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  1. TopTop #631
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Harvest of Thorns



    Whom are they arresting?

    Today, for the bomb in Times Square,

    the one that did not go off,

    except in people’s hearts

    and exploded faith - after calling us back

    from the borders of daily care

    to stand and watch in horror.

    Whom did they arrest?

    Not the insatiable hatred, not

    this misplaced

    passion, obsessed with righting

    wrongs at the expense of all

    that is

    right.

    Not the shadow of revenge,

    which knows no solace,

    runs from loving

    caresses, spits out the cloying taste

    of reconciliation.

    No, they never arrest the right one:

    that shadow fleeing

    over there, just now

    disappearing down the subway,

    rounding that corner, the one who

    has never yet been caught

    in all these millennia

    of wars, murderous martyrs,

    and lunacy.

    Each springs boxes him in,

    every butterfly is a bomber,

    fixing him in her sights,

    every child’s smile a vicious

    attack; only a cemetery feels

    like home to him.



    Such a strange universe, calling for help,

    holding so close to its heart

    this harvest of thorns.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  2. TopTop #632
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To A Terrorist

    For the historical ache, the ache passed down
    which finds its circumstance and becomes
    the present ache, I offer this poem

    without hope, knowing there's nothing,
    not even revenge, which alleviates
    a life like yours. I offer it as one

    might offer his father's ashes
    to the wind, a gesture
    when there's nothing else to do.

    Still, I must say to you:
    I hate your good reasons.
    I hate the hatefullness that makes you fall

    in love with death, your own included.
    Perhaps you're hating me now,
    I who own my own house

    and live in a country so muscular,
    so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
    only to mean well, and to protect.

    Christ turned his singular cheek,
    one man's holiness another's absurdity.
    Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

    the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
    to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
    doomed to become mere words.

    The first poet probably spoke to thunder
    and, for a while, believed
    thunder had an ear and a choice.

    - Stephen Dunn
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  3. TopTop #633
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Family Garden

    Tell me again about your garden
    Tell me how you planted, in the small
    flat of mountain land, corn seed

    and bean seed, how your finger poked the soil
    then you dropped in three dark bean seeds
    for every yellow seed of corn.

    Trees and mountains collared your land,
    but the fenced garden opened freely
    to sun and warm summer rains.

    Your potato rows bulged in July. You ached
    from digging them up, your hands down in dirt,
    the cool lump of a tuber, brown-spotted,

    just recovered, a greeting, like shaking hands.
    Baskets full of bumpy brown potatoes filled
    your basement until fall, until you gave

    away what you could, throwing out the rest.
    You gave away honey from the white hive too,
    that box of bees beside the garden,

    honey stored in Mason jars, a clearest honey
    nectar from lin tree blossoms and wild flowers.
    The bright taste of honey on the tongue

    spoke of the place, if a place can be known
    by the activity of bees and a flavor in the mouth,
    if a person can be known by small acts

    such as these, such as the way you rocked
    summer evenings from a chair on the porch
    tending your inner garden, eyes closed.

    - Hank Hudepohl
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  4. TopTop #634
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Lanyard

    The other day I was ricocheting slowly
    off the blue walls of this room,
    moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
    from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
    when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
    where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

    No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
    could send one into the past more suddenly—
    a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
    by a deep Adirondack lake
    learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
    into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

    I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
    or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
    but that did not keep me from crossing
    strand over strand again and again
    until I had made a boxy
    red and white lanyard for my mother.

    She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
    and I gave her a lanyard.
    She nursed me in many a sick room,
    lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
    laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
    and then led me out into the airy light

    and taught me to walk and swim,
    and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
    Here are thousands of meals, she said,
    and here is clothing and a good education.
    And here is your lanyard, I replied,
    which I made with a little help from a counselor.

    Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
    strong legs, bones and teeth,
    and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
    and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
    And here, I wish to say to her now,
    is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

    that you can never repay your mother,
    but the rueful admission that when she took
    the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
    I was as sure as a boy could be
    that this useless, worthless thing I wove
    out of boredom would be enough to make us even.



