Click Banner For More Info See All Sponsors

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

This site is now closed permanently to new posts.
We recommend you use the new Townsy Cafe!

Click anywhere but the link to dismiss overlay!

Page 117 of 162 FirstFirst ... 17 67 107 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 127 ... LastLast
Results 3,481 to 3,510 of 4857

  • Share this thread on:
  • Follow: No Email   
  • Thread Tools
  1. TopTop #3481
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Edges Of Roads

    Of all country things, I suppose
    I know best the edges of roads,
    not berms where grass grows down to sides
    of ditches, like on interstates,

    or even where animals feed
    at dusk, where cans congregate with
    wrappers and the small dead are bounced
    off below the cruising vultures.

    I mean the trails behind the line
    of woods and brush several yards off
    where whatever watches can see
    all that passes, not seen itself.

    Hunters will know the place I mean
    where on wet fall days they can move
    silently, far enough from home,
    but not in so deep they can get lost.

    Lovers know it best, slipping off
    on weekday afternoons or weekend
    nights, pushing back convertible
    tops, reaching for fragments of sky.

    Seeing and not being seen are what
    I want to say, not in hiding
    but in league with fringes, knowing
    what roads don't know of things that stay,

    the way a child, who isn't lost, kneels
    out of sight, urging with a straw
    a beetle along, while through the town
    anxious voices cry out his name.

    - Trent Busch
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  2. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  3. TopTop #3482
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For the Union Dead

    “Delinquent Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.”

    The old South Boston Aquarium stands
    in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
    The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
    The airy tanks are dry.

    Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
    my hand tingled
    to burst the bubbles
    drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

    My hand draws back. I often sigh still
    for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
    of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
    I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

    fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
    yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
    as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
    to gouge their underworld garage.

    Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
    sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
    A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
    braces the tingling Statehouse,

    shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
    and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
    on St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,
    propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.

    Two months after marching through Boston,
    half the regiment was dead;
    at the dedication,
    William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

    Their monument sticks like a fishbone
    in the city’s throat.
    Its Colonel is as lean
    as a compass-needle.

    He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
    a greyhound’s gentle tautness;
    he seems to wince at pleasure,
    and suffocate for privacy.

    He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,
    peculiar power to choose life and die—
    when he leads his black soldiers to death,
    he cannot bend his back.

    On a thousand small town New England greens,
    the old white churches hold their air
    of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
    quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.

    The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
    grow slimmer and younger each year—
    wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
    and muse through their sideburns . . .

    Shaw’s father wanted no monument
    except the ditch,
    where his son’s body was thrown
    and lost with his “niggers.”

    The ditch is nearer.
    There are no statues for the last war here;
    on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
    shows Hiroshima boiling

    over a Mosler Safe, the “Rock of Ages”
    that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
    When I crouch to my television set,
    the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

    Colonel Shaw
    is riding on his bubble,
    he waits
    for the blessèd break.

    The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
    giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
    a savage servility
    slides by on grease.

    - Robert Lowell
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  4. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  5. TopTop #3483

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Here is more on the 54th Regiment: African Americans led by Shaw fighting on the Union side. Also an image of the the plaque Lowell refers to. If you haven't seen this in person, be sure to visit it near the Statehouse next time you're in Boston: https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/shaw.htm

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    For the Union Dead

    ...
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  6. Gratitude expressed by:

  7. TopTop #3484
    gabriela
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    See:
    Robert Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" and St. Gaudens' Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    For the Union Dead

    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 09-08-2017 at 12:43 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  8. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  9. TopTop #3485
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Eagle Creek Fire

    The air is still,
    the sky white with smoke
    from the Eagle Creek fire,
    ash drops in tiny flakes,
    the giant white oak
    stands motionless and black,
    silhouetted against the sky,
    like a giant tombstone,
    each dark leaf an inscription,
    a memory of one of its
    charred cousins,
    devoured by
    the fire.

    - Bill Denham
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  10. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  11. TopTop #3486
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Credo

    My friend from Asia has powers and magic, he plucks a blue leaf from the young blue-gum
    And gazing upon it, gathering and quieting
    The God in his mind, creates an ocean more real than the ocean, the salt, the actual
    Appalling presence, the power of the waters.

    He believes that nothing is real except as we make it. I humbler have found in my blood
    Bred west of Caucasus a harder mysticism.

