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  1. TopTop #2131
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Zero-Circle


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


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


    We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
    If we say "Yes we can," we¹ll be lying.


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


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


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


    When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
    we¹ll become a mighty kindness.


    - Jelalludin Rumi
    Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
    (Translation by Coleman Barks)
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #2132
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Brave And Startling Truth



    We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
    Traveling through casual space
    Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
    To a destination where all signs tell us
    It is possible and imperative that we learn
    A brave and startling truth
    And when we come to it
    To the day of peacemaking
    When we release our fingers
    From fists of hostility
    And allow the pure air to cool our palms

    When we come to it
    When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
    And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
    When battlefields and coliseum
    No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
    Up with the bruised and bloody grass
    To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

    When the rapacious storming of the churches
    The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
    When the pennants are waving gaily
    When the banners of the world tremble
    Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

    When we come to it
    When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
    And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
    When land mines of death have been removed
    And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
    When religious ritual is not perfumed
    By the incense of burning flesh
    And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
    By nightmares of abuse

    When we come to it
    Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
    With their stones set in mysterious perfection
    Nor the Gardens of Babylon
    Hanging as eternal beauty
    In our collective memory
    Not the Grand Canyon
    Kindled into delicious color
    By Western sunsets

    Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
    Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
    Stretching to the Rising Sun
    Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
    Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
    These are not the only wonders of the world

    When we come to it
    We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
    Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
    Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
    We, this people on this mote of matter
    In whose mouths abide cankerous words
    Which challenge our very existence
    Yet out of those same mouths
    Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
    That the heart falters in its labor
    And the body is quieted into awe

    We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
    Whose hands can strike with such abandon
    That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
    Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
    That the haughty neck is happy to bow
    And the proud back is glad to bend
    Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
    We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

    When we come to it
    We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
    Created on this earth, of this earth
    Have the power to fashion for this earth
    A climate where every man and every woman
    Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
    Without crippling fear

    When we come to it
    We must confess that we are the possible
    We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
    That is when, and only when
    We come to it.

    - Maya Angelou
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  5. TopTop #2133
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What I Want


    What I want is to see your face
    In a tree, in the sun coming out,
    In the air.
    What I want is
    To hear the falcon-drum and light again
    On your forearm.

    You say, "Tell him I'm not here." The sound
    Of that brusque dismissal
    Becomes what I want.

    To see in every palm your elegant silver coin shavings,
    To turn with the wheel of the rain,
    To fall with the falling bread

    Of every experience,

    To swim like a huge fish
    In ocean water,

    To be Jacob recognizing Joseph.
    To be a desert mountain
    Instead of a city.

    I'm tired of cowards.
    I want to live with lions.
    With Moses.

    Not whining, teary people. I want
    The ranting of drunkards.
    I want to sing like birds sing,

    Not worrying who hears,
    Or what they think.
    Last night,

    A great teacher went from door to door
    With a lamp. "He who is not to be found
    Is the one I'm looking for."

    Beyond wanting, beyond place, inside form,
    That one. A flute says, I have no hope
    For finding that.

    But love plays
    And is the music played.
    Let that musician
    Finish this poem. Shams,
    I am a waterbird
    Flying into the sun.


    - Jellaludin Rumi
    (Translated by Coleman Barks)
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  7. TopTop #2134
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A conversation with the Moon


    You are in your heavens Miz Moon
    And I am in my cups.
    The Japanese named their Lunar Goddess
    "Tsukiyomi-no-mikoto"
    ("The Great, The Exalted")
    And, luminous as you are tonight
    Surrounded by a galaxy of stars,
    I certainly concur.
    Artemis was the handle
    For your Exalted-ness,
    That Socrates and Homer
    Used in prayer.
    And in some yesterday,
    For that for same purpose.
    The Romans renamed you
    ......"Diana"
    That was after
    The Big Botta Bang
    of course
    But before the Pope
    was a Catholic,
    And before the botta bing
    (Blame it on the brandy, Miz Moon )
    Will a Moon Goddess
    still accept a prayer,
    From a punster
    For one who really shined.
    On this day...,Septemer 9th
    in 1940, John Lennon was born
    In the midst of bombing raids
    on Liverpool
    Just to be Hinkled to his end
    on my birthday 12/8/1980
    Please shine brightly on that boy
    Today and or all time
    Remember each night, his prayer
    "Give Peace A Chance."
    Thank you, and good morning.


