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  1. TopTop #3901
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Postscript

    And some time make the time to drive out west
    Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
    In September or October, when the wind
    And the light are working off each other
    So that the ocean on one side is wild
    With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
    The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
    By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
    Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
    Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
    Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
    Useless to think you'll park or capture it
    More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
    A hurry through which known and strange things pass
    As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
    And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

    - Seamus Heaney
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  2. TopTop #3902
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Return

    A little too abstract, a little too wise,
    It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
    It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
    Let the rich life run to the roots again.
    I will go down to the lovely Sur Rivers
    And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.
    I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers
    In the ocean wind over the river boulders.
    I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,
    That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,
    The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks
    So that they cannot strike, can hardly fly.
    Things are the hawk’s food and noble is the mountain,
    Oh noble
    Pico Blanco, steep sea-wave of marble.

    - Robinson Jeffers
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  3. TopTop #3903
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Advice For The Fall Equinox


    Walking in balance is not easy —
    to step so lightly
    the grasses are not bent,
    to step so firmly
    one’s track points
    a way through the thicket.

    Indeed it seems our nature to be
    off balance,
    one foot stepping so lightly
    one so firmly
    that lost in the desert
    we always walk in a circle.

    There are worse fates; let us then
    learn to walk the circle in joy.
    The seasons turn & return
    one upon the other
    & there is nowhere to go;
    the Earth is Home enough;
    the walk, all too brief,
    leads Nowhere.

    To learn to walk in balance
    practice the dance.


    Consejo para el Equinoccio Otoñal


    Andar en equilibrio no es fácil —
    pisar tan ligeramente
    que la hierba no se doble,
    pisar tan firmemente
    que nuestra huella señale
    el camino por la maleza.

    En verdad nuestra naturaleza parece
    ser sin balance,
    un pie pisando tan ligeramente
    el otro tan firme
    que perdidos en el desierto
    siempre caminamos en círculo.

    Hay peores destinos; entonces
    aprendamos a caminar el círculo en gozo.
    Las estaciones voltean y vuelven
    y no hay a donde ir;
    la Tierra es hogar suficiente;
    el camino, demasiado breve,
    a nada nos lleva.

    Para aprender a andar en balance
    practica el baile.

    - Rafael Jesús González
    Last edited by Barry; 09-22-2018 at 01:20 PM.
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  5. TopTop #3904
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tense Times

    Tense times for me,
    and sleep’s acting like a newly love-struck teen.
    I shall disregard the state my heart’s in
    and my mind’s upheavals like water bubbling
    past the boiling point.

    I am a part of the universe with which the universe is angry,
    a part of the earth of which the earth feels utterly ashamed,
    a wretched human towards whom
    other humans cannot maintain neutrality.

    Neutrality: an illusion
    like all the graces of which humans speak, so shamelessly theoretical.
    Truth is an inadequate term, just like Man,
    and love bumps about,
    a miserable fly
    trapped in a glass box.
    Freedom is very relative:
    all said and done we live in a ball-shaped prison
    barred with ozone.
    Set free, our fate
    is certain death.

    I am incapable of laughing.
    Completely incapable of smiling, even.
    Incapable, at the same time, of crying.
    Incapable of acting like a human being,
    which doesn’t upset me in the slightest
    though it hurts so
    to have a body covered with light down,
    to walk on two limbs,
    to depend wholly on your mind,
    to be drawn after your desires to the furthest point,
    to have your freedom trapped,
    to have others decide to kill you,
    to miss those closest to you
    without a chance to say farewell.

    What good does Farewell do
    but leave a sad impression?
    What good’s meeting?
    What good’s love?
    What good is it to be this alive
    while others die from sorrow
    over you?

    I saw my father for the last time through thick glass
    then he departed, for good.
    Because of me, let’s say.
    Let us say because he could not bear the thought
    I’d die before him.
    My father died and left death to besiege me
    without it frightening me sufficiently.
    Why does death scare us to death?
    My father departed after a long time
    spent on the surface of this planet.
    I didn’t say farewell as I should have
    nor grieve for him as I should have
    and was incapable of tears,
    as is my habit, which grows uglier with time.

