the ordinary day
    that is here at this moment and is me

    I do not see it going its own way
    but I never saw how it came to me

    it extends beyond whatever I may
    think I know and all that is real to me

    it is the present that it bears away
    where has it gone when it has gone from me

    there is no place I know outside today
    except for the unknown all around me

    the only presence that appears to stay
    everything that I call mine it lent me

    even the way that I believe the day

    for as long as it is here and is me

    - W.S. Merwin
    Last edited by Barry; 09-30-2015 at 05:37 PM.
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  21. TopTop #2621
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I, Coyote, Stilled Wonder

    When did I get this bejawed look,
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    that flashes up out of creeks and pools?
    Was it when I fled across
    pasture and through woods,
    up to ledge, and came out
    in the world to let myself think events
    back into their right sequence again?
    Man glaring into bloody mess on ground,
    cow, who has birthed calf, I,
    Coyote, actually tasted,
    ate of it well past demarcating line
    where calf becomes aftermatter.
    I think it was then, when I fled
    singing, happy, to wood’s edge.
    I could see Man raise arms,
    steady his over-and-under, and squeeze.
    I, Coyote, I was there, yes I saw it all,
    even the flock of tiny lead
    that went scattering past.
    I felt in me all those that hit,
    nearly shattered wraith, clinging
    to crushed jawbone, invisibly
    slickering through trees, from here on
    alone, I, Coyote, stilled wonder.


    - Galway Kinnell
    Last edited by Barry; 10-02-2015 at 02:06 PM.
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  23. TopTop #2622
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn Equinox

    Light pregnant with gold develops from
    the first glow of red over the horizon,
    its shining presence eager to arrive before
    the full moon has left the sky.
    It is a promise that its decision to leave day by day
    will have meaning.

    I am held in the stillness of this honeyed presence,
    reminded of the exquisite nature of being
    in those last moments
    before loss becomes certain.

    - Jean Norelli
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  25. TopTop #2623
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fig Tree

    Offering herself to strangers,

    ripe purple ova,
    sweet sacks of seeds
    soft for the squeezing and tasting--
    somebody tell her
    not to do that!
    Sprawled all over the sidewalk
    for any dogwalker to finger,
    any old lady, hobbling by on her walker, gets one,
    or homeless guy settling in for a smoke,
    or surreptitious single mother
    with her plastic bags,
    her army of climbing kids.
    Not very ladylike,
    crotch open for a sneakered foot,
    a panting embrace,
    and all that black honey, oozing.
    See how her heart’s left
    smashed on the sidewalk
    for feral cats to sniff,
    her intimate goo underfoot,
    pecked by pigeons, swarmed with ants.
    Should have pruned her harder,
    brought her up short
    before she showed her desire so freely
    upraised arms opening to sky, profligate
    branches that could poke somebody’s eye out:
    such crazy need to feed the world.


    - Allison Luterman
    Last edited by Barry; 10-04-2015 at 02:32 PM.
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  27. TopTop #2624

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I love it! An Open Secret about figs! Wish the heck I could find some, the only big tree around here is all picked, nothin' on the ground at all! She is one of my favorite poets, but I sent her my work to critique and she was more critical than I'd thought she'd be, ouch! So I haven't read as much of her since the bruised ego, and now this poem of hers about bruised figs, which is DELICIOUS!
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  29. TopTop #2625
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Word


    Down near the bottom
    of the crossed-out list
    of things you have to do today,

    between "green thread"
    and "broccoli," you find
    that you have penciled "sunlight."

    Resting on the page, the word
    is beautiful. It touches you
    as if you had a friend

    and sunlight were a present
    he had sent from someplace distant
    as this morning - to cheer you up,

    and to remind you that,
    among your duties, pleasure
    is a thing

    that also needs accomplishing.
    Do you remember?

    that time and light are kinds

    of love, and love
    is no less practical
    than a coffee grinder

    or a safe spare tire?

    Tomorrow you may be utterly
    without a clue,
    but today you get a telegram
    from the heart in exile,
    proclaiming that the kingdom

    still exists,

    the king and queen alive,
    still speaking to their children,

    - to any one among them
    who can find the time
    to sit out in the sun and listen

    - Tony Hoagland
    Last edited by Barry; 10-06-2015 at 12:09 AM.
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  30. TopTop #2626

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    right on, Baby!
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  31. TopTop #2627
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Chant

    We live to stay
    Alive. Prey all, alert
    For predators, aware
    We will be eaten.