    - Patrick Burns
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  9. TopTop #2135
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Failure

    The will of color loves how light spreads
    Through its diffusions, making textures subtle,
    Clothing a landscape in concealment
    For color to keep its mysteries
    Hidden from the unready eye.
    But the light that comes after rain
    Is always fierce and clear,
    And illuminates the face of everything
    Through the transparency of rain.
    Despite the initial darkening,
    This is the light that failure casts.
    Beholden no more to the promise
    Of what dream and work would bring.
    It shows where roots have withered
    And where the source has gone dry.
    The light of failure has no mercy
    On the affections of the heart;
    It emerges from beyond the personal,
    A wiry, forthright light that likes to see crevices
    Open in the shell of a controlled life.
    Though cruel now, it serves a deeper kindness,
    Wise to the larger call of growth.
    It invites us to humility
    And the painstaking work of acceptance
    So that one day we may look back
    In recognition and appreciation
    At the disappointment we now endure.


    - John O’Donohue
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  11. TopTop #2136

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    synchronicity for me reading this today! sharing further.
    ♥ ॐ
    with a heart & an om, and heck let's throw in a Sun,
    for even though the poem is about "failure" and does
    not use cosmetics to disguise its cracked, broken landscape,
    it yet opens the silver lining...

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  13. TopTop #2137
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Will It Feel To Be Brushed By The Lion's Mane

    Hot and fiery, cool and indifferent

    Will it sing me a song of the past
    Bring up my ancestors from the unleavened earth

    How will it feel to be touched,
    Touched by the flame of that lion’s mane
    Tawny, golden eyes that see through me,
    Find my true selves on the other side.

    How will it feel to hear
    The lion’s roar
    In the early morning
    Dew hanging softly on a spider’s web.

    How will it feel to come home
    To the space between the worlds
    Where the rust colored earth
    Holds secrets that I still want to know
    That I still need to know.

    I want to make poems
    While thinking of the bread of heaven
    And the cup of astonishment.

    I want to make poems
    That look into the earth
    And the heavens and see the unseable.

    I want to make poems to thank
    Those who have come before
    Touched the earth
    And made it holy
    So that I may walk
    And know who I am
    Speaking through my ancestors
    The voices of those who will speak through my veins.

    How will it feel
    To be brushed by the lion’s mane?


    - Margaret Caminsky-Shapiro
    (With appreciation to Dorothy Walters poem, “Seekers”)
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  15. TopTop #2138
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You Will Never Be Alone


    You will never be alone, you hear so deep
    A sound when autumn comes. Yellow
    Pulls across the hills and thrums,
    Or the silence after lightning before it says
    Its names—and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
    Apologies. You were aimed from birth:
    You will never be alone. Rain
    Will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
    Long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,
    Moss or rock, and years. You turn your head—
    That’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
    The whole wide world pours down.


    - William Stafford
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  17. TopTop #2139
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bats in the Belfry


    Bats are the least of the beasts
    that may inhabit the belfry.
    Sometimes the touch of the full moon
    on the ropes are enough
    to stir the clappers
    & set the bells to clanging
    spreading panic among the denizens
    made of our phobias & frights.
    The bats flit & the other beasts
    crawl, skitter, scamper about.
    Blame the moon who cannot help
    touching all in her light
    including the ropes that bind us.

    - Rafael Jesús González


    Murciélagos en el campanario


    Murciélagos son los menores de las bestias
    que puedan habitar el campanario.
    A veces el toque de la luna llena
    en las sogas basta
    para agitar los badajos
    y poner las campanas a clamar
    difundiendo pánico entre los residentes
    compuestos de nuestras fobias y sustos.
    Los murciélagos vuelan y los otros bichos
    se arrastran, saltan, huyen.
    Culpa a la luna que no pueda
    no tocar todo bajo su luz
    inclusive los lasos que nos atan.

    © Rafael Jesús González 2014
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  19. TopTop #2140
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Very little has happened

    they tell me I was born
    I don’t remember
    parents gone
    children grown
    a grandchild
    red sandstone
    hard granite

    from 30,000 feet
    in this airplane
    the clouds below
    are white

    - trout black
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  21. TopTop #2141
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rumi's Moon


    After words flutter about
    followed by proclamations of “Ahhh!!!”
    I step down off the back porch
    into the mystery of evening

    I stand on the bare dirt
    making out moonglow
    just over the roofline
    there she is in her glory
    for the last full moon of summer

    And over there
    the old church’s cathedral spire
    is fully lit like a rocket on the launching pad
    aiming for an unknown destination
    that has already been reached in moonlight

    The moon says:
    There is nowhere to go
    that cannot be found here
    the journey and the destination
    are one and the same

    So, enjoy the fluttering
    followed by “Ahhh!!!”
    and savor the dark drive home


    - Marshal McKitrick
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  23. TopTop #2142
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For The Children

    The rising hills, the slopes
    of statistics
    lie before us.
    the steep climb
    of everything, going up
    up, as we all
    go down.