    The soldiers besiege me on all fronts
    in uniforms of poor color.
    Laws and regimes and statutes besiege me.
    Sovereignty besieges me,
    a highly concentrated instinct that living creatures cannot shake.
    My loneliness besieges me.
    My loneliness chokes me.
    I am choked by depression, nervousness, worry.
    Remorse, that I’m a member of the human race, kills me.
    I was unable to say goodbye to all those I love
    and who departed, even temporarily.
    I was unable to leave a good impression of a last meeting.
    Then I yielded to the rifles of longing
    leveled my way.
    I refused to raise my hand
    and became incapacitated.
    Then I was bound by sorrow
    that failed to force me to tears.

    The Knowing gnaws at me from within,
    killing every shot I have at survival.
    The Knowing is killing me slowly
    and it’s much too late for a cure.

    - Ashram Fayadh

    Fayadh is a Palestinian poet, living in exile in Saudi Arabia. In 2015, he was sentenced to death for cursing against Allah and the prophet Muhammad, insulting Saudi Arabia and distributing a book of his poems that promoted atheism. The above is the first poem he wrote while imprisoned.

    Hundreds of leading authors, artists and actors, including the director of Tate Modern, Chris Dercon, the British poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, and actor Helen Mirren appealed for his release. More than 60 international arts and human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the writers’ association PEN International, launched a campaign calling on the Saudi authorities and western governments to save him. Readings of his poetry in support of his case took place in 44 countries.

    His sentence was later commuted to eight years, 800 lashes and a personal renunciation of his work.
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  6. Gratitude expressed by:

    M/M
  7. TopTop #3905
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Ripening

    This Living
    has softened the hard fruit
    of my being

    Everyday, tenderness
    claims more of me
    taking me holy
    into ripeness

    Let me not
    fall from the branch
    ripe but untasted

    Rather, let the Beloved
    pluck me in ripeness
    and pierce me with His bite

    Releasing the juicy
    fullness of my life
    to run down His arm
    like tears of gratitude,
    like tears of devotion

    But,
    if fall I must
    untasted
    melting into the earth

    Let that nourishing decay
    be my devotion
    spreading out in a pool
    of returning

    the essential elements
    of my being

    - Kay Crista
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  9. TopTop #3906
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pablo Maestro




    Neruda
    justice is your breath
    fearless in knowing
    tattooed by the wind
    love carved in faith
    the poet of poets
    your song completed the world


    I began with the best
    you were the first.
    At eleven I found
    “Twenty Love Poems
    and One Song Of Despair”.
    Transmuted by the thoughts you think
    with the feelings I felt
    I came to be
    in flight with your flight
    a peace making song of grapes


    Nobel man of Nobel Prize
    Chilean forever
    embracing your wounded land
    fixing its broken mouth
    tending its tragic de-petalled daisies


    You inhabit me
    afire
    your words dialogue
    with my inner wisdom
    you know of distant sadness
    and in my voice that has humbled itself
    into a homeless poem of exile
    a searing truth lives where God flames.
    Justice finds its place in your hand.
    With each of your words we breathe in freedom
    and breath out pain.


    I was twenty one when
    with Carlos Fuentes,
    at the New York Hilton
    we met in a strange cadence
    of slow motion.
    Your wife, Matilde, in the background
    looked on accustomed to the routine
    as I sat beguiled at your feet
    amongst many others,
    and in my wiser years as a poet
    I’ve continued at your feet
    still translating into Nerudian
    when I don’t want facts
    to interfere with truth


    Last night, Pablo maestro,
    I slept in the same dream as you
    a merciful atonement
    of making love in a quiet poem
    where in each other’s exhiles
    we to one another sang


    When you were dying
    your forever betraying government
    cut off your phone from all the world,
    as the wood fences from all your homes
    bore the packed, scratched tributes
    for the humble for whom you sang
    to the famous that sang for you


    This is a small “song of despair”
    as I wash my face with your tears
    I again know your rhymes
    visionary of hot rhythms
    your drum is my heart beat
    and your voice is my song!


    - Jana Klenburg
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  11. TopTop #3907
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Omens

    Out here, we read everything as a sign.
    The coyote in its scruffed coat,
    bending to eat a broken persimmon on the ground.
    The mess of crows that fills the apple tree,
    makes a racket, lifts off.
    In between, quiet.
    The winter fog is a blank.
    I wish I could make sense
    of the child’s empty bed,
    the bullet hole though my brother’s heart.
    The mailman drops a package
    on the front stoop and the neighbor’s dog
    won’t stop barking. I tread
    down the stairs, lightly.
    Because we can’t know
    what comes next, we say,
    The plum tree is blooming early.
    There are buck antlers lying in the grass.
    A mountain lion left its footprints by the bridge.