    - Billy Collins
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  5. TopTop #635
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Another Mother's Day poem:


    We Have A Beautiful Mother

    We have a beautiful
    Mother
    Her hills
    Are buffaloes
    Her buffaloes
    Hills.
    We have a beautiful
    Mother
    Her oceans
    Are wombs
    Her wombs
    Oceans.
    We have a beautiful
    Mother
    Her teeth
    The white stones
    At the edge
    Of the water
    The summer
    Grasses
    Her plentiful
    Hair.
    We have a beautiful
    Mother
    Her green lap
    Immense
    Her brown embrace
    Eternal
    Her blue body
    Everything we know.

    - Alice Walker
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  6. TopTop #636
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Whales Weep Not!*

    They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
    the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

    All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
    on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
    The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
    there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
    the sea!

    And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
    on the depths of the seven seas,
    and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
    and in the tropics tremble they with love
    and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
    Then the great bull lies up against his bride
    in the blue deep bed of the sea,
    as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
    and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
    the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
    comes to rest
    in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
    fathomless body.

    And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
    wonder of whales
    the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
    forth,
    keep passing, archangels of bliss
    from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
    that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
    sea
    great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

    And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
    tender young
    and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
    the beginning and the end.

    And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
    when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
    and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
    encircling their huddled monsters of love.
    And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
    where God is also love, but without words:
    and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
    most happy, happy she!

    and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
    she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
    she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
    and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
    - D.H. Lawrence
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  7. TopTop #637
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wired


    First She had to heave up mountains,
    then cool her blood with ice and wait
    a little while for rock to tumble
    shatter, allow her glacier plow
    to rake the valleys out, until
    the last few seconds, so they say,
    we came and settled, built dry walls
    up to the crags, scattered sheep to eat
    forest shoots, and so came pasture.

    And still her brooks course through
    her veins, lilting and sighing and
    spinning their ways into lake and sea
    as she tilts quietly
    ominous, egg-timer wired
    to our words, feelings, thoughts—
    weighing whether to flip it over
    or, like the show with too small
    an audience, simply close the stage.

    - Raphael Block
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  8. TopTop #638
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    It’s The Dream

    It’s the dream we carry
    that someting wondrous will happen,
    that it must happen -
    time will open
    mountains will open
    spring will gush forth from the ground -
    that the dream itself will open
    that one morning we’ll quietly drift
    into a harbor we didn’t know was there.

    - Olav H. Hauge
    (translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hadin)
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  9. TopTop #639
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Jump Rope Rhyme

    Tat tvam asi:
    thou art that -
    that leaf, that tree,
    that cow, that cat,
    that cloud, that sky,
    that moon, that sun,
    that you, that I -
    for all are one.
    So here you are
    and there you go
    and who you were
    you hardly know.

    I think this I
    is only me:
    a drip, a drop,
    but not the sea.
    Yet when I wake
    from all these dreams,

    then, like the snake,
    I'll shed what seems:
    this mask, this skin,
    this ball and chain.
    I will begin
    to fall like rain.

    Our heart's last home:
    the wind-whipped foam,
    the sweet, deep sea.
    Tat tvam asi.

    - Tom Hansen
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  10. TopTop #640
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bird of Paradise

    I know time flies
    because the days have wings
    They wake up and fly
    with or without me

    I know the days have wings
    because my heart beats
    It beats the way wings beat
    between two shores

    I know time has shores
    because my heart has wings
    And wings are made
    to reach the other shore

    - Clark Heinrich
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  11. TopTop #641
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Elephant Girl



    Elephant Girl just wanted to play; no;

    She wanted good work without undue stress;

    Feed the elephants without accidents;

    If there's an accident, call the Veterinarian;

    If not, then practice principles of elephant health.

    Stay in the game no matter what.

    Which game?

    She had a desire to go deeper,

    Merge with whatever it is

    That makes monks so cheerful

    With so very little stuff.

    - Connie Madden
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  12. TopTop #642
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Absence That Was The Tree

    Two men are cutting the dead maple down:
    limbs and branches first, then the trunk
    in sections, all the pieces scattered in piles
    on the ground out of which it grew.

    It's been released from its enormous weight.
    It's given us this gift of a new view--
    now the church and the woods
    across the road can stare back at us

    through where it stood and labored
    to guard our privacy. The regions
    of the sky the branches divided have merged
    back again into their undefined whole.

    All the nests have come crashing down.
    No longer will we hear bird song
    from the particular quarter: it will not
    serve as orientation or point of discussion.