    In the next century
    or the one beyond that,
    they say,
    are valleys, pastures,
    we can meet there in peace
    if we make it.

    To climb these coming crests
    one word to you, to
    you and your children:

    stay together
    learn the flowers
    go light


    - Gary Snyder
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 09-16-2014 at 11:16 AM.
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  25. TopTop #2143
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    September


    September first comes round in my cold knees.
    In voices from the next room, and the body
    radiant from a shower.

    September comes with the tinnitus of country silence,
    the blue bay that keeps things still.

    The uselessness of success in spiritual practice
    seems lasting. But that’s such a weak account
    of the even weaker failure of weakness.

    For the fact is if I can’t offer half an hour
    to the One who gave me life…
    if I can’t listen for even half an hour for Him…
    if I can’t offer the One a half hour of gratitude for that…
    then immodesty has no limit.

    You hear what I am saying, I know.
    I am not someone who so treasures his every mood
    that he must thrust each precious slice into you,
    and I don’t feel bad at all here. I feel good.
    Because I know you’re listening.
    Maybe.

    May Be. The mediation, the message, is:
    the embryo of glee.

    In September it starts to stir.
    Before the end – just watch it –
    it wants to be born,
    once more.


    - Bruce Moody
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  27. TopTop #2144
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Kookaburras

    In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
    In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
    to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
    The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
    their cage, they asked me to open the door.
    Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them
    no, and walked away.
    They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
    They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
    home to their river.
    By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
    As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
    Nothing else has changed either.
    Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
    The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
    I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.


    - Mary Oliver
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #2145
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mending the Cloth
    For my ailing father, WWII Veteran and POW/MIA for nine months, and
    his fallen Humpin’ Honey B-29 crew, lost 12-7-44.

    Through the slits of sun shining on the backroads,
    I imagine my father's fallen crew sewing
    him back together when he crosses over.

    Nine men, each with silk from the parachutes
    they never had time to open, taking the tiniest
    of stitches to mend his torn cloth.

    In return, my father gives back the singular
    heartbeats he has carried for them
    these past sixty-eight years.

    Finally free of the weight
    of each man's final moments, my father soars
    back to his hometown, to his mother and father and sisters,

    to the wife and daughters who knew
    a duty-bound man with unresolved grief
    and the guilt of having survived.

    Sometimes the most generous contracts we make
    carry the heaviest burdens. It takes
    years until the debt is repaid,
    each side to the other.

    Sometimes we never know the reason
    so many had to suffer. We can only know
    what the heavens reveal

    on a solitary afternoon when peace drops in
    alone and unannounced
    like a silver needle
    falling from the sky.


    - Jackie Hallerberg
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  31. TopTop #2146
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mirrors At 4 AM

    You must come to them sideways
    In rooms webbed in shadow,
    Sneak a view of their emptiness
    Without them catching
    A glimpse of you in return.

    The secret is,
    Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
    A pretense.
    They are more themselves keeping
    The company of a blank wall,
    The company of time and eternity

    Which, begging your pardon,
    Cast no image
    As they admire themselves in the mirror,
    While you stand to the side
    Pulling a hanky out
    To wipe your brow surreptitiously.

    - Charles Simic

    Sent from my iPad
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  33. TopTop #2147
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    End Of Summer

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

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

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

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

    - Stanley Kunitz

    Sent from God knows where.
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  35. TopTop #2148
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dream On

    Some people go their whole lives
    without ever writing a single poem.
    Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
    to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
    They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
    and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
    These same people stroll into a church
    as if that were a natural part of life.
    Investing money is second nature to them.
    They contribute to political campaigns
    that have absolutely no poetry in them
    and promise none for the future.
    They sit around the dinner table at night
    and pretend as though nothing is missing.
    Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
    and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
    The family dog howls all night,
    lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
    Why is it so difficult for them to see
    that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
    Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
    croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
    their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
    and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
    forget the good deeds, the charity work,
    nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
    filling the birdfeeders all winter,
    helping the stranger change her tire.
    Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
    from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
    They walk around erect like champions.
    They are smooth-spoken and witty.
    When alone, rare occasion, they stare
    into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
    There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
    "And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
    next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
    learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
    our ancestors back from the dead--"
    poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
    You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
    You're a nowhere man misfiring
    the very essence of your life, flustering
    nothing from nothing and back again.
    The hereafter may not last all that long.
    Radiant childhood sweetheart,
    secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
    fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
    all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
    kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
    seeking, through poetry, a benediction
    or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
    explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
    And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
    It's a rare species of bird
    that refuses to be categorized.
    Its song is barely audible.
    It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
    here, then there, then here again,
    low-flying amber-wing darting upward
    then out of sight.
    And the dream has a pain in its heart
    the wonders of which are manifold,
    or so the story is told.

