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  1. TopTop #361
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Felicitous Life

    His old age fell on years of abundant harvest.
    There were no earthquakes, droughts or floods.
    It seemed as if the turning of the seasons gained in constancy,
    Stars waxed strong and the sun increased its might.
    Even in remote provinces no war was waged.
    Generations grew up friendly to fellow men.
    The rational nature of man was not a subject of derision.

    It was bitter to say farewell to the earth so renewed.
    He was envious and ashamed of his doubt,
    Content that his lacerated memory would vanish with him.

    Two days after his death a hurricane razed the coasts.
    Smoke came from volcanoes inactive for a hundred years.
    Lava sprawled over forests, vineyards, and towns.
    And war began with a battle on the islands.

    - Czeslaw Milosz
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  2. TopTop #362
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    God Says Yes to Me

    I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
    and she said yes
    I asked her if it was okay to be short
    and she said it sure is
    I asked her if I could wear nail polish
    or not wear nail polish
    and she said honey
    she calls me that sometimes
    she said you can do just exactly
    what you want to
    Thanks God I said
    And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
    my letters
    Sweetcakes God said
    who knows where she picked that up
    what I'm telling you is
    Yes Yes Yes

    - Kaylin Haught
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  3. TopTop #363
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    American Tune

    Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
    confused.

    Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

    But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
    bones.

    Still, you donít expect to be bright and bon vivant so
    far away from home, so far away from home.

    And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
    don't have a friend who feels at ease.

    I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
    driven to its knees.

    But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
    well so long.

    Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
    wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
    went wrong.

    And I dreamed I was dying.

    I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
    back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
    was flying.

    And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
    Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
    flying.

    And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
    come on the ship that sailed the moon.

    We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
    American tune

    oh, but it's all right, it's all right, itís all
    right, you can't be forever blessed.

    Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
    I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
    to get some rest.

    -Paul Simon
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  4. TopTop #364
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    THE MORAL INDIGNATION
    of Mayor Cory Booker

    Nothing like ears falling to the floor
    nothing like a South American colonel pontificating
    nothing like this
    more like a dark and stormy night
    more like West Side Story but in Newark, New Jersey
    more like a parable of the returning son
    the story retold of Sacco and Vanzetti

    Four college students lined up against a steel-barbed fence shot execution-style

    The mayor recounts this darkest night of his first year
    how he curled up on his couch

    How this is not the America he believes in
    how his friends get sick of hearing him speak of his patriotism
    and his dreams of what it means to be an American
    how Newark is going to be a destination city, full of parks
    he knows there is a God somewhere in charge
    and he knows he talks too much when he gets tired
    and this has been a most stressful and long week
    blood spilt on one more sidewalk
    please forgive him for talking too much
    for looking as if he is in shell-shock
    (his brown-orbed eyes belie an innocence)
    for sometimes crying
    not hearing—he has these flashes—
    a mother’s anguish, brother’s rage
    forgive him for all the mistakes he has made
    he has tried to learn, lived in Brick Towers, made the police rounds,
    brought in youth programs, cleaned up the precinct bathrooms
    how he has just come back from yet another shooting
    this time a 14-year old opening fire—on a playground—seven wounded

    Nothing like ears falling to the floor
    but this time a whole nation is listening

    - Nancy Cavers Dougherty
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  5. TopTop #365
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    America

    America, you ode for reality!
    Give back the people you took.

    Let the sun shine again
    on the four corners of the world

    you thought of first but do not
    own, or keep like a convenience.

    People are your own word, you
    invented that locus and term.

    Here, you said and say, is
    where we are. Give back

    what we are, these people you made,
    us, and nowhere but you to be.

    - Robert Creeley
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  6. TopTop #366
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Remember Galileo

    I remember Galileo describing the mind
    as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
    and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree,
    or jumping into the backseat of a car,
    and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
    but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
    Route 80 between the wheels of a giant truck,
    dancing back and forth like a thin leaf,
    or a frightened string, for only two seconds living
    on the white concrete before he got away,
    his life shortened by all that terror, his head
    jerking, his yellow teeth ground down to dust.

    It was the speed of the squirrel and his lowness to the ground,
    his great purpose and the alertness of his dancing,
    that showed me the difference between him and paper.
    Paper will do in theory, when there is time
    to sit back in a metal chair and study shadows;
    but for this life I need a squirrel,
    his clawed feet spread, his whole soul quivering,
    the loud noise shaking him from head to tail.
    O philosophical mind, O mind of paper, I need a squirrel
    finishing his wild dash across the highway,
    rushing up his green ungoverned hillside.