    - Danusha Lameris
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  13. TopTop #3908
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Making Passage

    It’s like swimming across a river
    with our eyes closed, this passage
    through the center of our life.

    Sometimes we have to navigate
    from the inside out—when the stars
    hide their light, when we cannot see the bank

    on the other side, when the hounds
    of our past bark on the shoreline
    braying their mournful song at our leaving.

    It is the stillness at the heart of the fire
    that guides—the voice of our angel of mercy
    that rings out when we look over our shoulder

    at the old life with longing. You cannot go back,
    she says, that place is gone now. And for a moment,
    we freeze in the river sure we will drown,

    forgetting which way is up and down,
    forward and back, as the roar of the roiling rapids
    pours through us, our heart filled

    with all the questions that have refused
    to leave us alone. And then something
    remembers itself, lifts our shoulders above

    the swirling cauldron of in-between,
    and we simply let go of the fight to stay.
    The tangled paradoxes flow on through

    the body of the river, and we are carried
    by an invisible current that draws us closer
    and closer to the edge of a new world.

    On our knees, we find root and ground,
    give thanks for this fertile soil, seeded
    with our dreams, thirsty for our arrival.

    - Laura Weaver
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  15. TopTop #3909
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Father’s Memory of a Mexican Mining Camp


    Softly, it always began softly.
    Then slowly swelled to a wail.
    Men’s voices. Maybe seven of them
    up on the hill behind the house.


    A breeze through the windows
    stirred the curtains like clouds.
    I was five, or six. Around midnight
    it would start—such a doleful sound.


    They were drinking. It was Saturday
    and the mines were closed. Their song
    would wake me—their longing.
    It was a language I knew,


    though I couldn’t make out the words.
    But the music—that was theirs.
    Some ancient secret. A string of notes
    piecing together who they once were.


    My twin brother slept soundly.
    I was alone with this mystery.
    It haunts me even now, this lament
    to their gods. If flowers were songs—


    if the marigold sang, it would mourn
    like this. I imagine them still
    sitting on a dark hill chanting
    their dirge. Some nights I wake—


    I hear them. I don’t remember
    my dreams, so I dutifully make
    my way to the window.
    All I see are clouds and mist.


    - Cindy Williams Gutiérrez
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  17. TopTop #3910
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For a Coming Extinction


    Gray Whale
    Now that we are sending you to The End
    That great god
    Tell him
    That we who follow you invented forgiveness
    And forgive nothing


    I write as though you could understand
    And I could say it
    One must always pretend something
    Among the dying
    When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
    Empty of you
    Tell him that we were made
    On another day


    The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
    Winding along your inner mountains
    Unheard by us
    And find its way out
    Leaving behind it the future
    Dead
    And ours


    When you will not see again
    The whale calves trying the light
    Consider what you will find in the black garden
    And its court
    The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
    The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
    And fore-ordaining as stars
    Our sacrifices


    Join your word to theirs
    Tell him
    That it is we who are important


    - W. S. Merwin
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  19. TopTop #3911
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Twenty-One Love Poems [Poem III]


    Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time
    for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
    in time tells me we’re not young.
    Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
    my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
    did I lean from any window over the city
    listening for the future
    as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
    And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
    Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
    of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
    the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
    At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
    At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
    I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
    and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
    and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.


    - Adrienne Rich
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  21. TopTop #3912
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Crisis

    THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.


    - Tom Paine
    (December 23, 1776)

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  22. TopTop #3913
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Daily News

    reading the obituaries
    the world goes on
    at a far center
    a universe dies
    a compression of lifetime
    into words
    sometimes
    a photo
    of someone
    smiling

    - Les Bernstein
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  24. TopTop #3914
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from 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
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  25. TopTop #3915
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Great job, Larry! Anna and I love you!
    Roland
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  26. TopTop #3916
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dream Song #16

    Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes    ...    Yo no sé!
    - César Vallejo

    They sniffed us out of the holes with the animals
    they had programmed and there are blows in life so
    powerful we just don’t know and there were trenches
    and there was water and it poured in through our mouths

    and out of our ears and there were things we saw in the
    sand at that moment of sinking: mountains and daisies
    and tulips and rivers and the bodies of the people we
    had been and the bodies of the people we had loved

    and we felt hooks coming through the trenches and we
    felt hooks coming through the sand and I saw hooks coming
    through my child’s clothes and I wanted him to know that they
    would never be able to scoop us out of the sand but of course

    it wasn’t true they had scooped us out of the sand and our
    mouths were so full of dirt it is what they do when you’re
    dead and they made us spit and they beat us until our mouths
    were empty and they paid us for constructing the mountain and

    it was me and L and we looked for S and we looked for J and J
    and we looked for O and we looked for R and we looked for J
    and S in the holes in which the bodies of those we loved were
    hiding or dying or sinking or stealing some shelter some little

    worm’s worth of cover to keep their bodies from dissolving
    into the maniac murmurs of this impossible carcass economy