    Multitude stands in my mind but I think that the ocean in the bone vault is only
    The bone vault’s ocean: out there is the ocean’s;

    The water is the water, the cliff is the rock, come shocks and flashes of reality. The mind
    Passes, the eye closes, the spirit is a passage;

    The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the heartbreaking beauty
    Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.


    - Robinson Jeffers
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  12. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  13. TopTop #3487
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    raveling travel

    he was talking about how it was
    that a spider
    found on different islands
    separated by infinite water


    could get around
    (undaunted by doubt)


    a silk thread
    swept up by wind


    maybe like a song
    past understanding catches the ear
    as if we could hear
    filaments of ourselves on the air


    a strand of dying sunlight
    pulling thread out of a star


    a more rational creature
    would not dare
    such a survival strategy --


    silk -- unraveling
    oneself -- a form
    of travel


    - Gene Berson

    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  14. Gratitude expressed by:

  15. TopTop #3488
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Word On Statistics

    Out of every hundred people

    those who always know better:
    fifty-two.

    Unsure of every step:
    nearly all the rest.

    Ready to help,
    as long as it doesn't take long:
    forty-nine.

    Always good,
    because they cannot be otherwise:
    four--well, maybe five.

    Able to admire without envy:
    eighteen.

    Led to error
    by youth (which passes):
    sixty, plus or minus.

    Those not to be messed with:
    forty and four.

    Living in constant fear
    of someone or something:
    seventy-seven.

    Capable of happiness:
    twenty-some-odd at most.

    Harmless alone,
    turning savage in crowds:
    more than half, for sure.

    Cruel
    when forced by circumstances:
    it's better not to know
    not even approximately.

    Wise in hindsight:
    not many more
    than wise in foresight.

    Getting nothing out of life but things:
    thirty
    (although I would like to be wrong).

    Doubled over in pain,
    without a flashlight in the dark:
    eighty-three,
    sooner or later.

    Those who are just:
    quite a few at thirty-five.

    But if it takes effort to understand:
    three.

    Worthy of empathy:
    ninety-nine.

    Mortal:
    one hundred out of one hundred--
    a figure that has never varied yet.



    - Wislawa Szymborski
    (translated by Joanna Trzeciak)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  16. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  17. TopTop #3489
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dreamers

    there's no emptiness
    in the heart no sadness
    at the start of youth
    we are travelers in space
    boundaries are made
    jobs are scarce
    the place we move to
    with our parents early
    is our place and we dream
    of staying on here with you
    winds of summer heat
    winds of seasonal change
    winds of American youth
    here early here to stay
    the stone of darkness
    suddenly blazes
    with magnificent light
    stay on stay here

    - Jack Crimmins
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  18. Gratitude expressed by:

  19. TopTop #3490
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Head is in My Heart


    Not every day, but today,
    When glancing in the mirror
    By the front door,
    I saw myself…
    Differently…
    I went back to take a look…again.
    “Your head is in your heart,” I said.

    I paused, I took it in, whatever that meant.
    Maybe this will be my meditation for a day,
    My Koan for a week?

    This was a felt moment.
    Sort of an Alice in Wonderland moment.
    Maybe a Magritte question?

    “My head is in my heart,” I said.
    Thank God, it has a new place to call home!

    - Eliza Weaver
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  20. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  21. TopTop #3491
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Valley Fire

    September 14, 2015


    Sky’s so dry you could light a match
    by winking at the clouds and
    borer beetles burrow
    insatiable selves
    into the hearts
    of firs. Meanwhile

    the big leaf maples
    burnish our autumn early this year.
    They’re beautiful but
    they’re more beautiful
    when they’re wet,
    says a friend, and
    my mouth starts to water

    yes,
    this time of year,
    everything’s better
    when it’s wet.

    And there’s a big hot hole in the land
    up north and east that makes my
    own life feel glorious full, and all
    my dreams feel edgy. So

    when those first real
    raindrops fall (if they come
    before the fire), and after
    the kids are asleep,
    I’m gonna
    have sex
    in the rain.

    - Amy Robinson
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  22. Gratitude expressed by:

  23. TopTop #3492
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    As I crossed the bridge, a hairy hand came out.
    "Stop, pay troll."
    I gave him 5 euros. He put it not in his purse but in a jar.
    "It's for the poor. They are very hungry," he said.
    "This week Africa. Maybe next week your country."
    He scratched. "When you get to the other side of the bridge, you get it back."
    I looked, saw no one giving back. He saw me looking.

    "Not THIS bridge," he said.