    We remark about the extra light,
    the new distance its absence
    will afford, the extra breezes
    traveling through the opened gate.

    Death has a way of allowing us to see
    beyond where the body formerly stood.
    But we have come to love that body
    more than the space revealed behind it.

    All winter long we'll hack the remnants
    even smaller so they will fit our stove,
    where the tree will warm us in its next life. When
    it says farewell, it will be as smoke on the air.


    - Philip Terman
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  13. TopTop #643
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Before Summer Rain


    Suddenly, from all the green around you,
    something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
    you feel it creeping closer to the window,
    in total silence. From the nearby wood

    you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
    reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
    so much solitude and passion come
    from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

    will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
    away from us, cautiously, as though
    they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

    And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
    the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
    childhood hours when you were so afraid.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke

    (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
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  14. TopTop #644
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sparrow

    With its swift
    flick and plummet
    through the chrism
    of these first hours
    after the rain
    spraying droplets
    off its wingtips then
    scissoring past
    the phone lines
    into the blue
    distance of roofs
    and freeways
    how not see it as
    diving past
    all we slather
    onto the world
    diving past it
    the same way
    we survive
    our happiness
    and also: sorrow.

    - Peter Campion
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  15. TopTop #645
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To My Mother

    I was your rebellious son,
    do you remember? Sometimes
    I wonder if you do remember,
    so complete has your forgiveness been.

    So complete has your forgiveness been
    I wonder sometimes if it did not
    precede my wrong, and I erred,
    safe found, within your love,

    prepared ahead of me, the way home,
    or my bed at night, so that almost
    I should forgive you, who perhaps
    foresaw the worst that I might do,

    and forgave before I could act,
    causing me to smile now, looking back,
    to see how paltry was my worst,
    compared to your forgiveness of it

    already given. And this, then,
    is the vision of that Heaven of which
    we have heard, where those who love
    each other have forgiven each other,

    where, for that, the leaves are green,
    the light a music in the air,
    and all is unentangled,
    and all is undismayed.

    - Wendell Berry
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  16. TopTop #646
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Hardware Store As Proof of the Existence of God

    I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east
    like the steel woodpeckers of the future,
    and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,
    and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,
    and bins of hooks glittering into bees,

    and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,
    and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,
    and a company of plungers waiting for God
    to claim their thin legs in their big shoes
    and put them on and walk away laughing.

    In a world not perfect but not bad either
    let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,
    caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,
    and signs so spare a child may read them,
    Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware the Dog.

    In the right hands, they can work wonders.

    - Nancy Willard
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  17. TopTop #647
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Loneliest Job in the World
    As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?,
    you are completely screwed, because
    the next question is How Much?,

    and then it is hundreds of hours later,
    and you are still hunched over
    your flowcharts and abacus,

    trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
    This is the loneliest job in the world:
    to be an accountant of the heart.

    It is late at night. You are by yourself,
    and all around you, you can hear
    the sounds of people moving

    in and out of love,
    pushing the turnstiles, putting
    their coins in the slots,

    paying the price which is asked,
    which constantly changes.
    No one knows why.

    -Tony Hoagland
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  18. TopTop #648
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ancestors



    It was only possible to dismiss them —

    Yorkshire yeomen and women

    Of London who managed

    To meet and marry

    And not be thrown into prison

    Nor deported -- Cockneys

    Of a semi-certain legitimacy

    In the hurly of survival there.



    The docks of time

    Spread an ocean between them

    And where I sit, never to be old,

    Though I live to a hundred and four

    As some of them did.



    “Do you understand the strategy of the next pitch?

    What the batter’s talent is,

    Which out’s left,

    Who’s next up?”



    The focus of all of that, here, now,

    Eliminates the past with

    Tension on the future,

    And Pee Wee Reese and Oscar Wilde

    Are one in oblivion with who’s to come.



    I have no ancestors.

    And as for descendants,

    I have nothing to offer the future

    Which they cannot supply themselves.

    This writing flows black ink only

    Onto the lined paper of my heart.



    - Bruce Moody
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  19. TopTop #649
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I know the truth - give up all other truths!

    I know the truth - give up all other truths!
    No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
    Look - it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
    what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

    The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
    the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
    And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
    who never let each other sleep above it.