    - Daniel Borzutzky
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  27. TopTop #3917
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from 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
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  29. TopTop #3918
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eulogy

    My mother was a dictionary.
    She was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal language.
    She knew dozens of words that nobody else knew.
    When she died, we buried all of those words with her.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    She knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.
    She knew words that will never be spoken again.
    She knew songs that will never be sung again.
    She knew stories that will never be told again.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    My mother was a thesaurus,
    My mother was an encyclopedia.

    My mother never taught her children the tribal language.
    Oh, she taught us how to count to ten.
    Oh, she taught us how to say “I love you.”
    Oh, she taught us how to say “Listen to me.”
    And, of course, she taught us how to curse.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    She was one of the last four speakers of the tribal language.
    In a few years, the last surviving speakers, all elderly, will also be gone.
    There are younger Indians who speak a new version of the tribal
    language.
    But the last old-time speakers will be gone.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    But she never taught me the tribal language.
    And I never demanded to learn.
    My mother always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”
    She was right, she was right, she was right.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    When she died, her children mourned her in English.
    My mother knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.
    Sometimes, late at night, she would sing one of the old songs.
    She would lullaby us with ancient songs.
    We were lullabied by our ancestors.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    I own a cassette tape, recorded in 1974.
    On that cassette, my mother speaks the tribal language.
    She’s speaking the tribal language with her mother, Big Mom.
    And then they sing an ancient song.
    I haven’t listened to that cassette tape in two decades.
    I don’t want to risk snapping the tape in some old cassette player.
    And I don’t want to risk letting anybody else transfer that tape to
    digital.
    My mother and grandmother’s conversation doesn’t belong in the
    cloud.
    That old song is too sacred for the Internet.
    So, as that cassette tape deteriorates, I know that it will soon be dead.
    Maybe I will bury it near my mother’s grave.
    Maybe I will bury it at the base of the tombstone she shares with my
    father.

    Of course, I’m lying.
    I would never bury it where somebody might find it.
    Stay away, archaeologists! Begone, begone!

    My mother was a dictionary.
    She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years.
    She knew words that will never be spoken again.
    I wish I could build tombstones for each of those words.
    Maybe this poem is a tombstone.

    My mother was a dictionary.
    She spoke the old language.
    But she never taught me how to say those ancient words.
    She always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”
    She was right, she was right, she was right.

    - Sherman Alexie
    Last edited by Barry; 10-11-2018 at 03:51 PM.
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  31. TopTop #3919
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What We Need


    on earth we need nothing new no gizmo style fads

    no media distraction what we need is old

    ancient primal primitive pagan we need torah runes testament

    vedas dharma chant gregorian taiko drum salutations to the sun

    we need what we have been given from the beginning Word

    rolling thunder god condensing out of Spirit

    the deep the water the firmament the air the fire

    the whispering whistling wind of Spirit pulsing in all matter

    what we need radiates from the sun the stars from the Bodhi tree

    the burning bush speaking to our hearts

    with our drums we call back to the cosmos

    what we need is what we knew as Bushmen who heard the angels

    who saw the light shining from within all things

    what we need is to remember who we are what we know

    with our bare feet on the earth our round heads below the dome of the sky

    make one endless gracious bow to the great being of Love

    who gives us life on earth life in the stars

    make one endless gracious bow to what we know

    the truth of love the love of truth

    - Theresa Roach Melia
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  33. TopTop #3920
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Father’s Studio, 2005
    As if browsing in a gallery,
    I flip through canvases leaning against the wall
    behind my father’s studio. A clear October day,

    the air breezeless, birdless. Silence
    still cloys like oily mud, two months
    since the flood. The studio’s siding sags;

    the back door won’t close. I look in:
    heaps of clothes rotting, shelves of LPs,
    their jackets fused, some swollen books,

    and, further back in muck and shadow,
    forty years of work my father made,
    and catalogues, and slides, and reviews.