    - Birrell Walsh
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  24. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  25. TopTop #3493
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pledge

    Republic, your cool hands
    On my schoolgirl shoulders.
    Not sure what allegiances meant
    Until the vows were held by heart,
    By memory, by rote, by benign betrothal.
    Republic, you were mine, I knew
    Because of Mother’s religious pamphlets:
    Lindsay for Mayor.
    McGovern for President.
    How to Register Voters.
    I didn’t ever want to go to school
    On Saturdays. The baby-sitter said
    If Nixon won, I’d have to go. Me,
    Your most cherished child bride.
    I wanted a white communion dress
    Like the ones the Catholic girls wore.
    Republic, you know I wanted to play
    Cards with Mother. Mother smoking
    Marlboros, watching Watergate all week.
    Citizen Mother all consumed at that confessional.
    I liked the name Betsy Ross.

    - Elizabeth Powell
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  26. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  27. TopTop #3494
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    wow.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    As I crossed the bridge, a hairy hand came out.
    "Stop, pay troll."
    I gave him 5 euros. He put it not in his purse but in a jar.
    "It's for the poor. They are very hungry," he said.
    "This week Africa. Maybe next week your country."
    He scratched. "When you get to the other side of the bridge, you get it back."
    I looked, saw no one giving back. He saw me looking.

    "Not THIS bridge," he said.

    - Birrell Walsh
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  28. Gratitude expressed by:

  29. TopTop #3495
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Two Kinds

    There are two kinds of people in the world;
    the ones with washers and dryers and the ones
    who unfurl their slips at the laundromat, spread
    saris and bed sheets by the river, hang
    their checkered boxers on the line.

    There are two: those who love Einstein
    for his relativity and those who love his hair.
    Those who relish words like infrastructure
    and problematic, and those who like to ponder
    life in the belly of the whale. For some,
    invitations come as night birds; others get
    a summons in the mail. These wander wet and
    lonely; those soft-shoe in rhythm with the rain.

    Two kinds: the tragic heroes and the understudies;
    the bootleggers and the cobblers. Wolf-whisperers
    and dogcatchers; shovellers of snow and readers
    of the flake. There are those who run into the room
    with a lit match, stopping to wonder what they came for,
    and the ones who run in without the match.

    - Prater Sereno
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  30. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  31. TopTop #3496
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    praise song

    to my aunt blanche
    who rolled from grass to driveway
    into the street one sunday morning.
    i was ten.
    i had never seen
    a human woman hurl her basketball
    of a body into the traffic of the world.
    Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
    Praise to the faith with which she rose
    after some moments then slowly walked
    sighing back to her family.
    Praise to the arms which understood
    little or nothing of what it meant
    but welcomed her in without judgment,
    accepting it all like children might,
    like God.

    - Lucille Clifton
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  32. Gratitude expressed by:

  33. TopTop #3497
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Proud

    Like those crazy Babylonians, who raised a tower
    higher than their own I.Q.; so gigantic,
    it could only have been built by God —
    a fact that they forgot, until they fell,
    in argument, apart, like so many unmortared
    parts of speech. Babylon, remember?
    They fell, and we grew up
    to learn two languages — one for money,
    and one for love; one for saying what we mean,
    and one for hiding it. I'm thinking of my brother,
    who lost his voice, and then his wife
    because he was too proud to say, "Please, Don't Go."
    That architect, my brother,
    who sleeps now on his office couch,
    twitching like a racedog in a business suit,
    a dog who dreams he is so far ahead of all
    the competition, he'll be impossible to catch.
    I'm speaking of my brother, but I might as well
    be talking of my enormously rich and arrogant
    other relative, the United States — a country so goliath,
    it casts a shadow over half the world;
    so ambidextrous, it can lie and listen to itself
    at once. And isn't that the story of the mind?
    Which started as a little church,
    with open doors,
    but wound up as a fortress, with foot-thick walls
    and a bristling defense. Somewhere inside,
    we are lost, muttering about our enemies
    and making up the truth. Truth is,
    the self is a disease, a wound
    which grows infected with the fear
    that it will never have enough.
    And egomania
    is standing on a mountaintop
    and sucking down great lungfuls
    of a better quality of air
    than what the common people get; it feels
    like freedom and it tastes like truth;
    you laugh, and every forty seconds, pledge
    a new allegiance to yourself. And maybe
    we will have to go on climbing to some
    hopeless height, to some fantastic speed,
    like Icarus the biggest day of his career.
    Maybe there are pinnacles of ignorance,
    altitudes of stupid, from which
    recovery is impossible. I think
    of my brother, who might have saved himself
    with just a single word, however late and lame.
    I think of my country,
    which goes on talking.