    - Gerald Stern
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  7. TopTop #367
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wooden Boats

    I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
    Who knows precisely how a board
    Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
    Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
    Can shape it to the hull.

    The knowledge lies as much
    Within his sure hands on the plane
    As in his head;
    It lies in love of wood and grain,
    A rough hand resting on the satin
    Of the finished deck.

    Is there within us each
    Such artistry forgotten
    In the cruder tasks
    The world requires of us,
    The faster modern work
    That we have
    Turned our life to do?

    Could we return to more of craft
    Within our lives,
    And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
    By letting our hands linger
    On the product of our artistry?
    Could we recall what we have known
    But have forgotten,
    The gifts within ourselves,
    Each other too,
    And thus transform a world
    As he and friends do,
    Shaping steaming oak boards
    Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

    - Judy Brown
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  8. TopTop #368
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cottonwood Trees

    The cottonwoods are
    flinging themselves outward,
    filling the air with spiraling flurries,
    covering lawns in deepening drifts.
    You could not call this generosity.
    Like any being, they
    let loose what they have
    in order to survive,
    in order that their lives might continue
    in a new year's growth.
    The more seeds they send out
    on their lofted journeys
    the greater the chance
    for their kind to flourish.
    There is no hesitation.
    No one asks how much
    they will give. Without words
    they know so clearly
    that everything depends
    on what we call giving,
    that which the world knows only as creation.

    - Lynn Ungar
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  9. TopTop #369
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The River of Bees

    In a dream I returned to the river of bees
    Five orange trees by the bridge and
    Beside two mills my house
    Into whose courtyard a blindman followed
    The goats and stood singing
    Of what was older

    Soon it will be fifteen years

    He was old he will have fallen into his eyes

    I took my eyes
    A long way to the calendars
    Room after room asking how shall I live

    One of the ends is made of streets
    One man processions carry through it
    Empty bottles their
    Image of hope
    It was offered to me by name

    Once once and once
    In the same city I was born
    Asking what shall I say

    He will have fallen into his mouth
    Men think they are better than grass

    I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay

    He was old he is not real nothing is real
    Nor the noise of death drawing water

    We are the echo of the future

    On the door it says what to do to survive
    But we were not born to survive
    Only to live

    - W. S. Merwin
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  10. TopTop #370
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Good People

    From the kindness of my parents
    I suppose it was that I held
    that belief about suffering

    imagining that if only
    it could come to the attention
    of any person with normal
    feelings certainly anyone
    literate who might have gone

    to college they would comprehend
    pain when it went on before them
    and would do something about it
    whenever they saw it happen
    in the time of pain the present
    they would try to stop the bleeding
    for example with their own hands

    but it escapes their attention
    or there may be reasons for it
    the victims under the blankets
    the meat counters the maimed children
    the animals the animals
    staring from the end of the world

    - W.S. Merwin
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  11. TopTop #371
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tree

    It is foolish
    to let a young redwood
    grow next to a house.

    Even in this
    one lifetime,
    you will have to choose.

    That great calm being,
    this clutter of soup pots and books—

    Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
    Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  12. TopTop #372
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Waking

    Get up from your bed,
    go out from your house,
    follow the path you know so well,
    so well that you now see nothing
    and hear nothing
    unless something can cry loudly to you ,
    and for you it seems
    even then
    no cry is louder than yours
    and in your own darkness
    cries have gone unheard
    as long as you can remember.

    These are hard paths we tread
    but they are green
    and lined with leaf mould
    and we must love their contours
    as we love the body branching
    with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.

    I know that sometimes
    your body is hard like a stone
    on a path that storms break over,
    embedded deeply
    into that something that you think is you,
    and you will not move
    while the voice all around
    tears the air
    and fills the sky with jagged light.

    But sometimes unawares
    those sounds seem to descend
    as if kneeling down into you ‘and you listen strangely caught
    as the terrible voice moving closer
    halts,
    and in the silence
    now arriving
    whispers

    Get up, I depend
    on you utterly.
    Everything you need
    you had
    the moment before
    you were born.