    I step back into the sunlight,
    look through the canvases again,
    remember my father working on them,

    and time unravels and I see myself
    doing the things a ghost does,
    shuffling inside the narrow frame

    of a world of ruined images. Yes,
    I remember these paintings.
    They were good. And I remind myself:

    he’s already repainting them.
    They’re still good.
    Stop acting like a ghost.



    - Brad Richard
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  34. Gratitude expressed by:

  35. TopTop #3921
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Warmth

    I hold my face in my two hands.
    No, I’m not crying.
    I hold my face in my two hands,
    to keep my loneliness warm,
    two hands protecting,
    two hands nourishing,
    two hands preventing
    my soul from leaving me in anger.

    - Thich Nhat Hanh
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #3922
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In a Dark Time

    In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
    I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
    I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
    A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
    I live between the heron and the wren,
    Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

    What’s madness but nobility of soul
    At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
    I know the purity of pure despair,
    My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
    That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
    Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

    A steady storm of correspondences!
    A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
    And in broad day the midnight come again!
    A man goes far to find out what he is—
    Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
    All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

    Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
    My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
    Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
    A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
    The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
    And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

    - Theodore Roethke
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  39. TopTop #3923
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stories


    Let me think of the way that story goes
    About the king of time and his long robes.
    The world is breathless for good storytelling.
    Always words find their way out of us
    And our mouths shape them firm and forever.
    Sometimes songs come into us flowing from streams
    Towards places sounds have never been.
    Always other voices are speaking through us.
    Stories wander the royal road of dreams
    With their silent language. Words arrive
    The way the shaman came, the first teller,
    Then came the prophets and their retelling.
    Many sounds faded, forgotten or ripened to return

    Again when synchronicity could acquire its sense of timing.

    Words find their warmth in the moist mouth of revelation.
    These stories cross the far horizons and in time find each other.
    That occurrence is a gift as written records tell the tales
    On stone, on leaf, parchment and on the page of living memory.
    Stories are our eternal bread. They reveal the divine passwords
    At the gates that open to the center of our lives.


    - Richard Meyers
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  41. TopTop #3924
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Source

    Water is the least environmentally impactful
    bev*erage and bottled water is the most environmen*tally
    responsible packaged drink choice.
    - INTERNATIONAL BOTTLED WATER ASSOCIATION

    Far from these woods and this river, far from the Source,
    in a made place not easy to comprehend,
    harder than woods and river but much less hard,
    where sky and grass are priceless or must be shared,
    and shade is rectilinear and smooth;
    where the scourge teems upward in tall elaborate mounds,
    and doom seeps outward, settling a dull gray crust
    over what once were woods and river like these;
    in the back of a double-locked shelter in a room where salt
    and bread are kept safe from the rain, from rats and starlings,
    in a humming iron chest that holds inside it
    fresh weather like that of a day between fall and winter;
    on a crowded shelf of that chest stands a vessel pressed
    from molecules of degraded plantlife and creatures;
    and there, in that thin vessel—that is where
    the creature, exiled forever from the Source,
    further and further cut off from woods and river,
    keeps for itself eight handfuls of the river.
    It opens the door of the chest. It stands and drinks.
    The once-living bottle is see-through like the contents,
    the label of vegetable fiber the color of envy.

    - Joshua Mehigan
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  43. TopTop #3925
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Indigo Blue

    Must it always be this way?
    The heart blood red, always red
    hot and thick and steamy?

    I know the hearts on fire today
    passion, courage, fierce rhythm and heat
    but tell me, can’t the heart just once
    find another color

    Green maybe
    as winter moss just after the rain
    or the green of chamomile just before it blossoms

    The green of jasmine leaves
    flowing through the eyes
    then through my heart

    Or maybe the heart can be butter yellow
    the yellow of a whole pound of it
    at a Sunday breakfast with friends

    And why not a heart sun yellow
    as beautiful and full of hope as that
    single chrysanthemum corsage
    at the homecoming dance so long ago

    It’s primary, this thought
    a green heart, a yellow heart, and yes
    a heart vermillion red

    But they won’t do for me today
    Today is more complex
    I need a blue I cannot name
    a blue from another place

    No, don’t give me your sky blue of a western afternoon
    Full of soft birds and wind
    And forget yours flowers of violet and periwinkle

    If I can’t do red today
    I’m farther still from soft blue petals

    My heart today is that other blue
    darker than blueberries crushed underfoot
    and darker than grapes
    abandoned on the vine

    This is a blue past midnight
    almost past caring
    try indigo blue heading to black

