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  1. TopTop #2671
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Proclamation


    Whereas the world is a house on fire;
    Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
    Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
    a single bird on a wire
    left by migration behind.
    Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
    and peace an abstraction
    while war is real;
    Whereas words are all I have;
    Whereas my life is short;
    Whereas I am afraid;
    Whereas I am free - despite all
    fire and anger and fear;
    Be it therefore resolved a song
    shall be my calling - a song
    not yet made shall be vocation
    and peaceful words the work
    of my remaining days.


    - Kim Stafford
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  3. TopTop #2672
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rise and Fall - Larry Robinson

    Rise and Fall

    Let go of fear
    and rest in that which is.
    For peace, like love,
    comes to those who allow it.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in stillness.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Watch the tide rise...
    and fall.
    Watch towers rise...
    and fall.

    Watch walls rise...
    and fall.
    Watch statues rise...
    and fall.

    Watch empires rise...
    and fall.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in the arms
    of the One
    who has always held you,
    the One who holds
    atoms and empires
    and oceans and stars.

    Let go of fear
    and watch what happens next.

    - Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 11-17-2015 at 01:10 PM.
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  4. TopTop #2673

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    perfect.
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  5. Gratitude expressed by:

  6. TopTop #2674
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Oooh, great one, Larry!



    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Rise and Fall - Larry Robinson


    Rise and Fall


    Let go of fear
    and rest in that which is.
    For peace, like love,
    comes to those who allow it.


    Let go of fear
    and rest in stillness.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.


    Watch the tide rise...
    and fall.
    Watch towers rise...
    and fall.


    Watch walls rise...
    and fall.
    Watch statues rise...
    and fall.


    Watch empires rise...
    and fall.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.


    Let go of fear
    and rest in the arms
    of the One
    who has always held you,
    the One who holds
    atoms and empires
    and oceans and stars.


    Let go of fear
    and watch what happens next.


    - Larry Robinson
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  7. Gratitude expressed by:

  8. TopTop #2675
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Song

    There are those who are trying to set fire to the world,
    we are in danger,
    there is time only to work slowly,
    there is no time not to love.

    - Deena Metzger
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  9. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  10. TopTop #2676
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Those Who Have Lost Everything

    crossed
    in despair
    many deserts
    full of hope

    carrying
    their empty
    fists of sorrow
    everywhere

    mouthing
    a bitter night
    of shovels
    and nails

    “you’re nothing
    you’re shit
    your home’s
    nowhere”—

    mountains
    will speak
    for you

    rain
    will flesh
    your bones

    green again
    among ashes
    after a long fire

    started in
    a fantasy island
    some time ago

    turning
    Natives
    into aliens

    - Francisco X. Alarcón
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  11. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  12. TopTop #2677
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems

    Every revolution needs fresh poems
    that is the reason
    poetry cannot die.
    It is the reason poets
    go without sleep
    and sometimes without lovers
    without new cars
    and without fine clothes
    the reason we commit
    to facing the dark
    and
    resign ourselves, regularly, to the possibility
    of being wrong.
    Poetry is leading us.
    It never cares how we will
    be held by lovers
    or drive fast
    or look good
    in the moment;
    but about how completely
    we are committed
    to movement
    both inner and outer;
    and devoted to transformation
    and to change.


    - Alice Walker
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 11-20-2015 at 01:26 PM.
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  13. TopTop #2678
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  rumi poets WvW.jpg
Views: 1492
Size:  77.9 KB
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 11-20-2015 at 01:27 PM.
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  14. TopTop #2679
    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
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 11-21-2015 at 01:27 PM.
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  15. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  16. TopTop #2680
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Africa revisited

    Tell me about your trip to Africa, the liv ely wild creatures inhabiting that continent.
    Remind me again of how they appeared to you.
    Just another day in the life for them, A small miracle for you.

    You hike dusty African hills with no guarantee that you will be invited in, to observe their world.
    Will you be welcomed to a dappled glimpse of fur and chiseled teeth?
    Alone at night, will you be somewhat disturbed by distant roaring base sounds heard instead of words?

    A profound gift of savannah life is handed to you, on an earth l y platter.
    Your easy presence is considered in a flash then filed away, as
    neither predator nor prey, just a heart beat in the distance.