    - David Whyte
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  13. TopTop #373
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Plums Failing Well

    So what if plums fall
    out of the tree, to lie
    squashed and decomposing
    on the earth? So what if
    the only attention they receive
    is from the ants and birds
    who find something in them
    to feed from still,
    all spayed and color changed?
    If they could breathe,
    do you think they would say
    more than so what?
    This is good, to live
    to the end as something
    to get taken. What was
    the ripeness for anyhow?
    Why should chromosomes blink
    and twitch inside the seed,
    the pit at the middle, the vast
    earth-shaped center of all
    of this? So what if we lie
    here or there as pith
    in the cold night where the owl
    hoots at the stirring that will
    compute into the dark color
    of that calling and the ground
    we leak into,
    small piece by small piece.

    - Linda Gregg
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  14. TopTop #374
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At This Moment

    And if I have nothing to say
    and all the words inside my brain
    are hollowed out, scraped clean, gone,
    then let nothingness stream forth
    in rows of blazing zeroes.

    Let emptiness be the still lake it is
    where I coast in my small boat
    fishing for the thing I cannot find,
    the lake where stones travel
    searching lifetimes for the bottom.

    Let silence come like animals
    in the dark mountain night,
    watchful yet unafraid, licking my body
    with tenderness the way a mother bear
    licks her cubs, less to clean them
    than to give them strength.

    Let the absent words dissolve
    before they're formed
    and the fret and strain of pulling
    one sentence toward the next
    slacken, until all that's left
    is something wild and musical,
    one note without speech.

    - Ethna McKiernan
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  15. TopTop #375
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

    When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
    Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
    Then all the unattended stress falls in
    On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

    The light in the mind becomes dim.
    Things you could take in your stride before
    Now become laborsome events of will.

    Weariness invades your spirit.
    Gravity begins falling inside you,
    Dragging down every bone.

    The ride you never valued has gone out.
    And you are marooned on unsure ground.
    Something within you has closed down;
    And you cannot push yourself back to life.

    You have been forced to enter empty time.
    The desire that drove you has relinquished.
    There is nothing else to do now but rest
    And patiently learn to receive the self
    You have forsaken for the race of days.

    At first your thinking will darken
    And sadness take over like listless weather.
    The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

    You have traveled too fast over false ground;
    Now your soul has come to take you back.

    Take refuge in your senses, open up
    To all the small miracles you rushed through.

    Become inclined to watch the way of rain
    When it falls slow and free.

    Imitate the habit of twilight,
    Taking time to open the well of color
    That fostered the brightness of day.

    Draw alongside the silence of stone
    Until its calmness can claim you.
    Be excessively gentle with yourself.

    Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
    Learn to linger around someone of ease
    Who feels they have all the time in the world.

    Gradually, you will return to yourself,
    Having learned a new respect for your heart
    And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

    - John O'Donohue
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  16. TopTop #376
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Wheel Revolves

    You were a girl of satin and gauze
    Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion.
    Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu I
    Written in his middle age.
    Young as I was they touched me.
    I never thought in my own middle age
    I would have a beautiful young dancer
    To wander with me by falling crystal waters,
    Among mountains of snow and granite,
    Least of all that unlike Po’s girl
    She would be my very daughter.

    The earth turns towards the sun.
    Summer comes to the mountains.
    Blue grouse drum in the red fir woods
    All the bright long days.
    You put blue jay and flicker feathers
    In your hair.
    Two and two violet green swallows
    Play over the lake.
    The blue birds have come back
    To nest on the little island.
    The swallows sip water on the wing
    And play at love and dodge and swoop
    Just like the swallows that swirl
    Under and over the Ponte Vecchio.
    Light rain crosses the lake
    Hissing faintly. After the rain
    There are giant puffballs with tortoise shell backs
    At the edge of the meadow.
    Snows of a thousand winters
    Melt in the sun of one summer.
    Wild cyclamen bloom by the stream.
    Trout veer in the transparent current.
    In the evening marmots bark in the rocks.
    The Scorpion curls over the glimmering ice field.
    A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets.
    Thunder growls far off.
    Our campfire is a single light
    Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls.
    The manifold voices of falling water
    Talk all night.
    Wrapped in your down bag
    Starlight on your cheeks and eyelids
    Your breath comes and goes
    In a tiny cloud in the frosty night.
    Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise.
    Ten thousand years revolve without change.
    All this will never be again.

    - Kenneth Rexroth
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  17. TopTop #377
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Well Rising

    The well rising without sound,
    the spring on a hillside,
    the plowshare brimming through deep ground
    everywhere in the field—

    The sharp swallows in their swerve
    flaring and hesitating
    hunting for the final curve
    coming closer and closer—

    The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
    counseling decision, decision:
    thunderous examples. I place my feet
    with care in such a world.