    - Tony Hoagland
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  34. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  35. TopTop #3498
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Olam

    Olam is another word
    for the elusive Godot.
    What will never come
    is also the one place

    that never goes,
    where Lurianic sparks
    are everywhere scattered
    and waiting is wonderful

    when always there is task,
    the tikkun of taking tea
    or telling tales. Being together
    is the ordinary telos

    worth our transience -
    for the Lord is not our friend
    as the Talmud warns,
    but you have been to me,

    and I sometimes
    imperfectly to you,
    in this realm of
    sometimes passing.

    - Zach Horvitz
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  36. Gratitude expressed by:

  37. TopTop #3499
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prayer and Cosmos


    Three great rebbes wrestle with the hermeneutics of prayer:
    does god pray, to whom, and what are those prayers?

    The inquisitive Earthling asks the reflective moon about the prayers of the Sun.

    From Rabbi Yochanan we learn that God prays; then
    Rabbi Zutra ben Tobi reflects and relates god’s prayer only to discover that the Holy one received the same prayer from Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha.

    Amazingly, the prayers of sun and moon overlap, so a major eclipse of sorts is unfolding from where we stand, here upon the earth.

    Each planet plays it’s part, each Rebbe speaks his truth, and the Holy One keeps shining the one great light.

    The three align perfectly as they hurtle through space and time.

    From the earth we watch the moon block the sun and we cheer as it reaches totality.

    “Look how the sun and moon are joined, offering the same prayer” we say in that magnificent moment.

    What we and the Rabbis forget is that the whirling planets and their heartfelt prayers are always reaching for totality.

    - Bruce Silverman
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  38. TopTop #3500
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What the Storms Say

    We have arrived. Yet
    We are many and gather.
    Still yelling at you
    To turn, requiring you
    To move, demanding
    That you help each other.
    We are screaming for you
    To follow the spiral path
    Of transformation. Our
    Clouds swirl nine miles
    High, we batter you so
    You will learn your limits.
    We barrel through your
    Cities so you find out
    You have gone too far.
    You have forgotten too
    Often how we are all
    interconnected. Now
    We remember. We
    Are calling all of life
    To acknowledge our
    Indivisibility. Your
    Souls are bound up
    With us, the hurricanes,
    The firestorms, and
    The earthquakes.
    We vibrate, we dance
    In the wild rotations
    Of celestial mirth.
    Our souls follow
    The beat, We are
    Intrepid. We are
    The spirits of change.
    We call on you to
    Reconsider your lives,
    We are the hurricanes,
    Insisting that you hurry,
    Since there is little
    Time before you and
    Your circle of interrelated
    Species will no longer
    Be threatened, You will
    Fall. To survive, you must
    Keep watch and listen.
    You run away to escape
    The very thing you have
    Created. Understand
    This is not possible.
    Safety is no where.
    Extinction is upon us.
    And when you return
    From being with us,
    What will you have?
    Possessions are nothing.
    We do not own one square
    Inch of Mother Earth. She
    Owns us, and she is out
    Of patience. Trust not in
    Material goods. Instead,
    Rely on the wisdom of
    The storms, the tsunami,
    The floods, the tornados,
    The lightning, the thunder.
    See how we turn, We
    Destroy, and we create.
    We challenge you with
    Your future, The time
    Of the Great Migrations,
    Of the Great Turnings,
    Of the magical moments
    Of mountains, The time
    Of epiphany is upon you.
    You have not lost everything.
    What you have bought, what
    You have so carefully counted
    Has passed away. What you
    Can hold is each other. What
    You can cherish is diversity,
    Multiplicity, all the forms
    Of life. We order you to stand
    Up and take notice. Our
    Firestorms tell you to answer
    Your grief with service. What
    Service? To love one another,
    To care, to give, to help. We
    Are one. Something far greater
    Than your selves are moving.
    Something is being co-created.
    You are like toddlers testing
    Boundaries. You experience
    Limits. All is not about comfort
    Nor about your convenience.
    Nor is it about what we own
    Or what we can buy. All is
    About our relationship to
    Mother Earth and to and
    Amongst her myriad of
    Creatures. There is enough.
    There is a way. The way is
    Acknowledging suffering
    As part of our path to
    Redemption. The way
    Of holding each other
    And of committing
    To the protection of
    Sentient being to live
    Together in peace and
    In love. So we, the storm
    Sprits are showing your
    The price of all your lives
    Is to recreate your lives.
    You will run for your lives.
    You will remember what
    You thought your life was.
    Then you will know exactly what
    Life is worth. You are hunkered
    Down under the storms. Your lives
    belong to spirit and praise change.

