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  1. TopTop #271
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I have walked along many roads,
    and opened paths through brush,
    I have sailed over a hundred seas
    and tied up on a hundred shores.

    Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve seen
    excursions of sadness,
    angry and melancholy
    drunkards with black shadows,

    and academics in offstage clothes
    who watch, say nothing, and think
    they know, because they do not drink wine
    in the ordinary bars.

    Evil men who walk around
    polluting the earth. . .

    And everywhere I’ve been I’ve seen
    men who dance and play,
    when they can, and work
    the few inches of ground they have.

    If they turn up somewhere,
    they never ask where they are.
    When they take trips, they ride
    on the backs of old mules.

    They don’t know how to hurry,
    not even on holidays.
    They drink wine, if there is some,
    if not, cool water.

    These men are the good ones,
    who love, work, walk and dream.
    And on a day no different from the rest
    they lie down beneath the earth.

    - Antonio Machado
    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  2. TopTop #272
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For What Binds Us

    There are names for what binds us:
    strong forces, weak forces.
    Look around, you can see them:
    the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
    nails rusting into the places they join,
    joints dovetailed on their own weight.
    The way things stay so solidly
    wherever they've been set down --
    and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

    And see how the flesh grows back
    across a wound, with a great vehemence,
    more strong
    than the simple, untested surface before.
    There's a name for it on horses,
    when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

    as all flesh
    is proud of its wounds, wears them
    as honors given out after battle,
    small triumphs pinned to the chest --

    And when two people have loved each other
    see how it is like a
    scar between their bodies,
    stronger, darker, and proud;
    how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
    that nothing can tear or mend.

    - Jane Hirschfield
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  3. TopTop #273
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Altered

    A hand moves across the room, deliberately, in slow motion, making a half moon as if to spread its essence onto the pilgrims gathered there, as if to feed these mortal souls with one divine gesture. Alerted by this single motion, these seekers spread their thoughts and prayers across the skies, rain clouds that seep into gaps where longing waits to be filled yet is never sated. It is the prayers that feed. Some digest, some do not. The whole world, an altar, moved by a single soul willing to extend itself, stretching like the scirocco to cover more ground, stretching, to touch more pilgrims of the heart, souls ready to absorb every vibration. Bodies born and growing, grown then gone, so ethereal, so desirous of, so resistant to states of divinity — a feather floating, a moving cloud, a subtle breeze.

    - Clara Rosemarda
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  4. TopTop #274
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sunrise

    You can
    die for it--
    an idea,
    or the world. People

    have done so,
    brilliantly,
    letting
    their small bodies be bound

    to the stake,
    creating
    an unforgettable
    fury of light. But

    this morning,
    climbing the familiar hills
    in the familiar
    fabric of dawn, I thought

    of China,
    and India
    and Europe, and I thought
    how the sun

    blazes
    for everyone just
    so joyfully
    as it rises

    under the lashes
    of my own eyes, and I thought
    I am so many!
    What is my name?

    What is the name
    of the deep breath I would take
    over and over
    for all of us? Call it

    whatever you want, it is
    happiness, it is another one
    of the ways to enter
    fire.

    - Mary Oliver
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  5. TopTop #275
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Married Love

    You and I
    Have so much love,
    That it
    Burns like a fire,
    In which we bake a lump of clay
    Molded into a figure of you
    And a figure of me.
    Then we take both of them,
    And break them into pieces,
    And mix the pieces with water,
    And mold again a figure of you,
    And a figure of me.
    I am in your clay.
    You are in my clay.
    In life we share a single quilt.
    In death we will share one coffin.

    - KUAN TAO-SHĘNG (1262-1319)
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  6. TopTop #276
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Four Poems for Robin

    Siwashing it out once in Siuslaw Forest

    I slept under rhododendron
    All night blossoms fell
    Shivering on a sheet of cardboard
    Feet stuck in my pack
    Hands deep in my pockets
    Barely able to sleep.
    I remembered when we were in school
    Sleeping together in a big warm bed
    We were the youngest lovers
    When we broke up we were still nineteen.
    Now our friends are married
    You teach school back east
    I dont mind living this way
    Green hills the long blue beach
    But sometimes sleeping in the open
    I think back when I had you.