    - William Stafford
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  18. TopTop #378
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Milk from Chickens

    The day my son declared with hammerhead certainty
    that milk comes from chickens was the day
    I yanked him out of the city
    and drove west to farm and prairie land.

    Like a nail pried from hard wood, he complained
    from the back seat, missing electronic games and TV.
    Near the South Dakota border, he saluted
    a McDonald’s as we flew by.

    I wanted my boy to take a turn lifting
    barb wire to slip into open fields
    keeping an eye out for the crazy bull.
    I wanted him to hold a bottle for a lamb,

    to feel the fierceness of animal hunger,
    the suck of an animal mouth.
    I wanted him to sleep in darkness encoded
    with urgent messages of fireflies,

    to see the bright planets in alignment overhead,
    to stand on the graves of his grandparents,
    dead so many years before he was born,
    and to trace the names etched on granite pillows,

    hard as the last sleep.
    How else to plant in him the long root of plains grass,
    help him reach water in drought and
    know who his mother is?

    - Margaret Hasse
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  19. TopTop #379
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Compassion

    Have compassion for everyone you meet
    Even if they don't want it.

    What seems conceit, bad manners,
    Or cynicism is always a sign
    Of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.

    You do not know what wars are going on
    Down there where the spirit meets the bone.

    - Miller Williams
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  20. TopTop #380
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Praise of the Earth

    Let us bless
    The imagination of the Earth,
    That knew early the patience
    To harness the mind of time,
    Waited for the seas to warm,
    Ready to welcome the emergence
    Of things dreaming of voyaging
    Among the stillness of land.

    And how light knew to nurse
    The growth until the face of the Earth
    Brightened beneath a vision of color.

    When the ages of ice came
    And sealed the Earth inside
    An endless coma of cold,
    The heart of the Earth held hope,
    Storing fragments of memory,
    Ready for the return of the sun.

    Let us thank the Earth
    That offers ground for home
    And hold our feet firm
    To walk in space open
    To infinite galaxies.

    Let us salute the silence
    And certainty of mountains:
    Their sublime stillness,
    Their dream-filled hearts.

    The wonder of a garden
    Trusting the first warmth of spring
    Until its black infinity of cells
    Becomes charged with dream;
    Then the silent, slow nurture
    Of the seed's self, coaxing it
    To trust the act of death.

    The humility of the Earth
    That transfigures all
    That has fallen
    Of outlived growth.

    The kindness of the Earth,
    Opening to receive
    Our worn forms
    Into the final stillness.

    Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
    For all our sins against her:
    For our violence and poisonings
    Of her beauty.

    Let us remember within us
    The ancient clay,
    Holding the memory of seasons,
    The passion of the wind,
    The fluency of water,
    The warmth of fire,
    The quiver-touch of the sun
    And shadowed sureness of the moon.

    That we may awaken,
    To live to the full
    The dream of the Earth
    Who chose us to emerge
    And incarnate its hidden night
    In mind, spirit, and light.

    - John O'Donohue
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  21. TopTop #381
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Atavism

    1.
    Sometimes in the open you look up
    where birds go by, or just nothing,
    and wait. A dim feeling comes
    you were like this once, there was air,
    and quiet; it was by a lake, or
    maybe a river you were alert
    as an otter and were suddenly born
    like the evening star into wide
    still worlds like this one you have found
    again, for a moment, in the open.


    2.
    Something is being told in the woods: aisles of
    shadow lead away; a branch waves;
    a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
    path. A withheld presence almost
    speaks, but then retreats, rustles
    a patch of brush. You can feel
    the centuries ripple generations
    of wandering, discovering, being lost
    and found, eating, dying, being born.
    A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
    the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
    down a forest aisle is a strange, long
    plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
    For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
    wider than your mind, away out over everything.

    - William Stafford
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  22. TopTop #382
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Panning

    Have you ever wondered
    why,
    just when it seems
    that things are flying
    out of your control,
    you're headed to the edge,
    the waters calm
    and you come back to center?

    Or
    why,
    just when your life
    is feeling steady, balanced,
    on an even course,
    everything suddenly shifts,
    slides and sloshes to the side?

    Maybe god is panning for gold,
    looking for the bright bits
    among the dross.
    Do you really want
    to keep them hidden
    any longer?