    - Marina Tsvetayeva
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  20. TopTop #650
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Inscription for the Door



    I have no enemies left,

    only some friends who are late.

    Come in, hang your coat

    beside the fire and pull a chair to its edge.

    We shall drink tea and clear the path

    leading back to the heart’s first address.

    You may have news of these nations beginning

    at last to revolve beside each other like seasons

    or word of the fires out of control south of us,

    where the poor are burning the lies keeping

    them poor.

    Why are those three ragged strangers still kneeling

    Over their ashes, invite them, bring them in,

    they can rest here beside this oven of bread.

    Children sleep in the corners, taking notes.

    A woman is dressing in the room overhead,

    her footsteps are tablets I open to sleep.

    The new wind is full of branches tonight,

    Leaving no holes in the darkness.

    Enter. I have no enemies left any more,

    0nly some friends who are late.

    - Eugene Ruggles
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  21. TopTop #651
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cemetery Poem

    Michelle finds me long past midnight, shoveling
    the grassy turf in our backyard, digging
    three feet by six, determined to dig further.
    And if she could love me enough
    to trust me, to not cover her mouth
    in shocked recognition, her hair lit up
    in moonlight; if she could simply shovel
    into the earth and dig another hole
    beside me, straining to bear the weight
    each blade lifts in its gunmetal sheen,
    then maybe, if she could trust like that
    she’d begin to see them — the war dead,
    how they stand under lime trees and ash,
    here among us, papyrus and stone in their hands.
    There will be no dreaming for me.
    Not tonight. I dig without stopping and tell her—
    We need to help them, if only with a coffin.
    Michelle stares out at these blurry figures
    in silhouette, the very young and the very old
    among them, and with a gentle hand
    she stays the shovel I hold, to say —
    We should invite them into our home.
    We should learn their names, their history.
    We should know these people
    we bury in the earth.

    - Brian Turner
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  22. TopTop #652
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cancer Prayer

    Dear God
    Please flood her nerves with sedatives
    and keep her strong enough to crack a smile
    so disbelieving friends and relatives
    can temporarily sustain denial.
    Please smite that intern in oncology
    who craves approval from department heads.
    Please ease her urge to vomit, let there be
    kind but flirtatious men in nearby beds.
    Given her hair, consider amnesty
    for sins of vanity; make mirrors vanish.
    Surround her with forgiving family
    and nurses not too numb to cry. Please banish
    trite consolations; take her in one swift
    and gentle motion as your final gift.

    - Michael Astriee
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  23. TopTop #653
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Was it Writ?

    Was it writ that first
    She set her winds to whistle
    spiraling round, bringing all weathers;
    second, through mist, fog and fern
    sortied the soft whistling owl;
    third, shepherd intoned to his sharp-eared friend
    fetching the lost from bog and fen;
    fourth, thundered our jets;
    fifth, deafening silence?
    Sixth, ructions and ripples convulse!

    Or might we
    funnel absolute energies,
    swiveling like a deer's ears
    towards the source of sounds?

    Furies calm;
    quakes subside;
    walls of hate crack.
    We laugh at our pettiness.
    A never-before-dance
    begins to spin.

    - Raphael Block
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  24. TopTop #654
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    More Blues and the Abstract Truth

    I back the car over a soft, large object;
    hair appears on my chest in dreams.
    The paperboy comes to collect
    with a pit bull. Call Grandmother
    and she says, Well you know
    death is death and none other.

    In the mornings we’re in the dark;
    even at the end of June
    the zucchini keep on the sill.
    Ring Grandmother for advice
    and she says, O you know
    I used to grow so many things.

    Then there’s the frequent bleeding,
    the tender nipples, and the rot
    under the floormat. If I’m not seeing
    a cold-eyed doctor it is
    another gouging mechanic.
    Grandmother says, Thanks to the blue rugs
    and Eileen Briscoe’s elms
    the house keeps cool.

    Well. Then. You say Grandmother
    let me just ask you this:
    How does a body rise up again and rinse
    her mouth from the tap. And how
    does a body put in a plum tree
    or lie again on top of another body
    or string a trellis. Or go on drying
    the flatware. Fix rainbow trout. Grout the tile.
    Buy a bag of onions. Beat an egg stiff. Yes,
    how does the cat continue
    to lick itself from toenail to tailhole.
    And how does a body break
    bread with the word when the word
    has broken. Again. And. Again.
    With the wine. And the loaf.
    And the excellent glass
    of the body. And she says,
    Even. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling.
    My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom.

