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  1. TopTop #661
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Secret

    Two girls discover
    the secret of life
    in a sudden line of
    poetry.

    I who don't know the
    secret wrote
    the line. They
    told me

    (through a third person)
    they had found it
    but not what it was
    not even

    what line it was. No doubt
    by now, more than a week
    later, they have forgotten
    the secret,

    the line, the name of
    the poem. I love them
    for finding what
    I can't find,

    and for loving me
    for the line I wrote,
    and for forgetting it
    so that

    a thousand times, till death
    finds them, they may
    discover it again, in other
    lines

    in other
    happenings. And for
    wanting to know it,
    for

    assuming there is
    such a secret, yes,
    for that
    most of all.

    - Denise Levertov
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  2. TopTop #662
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Labyrinth

    I walk the beach
    washed in churning sound,
    sighting flight soarings,
    cormorants, pelicans, gulls
    on uplifting currents
    shifting in the shore wind,
    earful, eyeful coastal motion
    and then I find along the sloping shore
    a fully realized laid-out labyrinth
    not a random residue of tidal flow
    but measured paths formed of seaweed, sand, and stone
    a shape satisfying the human eye, the foot,
    for a circumnambulation of will
    mind and questing spirit
    of each traveler making the way alone.

    Someone has left to a beach wanderer
    this circular route map on the longer journey,
    a place of time and space to ask directions
    where each questing step leads to the center,
    each inward step returns outward from the core,
    a kind of breathing in and breathing out
    endings requiring beginnings, living dying
    and dying living on this ever changing shore.

    I place my foot onto the winding path
    asking what I need to ask myself,
    what I hope for and what I fear,
    what there is to gain and what to lose,
    not that I will die but how
    I'll take death's indignities,
    accepting dying as but another stage,
    how to give up the power to choose.

    And at the labyrinthian core,
    enlightened, relieved of choice
    traveling where my footsteps take me
    I turn to marvel where I've been,
    how far I've come by walking,
    and by the weavings of my mind and hand.
    My questing over, I now may yield
    to this winding destiny
    footprinted on these pathways
    soon to be erased in sand.

    - Doug Stout
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  3. TopTop #663
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Otherwise

    I got out of bed
    on two strong legs.
    It might have been
    otherwise. I ate
    cereal, sweet
    milk, ripe, flawless
    peach. It might
    have been otherwise.
    I took the dog uphill
    to the birch wood.
    All morning I did
    the work I love.
    At noon I lay down
    with my mate. It might
    have been otherwise.
    We ate dinner together
    at a table with silver
    candlesticks. It might
    have been otherwise.
    I slept in a bed
    in a room with paintings
    on the walls, and
    planned another day
    just like this day.
    But one day, I know,
    it will be otherwise.

    - Jane Kenyon
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  4. TopTop #664
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sunday, Salaam

    Gushing forth
    from three miles deep
    in the Gulf Coast,
    clouds roil beneath
    the sunrise sheen,
    slick acres
    of greed.

    No one is in
    the pews
    this Sunday:
    the morning is
    deadly,
    silent

    sea birds squat
    bewildered,
    the shore marsh
    dragged, clogged
    with the offal
    of sacrifice
    to strange gods,

    the temple bereft,
    mud and sandy traces
    lie on its ancient, sacred floors,
    walls echoing cries
    of betrayed souls,
    their Mother’s

    nascent
    thunder.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  5. TopTop #665
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Passing

    How swiftly the strained honey
    of afternoon light
    flows into darkness

    and the closed bud shrugs off
    its special mystery
    in order to break into blossom:

    as if what exists, exists
    so that it can be lost
    and become precious

    - Lisel Mueller
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  6. TopTop #666
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Ripe Fig

    Now that you live in my chest,
    anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

    Those other things that entice people,
    like porcelain dolls from China,
    which have made people weep for centuries,
    even those are changing now.

    What used to be pain is now a lovely bench
    where we sit under the roses.

    A left hand has become a right.
    a black wall, a window,
    a cushion in a heel of a shoe,
    a leader of an assembly.

    Intelligence and silence.
    What we say is poison to some,
    nourishing to others.

    What we say is a ripe fig,*
    but not all birds that fly eat figs.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
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  7. TopTop #667
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Casualties

    Having flown their last miles,
    tattered wings flutter, try to rise
    from the red-brown skin of a Louisiana beach.
    Off the endangered list for one short year,
    now just flotsam and jetsam lapping this humid shore.
    An open vein, oil and water mix,
    unspooling a knotted thread along the coast
    to weave this pelican’s shroud.