    Tell me again about your trip to Africa, deep jungle's roar at night, hyena's fulsome laughter carried on slight wind.
    Remind me once again of how the unbidden occurs whether we allow it or not,
    Remind me too of the ways grace rains down on each of us lively wild creatures, uninvited and ever-present.

    - Ann Krinard
    Last edited by Barry; 11-22-2015 at 02:33 PM.
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  18. TopTop #2681
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To My Favorite Seventeen Year-Old High School Girl

    Do you realize that if you had started
    building the Parthenon, on the day you were born
    you would be all done in only one more year?
    Of course, you couldn’t have done that alone,
    so never mind, you’re fine just as you are.
    You’re a love for simply being yourself.
    But did you know that, at your age Judy Garland
    was pulling down $150,000 per picture,
    Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory,
    and Blase Pascal had cleaned up his room?
    No, wait, I mean he had invented the calculator.
    Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life
    after you come out of your room
    and begin to blossom, or, at least, pick up all your socks.
    For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey
    was Queen of England when she was only fifteen,
    but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model.
    A few centuries later, when he was your age,
    Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family
    but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies,
    four operas, and two complete masses as a youngster.
    But of course that was in Austria at the height
    of romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland.
    Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15
    or Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17?
    We think you are special by just being you,
    playing with your food and staring into space.
    By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes,
    but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.

    - Billy Collins
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  20. TopTop #2682
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prayer For The Great Family

    Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day—
    and to her soil: rich, rare and sweet
    in our minds so be it.

    Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf
    and fine root-hairs; standing still through the wind
    and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
    in our mind so be it.

    Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent
    Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
    clear spirit breeze
    in our minds so be it.

    Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
    freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
    self-complete, brave, and aware
    in our minds so be it.

    Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
    holding or releasing; streaming through all
    our bodies salty seas
    in our minds so be it.

    Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
    trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
    bears and snakes sleep—he who wakes us—
    in our minds so be it.

    Gratitude to the Great Sky
    who holds billions of stars—and goes yet beyond that—
    beyond all powers, and thoughts
    and yet is within us—
    Grandfather Space.
    The Mind is his Wife.

    so be it.

    - Gray Snyder
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 11-24-2015 at 12:28 PM.
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  22. TopTop #2683
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blessing The Bones

    I sit alone at the kitchen table,
    barbecued chicken bones lie heaped
    like dead soldiers on my plate.
    I lick the sauce from the bones.
    I feel carnal and content
    and then I think of grandma.
    I could be her as I enjoy
    this solitary meal.

    She is dressed in a long straight skirt,
    a short-sleeved cotton blouse.
    Her apron is spotted, her stockings
    sag down around her ankles, her toes
    poke through worn slippers.
    I watch her soak crusts of bread
    in pan drippings, take her fork and balance
    bits of lamb and potatoes on top.
    She always ate last, but best of all.

    I think of her long, un-mothered life -
    just twelve when she boarded
    the boat to Ellis Island, a child
    sent alone by her family to seek a better life.
    She was not blue-blood, never lost
    her accent or peasant ways,
    heard American neighbors call her
    immigrant or less.

    I think of her homeland under seige.
    I could be dying there now,
    our home downed by mortar shells.
    I could be eating rationed bread,
    the only bones those of slaughtered sons.
    I could be cleaning a daughter's ravaged flesh.

    I want to cry out to grandma,
    cry out so the heavens will open
    and angels bring her closer.
    I want to hold her, smell her skin,
    bury my head in her feeble shoulders,
    run my fingers through her white hair,
    kiss away her sadness.

    I want to cover her table
    with a white Damask cloth,
    set out a feast, exchange
    her black babooshka for the
    milliner's finest red felt hat.
    I want to thank her for my life,
    say that I understand her sacrifice.

    I want to bless her bones.

    - Jackie Huss Hallerberg
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  24. TopTop #2684
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Gratitude


    What did you notice?

    The dew snail;
    the low-flying sparrow;
    the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
    big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
    the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;

    the sweet-hungry ants;
    the uproar of mice in the empty house;
    the tin music of the cricket’s body;
    the blouse of the goldenrod.

    What did you hear?

