Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

It Was A Pretty Big Year


It was a pretty big year for predators.
The marketplace was on a roll.
And the land of opportunity,
Spawned a whole new breed of men without souls.
This year, notoriety got all confused with fame.
And the devil is downhearted,
Because there’s nothing left for him to claim.
He said, “it’s just like home,
“It’s so low-down, I can’t stand it,
“I guess my work around here has all been done.”
And the fruit is rotten,
The serpent’s eyes shine,
As he wraps around the vine.
In the Garden of Allah.


- Don Henley
(“The Garden of Allah” - 1995)

[Larry Robinson]

Unwritten Note


The news is on everyone's lips
like flies gathering on excrement:
President Roosevelt has ordered


our removal. Will we be
taken from our homes like vermin?
I know it must be a misunderstanding,


gossip spread in these
harsh times. I choke
on acrid laughter.


It is not possible.
After all, I served
my chosen country in the Army,


in the Great War. So I go to see
my longtime friend and sheriff
of Monterey County.


It is no joke, Hideo. You'll have to go.
He can't look me in the eyes.
When he finds my body hung


in this rented room, with
my certificate of honorary citizenship
expressing honor and respect


for your loyal and splendid
service to the country,
he will understand why


I could not allow
this noble country to tarnish
its honor, or mine.


- Jodi Hottel

[Larry Robinson]

On Prayer You ask me how to pray to someone who is not. All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard, Above landscapes the color of ripe gold Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun. That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal Where everything is just the opposite and the word is Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned. Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately, Feels compassion for those tangled in the flesh And knows that if there is no other shore We will walk that aerial bridge all the same. - Czeslaw Milosz (translated by Robert Hass)

[Larry Robinson]

This Ecstasy It’s not paradise I’m looking for but the naming I hardly gave a thought to. Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness among the animals before I started listening to the news. Call it the hint I had about the knowledge that would explode. In the meantime, which is real time plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt and speaking French, which is more than I can take, which I marvel at like a boy from the most distant seat in the Kronos Dome, where I am one of so many now I see the point of falling off. There’s not enough seats for us all to attend the eschaton. This ecstasy that plants beauty on my tongue, so that if it were a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness of a hummingbird and grace of a heron, is so much mercy in light of the darkness that comes. Who would say consolation? Who would say dross? Not that anyone would blame them. All night I hear so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted to look back, to save myself in hindsight, where all I see is the absence of me. Where all I hear is your voice, which couldn’t be more strange. How to go on walking hand in hand without our bodies on the path we made for our feet, talking, talking? - Chard deNiord

[Larry Robinson]

Of The Empire


We will be known as the culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.


- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Before The Men's Retreat




She asks: “What is it?”
And I say: “100 men naked in the woods.”
She wrinkles her nose and says: “No clothes?”
And I say: “Sometimes.”
And she says: “What do you do?”
I say: First we removed the coat of corporate soldier, of worker
bee, of boss, of coach, of business owner.
Then we pull off the jacket of marriage.
Toss aside the shoes of parenthood.
The umbrella of son.
The backpack of friend.
The helmet of hero, savior, tough guy.
We pull from our pockets the mantle of lady’s man, lover,
slayer of the weaker sex.
We check in our charm and toss away the pants of romance.
All the roles and expectations we carry about in our
lives, we leave behind like a pile of clothes on the floor.”
She says: “On the floor? That’s what I thought. Then you’re naked?”
Says I: “Not yet. We promise not to engage in physical violence,
then we strip off unnecessary civilization. Toss it in the
pile with all the rest.”
She: “Then you’re naked.”
I: “No. We still hold onto our tattered dysfunctions and
threadbare beliefs like a 10 year old pair of bikini briefs.
That’s the last thing, but we hold fast, because, you know,
those stinking little lies and truths, that stained and
shredded pair of underwear held our life together for 10,
20, 40 years. And only when we can toss that old thing away
are we truly naked”
She blinks and says: “So it’s 100 men in the woods in tattered
underwear.”
I say: “Yes. But over the course of the week, it washes away in
the realm of ritual. Blown away by the breath of spirit.
Cracked open under the scrutiny and support of men. Pried
off by the power of story.”
She stares at me, silent, and then: “Why? ... Why do you do it?”
I say: “So we can see what’s left. That’s us. Naked. We can
hardly recognize ourselves, but that’s who we are. It’s
blinding. Dazzling. Beautiful. Very painful, but very real.
We walk with it. Work with it. Sing songs to honor and
protect it. Wounds are revealed, healed, become our
strength and our shield. Internal lands are explored.
Monsters are banished. And in the end, we bring some
of all this back into life, even as we put our clothes back on.”
She shifts and settles, ponders and pads about the room, then
smiles and says: “Well have a good time then.”


- Greg Kimura

[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

[Attic]

The Parable of the Old Men and the Young is a poem by Wilfred Owen which compares the ascent of Abraham to Mount Moriah and his near-sacrifice of Isaac there with the start of World War I. It had first been published by Siegfried Sassoon in 1920 with the title The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, without the last line "And half the seed of Europe, one by one".^[1]

The poem is an allusion to a story in the Bible, Genesis 22:1-18.