    The hasp of Pandora’s box, so carelessly sprung,
    sinks to the ocean floor, eludes us in the current.
    For now, an eternity of stars returns each night,
    bright reminder that we lost paradise somewhere along the way.

    - Susan Collier Lamont
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  8. TopTop #668
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sit Quietly

    If you have time to chatter,
    Read books
    If you have time to read,
    Walk into the mountain, desert, and ocean
    If you have time to walk,
    Sing songs and dance
    If* you have time to dance,
    Sit quiety, you Happy Lucky Idiot.
    *
    - Nanao Sakaki
    *
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  9. TopTop #669
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Another Long Walk


    Given enough time,
    there is always another long walk,
    another proof of civilization's lie,
    and all must prepare to run,
    for no matter where you are born,
    the sky can crack and drown you in fire.

    The prophet said it would be fire
    licking at our heels next time
    and it is anyone’s bad luck to be born
    where death comes cloaked as a walk
    that goes on and on, until lives run
    out of breath, stumble, and lie

    in barren fields with nothing to lie
    between them and scorching fire.
    There is nothing to do, but to run
    as fast as you can, to outdistance time
    and this nightmare of a walk
    where death is borne

    on wings of silver and hope dies, unborn,
    among hobbled prints that lie
    in mute witness to another long walk
    that crushes hearts into red grit of fire
    and strangles cries of rage that time
    after time, someone must pack up a life and run

    to nowhere. This walk, too, shall run
    its course, new stars will be born
    to light up the heavens and, in time,
    history will write, not quite truth, not quite lies,
    of who and why and how all became fire.
    Some will say there never was a walk

    of death, that all people are free to walk
    a thousand miles of blackened earth, to run
    a marathon of fear, while fire
    power presides as midwife to newborn
    cries of war. Dark clouds gather and lie
    low over fallow fields, where time

    has run out. On distant horizon, fire is born,
    from smoldering ash left to lie untended.
    The time has come for another long walk.

    - Patrice Warrender
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  10. TopTop #670
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Homing Song: Two Stanzas

    Because any place
    you affix as home is an astonishment
    Destiny or destination-- you are home
    and you know instinctly how to doubt it
    a talent for searching, you begin
    with maps and roots and tributaries
    in a backyard or in a city park
    unearthing cedar systems or star charts
    or at your father's cabin
    mapping the riverlogic of the Nemakagan
    while otters skim and pack the trail
    for you, while sand coyotes pull in
    midnight air, and sing a capella
    all the lonely way back
    to you
    And you sing back, throwing out
    round songs to anonymous canyons
    and the fine criminal lives
    you admire and while
    Invoking nothing more than the
    comfort of the faraway familiar,
    echoes like whispers
    the sound of a descending star
    your own long distance
    it's all the same
    Once you were reminded
    of the throatsingers in Canada
    as a child cried behind you
    Each enhanced private legends
    you used to decipher alone,
    tremeloes come back
    signifying you, signifying them
    at the same time, a song
    means all of us.

    - Denise Sweet
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  11. TopTop #671
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Gardener of Eden

    I am the old dreamer who never sleeps
    I am timekeeper of the timeless dance
    I preserve the long rhythms of the earth
    and fertilize the rounds of desire

    In my evergreen arboretum
    I raise flowering hopes for the world
    I plant seeds of perennial affection
    and wait for their passionate bloom

    Would you welcome that sight if you saw it?
    Revalue the view you have lost?
    Could you wake to the innocent morning
    and follow the risks of your heart?

    Every day I grow a dream in my garden
    where the beds are laid out for love
    When will you come to embrace it
    and join in the joy of the dance?

    - James Broughton
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  12. TopTop #672
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cutting Loose

    Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
    you sing. For no reason, you accept
    the way of being lost, cutting loose
    from all else and electing a world
    where you go where you want to.

    Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
    that a steady center is holding
    all else. If you listen, that sound
    will tell you where it is and you
    can slide your way past trouble.

    Certain twisted monsters
    always bar the path -- but that's when
    you get going best, glad to be lost,
    learning how real it is
    here on earth, again and again.

    - William Stafford
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  13. TopTop #673
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Time

    Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this
    in winter especially. Summer comes,
    I want to tumble with the river
    over rocks and mossy dams.

    A fish drifting upside down.
    Slow accordions sweeten the breeze.

    The Sanitary Mattress Factory says,
    "Sleep is Life."
    Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon?