    The thrush greeting the morning;
    the little bluebirds in their hot box;
    the salty talk of the wren,
    then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

    What did you admire?

    The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
    the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
    the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the
    pale green wand;
    at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid
    beauty of the flowers;
    then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

    What astonished you?

    The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

    What would you like to see again?

    My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
    her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her
    recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her
    sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

    What was most tender?

    Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
    the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
    the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
    the tall, blank banks of sand;
    the clam, clamped down.

    What was most wonderful?

    The sea, and its wide shoulders;
    the sea and its triangles;
    the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

    What did you think was happening?

    The green breast of the hummingbird;
    the eye of the pond;
    the wet face of the lily;
    the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
    the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
    the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve
    of the first snow—

    so the gods shake us from our sleep.

    - Mary Oliver
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  26. TopTop #2685
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Family Reunion


    The week in August you come home,
    adult, professional, aloof,
    we roast and carve the fatted calf
    —in our case homegrown pig, the chine
    garlicked and crisped, the applesauce
    hand-pressed. Handpressed with greengage wine.


    Nothing is cost effective here.
    The peas, the beets, the lettuces
    handsown, are raised to stand apart.
    The electric fence ticks like the slow heart
    of something we fed and bedded for a year,
    then killed with kindness’s one bullet
    and paid Jake Mott to do the butchering.


    In winter we lure the birds with suet,
    thaw lungs and kidneys for the cat.
    Darlings, it’s all a circle from the ring
    of wire that keeps raccoons from the corn
    to the gouged pine table that we lounge around,
    distressed before any of you was born.


    Benign and dozy from our gluttonies,
    the candles down to stubs, defenses down,
    love leaking out unguarded the way
    juice dribbles from the fence when grounded
    by grass stalks or a forgotten hoe,
    how eloquent, how beautiful you seem!


    Wearing our gestures, how wise you grow,
    ballooning to overfill our space,
    the almost-parents of your parents now.
    So briefly having you back to measure us
    is harder than having let you go.


    - Maxine Kumin
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  28. TopTop #2686
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    They've lost it, lost it,
    and their children
    will never even wish for it-
    and I am afraid
    that the whole tribe's in trouble,
    the whole tribe is lost-
    because the sun keeps rising
    and these days
    nobody sings


    - Aaron Kramer
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  30. TopTop #2687
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love Calls Us to the Things of the World

    The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
    And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
    Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
    As false dawn.

    Outside the open window
    The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
    Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
    Now they are rising together in calm swells
    Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
    With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying
    The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
    And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
    They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
    That nobody seems to be there.
    The soul shrinks

    From all that it is about to remember,
    From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
    And cries,

    "Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
    Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
    And clear dances done in the sight of heaven."

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
    With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
    The soul descends once more in bitter love
    To accept the waking body, saying now
    In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,

    "Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
    Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
    Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
    And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
    Of dark habits,
    keeping their difficult balance."

    - Richard Wilbur
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  31. TopTop #2688
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Listening to the Koln Concert

    After we had loved each other intently,

    we heard notes tumbling together,
    in late winter, and we heard ice
    falling from the ends of twigs.

    The notes abandon so much as they move.
    They are the food not eaten, the comfort
    not taken, the lies not spoken.
    The music is my attention to you.

    And when the music came again,
    later in the day, I saw tears in you r eyes.
    I saw you turn your face away
    so that the others would not see.

    When men and women come together,
    how much they have to abandon! Wrens
    make their nests of fancy threads
    and string ends, animals

    abandon all their money each year.
    What is that men and women leave?
    Harder then wrens' doing, they have
    to abandon their longing for the perfect.

    The inner nest not made by instinct
    will never be quite round,
    and each has to enter the nest
    made by the other imperfect bird.

    - Robert Bly
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  32. TopTop #2689
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love After Love

    The day will come when, with elation,
    you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror,
    and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say,
    sit here, eat.

    You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
    Give wine, give bread.
    Give back your heart to itself,
    to the stranger who has loved you all your life,
    whom you ignored for another,
    who knows you by heart.

    Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
    the photographs, the desperate notes,
    peel your own image from the mirror.
    Sit. Feast on your life.