    Omnivorous, life eats all,
    Grass, sheep,
    The upright Sapiens,
    Wolf whole.

    Ferocious, tenacious life
    Hangs in beautiful balance.
    Feral child of chance,
    Luck and luckless.

    The wily mind
    Calculates its chances,
    The heart drums
    Her maniacal mantra:

    Alive, alive, alive.

    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Barry; 10-06-2015 at 05:26 PM.
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  33. TopTop #2628
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Enlightenment
    Ten years ago I couldn't stop thinking, feeling,
    Just anger, just rage, until this moment.
    A crow laughs, the dust clears, I hold the arhat's fruit.
    Spotted sunlight in Zhaoyang Palace, a pale face chanting.
    - Ikkyu
    (translated by Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith)
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  35. TopTop #2629
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    ON REMAINING NEUTRAL WHILE YOUR FIVE-YEAR-OLD HANDLES A GUN


    It takes practice. It must,
    to find just the right balance,
    the right way to sift, to modulate energy,
    attitude, so he won’t walk
    back to the car, eyes glued to asphalt,
    filled with rapture or
    steeped in judgment,
    after touching that thing. You want
    him to be infused with nothing but sky. The barrel
    is propped (mounted, I guess) on the edge
    of a Vietnam copter. A boy
    in fatigues keeps watch, with a personal
    Airsoft lazily tossed beneath the seat
    of the vintage machine he’s been left with.
    A boy in fatigues. Left with a Vietnam copter.
    The gun’s metal is dull, not the sleek shine
    your son’s mind was led to expect by the small
    doses of gunplay he’s been able to see
    in his carefully-crafted home environment.
    Softly, softly, he asks, Mom, what’s this?
    His small hands lift and lower the gun on
    its perch, no sign of bullets, or battle, or death.
    A gun, you answer, so cool. His hands flutter
    a moment, then return with a question.
    It won’t work anymore, you tell him. Again,
    so cool. What was it for? For war. Four days
    later, up north, one more young man, barely
    a man, releases his misplaced white-hot vitriol into the bodies
    of students. Your crafted, elusive
    equanimity gone, you unloose all your anger
    and fear of the gun not in your home (hush!) but on
    Facebook. You even piss off your sister-
    in-law. The way we can walk with such marked
    restraint amidst casual displays of masculine
    violence is itself an object of wonder, you think.
    And while you lie on your bed, frazzled and knowing
    the sweet, twisted, quite normal joy
    of kids being kids, while you fervently
    wish the NRA could truly be sent
    to a hell you know
    will never, ever exist, your five-year-old
    wanders in. Elbows propped, small hands under chin:
    Mom, I really want a dart-gun.
    Shit. It takes practice.


    - Amy Elizabeth Robinson
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  37. TopTop #2630
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Maple Seeds and Squirrels

    How amazing it is
    that maple seeds spinning their way down
    nourish squirrels
    and seeds of all sorts birds feed on
    to fly on air that supports bats and flying bugs
    who do their own feeding dance
    and all so obvious and miraculous at once
    and all so at once that time can hold and carry us
    until we fall away to spin like maple seeds
    and the urgency of sperm and egg
    mates new us's to continue spinning
    down through whispering atmosphere
    thick enough to caress with the wings of our souls
    thin enough to let us go when time tells us so.

    - Tim Hicks
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  39. TopTop #2631
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    what a wonderful and gloriously run-on sentence ...

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Maple Seeds and Squirrels

    How amazing it is
    that maple seeds spinning their way down
    nourish squirrels
    and seeds of all sorts birds feed on
    to fly on air that supports bats and flying bugs
    who do their own feeding dance
    and all so obvious and miraculous at once
    and all so at once that time can hold and carry us
    until we fall away to spin like maple seeds
    and the urgency of sperm and egg
    mates new us's to continue spinning
    down through whispering atmosphere
    thick enough to caress with the wings of our souls
    thin enough to let us go when time tells us so.