    A spring night in Shokoku-ji

    Eight years ago this May
    We walked under cherry blossoms
    At night in an orchard in Oregon.
    All that I wanted then
    Is forgotten now, but you.
    Here in the night
    In a garden of the old capital
    I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao
    I remember your cool body
    Naked under a summer cotton dress.


    An autumn morning in Shokoku-ji

    Last night watching the Pleiades,
    Breath smoking in the moonlight,
    Bitter memory like vomit
    Choked my throat.
    I unrolled a sleeping bag
    On mats on the porch
    Under thick autumn stars.
    In dream you appeared
    (Three times in nine years)
    Wild, cold, and accusing.
    I woke shamed and angry:
    The pointless wars of the heart.
    Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
    The first time I have
    Ever seen them close.


    December at Yase
    You said, that October,
    In the tall dry grass by the orchard
    When you chose to be free,
    “Again someday, maybe ten years.”

    After college I saw you
    One time. You were strange.
    And I was obsessed with a plan.

    Now ten years and more have
    Gone by: I’ve always known
    where you were—
    I might have gone to you
    Hoping to win your love back.
    You still are single.

    I didn’t.
    I thought I must make it alone. I
    Have done that.

    Only in dream, like this dawn,
    Does the grave, awed intensity
    Of our young love
    Return to my mind, to my flesh.

    We had what the others
    All crave and seek for;
    We left it behind at nineteen.

    I feel ancient, as though I had
    Lived many lives.

    And may never now know
    If I am a fool
    Or have done what my
    karma demands.

    - Gary Snyder
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  7. TopTop #277
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sunday Breakfast at Willow Wood

    “I suppose you’ll have the usual, right?”
    “Right. The French Folded Eggs and a triple shot latté”

    But when it came, all I saw was the golden mustard that had popped out overnight in the meadow, in the apple orchard, in the vineyard between the rows of dormant vines—mustard, everywhere, the color of French Folded Eggs which lie on my plate in their mustard perfection surrounded by the bare branches of hundred-year-old apple trees. And the way the sun pushed away the clouds and let the rain remain on the branches hit the yellow mustard in a brazen reflection of itself, and it was as if the sun had settled into the earth and come up beaming.

    I looked down into my plate of French mustard eggs folded into a perfect breakfast. The latté was dark and hot.

    - Fran Claggett
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  8. TopTop #278
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    History of Desire

    When you're seventeen, and drunk
    on the husky, late-night flavor
    of your first girlfriend's voice
    along the wires of the telephone

    what else to do but steal
    your father's El Dorado from the drive,
    and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
    Then climb the county water tower

    and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
    a hundred feet above the town?
    Because only the letters of that word,
    DORIS, next door to yours,

    in yard-high, iridescent script,
    are amplified enough to tell the world
    who's playing lead guitar
    in the rock band of your blood.

    You don't consider for a moment
    the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
    a decade after Doris, when,
    out for a drive on your visit home,

    you take the Smallville Road, look up
    and see RON LOVES DORIS
    still scorched upon the reservoir.
    This is how history catches up—

    by holding still until you
    bump into yourself.
    What makes you blush, and shove
    the pedal of the Mustang

    almost through the floor
    as if you wanted to spray gravel
    across the features of the past,
    or accelerate into oblivion?

    Are you so out of love that you
    can't move fast enough away?
    But if desire is acceleration,
    experience is circular as any

    Indianapolis. We keep coming back
    to what we are—each time older,
    more freaked out, or less afraid.
    And you are older now.

    You should stop today.
    In the name of Doris, stop.

    - Tony Hoagland
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  9. TopTop #279
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Comfort of Questions
    for Larry

    We built a house
    together, one without a roof.
    All night it opened
    to dark, abundant emptiness—
    the questions without answers.

    Gradually those questions
    became stars. Red dwarfs and blue giants
    consoled me, allowed the darkness
    inside to be, to sprout like a safe seed,
    slowly with grace.

    In that house, all those days,
    those years of your patient presence,
    I learned to live
    under freedom’s open sky,
    with the walls of kindness
    surrounding me.

    In the beginning, what I knew could
    fill volumes and teach me
    nothing. Now I look to the shadows,
    the starry questions and inhale,
    every exhalation a Thank You.