    - Derek Walcott
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 12-01-2015 at 01:40 PM.
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  34. TopTop #2690
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This Making of a Whole Self


    This making of a whole self takes
    such a very long time: pieces are not
    sequential nor our supplies. We work here,
    then there, hold up tattered fabric to the light.
    Sew past dark, intent. Use all our thread.

    Sleeves may come before length;
    buttons, before a rounded neck.
    We sew at what most needs us,
    and as it asks, sew again.

    The self is not one thing, once made,
    unaltered. Not midnight task alone, not
    after other work. It’s everything we come
    upon, make ours: all this fitting of
    what-once-was and has-become.

    - Nancy Shaffer
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  36. TopTop #2691
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fog Drip

    Fog drip, they say,

    replenishes the aquifer.
    Redwood needles pull
    moisture from the mist,
    guiding it down to the roots -
    and below.

    Even in the driest years
    these patient old ones
    remain ever green.

    Some elders are like that.
    They find the goodness there is
    and draw it down,
    sustaining themselves
    while feeding the deeper stream.

    They don’t demand attention;
    they don’t seek profit or approval.
    Usually they don’t even know
    they are doing this.
    Do the redwoods know - or care -
    where the water goes?

    Francis of Assisi called down grace
    by the simple act of gratitude.
    The foxes and the sparrows
    drank deeply from his fog drip.

    - Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Barry; 12-03-2015 at 02:00 PM.
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  37. TopTop #2692
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Thank You Message Written for her Family at Thanksgiving

    Happy Thanksgiving, my beloved family.

    As this time of year rolls around and we look at what we're thankful for,
    I'd have to say that what I'm most grateful for is my family.
    We are all here because we are the descendants of something greater than our own lives,
    and that is our family's lineage.
    We hold our place in a sequence of lives,
    a lineage of people who knew pain and joy, hope and despair,
    who were capable of greatness and generosity, as well as pettiness and spite.
    You are the next generations.
    You hold the key to the future and the link to memory.
    You are the living legacy of all the ancestors who have gone before you.
    Although much of our history and its players remain unknown to us,
    never forget that there is an invisible line of men and women who
    stand behind each of you and stretches back through time, farther than we can see.
    This moment is the culmination of every thought, action, feeling and
    circumstance of all of their lives added to all of your grandparents' lives,
    your parents' lives and now your lives.
    In this season of gratitude and remembering, I ask you to take a moment
    to consider your place in this lineage, to imagine what the faces must look like
    that stand silently behind you, to consider what their dreams may have been and
    how you are the answer to their prayers.
    Then look forward, to the children who come after you, to their children and beyond.
    What would you like to leave as a legacy for them?
    What prayers beat in your heart for them?
    For my part, I know that you are the living answers to my prayers.
    On behalf of all of your ancestors may I say, Thank you for choosing us.

    - Diana Del Drago
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 12-04-2015 at 01:29 PM.
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  38. Gratitude expressed by:

  39. TopTop #2693
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Holiday Poem

    Everyone wants a piece of you.
    Even the elderly oaks, their
    branches draped with lichen
    lace, are reaching long
    limbs towards your body
    as you pass.
    The demands are ceaseless,
    it seems. The ways to say
    yes, change direction,
    possibly crumble. Still,
    you let the branches brush you.
    Until you hear the rushing
    of the downhill stream,
    the wide green hand of the
    mountain letting go, letting forth.
    It asks nothing.
    You lean into,
    you follow
    that sound.

    - Amy Elizabeth Robinson
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 12-05-2015 at 01:29 PM.
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #2694
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Meeting The Light Completely

    Even the long-beloved
    was once
    an unrecognized stranger.

    Just so,
    the chipped lip
    of a blue-glazed cup,
    blown field
    of a yellow curtain,
    might also,
    flooding and falling,
    ruin your heart.

    A table painted with roses.
    An empty clothesline.

    Each time,
    the found world surprises—
    that is its nature.

    And then
    what is said by all lovers:
    "What fools we were, not to have seen."

    - Jane Hirshfield
    Last edited by Barry; 12-06-2015 at 01:00 PM.
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  43. TopTop #2695
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    December 7th Prayer

    Like a distressed baby,
    crying in an empty room,
    I used to pray.

    Now I just wait expectantly
    till clarity comes,
    often vexing me greatly
    with what it has to say,
    as if daring me to stare at the sun.