    - Tim Hicks
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  40. TopTop #2632
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;be ready for whatever it takes to win: we faceannihilation unless all citizens get in line."I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhereother citizens more fearfully bowin a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.Our signs both mean, "You hostages over therewill never be slaughtered by my act." Our vowscross: never to kill and call it fate. - William Stafford
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  42. TopTop #2633
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    The BIGGEST Brainwashing in ALL of History

    "...we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is a criminal attitude.
    In fact, we have been brainwashed."
    — from The Realities of War, by The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  44. TopTop #2634
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;be ready for whatever it takes to win: we faceannihilation unless all citizens get in line."I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhereother citizens more fearfully bowin a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.Our signs both mean, "You hostages over therewill never be slaughtered by my act." Our vowscross: never to kill and call it fate. - William Stafford
    Last edited by Barry; 10-11-2015 at 01:55 PM.
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  45. TopTop #2635
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Call Away

    A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
    Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
    I want to be out of here, go out,
    Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

    My back against a shed wall, I settle
    Down where no one can find me.
    I stare out at the box-elder leaves
    Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

    What is it that I want? Not money,
    Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
    This is what I want to do: to sit here,
    To take no part, to be called away by wind.

    I want to go the new way, build a shack
    With one door, sit against the door frame.
    After twenty years, you will see on my face
    The same expression you see in the grass.

    - Robert Bly
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  47. TopTop #2636
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shadows

    Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
    Terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
    Senseless acts has its thread looping
    Back through the world and into a human heart.
    And meanwhile
    The gold-trimmed thunder
    Wanders the sky; the river
    May be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
    Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
    Bring us to grief --- but these are the hours
    With the old wooden-god faces;
    We lift them to our shoulders like so many
    Black coffins, we continue walking
    Into the future. I don’t mean
    There are no bodies in the river,
    Or bones broken by the wind. I mean
    Everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
    Of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
    Of any person, or reason --- I mean
    The waters rise without any plot upon
    History, or even geography. Whatever
    Power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
    Dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
    The name of the catastrophe, it is never
    The opposite of love.

    - Mary Oliver
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  49. TopTop #2637
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Artificial Tears

    We are outliving our eyes
    We no longer can cry
    In a wicked world politically
    uncaring to weep is to act
    in some small but at least human
    way out or through hopelessness.
    Today we watched a dead child
    on a foreign beach far from his home
    another on a Hungarian railroad track
    his father pulling mother and child there
    rather than return them to the untenable
    and we discovering ourselves to be helpless
    are but for this verse individually useless.

    - Ed Coletti
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  50. Gratitude expressed by:

  51. TopTop #2638
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Old Friends

    Each a mentor
    a sherpa
    a pathway
    a wilderness

    Old friends now
    elders in gradual
    departure into
    deeper layers
    undiscovered edges
    shifting shorelines
    a kind of breathing
    a sort of threading

    in and out
    in and out
    weaving each other
    into living fabric

    - Clare Morris
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  53. TopTop #2639
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Holy Longing

    Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
    because the massman will mock it right away.
    I praise what is truly alive,
    what longs to be burned to death.

    In the calm water of the love-nights,
    where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
    a strange feeling comes over you
    when you see the silent candle burning.

    Now you are no longer caught
    in the obsession with darkness,
    and a desire for higher love-making
    sweeps you upward.

    Distance does not make you falter,
    now, arriving in magic, flying,
    and, finally, insane for the light,
    you are the butterfly and you are gone.

    And so long as you haven’t experienced
    this: to die and so to grow,
    you are only a troubled guest
    on the dark earth.

    - Goethe

    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  55. TopTop #2640
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Natalie Rogers:


    On the Death of the Beloved

    Though we need to weep your loss,
    You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
    Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.

    Your love was like the dawn
    Brightening over our lives
    Awakening beneath the dark
    A further adventure of colour.

    The sound of your voice
    Found for us
    A new music
    That brightened everything.

    Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
    Quickened in the joy of its being;
    You placed smiles like flowers
    On the altar of the heart.
    Your mind always sparkled
    With wonder at things.

    Though your days here were brief,
    Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

    We look towards each other no longer
    From the old distance of our names;
    Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
    As close to us as we are to ourselves.

    Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
    We know our soul's gaze is upon your face,
    Smiling back at us from within everything
    To which we bring our best refinement.

    Let us not look for you only in memory,
    Where we would grow lonely without you.
    You would want us to find you in presence,
    Beside us when beauty brightens,
    When kindness glows
    And music echoes eternal tones.

    When orchids brighten the earth,
    Darkest winter has turned to spring;
    May this dark grief flower with hope
    In every heart that loves you.

    May you continue to inspire us:
    To enter each day with a generous heart.
    To serve the call of courage and love
    Until we see your beautiful face again
    In that land where there is no more separation,
    Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
    And where we will never lose you again.

    - John O'Donohue
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

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