    - Rebeca del Rio
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  10. TopTop #280
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Winter's Margin

    On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
    With half-forged memories come flocking home
    To gardens famous for their charity.
    The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
    Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.
    With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
    By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
    Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
    But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
    Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
    And what I dream of are the patient deer
    Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; -
    They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
    Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

    - Mary Oliver
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  11. TopTop #281
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Today

    If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
    so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

    that it made you want to throw
    open all the windows in the house

    and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
    indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

    a day when the cool brick paths
    and the garden bursting with peonies

    seemed so etched in sunlight
    that you felt like taking

    a hammer to the glass paperweight
    on the living room end table,

    releasing the inhabitants
    from their snow-covered cottage

    so they could walk out,
    holding hands and squinting

    into this larger dome of blue and white,
    well, today is just that kind of day.

    - Billy Collins
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  12. TopTop #282
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Enkindled Spring

    This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
    Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
    Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
    Where the wood fumes up, and the flickering, watery rushes.

    I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
    Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
    Of growing, these sparks that puff in wild gyration,
    Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

    And I, what fountain of fire am I among
    This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
    About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
    Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.

    - D. H. Lawrence
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  13. TopTop #283
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Jerusalem

    "Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
    Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
    is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine."
    -Tommy Olofsson, Sweden

    I'm not interested in
    Who suffered the most.
    I'm interested in
    People getting over it.

    Once when my father was a boy
    A stone hit him on the head.
    Hair would never grow there.
    Our fingers found the tender spot
    and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
    stands up. A bucket of pears
    in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.
    The pears are not crying.
    Later his friend who threw the stone
    says he was aiming at a bird.
    And my father starts growing wings.

    Each carries a tender spot:
    something our lives forgot to give us.
    A man builds a house and says,
    "I am native now."
    A woman speaks to a tree in place
    of her son. And olives come.
    A child's poem says,
    "I don't like wars,
    they end up with monuments."
    He's painting a bird with wings
    wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

    Why are we so monumentally slow?
    Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
    big guns, little pills.
    If you tilt your head just slightly
    it's ridiculous.

    There's a place in my brain
    Where hate won't grow.
    I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
    Something pokes us as we sleep.

    It's late but everything comes next.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  14. TopTop #284
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Just Now

    In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
    the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
    that there has been something simpler than I could ever
    believe
    simpler than I could have begun to find words for
    not patient not even waiting no more hidden
    than the air itself that became part of me for a while
    with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
    something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
    and the nights not separate from them
    not separate from them as they came and were gone
    it must have been here neither early nor late then
    by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

    - W.S. Merwin
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  15. TopTop #285
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poverty

    Poverty seizes me in the middle of things
    and my life will never be the same:
    I will face outwards to the trees
    and animals
    and not look back.

    Silent, furred creatures,
    and the tall eucalypts
    gather slowly about me;

    they have given me this new life,
    walking alone in the moonlight,
    not knowing who I am.

    - John Tarrant
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  16. TopTop #286
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'

    Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
    a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
    begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
    to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
    say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
    think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
    I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
    with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
    scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
    sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
    and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
    I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
    in the heart," but it seems like things
    are always ending—vacation or childhood,
    relationships, stores going out of business,
    like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
    And where do we fit in? How can we get up
    in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
    put one foot after the other, open the window,
    make coffee, watch the steam curl up
    and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
    in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
    lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
    The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
    for the thousandth time.

    - Barbara Crooker
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  17. TopTop #287
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode To Enchanted Light

    Under the trees light
    has dropped from the top of the sky,
    light
    like a green
    latticework of branches,
    shining
    on every leaf,
    drifting down like clean
    white sand.

    A cicada sends
    its sawing song
    high into the empty air.

    The world is
    a glass overflowing
    with water.