    - James Tate
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #2149
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Larry, this poem just made me smile
    it speaks of those, so blind and deaf,
    who think their lives worthwhile
    yet their kids go bad to steal a verse
    to fill that awful void.
    Oh, they're the ones who pay the price
    for the beauty of a painted word.


    "Why is it so difficult for them to see
    that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial."

    [QUOTE=Larry Robinson;183539]Dream On

    Some people go their whole lives
    without ever writing a single poem.
    Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
    to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
    They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
    and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing....
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  38. Gratitude expressed by:

  39. TopTop #2150
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Nocturne

    Last night in bed
    I mouthed a prayer
    of my own composition.

    It sounded offhand, it was carelessly
    addressed, it twisted my meaning
    entirely, it left an ache,
    I didn’t know what I was doing.

    So I took down my yellowed copy
    of French With Pictures
    by the late literary critic I.A. Richards
    and I put my petition
    into soft French words.

    I.A. Richards believed that irony
    was the language of redemption.
    He wrote and lectured famously on this,
    but his masterpiece was French With Pictures.
    “The chapeau is on the table.”
    “The man with the beard stands before the window.”
    “She comes from a village by the sea.”

    There is no improving the old traditions.
    They are already mortal, partial, and wrong.
    The woman at the table by the window
    puts her head into her hands.
    “Into your hands,” she said.

    - Sara Miller

    Sent from Yazd.
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #2151
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tashlikh

    These are the days of awe -
    time of inventory
    and a new beginning
    when harvest of what we sowed
    comes in.
    (What have we sown
    of discord & terror?
    Where have we fallen short
    of justice?)

    The scales dip & teeter;
    there is so much
    to discard,
    so much to atone.

    When our temples stood
    we loaded a goat
    with our transgressions
    and sent it to the wild.
    Now we must search our pockets
    for crumbs of our trespasses,
    our sins to cast upon the rivers.
    The days are upon us
    to take stock of our hearts.
    It is time to dust
    the images of our household gods,
    our teraphim,
    our lares.

    © Rafael Jesús González 2014



    Tashlij

    Estos son los días de temor -
    tiempo del inventario
    y un nuevo comienzo
    cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
    entra.
    (¿Qué hemos sembrado
    de discordia y terror?
    ¿Dónde hemos fallado
    en la justicia?)

    Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
    hay tanto de que deshacerse,
    tanto por lo cual expiar.

    Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
    cargábamos una cabra
    con nuestros pecados
    y la echábamos al desierto.
    Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
    las migas de nuestras faltas,
    nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
    Están sobre nosotros los días
    para hacer inventario del corazón.
    Es tiempo de sacudir
    las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
    nuestros térafim,
    nuestros lares.

    © Rafael Jesús González
    Sent from Isfahan.
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  42. Gratitude expressed by:

  43. TopTop #2152
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Message From The Wanderer

    Today outside your prison I stand
    and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
    you have relatives outside. And there are
    thousands of ways to escape.

    Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
    cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
    and shouted my plans to jailers;
    but always new plans occured to me,
    or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
    or some stupid jailer would forget
    and leave the keys.

    Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
    those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
    their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
    heroes that exist only where they are not.

    Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
    just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
    you can pass an antelope and not know
    and look back, and then—even before you see—
    there is something wrong about the grass.
    And then you see.

    That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

    Now—these few more words, and then I’m
    gone: Tell everyone just to remember
    their names, and remind others, later, when we
    find each other. Tell the little ones
    to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
    where they can. And if any of us get lost,
    if any of us cannot come all the way—
    remember: there will come a time when
    all we have said and all we have hoped
    will be all right.

    There will be that form in the grass.