    - Larry Robinson
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  23. TopTop #383
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reception

    They were sitting at their tables on the lawn
    when suddenly I saw them all
    in a line approaching a door that opened
    on a field that was also a lawn.
    I was in awe of the guests, the way
    they sat in the shadow of the door
    and sipped their drinks, the way
    they laughed and cried. I watched
    a Cessna fade into the sky
    as something that was there for a while
    in the form of pure idea, as something
    that would burn one day like a straw,
    but hummed for now in lieu of prayer
    then disappeared into a cloud.
    I saw the endless line of happy guests
    move along, move along,
    forgetting everything as they passed
    beneath a high dark beam
    into a field that was also a void.

    - Chard DeNiord
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  24. TopTop #384
    Richard Nichols's Avatar
    Richard Nichols
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Your Panning is a nice bit of the gold, thanks
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Panning

    Have you ever wondered
    why,
    just when it seems
    that things are flying
    out of your control,
    you're headed to the edge,
    the waters calm
    and you come back to center?

    Or
    why,
    just when your life
    is feeling steady, balanced,
    on an even course,
    everything suddenly shifts,
    slides and sloshes to the side?

    Maybe god is panning for gold,
    looking for the bright bits
    among the dross.
    Do you really want
    to keep them hidden
    any longer?

    - Larry Robinson
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  25. TopTop #385
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Green-Striped Melons

    They lie
    under stars in a field.
    They lie under rain in a field.
    Under sun.

    Some people
    are like this as well—
    like a painting
    hidden beneath another painting.

    An unexpected weight
    the sign of their ripeness.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  26. TopTop #386
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Glad

    In the glory of the gloaming-green soccer
    field her team, the Gladiators, is losing

    ten to zip. She never loses interest in
    the roughhouse one-on-one that comes

    every half a minute. She sticks her leg
    in danger and comes out the other side running.

    Later a clump of opponents on the street is chant-
    ing, WE WON, WE WON, WE . . . She stands up

    on the convertible seat holding to the wind-
    shield. WE LOST, WE LOST BIGTIME, TEN TO

    NOTHING, WE LOST, WE LOST. Fist pumping
    air. The other team quiet, abashed, chastened.

    Good losers don't laugh last; they laugh
    continuously, all the way home so glad.

    - Coleman Barks
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  27. TopTop #387
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change

    Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change
    is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
    The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
    by the side, but not the tracks.
    I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
    and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.

    Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
    near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
    is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
    The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

    Every Tuesday on Morales Street
    butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
    The widow in the tilted house
    spices her soup with cinnamon.
    Ask her what doesn’t change.

    Stars explode.
    The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
    The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

    The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
    but when it goes away, shrinking back
    from the walls of the brain,
    it takes something different with it every time.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  28. TopTop #388
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    O Taste and See

    The world is
    not with us enough
    O taste and see
    the subway Bible poster said,
    meaning The Lord, meaning
    if anything all that lives
    to the imagination’s tongue,
    grief, mercy, language,
    tangerine, weather, to
    breathe them, bite,
    savor, chew, swallow, transform
    into our flesh our
    deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
    living in the orchard and being
    hungry, and plucking
    the fruit.

    - Denise Levertov
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  29. TopTop #389
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    One Spark

    One spark can ignite a wild and raging fire
    falling onto dried tinder, too long apart from wetness.

    Spark turns to ember
    ember to flame
    flame to fire
    fire to ignition, initiation,
    immolation, or illumination.

    Another spark with self-same potential
    lands on hardened ground or moisture-laden soil
    and simply glows out, as if never burned.

    There is no fairness to this system.
    It happens, or it doesn’t, depending
    on a million factors of circumstance and environment,
    history and fate.

    Every spark contains the power
    and potential to burn down the world
    or illuminate a new one.


    - Lion Goodman
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  30. TopTop #390
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    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    An Oregon Message

    When we first moved here, pulled
    the trees in around us, curled
    our backs to the wind, no one
    had ever hit the moon—no one.
    Now our trees are safer than the stars,
    and only other people's neglect
    is our precious and abiding shell,
    pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.

    From our snug place we shout
    religiously for attention, in order to hide:
    only silence or evasion will bring
    dangerous notice, the hovering hawk
    of the state, or the sudden quiet stare
    and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.

    This message we smuggle out in
    its plain cover, to be opened
    quietly: Friends everywhere—
    we are alive! Those moon rockets
    have missed millions of secret
    places! Best wishes.

    Burn this.

    - William Stafford
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