    Yesterday someone said, "It gets late so early."
    I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.
    Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  14. TopTop #674
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The World is Too Much With Us

    The world is too much with us; late and soon,
    Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
    Little we see in Nature that is ours;
    We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
    The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
    The winds that will be howling at all hours,
    And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
    For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
    It moves us not. - Great God! I’d rather be
    A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

    - William Wordsworth
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  15. TopTop #675
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Because

    Lately she's been falling in love everywhere--
    at the market, in the pharmacy, always in the cafeteria
    sliding her tray over the metal rails,
    last week with the hands of the attendant at the gas station.
    Sometimes it happens all day long.

    Yesterday at the campus it was everything again--
    The way the postmaster was whistling,
    or how the frisbee players sing the quad.
    The way some students stay after class, that usually gets her.
    Cashiers, people who sing at stop lights--all fair game.
    Cab drivers--forget it.

    With ice cream scoopers, with their little paper hats,
    it is often love at first sight,
    and she will never forget how at the sandwich shop--
    the young man working said anything to drink, miss?
    to the 80-year-old woman in front of her,
    then when it was her turn, said ma'am instead.

    Later today, blessed by all this loving
    she will make some tea and play a violin concerto
    for her dog who is deaf.
    She will play the music as loud as it will go
    because she can,
    and because somehow he'll hear it,
    and he will stand on the porch
    of the fine yellow house, glowing.

    She will be all choked up
    because the lawn chairs
    have never been this white before,
    and because, tired ears flapping
    in a soft Autumn breeze,
    the old dog will bark back his joy.

    - Lisa Starr
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  16. TopTop #676
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Tell You

    [excerpt]
    I could not predict the fullness
    of the day. How it was enough
    to stand alone without help
    in the green yard at dawn.

    How two geese would spin out
    of the ochre sun opening my spine,
    curling my head up to the sky
    in an arc I took for granted.

    And the lilac bush by the red
    brick wall flooding the air
    with its purple weight of beauty?
    How it made my body swoon,

    brought my arms to reach for it
    without even thinking.

    ***

    In class today a Dutch woman split
    in two by a stroke — one branch
    of her body a petrified silence,
    walked leaning on her husband

    to the treatment table while we
    the unimpaired looked on with envy.
    How he dignified her wobble,
    beheld her deformation, untied her

    shoe, removed the brace that stakes
    her weaknesses. How he cradled
    her down in his arms to the table
    smoothing her hair as if they were

    alone in their bed. I tell you—
    his smile would have made you weep.

    ***

    At twilight I visit my garden
    where the peonies are about to burst.

    Some days there will be more
    flowers than the vase can hold.

    - Susan Glassmeyer
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  17. TopTop #677
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cormorants

    When the door to the chapel of dusk is ajar the cormorants flock and fly west,
    necks outstretched towards salvation; nuns en route to vespers.
    The silhouettes of their habits cut across the shadowed sky.
    They form a cluster, as from the cloister hurrying to Evensong,
    Then thread themselves along a line too fine to see.

    I can tell them like beads, a sunset rosary: Ave Maria, Stella Maris, ora pro avis.
    Pray for your dark daughters, now and at the closing of each day.
    May the oceans continue to feed them;
    May the winds bear up the black flames of their wings,
    And may the rocky islands lend them sanctuary, at their journey's end.


    - Jane L. Mickelson
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  18. TopTop #678
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Atlas

    Extreme exertion
    isolates a person
    from help,
    discovered Atlas.
    Once a certain
    shoulder-to-burden
    ratio collapses,
    there is so little
    others can do:
    they can't
    lend a hand
    with Brazil
    and not stand
    on Peru.

    - Kay Ryan
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  19. TopTop #679
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The Coffin

    “I am not saying, I am not saying”.

    The Roshi had thought deeply between the first and second saying?

    The question, “Alive or dead?”

    Mother Nature, alive or dead?

    My closed eyes, alive or dead.

    The spirit of growing things, alive or dead?

    It is ours to say.

    Sit and cry and wait.

    It is ours to say.

    - Bruce Gibbs
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  20. TopTop #680
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Imagine

    Imagine the time the particle you are
    Returns where it came from.
    The family darling comes home!
    Wine without being contained in cups
    Is handed around.
    A red glint appears in a granite outcrop
    And suddenly the whole cliff turns to
    Ruby!

    - Jelalludin Rumi
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  21. TopTop #681
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Call It Accident


    Call it midnight thump and boom.
    Gumbo lockdown.

    Call up gush;
    swirl and spread.

    Forward moving call it stalled.
    Call a party, crown petroleum queen.

    On call the creeping,
    race for land.

    Call it caught

    drifting

    in a starless sea.