    - Pablo Neruda
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  18. TopTop #288
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Birthing
    *
    Call out the names in the procession of the loved.
    Call from the blood the ancestors here to bear witness
    to the day he stopped the car,
    we on our way to a great banquet in his honor.
    In a field a cow groaned lowing, trying to give birth,
    what*he called front leg presentation,
    the calf comes out nose first, one front leg dangling from his mother.
    A fatal sign he said while rolling up the sleeves
    of his dress shirt, and climbed the fence.
    I watched him thrust his arms entire
    into the yet to be, where I imagined holy sparrows scattering
    in the hall of souls for his big mortal hands just to make way.
    With his whole weight he pushed the calf back in the mother
    and*grasped the other leg tucked up like a closed wing
    against the new one’s shoulder.
    And found a way in the warm dark to bring both legs out
    into the world together.
    Then heaved and pulled, the cow arching her back,
    until a bull calf, in*a whoosh of blood and water,
    came falling whole and still onto the meadow.
    We rubbed his blackness, bloodying our hands.
    The mother licked her newborn, of us oblivious,
    until he moved a little, struggled.
    I ran to get our coats, mine a green velvet cloak,
    and his a tuxedo jacket, and worked to rub the new one dry
    while he set out to find the farmer.
    When it was over, the new calf suckling his mother,
    the farmer soon to lead them to the barn,
    leaving our coats just where they lay
    we huddled in the car.
    And then made love toward eternity,
    Without a word drove slowly home. And loved some more.
    *
    *****- Deborah Digges
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  19. TopTop #289
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Esquimos Have No Word for “War”

    Trying to explain it to them
    Leaves one feeling ridiculous and obscene.
    Their houses, like white bowls,
    Sit on a prairie of ancient snowfalls
    Caught beyond thaw or the swift changes
    Of night and day.
    They listen politely, and stride away.

    With spears and sleds and barking dogs
    To hunt for food. The women wait
    Chewing on skins or singing songs,
    Knowing that they have hours to spend,
    That the luck of the hunter is often late.

    Later, by fires and boiling bones
    In streaming kettles, they welcome me,
    Far kin, pale brother,
    To share what they have in a hungry time
    In a difficult land. While I talk on
    Of the southern kingdoms, cannon, armies,
    Shifting alliances, airplanes, power,
    They chew their bones, and smile at one another.

    - Mary Oliver
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  20. TopTop #290
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    That Twitching

    When I sleep
    That twitching you see is really a leisurely stroll

    Dogs dream seven times faster than you do

    Do strangers come up to you
    And scratch your head?

    Dogs love seven times stronger than you do

    If your beloved died would you sit patiently by the train platform
    For years?

    Dogs wait seven times longer than you do

    It is not to late
    To find your dog heart

    - Warren Peace
    (Translated by Brian Narelle)
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  21. TopTop #291
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Narcissus

    Encircled by her arms as by a shell,
    she hears her being murmur,
    while forever he endures
    the outrage of his too pure image...

    Wistfully following their example,
    nature re-enters herself;
    contemplating its own sap, the flower
    becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens...

    It's the return of all desire that enters
    toward all life embracing itself from afar...
    Where does it fall? Under the dwindling
    surface, does it hope to renew a center?

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
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  22. TopTop #292
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Message from Space

    Everything that happens is the message:
    you read an event and be one and wait,
    like breasting a wave, all the while knowing
    by living, though not knowing how to live.

    Or workers built an antenna -- a dish
    aimed at stars -- and they themselves are its message,
    crawling in and out, being worlds that loom,
    dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

    And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up
    eye and ear -- suddenly we fall into
    sound before it begins, the breathing
    so still it waits there under the breath --

    And then the green of leaves calls out, hills
    where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied
    stillness unfolding their careful words:
    "Everything counts. The message is the world."

    - William Stafford
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  23. TopTop #293
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lines Written In Early Spring

    I heard a thousand blended notes,
    While in a grove I sate reclined,
    In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
    Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

    To her fair works did Nature link
    The human soul that through me ran;
    And much it grieved my heart to think
    What man has made of man.

    Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
    The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
    And 'tis my faith that every flower
    Enjoys the air it breathes.

    The birds around me hopped and played,
    Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
    But the least motion which they made
    It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

    The budding twigs spread out their fan,
    To catch the breezy air;
    And I must think, do all I can,
    That there was pleasure there.

    If this belief from heaven be sent,
    If such be Nature's holy plan,
    Have I not reason to lament
    What man has made of man?