    - Patria Brown
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  39. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  40. TopTop #3501
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Soon

    autumn is about to make its leap
    leaves are thrashing in the roadways

    a thunderstorm fell yesterday
    sweet gum blushes sunset in

    old summer green a sign
    to go a rush to see time gone

    these brutal months cleaned in rain

    - Kevin Pryne
    Last edited by Barry; 09-24-2017 at 01:03 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  41. Gratitude expressed by:

  42. TopTop #3502
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn

    The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
    as if orchards were dying high in space.
    Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

    And tonight the heavy earth is falling
    away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

    We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
    And look at the other one….it's in them all.

    And yet there is Someone, whose hands
    Infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.


    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated from the German by Robert Bly)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  43. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  44. TopTop #3503
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Autumn-Poem.jpg
Views: 714
Size:  107.6 KB

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Autumn

    The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
    as if orchards were dying high in space.
    Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

    And tonight the heavy earth is falling
    away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

    We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
    And look at the other one….it's in them all.

    And yet there is Someone, whose hands
    Infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.


    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated from the German by Robert Bly)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  45. Gratitude expressed by:

  46. TopTop #3504
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Weather Report

    for the autumn equinox


    Balance:
    The still point on the seesaw
    between summer and winter
    longer and shorter
    neither one nor the other

    Yet this day
    is not only a moment poised
    between dualities,
    but a Singularity.
    a One.
    a Clarity.

    Sun in full radiance
    sky so blue
    earth so green
    and a wind
    just enough to breathe
    movement
    into September trees --
    beauty
    that strikes like a thunderclap.

    And so, in this moment between,
    this perfect day,
    I force myself to remember:
    We are poised in a precarious balance
    that will soon slide away,
    down with a rush
    to another weather, dark and chill.

    And I pray,
    May the clarity of this day
    stay
    in our hearts
    when the weather changes.

    May we still hold light
    In the darkness to come

    May we find the still point
    On which to balance.


    - Nina Mermey Klippel
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  47. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  48. TopTop #3505
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Earth Prayer

    O Endless Creator, Force of Life, Seat of the Unconscious, Dharma,
    Atman, Ra, Qalb, Dear Center of our Love, Christlight, Yahweh, Allah,
    Mawu, Mother of the Universe…

    Let us, when swimming with the stream, become the stream…
    Let us, when moving with the music, become the music…
    Let us, when rocking the wounded, become the suffering..

    Let us live deep enough till there is only one direction…
    and slow enough till there is only the beginning of time…
    and loud enough in our hearts till there is no need to speak…

    Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,
    let us see it in everything and everyone,
    till we admit to the mystery that when I look deep enough into you,
    I find me,
    and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart,
    you recognize it as your secret, which you thought no one else knew…

    O let us embrace that unexpected moment of unity as the atom of God…
    Let us have the courage to hold each other when we break and worship what unfolds…

    O nameless spirit that is not done with us,
    let us love without a net beyond the fear of death
    until the speck of peace we guard so well becomes the world…

    - Mark Nepo
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #3506
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Late Summer Roses


    In the calm

    of a late summer afternoon
    my father sent me roses.


    I was watching two
    white butterflies
    dance around each other
    through the light and easy air
    when I saw them—
    pink roses
    so small
    one fit in the palm of my hand.


    The scent
    Ah, well, the scent
    of a rose
    can open you.


    Long dead, my father
    sends me roses.
    My heart
    like a child,
    amazed.


    - Mary Swanson
    Last edited by Barry; 09-28-2017 at 02:02 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  51. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  52. TopTop #3507
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hope





    I do not stand in judgment.
    I simply weep
    for the blindness I see
    around me,
    for the hurt inflicted,
    knowingly or unknowingly,
    upon the marginalized.
    I know nothing else to do
    but weep for this reality,
    for this inability to love
    each other.

    May my tears fall upon this arid soil,
    may their moisture
    find the heart’s seed,
    dry and shriveled,
    for lack of loving,
    for the lack of tears,
    for the lack of life giving moisture.
    May my tears envelop
    each shriveled heart seed,
    allow each seed to swell,
    to begin to feel once more
    what has been lost—
    the ability to grieve,
    to weep and to water
    with their own tears
    other dry and shriveled
    heart seeds.