    Long-billed or swell-bellied, sway in the bilge.
    Call it quits—trolled, talked-down.

    Roll call: Plover, Egret, Tern.
    Shrimp estuaries and pelican rookeries. Songbirds

    who “I used to come here from America.”
    Call it marshes packed in sludge.


    - Monique Wentzel
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  22. TopTop #682
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At Thomas Merton’s Grave

    We can never be with loss too long.
    Behind the warped door that sticks,
    the wood thrush calls to the monks,
    pausing upon the stone crucifix,
    singing: “I am marvelous alone!”
    Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:
    rows of marrow and bone undone.
    The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,
    sealing the blue hills with vermilion.
    Moss dyes a squirrel’s skull green.
    The cemetery expands its borders—
    little milky crosses grow like teeth.
    How kind time is, altering space
    so nothing stays wrong; and light,
    more new light, always arrives.

    - Spencer Reece
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  23. TopTop #683
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Wings of Love

    I will row my boat on Muckross Lake when the grey of the dove
    Comes down at the end of the day; and a quiet like prayer
    Grows soft in your eyes, and among your fluttering hair
    The red of the sun is mixed with the red of your cheek.
    I will row you, O boat of my heart! Till our mouths have forgotten to speak
    In the silence of love, broken only by trout that spring
    And are gone, like a fairy’s finger that casts a ring
    With the luck of the world for the hand that can hold it fast.
    I will rest my on my oars, my eyes on your eyes, till our thoughts have passed
    From the lake and the sky and the rings of the jumping fish;
    Till our ears are filled from the reeds with a sudden swish
    And a sound like the beating of flails in the time of corn.
    We shall hold our breath while a wonderful thing is born
    From the songs that were chanted by bards in the days gone by;
    For a wild white swan shall be leaving the lake for the sky,
    With the curve of her neck stretched out in a silver spear.
    Oh! When the creak of her wings shall have brought her near,
    We shall hear again a swish, and a beating of flails,
    And a creaking of oars, and a sound like wind in sails,
    As the mate of her heart shall follow her into the air.
    O wings of my soul! We shall think of Angus and Caer
    And Etain and Midir, that were changed into wild white swans
    To fly round the ring of the heavens, through the dusks and the dawns,
    Unseen by all but true lovers, till judgment day
    Because they had loved for love only. O love! I will say,
    For a woman and man with eternity ringing them round
    And the heavens above and below them, a poor thing it is to be bound
    To four low walls that will spill like a pedlar’s pack,
    And a quilt that will run into holes, and a churn that will dry and crack
    Oh! better than these, a dream in the night, or our heart’s mute prayer
    That O’Donaghue, the enchanted man, should pass between water and air
    And say, I will change them each into a wild white swan,
    Like the lovers Angus and Midir, and their beloved ones, Caer and Etain
    Because they have loved for love only, and have searched through the shadows of things
    For the Heart of all hearts, though the fire of love, and the wine of love, and the wings.

    - James H. Cousins
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  24. TopTop #684
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Colossus

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
    "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
    With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


    - Emma Lazarus
    New York City, 1883
    (Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)
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  25. TopTop #685
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Letter to Ruth Stone

    Now that you have caught sight
    of the other side of darkness
    the invisible side
    so that you can tell
    it is rising
    first thing in the morning
    and know it is there
    all through the day

    another sky
    clear and unseen
    has begun to loom
    in your words
    and another light is growing
    out of their shadows
    you can hear it

    now you will be able
    to envisage beyond
    any words of mine
    the color of these leaves
    that you never saw
    awake above the still valley
    in the small hours
    under the moon
    three nights past the full

    you know there was never
    a name for that color

    - W.S. Merwin
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  26. TopTop #686
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Section of the Oconee Near Watkinsville

    Before I get in,
    the aluminum canoe floats flat on the shine
    of water. Then I ruin its poise.
    Middle of the first shoal through, I’m out,
    stumbling through the ankle-breaking rocks.
    Canoe free-floating downstream, without decision
    or paddle. I lunge and bruise across the shallows
    To get a forefinger in the rope eye on the stern.

    June afternoon light. June afternoon water.

    I know there’s a life being led in lightness,
    out of my reach and discipline.
    I keep trying to climb in its words,
    and so unbalance us both.
    The teacher’s example is everywhere open,
    like a boat never tied up, no one in it,
    that drifts day and night, metallic dragonfly
    above the sunken log.