    - C. D. Wright
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  25. TopTop #655
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

    So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
    And took the fire with him, and a knife.
    And as they sojourned both of them together,
    Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
    Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
    But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
    Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
    And builded parapets and trenches there,
    And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
    When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
    Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
    Neither do anything to him, thy son.
    Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
    A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

    But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
    And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

    - Wilfred Owen

    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) spent much of his short, adult life as a volunteer soldier for the British military during World War I. He wrote vivid and terrifying poems about modern warfare. Owen was killed by machinegun fire just days before the end of the war.
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  26. TopTop #656
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    THE PRISONER
    (In Memory of My Father's Fallen B-29 Crew)

    I am the age his mother was
    when the telegram came.
    I open the crumbling envelope
    and find it there.
    I am her again as I
    read those bold
    black words:
    "So sorry,
    the plane was lost,
    shot down over Manchuria.
    Your son is missing,
    and presumed dead.
    Many regrets."

    I see him before me
    as he left for the war,
    handsome and young -
    a farm boy
    full of his bravery
    yet hay-field green.
    They all looked like that -
    happy and cock-sure
    in brown leather jackets
    hats off to the side
    fighting for the greatest country on earth
    fighting for freedom.
    But the ones who
    will never come home
    are already marked.

    For fifty years my father
    has tried to understand
    why he was blown from the plane,
    why his life was saved
    and others perished.

    It is 4 a.m. - I tell my father
    to turn off his radio,
    but the war wounds are
    playing an all-night chess game
    on his exiled body,
    advancing across him
    like the bombers that day
    over Manchuria.

    And he is listening
    for news of his safety,
    for Russians coming to
    liberate Mukden prisoners of war,
    for his release.

    He is listening,
    just as his mother did
    every night for nine months
    after the telegram came.


    - Jackie Huss Hallerberg
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  27. TopTop #657
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Today I Was Happy, So I Made This Poem

    As the plump squirrel scampers
    Across the roof of the corncrib,
    The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
    And I see that it is impossible to die.
    Each moment of time is a mountain.
    An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven,
    Crying,
    This is what I wanted.

    - James Wright
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  28. TopTop #658
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    It Was Like This: You Were Happy


    It was like this:
    you were happy, then you were sad,
    then happy again, then not.

    It went on.
    You were innocent or you were guilty.
    Actions were taken, or not.

    At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
    Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

    Now it is almost over.

    Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

    It does this not in forgiveness—
    between you, there is nothing to forgive—
    but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
    he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

    Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

    It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
    or your days: they will be wrong,
    they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
    all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

    Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
    you slept, you awakened.
    Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

    - Jane Hirshfield
    Last edited by Larry Robinson; 06-04-2010 at 08:01 AM.
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  29. TopTop #659
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Future

    For God's sake, be done
    with this jabber of "a better world."
    What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
    twit or child thereof ever
    in embodied light will see
    a better world than this.
    Do something! Go cut the weeds
    beside the oblivious road. Pick up
    the cans and bottles, old tires,
    and dead predictions. No future
    can be stuffed into this presence
    except by being dead. The day is
    clear and bright, and overhead
    the sun not yet half finished
    with his daily praise.

    - Wendell Berry
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  30. TopTop #660
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Invitation to the Dance

    In the story my father tells
    he's running up the marble staircase
    at the Boston Music Hall, a young man
    late for the concert-
    decked out in his coat
    and best tie, though earlier today
    he's been to the burlesque house,
    then counted his change for a doughnut,

    saving just enough for the symphony,
    the train-fare home.
    How tall he is, and slim, his face
    the same thin face I wore at 17
    and his hair is nearly black,
    flying up from his forehead
    as he takes the stairs, two, three at once;

    and if I could hold him fast at any moment
    this would be it-not the thrill of first sex
    not the complex joy of marriage,
    not the morning of my birth-but as he is
    here, now-quick enough to catch the melody,
    late enough to move with it, keep time with it,
    running with all his life before him
    and the world filled with music.

    - Martha Carlson-Bradley
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