    Or, slowly cooking a thick slab of puzzlement,
    avoiding all recipes’ tedium,
    I keep turning and turning
    till I get a well-seared response
    to a question that refuses to leave.

    Sometimes I’m like a clumsy country doctor,
    vainly trying to pin down a persistent pain’s true cause,
    poking and prodding,
    ineptly seeking to know what’s up,
    only to find that what’s not up
    is what I ought to seek.

    Amazed that the head on collision of one sperm and one egg,
    in the fierce run up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
    led to the odd duck who bears my name,
    I am lately bemused by the wondrous strangeness of it all,
    and regret, ever so slightly, that no one can hear me when,
    my solitary heart wishing that it were not so,
    I yearn to say, “Thanks for all this blessing.”

    - Bill Dickinson
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  45. TopTop #2696
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mr. Cogito Reads the Newspaper

    The front page reports
    120 soldiers were killed

    the war was long
    you get used to it

    right next to this news
    of a spectacular crime
    with the killer’s photo

    Mr. Cogito’s gaze
    moves with indifference
    over the soldiers’ hecatomb
    to plunge with great relish
    into the quotidian macabre

    a thirty-year-old farmworker
    in a state of manic depression
    murdered his own wife
    and two small children

    we are told the exact
    way they were killed
    the position of the bodies
    and the other details

    it’s no use trying to find
    120 lost men on a map
    a distance too remote
    hides them like a jungle

    they don’t speak to the imagination
    there are too many of them
    the numeral zero on the end
    turns them into an abstraction

    a theme for further reflection:
    the arithmetic of compassion.

    - Zbigniew Herbert
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 12-08-2015 at 01:46 PM.
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  47. TopTop #2697
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lost in thought

    I want to get lost in those thoughts
    that continue expanding

    way out over the clouds
    rising into nests of stars

    migrating across seas, flying
    into wild new geographies of meaning.

    I want to get carried away
    from all that is manageable and trivial,

    all that is self-defeating
    all that shrivels the heart
    binds the feet and shrink wraps a soul.

    I want to get lost with those spacious thoughts
    that amaze, like stories,

    building syllable upon syllable,
    word after word, until, in the end,

    the plot gives way
    to holy incomprehension,

    I want to say yes to all
    that bids us to the window
    and across the door step

    where rustling satin notes of sky
    sing us into whole landscapes
    of yet unspoken poetry.


    - Judith Stone
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  49. TopTop #2698
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    There Is No Going Back


    No, no, there is no going back.
    Less and less you are
    that possibility you were.
    More and more you have become
    those lives and deaths
    that have belonged to you.
    You have become a sort of grave
    containing much that was
    and is no more in time, beloved
    then, now, and always.
    And so you have become a sort of tree
    standing over a grave.
    Now more than ever you can be
    generous toward each day
    that comes, young, to disappear
    forever, and yet remain
    unaging in the mind.
    Every day you have less reason
    not to give yourself away.

    - Wendell Berry
    Last edited by Barry; 12-10-2015 at 02:21 PM.
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  51. TopTop #2699
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Races

    You are a Brother
    And a Sister
    In the colors of Life
    Some people believe
    They are races
    Human races
    Whatever that may be
    Races are for running
    The competitive edge
    Distrust and confusion
    Leaving alterations
    In innocent faces
    We are natural Life
    A part of Mother Earth's design
    A blending of colorsTo make the difference
    In the teaching
    of meanings
    We are colors in the family
    of Life.

    - John Trudell
    (February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015)
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  53. TopTop #2700
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thanks For Remembering Us

    The flowers sent here by mistake,
    signed with a name that no one knew,
    are turning bad. What shall we do?
    Our neighbor says they're not for her,
    and no one has a birthday near.
    We should thank someone for the blunder.
    Is one of us having an affair?
    At first we laugh, and then we wonder.

    The iris was the first to die,
    enshrouded in its sickly-sweet
    and lingering perfume. The roses
    fell one petal at a time,
    and now the ferns are turning dry.
    The room smells like a funeral,
    but there they sit, too much at home,
    accusing us of some small crime,
    like love forgotten, and we can't
    throw out a gift we've never owned.

    - Dana Gioia
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