    Today my heart filled with
    sorrow, pain and helplessness
    hidden from light and growing dark
    is indigo blue heading to black
    a blue so dark, even God can’t see it clearly

    My country is being torn apart
    And I am unable to stop the madness

    Yes, my heart is indigo blue
    today

    - Doug von Koss
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  45. TopTop #3926
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ongoing

    Never mind the distances traveled, the companion
    she made of herself. The threadbare twenties not
    to be underestimated. A wild depression that ripped
    from January into April. And still she sprouts an appetite.
    Insisting on edges and cores, when there were none.
    Relationships annealed through shared ambivalences.
    Pages that steadied her. Books that prowled her
    until the hard daybreak, and for months after.
    Separating new vows from the old, like laundry whites.
    Small losses jammed together so as to gather mass.
    Stored generations of filtered quietude.
    And some stubbornness. Tangles along the way
    the comb-teeth of the mind had to bite through, but for what.
    She had trained herself to look for answers at eye level,
    but they were lower, they were changing all the time.

    - Rita Dove
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  47. TopTop #3927
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dust On My Forehead

    My outrage is not helping my country
    My dismissal of this absurdity
    is not strengthening my resolve
    My denigration of “those people”
    joins me
    with them
    Go ahead
    make your own conclusions
    I too want a fair world
    I too want to live in a country
    where elected officials care
    about the poor and the sick
    I want our rivers and oceans
    and immigrants and children
    protected.
    Can I see this in a kinder way?
    Can I be more Zen and let my kind face beam out to you?
    Can I speak more patiently like a Christian?
    Can I be more respectful like a Muslim?
    Can I be more Jewish
    with impassioned arguments?
    Can I dance more like a Sufi?
    Can I bow down on this earth
    and leave the brown dusted
    on my forehead
    not brushing the precious
    soil off the knees of my jeans?
    Like Ash Wednesday
    or a tattoo or a black
    band worn around my arm
    you will see my attempts
    my way
    to make peace
    with this troubling world
    It involves placing my forehead
    on the earth
    in my garden
    or the patch of weeds
    in my driveway or the sand near the creek
    - look closely
    - into my eyes
    - they are brown
    The speckles left over from all that kneeling
    and bending
    and giving thanks.

    - Kristy Hellum
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  49. TopTop #3928
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn


    Hints of autumn

    are peeking at me—
    a few golden leaves
    among the numerous green.
    Daylight is diminishing
    while darkness grows longer.
    Vegetable plants are
    at least half spent—

    just like me—
    in the midst of
    life’s autumn,
    at least half spent.
    This body is stiffening
    despite yoga stretches
    and nature walks.
    Tiredness increases
    despite longer nightly sleep
    and occasional naps.

    The desire to do
    is metamorphosing
    into the desire
    to just be . . .
    to rest, to count blessings,
    to smile at this rich,
    fulfilling life’s
    gifts and ironies,
    to feel abiding love
    for dear ones
    abiding on the other side;
    to remember abundant good times
    and marvel that
    many difficult challenges
    and tribulations have
    actually passed;

    to appreciate the opportunity
    to slow down, rest, and
    contemplate life’s transitions
    during the long, dark nights
    and short golden days
    of autumn.

    - Zahira Rabinowitz
    Last edited by Barry; 10-21-2018 at 02:50 PM.
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  51. TopTop #3929
    Peggy
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Just what I needed today. TY.
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  52. TopTop #3930
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When There Were Ghosts

    On the Mexico side in the 1950s and 60s,
    There were movie houses everywhere

    And for the longest time people could smoke
    As they pleased in the comfort of the theaters.

    The smoke rose and the movie told itself
    On the screen and in the air both,

    The projection caught a little
    In the wavering mist of the cigarettes.

    In this way, every story was two stories
    And every character lived near its ghost.

    Looking up we knew what would happen next
    Before it did, as if it the movie were dreaming

    Itself, and we were part of it, part of the plot
    Itself, and not just the audience.

    And in that dream the actors’ faces bent
    A little, hard to make out exactly in the smoke,

    So that María Félix and Pedro Armendáriz
    Looked a little like my aunt and one of my uncles—

    And so they were, and so were we all in the movies,
    Which is how I remember it: Popcorn in hand,

    Smoke in the air, gum on the floor—
    Those Saturday nights, we ourselves

    Were the story and the stuff and the stars.
    We ourselves were alive in the dance of the dream.

    - Alberto Ríos
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

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