    - Coleman Barks
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  27. TopTop #687
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lanling Hermitage

    Up high to a cloister of rock walls
    I pushed aside clouds and climbed
    a fine hike was what I hoped for
    ignoring the dangers I reached my prize
    but as light on the escarpment faded
    and streams branched out like the lines in my hand
    and the forests held nothing but loneliness
    and the pinnacles disappeared into space
    a man of the Way after reaching such heights
    descended alone in the stillness of night
    the mountain turned dark after sunset
    a hundred springs echoed across the fall sky
    my lamentable burdens reappeared intact
    why can't I stay free of cares


    - Wei Ying-wu
    (translated from the Chinese by Red Pine)
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  28. TopTop #688
    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 as beautiful, it touches you
    as if you had a friend

    and sunlight were a present
    he had sent you from some place 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
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  29. TopTop #689
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Recycling Day


    In my neighborhood we put out three rolling cans
    brown for trash, green for compost ( raw veggies and yard clippings only)
    and blue for paper, plastics number 1 & 2 and aluminum.

    At San Francisco General Hospital the green bin takes all food
    dead or alive, animal, vegetable or mineral.
    the blue accepts every hard plastic except number 7 (which can go in green if its made of compostable corn).

    But I want to live in that other county--
    you know, the one that takes it all.

    On Monday they’ve got a green bin for envy, jealousy and greed,
    Tuesday’s grey for despair, desperation and the desire to die.
    Wednesday is puce and smells nasty –
    bitterness, resentment and grudges you’ve held onto forever go in that one,
    even the worms don’t like it,
    so its sent off to the microbrial sludge plant for rehabilitation.

    Thursday they do lavender for lost loves, unfulfilled dreams and broken hearts.
    These get recycled into sperm and ovum
    for people who can’t make their own children.

    Friday is pink with orange polka dots for all thoughts obssessive,
    addictive and self deprecating
    And Saturday’s a rainbow can that the homeless folk like to rifle through
    for sorrow and grief they wrap around their shoulders for warmth.

    On Sunday the collectors go out for beer and hot dogs and watch football games,
    while all the people in town wake at dawn to dance in the streets.
    Faces like the next blank page in your favorite journal,
    they dance to the silent songs in their minds
    to the soft, strong beats of their coherent, empty hearts.

    - Monnie Reba Efross
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  30. TopTop #690
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Those Born After Us


    I. Truly, I live in a time of darkness!
    The innocent word is foolish. A smooth brow
    Suggests lack of sensitivity. Those who are laughing
    Just haven’t heard the terrible news yet.

    What kind of times are these,
    When a conversation about trees is almost a crime,
    Because so many misdeeds are left unspoken?
    That person there – calmly crossing the street,
    Is probably no longer available
    To his friends who are in trouble.

    It’s true: I’m still earning a living.
    But that’s pure coincidence.
    Nothing in what I do justifies my eating my fill.
    By chance, I am spared. (When my luck runs out, I’m lost).

    People say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad that you can.
    But how can I eat and drink, when what I eat
    Is taken from the mouths of the hungry, and the
    Water I drink deprives one who is thirsty?
    But still…I eat and I drink.

    I would like to be wise.
    In ancient books one can read what is wise:
    To not participate in the conflicts of the world,
    To be without fear, in the short time we have,
    Also to get along without violence,
    To requite evil with good,
    To not satisfy one’s wishes, but to forget them –
    These things are considered wise.
    All of them are beyond me.
    Truly I live in a time of darkness!

    II. I came into the cities at a time of disorder,
    A time of hunger.
    I came among people at a time of uproar,
    And I was outraged with them.
    So passed the time
    I was given on Earth.

    I took food between battles,
    And laid down to sleep among killers.
    I was careless in love,
    And regarded nature without patience.
    So passed the time
    I was given on Earth.


    In my time, all roads led to a swamp.
    My language gave me away to the executioner.
    I could do very little. But the rulers
    Sat more securely without me – that was my hope.
    So passed the time
    I was given on Earth.

    III. You, who are the ones who will rise up
    From the flood in which we went down,
    Remember,
    When you speak of our weaknesses,
    The dark times from which you escaped.

    We travelled, changing countries more often than shoes,
    Through the wars between classes, in despair
    Because we found injustice, but no outrage.

    And yet we do know this:
    Hatred, even of meanness,
    Distorts the visage.
    Anger, even at injustice,
    Makes hoarse the voice. Alas,
    Though we wanted to prepare the ground for kindness,
    We didn’t know how to be kind ourselves.

    But you, when the time comes,
    When human beings can help one another,
    Remember us
    With forbearance.

    - Bertolt Brecht
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