    - William Stafford
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  45. TopTop #2153
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Belief In Magic

    How could I not?
    Have seen a man walk up to a piano
    and both survive.
    Have turned the exterminator away.
    Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine.
    Seen rainbows in puddles.
    Been recognized by stray dogs.
    I believe reality is approximately 65% if.
    All rivers are full of sky.
    Waterfalls are in the mind.
    We all come from slime.
    Even alpacas.
    I believe we’re surrounded by crystals.
    Not just Alexander Vvedensky.
    Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in.
    Nonetheless.
    Nevertheless
    I believe there are many kingdoms left.
    The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.
    A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life
    even though
    even though this is my second heart.
    Because the first failed,
    such was its opportunity.
    Was cut out in pieces and incinerated.
    I asked.
    And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart
    in a jar.
    Strange tangled imp.
    Wee sleekit in red brambles.
    You know what it feels like to hold
    a burning piece of paper, maybe even
    trying to read it as the flames get close
    to your fingers until all you’re holding
    is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
    yet the words still hover in the air?
    That’s how I feel now.

    - Dean Young
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  47. TopTop #2154
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Barking

    The moon comes up.
    The moon goes down.
    This is to inform you
    that I didn’t die young.
    Age swept past me
    but I caught up.
    Spring has begun here and each day
    brings new birds up from Mexico.
    Yesterday I got a call from the outside
    world but I said no in thunder.
    I was a dog on a short chain
    and now there’s no chain.

    - Jim Harrison
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  49. TopTop #2155
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Absolution

    The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
    Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
    War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
    And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.

    Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
    And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
    We are the happy legion, for we know
    Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

    There was an hour when we were loth to part
    From life we longed to share no less than others.
    Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
    What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?

    - Siegfried Sassoon
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  51. TopTop #2156
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Musee des Beaux Arts

    About suffering they were never wrong,
    The old Masters: how well they understood
    Its human position: how it takes place
    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
    How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
    For the miraculous birth, there always must be
    Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
    On a pond at the edge of the wood:
    They never forgot
    That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
    Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
    Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
    Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

    In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
    Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
    Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
    But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
    As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
    Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
    Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
    Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

    - W. H. Auden


    Sent from Tehran.
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  53. TopTop #2157
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Nest

    I awaken

    To find your head
    Loaded with sleep,
    Branching my chest.

    Feel the streams
    Of your breathing
    Dream through my heart.

    From the new day,
    Light glimpses
    The nape of your neck.

    Tender is the weight
    Of your sleeping thought

    And all the worlds
    That will come back

    When you raise your head
    And look.

    - John O’Donohue
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  55. TopTop #2158
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This Is Not To Say


    A garden shows the care of hands, but this is not to say those hands have made it grow.

    That birds will sing among the trees is not to say that trees will harbor song, and

    Too, though drought withers the vine, this is not to say the Sun brings death to life.

    That a person like a flower in love may bloom is not to say that love is like a flower, or

    When by candlelight two lovers burn, that’s not to say the candle is the fire.

    Thoughts may dart and school like minnows, knowing nothing of the sea,

    Though this is not to say that water, mute infinity of liquid sparks,

    Could not rise into a cloud to rain upon a garden, or shade the gardener’s eye.

    This is not to say that thoughts are love or candlelight or song,

    This is not to say a garden, or the gardener, is a cloud.


    - Lewis Caraganis
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  57. TopTop #2159
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Room For My Father's Ghost


    Now is my father
    A traveler, like all the bold men
    He talked of, endlessly
    And with boundless admiration,
    Over the supper table,
    Or gazing up from his white pillow —
    Book on his lap always, until
    Even that grew too heavy to hold.

    Now is my father free of all binding fevers.
    Now is my father
    Traveling where there is no road.

    Finally, he could not lift a hand
    To cover his eyes.
    Now he climbs to the eye of the river,
    He strides through the Dakotas,
    He disappears into the mountains.
    And though he looks
    Cold and hungry as any man
    At the end of a questing season,

    He is one of them now.
    He cannot be stopped.

    Now is my father
    Walking in the wind,
    Sniffing the deep Pacific
    That begins at the end of the world.

    Vanished from us utterly,
    Now is my father circling the deepest forest —
    Then turning in to the last red campfire burning
    In the final hills,

    Where chieftains, warriors and heroes
    Rise and make him welcome,
    Recognizing, under the shambles of his body,
    A brother who has walked his thousand miles.

    - Mary Oliver
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  59. TopTop #2160
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Concurrence


    Each day's terror, almost

    a form of boredom-- madmen
    at the wheel and
    stepping on the gas and
    the brakes no good --
    and each day one,
    sometimes two, morning-glories,
    faultless, blue, blue sometimes
    flecked with magenta, each
    lit from within with
    the first sunlight.

    - Denise Levertov
    Last edited by Barry; 10-07-2014 at 02:15 PM.
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  60. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

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