    In this way, my grief is a fount of hope,
    for only in my tears,
    only through my tears,
    shared in community,
    am I able to live fully,
    to weep and then to dance,
    to dance and then to weep,
    in this never ending cycle
    of being human—
    we are born and we die.

    If we are to live fully
    in that interim, in that short time
    we are given, we must weep
    for we all know we are destined to loose
    everything and everyone
    we have ever loved.
    So, only through our grief,
    only through our weeping,
    openly, publicly, communally,
    are we able to embrace our full humanness,
    our own divinity, the wholeness of our lives,
    to experience genuine hope and joy,
    knowing our tears are watering
    the shriveled heart seeds of the world.

    Jesus wept.

    - Bill Denham






    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  53. Gratitude expressed by:

  54. TopTop #3508
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Hope.jpg
Views: 746
Size:  147.1 KB

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Hope
    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 09-29-2017 at 01:14 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  55. Gratitude expressed by:

  56. TopTop #3509
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Woman Poem


    We shed blood
    without violence
    blend matter and spirit
    fuse water and womb

    We are Isis
    rebirthing the sun
    We are Maeve
    reclaiming the shadow

    We are a mother's peace
    we hold the mother wound

    Our blankets are sewn of prayer
    red cotton, sweetgrass, yarrow
    plaited into song
    reclaiming the first medicine

    We are daughters of swords
    fight to the death
    for the no that means no,
    hold unfettered roots
    through green labyrinths
    to the Supreme

    We breathe stars into you
    til the end of breathing
    We hum you to us
    form tides steering mystery

    Old ways are ours
    oak murmuring the first leaves,
    carrying the confluence of all circles
    endings, beginnings
    everywhere under your feet

    We shape shift across this land
    fire the hearth
    travel the wheel
    through rusty creaks
    in awe of small things
    light workers, all beings
    the juice that is life

    We are
    and we are not.

    - Aoife Reilly
    Last edited by Barry; 09-30-2017 at 02:10 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  57. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  58. TopTop #3510
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Is Broken Is What God Blesses



    The lover’s footprint in the sand
    the ten-year-old kid’s bare feet
    in the mud picking chili for rich growers,
    not those seeking cultural or ethnic roots,
    but those whose roots
    have been exposed, hacked, dug up and burned
    and in those roots
    do animals burrow for warmth;
    what is broken is blessed,
    not the knowledge and empty-shelled wisdom
    paraphrased from textbooks,
    not the mimicking nor plaques of distinction
    nor the ribbons and medals
    but after the privileged carriage has passed
    the breeze blows traces of wheel ruts away
    and on the dust will again be the people’s broken
    footprints.
    What is broken God blesses,
    not the perfectly brick-on-brick prison
    but the shattered wall
    that announces freedom to the world,
    proclaims the irascible spirit of the human
    rebelling against lies, against betrayal,
    against taking what is not deserved;
    the human complaint is what God blesses,
    our impoverished dirt roads filled with cripples,
    what is broken is baptized,
    the irreverent disbeliever,
    the addict’s arm seamed with needle marks
    is a thread line of a blanket
    frayed and bare from keeping the man warm.
    We are all broken ornaments,
    glinting in our worn-out work gloves,
    foreclosed homes, ruined marriages,
    from which shimmer our lives in their deepest truths,
    blood from the wound,
    broken ornaments—
    when we lost our perfection and honored our imperfect sentiments, we were
    blessed.
    Broken are the ghettos, barrios, trailer parks where gangs duel to death,
    yet through the wretchedness a woman of sixty comes riding her rusty bicycle,
    we embrace
    we bury in our hearts,
    broken ornaments, accused, hunted, finding solace and refuge
    we work, we worry, we love
    but always with compassion
    reflecting our blessings—
    in our brokenness
    thrives life, thrives light, thrives
    the essence of our strength,
    each of us a warm fragment,
    broken off from the greater
    ornament of the unseen,
    then rejoined as dust,
    to all this is.


    - Jimmy Santiago Baca, 1952
    Last edited by Barry; 10-01-2017 at 01:43 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  59. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

Similar Threads

  1. Thank you Larry Robinson
    By JandA in forum WaccoReader
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-11-2009, 02:36 PM
  2. Poem of the day from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 05-20-2008, 09:33 AM
  3. Poems from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: 01-07-2007, 08:45 AM
  4. Measure F Precinct Walk with Larry Robinson
    By Portia in forum General Community
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-06-2006, 02:46 PM

Bookmarks