    - William Wordsworth
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  24. TopTop #294
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Pond

    Snapping turtles in the pond eat bass, sunfish,
    and frogs. They do us no harm when we swim.
    But early this spring two Canada geese
    lingered, then built a nest. What I’d
    heard of, our neighbor feared: goslings,
    as they paddle about, grabbed from below
    by a snapper, pulled down to drown.

    So he stuck
    hunks of fat on huge, wire-leadered hooks
    attached to plastic milk-bottle buoys.
    The first week he caught three turtles
    and still there are more: sometimes he finds
    the bottles dragged ashore, the wire
    wrapped several times around a pine trunk
    and the steel hook wrenched straight as a pin.

    - Gregory Orr
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  25. TopTop #295
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    From an Atlas of the Difficult World

    I know you are reading this poem
    late, before leaving your office
    of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
    in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
    long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
    standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
    on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
    across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
    I know you are reading this poem
    in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
    where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
    and the open valise speaks of flight
    but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
    as the underground train loses momentum and before running
    up the stairs
    toward a new kind of love
    your life has never allowed.
    I know you are reading this poem by the light
    of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
    while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
    I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
    of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
    I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
    in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
    count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
    you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
    lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
    because even the alphabet is precious.
    I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
    warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
    hand
    because life is short and you too are thirsty.
    I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
    guessing at some words while others keep you reading
    and I want to know which words they are.
    I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
    between bitterness and hope
    turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
    I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
    left to read
    there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

    - Adrienne Rich
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  26. TopTop #296
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The People Of The Other Village

    hate the people of this village
    and would nail our hats
    to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
    or staple our hands to our foreheads
    for refusing to salute them
    if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
    mix their flour at night with broken glass.
    We do this, they do that.
    They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats.
    We devein one of their sisters.
    The quicksand pits they built were good.
    Our amputation teams were better.
    We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
    They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
    They do this, we do that.
    We canceled our sheep imports.
    They no longer bought our blankets.
    We mocked their greatest poet
    and when that had no effect
    we parodied the way they dance
    which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
    was leprous, hairless.
    We do this, they do that.
    Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
    (10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

    - Thomas Lux
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  27. TopTop #297
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Dance

    The stepping-stones, once
    in a row along the slope,
    have drifted out of line,
    pushed by frosts and rains.
    Walking is no longer thoughtless
    over them, but alert as dancing,
    as tense and poised, to step
    short, and long, and then
    longer, right, and then left.
    At the winter's end, I dance
    the history of its weather.

    - Wendell Berry
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  28. TopTop #298
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Out of darkness and dread
    Shall come dawn and the birds...
    Love shall fold warm like a cloak
    Round the shuddering earth
    Till the sound of its woe cease...
    Reach me your hand,
    This is the meaning of all that we
    Suffered in sleep - the white peace
    Of the waking.

    - Edna St.Vincent Millay
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  29. TopTop #299
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Seven Of Pentacles

    Under a sky the color of pea soup
    she is looking at her work growing away there
    actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
    as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
    If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
    if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
    if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
    if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
    then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

    Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
    You cannot tell always by looking at what is happening.
    More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
    Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
    Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
    Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
    Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

    Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
    Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
    Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
    a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
    interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

    Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
    reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
    This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
    for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
    the planting,
    after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

    - Marge Piercy
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  30. TopTop #300
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Confluence

    Kids play in the creek beneath the redwood canopy,
    dark scent of earth, rising, covering everything,
    bells of voices, water rushing, sound of frogs and crickets.

    I pass – this other life – footsteps on wet pavement.
    If this were a painting, I’d step right in –
    become the white blossoms in the dappled shadows.

    Their thin bodies—ghosts stitching the creeks crevices
    playing house, cleaning the creek with found sticks
    weaving their voices into the sound of frogs and crickets.

    Their minds—open windows, white drapes flapping like tongues.
    I’d be – change of camera angle – the weak sun looking down
    pushing through the thick mesh of redwood canopy,

    yellow fingers probing the streets shadows
    like an apostle who doesn’t believe the wounds
    that throb from the earth like the sound of frogs and crickets.

    Or I’d be the trees themselves – ringed history reaching skyward
    everything happening again and again at my feet—roots spread
    a net gathering this galaxy—small stars of girls, the past,
    the voices, the water, the frogs and crickets—into a chorus of compassion.

    - Iris Dunkle
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