In the poem, the biblical patriarch Abraham (significantly called by his former name, Abram, in the poem) takes Isaac—his only begotten son by his wife Sarah—with him to make a sacrificial offering to God. The offering, though Isaac does not know this, is to be Isaac himself. "Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps", which suggests imagery relating to a young soldier being sent, possibly against his will, in a uniform to fight. When he makes to sacrifice his son, an angel calls from heaven, and tells Abram not to harm Isaac. Instead, he must offer the "Ram of Pride". Then follow the last two lines of the poem diverges from the Biblical account, set apart for greater effect: "But the old man would not so, but slew his son, / and half the seed of Europe, one by one."

"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young" is written loosely in iambic pentameter. It does not use traditional rhyme; instead, the lines are bound together by assonance, consonance, and alliteration.

As the title mentions, the poem is a parable. It is generally accepted that the old man, Abram, represents the European nations or more probably their governments. Another less common opinion is that he represents Germany or Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom some would claim started the war. However, Owen does not blame any individual nation or person in any of his other poems, so there is no reason to believe that he does so in this one. Rather, he condemns all those in power who took their countries to war.

According to the poem, the rulers of Europe believed that sacrificing their nations' (Ram of) Pride was too high a price, yet the irony is that the real cost of this Pride was millions of dead—the seed of Europe.

The last two lines are the only ones that rhyme, and the image they paint is chilling: an old man methodically killing the seed of Europe. It is mainly the power of this image, set out in the poem and culminating in the last two lines, that makes it haunting.

The poem is among those set in the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten.

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

["Mad" Miles]

Larry,

I rarely, pretty much never, intrude on this thread of yours. And I prefer that others resist the urge as well (with the proximate exception of Attic who provided very informative information!).

But since I shared your referral of Wilfred Owen's poem on my FB today, and have taught, and hope to teach again, his nonpareil poem, "Dulce et decorum est".

Here it is:

Wilfred Owen


Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


_____________________________________________________________________

How do we honor fallen Warriors? Stop fighting wars. Especially ones of choice based on lies and selfish interest. Truly defensive wars? That's a more difficult question. Most wars, are not defensive. Especially, but not exclusively, modern American (U.S.) ones. They're aggressive.

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

[Larry Robinson]

Point Reyes—wild oats in the wind
for JQ

As if it were the holy spirit
engulfing me,
as if I even knew
the nature of such a thing,
as if I might even be able to tell you
the mystery of a moment that pushed me
to the very edge of . . . of . . . something,
calling loudly without words for me to simply open up—all the way . . .

We stood together in silence,
in the midst of things,
on the headlands, high above the surf,
a dusty trail beneath our feet
crisscrossed from time to time
by slow moving, shinny black beetles,
while stationery, high above our heads
a hawk lay just beneath the cold gray blanket
that covered everything on this tiny slip of land
sliding northward, sliding always northward.
And everywhere it was wind—
the air moved, ruffled clothes and tousled hair,
made soft staccato pops and flutters in our ears
that almost hid from them
an exquisite, near silent song.

Had we not seen the wild oats dancing,
delicately dangling their tiny, hull-covered seeds,
atop straight golden stalks,
that bent down in the wind,
as if to say, namaste, to everything,
lightly touching one another, then,
like bows and strings—
had we not seen them dancing so,
we would have missed their music,
their heavenly music,
the intricacy of which,
the joy of which
went well beyond
what human hand
could make
or these human words
describe.

Oh, the wind and the song of the wild oats!
- Bill Denham

[Larry Robinson]

WAVING GOOD-BYE

A new suitcase in one hand,
car keys in the other and finally
off to college for the first time.

Looking back past the walnut tree
a last glance at the old house
his family still waving good-bye
good-bye from behind
the screened-in porch.

Shifting gears on Main Street,
thinking of things left behind
his old room and a medal from track
closet full of memories and old clothes
all still too good
to give away.

Homecoming for the thanksgiving feast
stunned at the bareness of his room
just one change of socks and underwear remaining
in the top right drawer of the otherwise
empty chest.

Staring down the hallway at Christmas,
past the presents and the lighted tree
he saw his room was gone.
the doorway and the door...
across from his little brother's room.

At spring break under the walnut tree
staring again at the screened-in porch
he was certain
the house was gone.

Trying one last time in June
the porch was gone
the tree was gone
Main Street no where
to be found.

Driving away past his disappearing high school
he wondered was there a medal?
Had he ever had a brother?

Clutching the wheel in front
he knew he'd better hurry
his road disappearing,
his town disappearing, and
was that his life
slowly waving good-bye
good-bye
in his rear view mirror?

- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

Healing From Cancer She lay still in the broken water of her tenderness. In every way the Cloud of Unknowing swept about her. With all due haste, waves of wholeness broke over her, blue and softly, Organ notes of roses papering surfaces all around her. Leaves whispered her name. With no fear and all trembling, she fell deep into wellness Coming finally back into her own life polished and fine Much as a babe enters into the bright world blinking from her cave of sustenance. - Kalia Mussetter

[Larry Robinson]

Salt

I thought of kneeling. I thought of cold
monastery stone and the red velvet cushions
at the communion rail -- a reverence
history could not contain.

What is history? -- the bones of a dead mouse.
His scarred face was the first mystery. Six
veils to reach the dark pulse of his arm --
Salome dancing for John the Baptist’s head.

I have found God in the least likely places --
the dog sleeping beside my chair
is inhabited by God. I could go into the street
and tell everyone God sleeps in my house

in the body of a dog! Who would believe me?
You have your own moments.
I too have lain in the night
beside my lover and heard God breathing.

Intention was the second mystery.
When my father died
his skin was like Michelangelo’s marble,
his veins the hidden rivers that sustained him

through five children, two wives, deaths, wars
even prison. Under the skin
where the blue vein pulsed, I saw
my grandmother’s heart flutter.

I leaned toward the pale gate
of the scarred stranger’s elbow, my tongue
reverent to the taste of salt.
The impulse to worship is always there.

It is the diamond in the water, the deer
last night, dreamily over the fence in the fog
for the shimmering lick in the field.

- Elizabeth Herron

[Larry Robinson]

A Scientist's Acrostic

Scientists are like beetles
Crawling over the earth, antennae twitching,
In tune with the mysteries
Einstein whispered under a star-polished
Night sky. He chose the celestial playground by
Convention-even logic, as beetles know, can be
Enhanced by beauty.

Illumination dawns after years of
Scratching through dark leaves, dirt.

Lying on one's back, legs flailing,
Is temporary, and not, as some imagine
Fundamental failure or
Even such a bad thing.


- Jennifer Gresham

[Dixon]

Nice one, Larry (and Ms. Gresham)! For those who don't know what an acrostic is, it means a message "hidden" in a poem (or other writing) such that you read it by reading DOWN the page rather than across. So in the poem above, reading down the first letter of each line says "SCIENCE IS LIFE". Acrostics are fun, and I recommend that those of you who enjoy such things try writing some, but it's difficult to write a good one, especially a poem containing two (or, heathen forbid, even more) acrostics, and more especially if you're making the lines rhyme too. I wrote a double-acrostic sonnet once for the Wergle Flomp poetry contest (a fun contest which gives cash prizes for the poems deemed most wonderfully bad!). My entry was about "vanity" poetry websites--sites that tell everyone their crappy poem is wonderful as a way to get them to buy collections of that crappy poetry and other stuff. My poem contains two acrostics ridiculing the vanity sites. These hidden messages are in the first letter and fourth letter of each line:

Sonnet with Two Acrostics

What drek is this? Who published it, and why?
Hath not the editor performed his task?
And is this not some kind of scam, I ask,
This poet’s purse to open with a lie?

Raise glasses for a toast, or to your eyes,
And imitate the doggerel you’ve heard.
Now there’s another literary turd.
Knee-deep in excrement, we seek a prize.

Diss not the hack the windmills of whose mind,
Rent thus asunder, quest yet for the Muse,
In simple rhymes like Eminem might use,
Vain verses which, like rotten grain, they grind.
Ere kaching! go registers of cash,
Let’s see this website print and sell this trash!

-- Dixon Wragg

[winks@sonic.net]

That post was enjoyeD
How much...lots, say I
And throw into the miX
No shortage of wry.. humor, and O
Know you’re read daily, maN
So Dixon, dear poet, write on, wragg on!

Nice one, Larry (and Ms. Gresham)! For those who don't know what an acrostic is, it means a message "hidden" in a poem (or other writing) such that you read it by reading DOWN the page rather than across. So in the poem above, reading down the first letter of each line says "SCIENCE IS LIFE". Acrostics are fun, and I recommend that those of you who enjoy such things try writing some, but it's difficult to write a good one, especially a poem containing two (or, heathen forbid, even more) acrostics, and more especially if you're making the lines rhyme too. I wrote a double-acrostic sonnet once for the Wergle Flomp poetry contest (a fun contest which gives cash prizes for the poems deemed most wonderfully bad!). My entry was about "vanity" poetry websites--sites that tell everyone their crappy poem is wonderful as a way to get them to buy collections of that crappy poetry and other stuff. My poem contains two acrostics ridiculing the vanity sites. These hidden messages are in the first letter and fourth letter of each line:

Sonnet with Two Acrostics

What drek is this? Who published it, and why?
Hath not the editor performed his task?
And is this not some kind of scam, I ask,
This poet’s purse to open with a lie?

Raise glasses for a toast, or to your eyes,
And imitate the doggerel you’ve heard.
Now there’s another literary turd.
Knee-deep in excrement, we seek a prize.

Diss not the hack the windmills of whose mind,
Rent thus asunder, quest yet for the Muse,
In simple rhymes like Eminem might use,
Vain verses which, like rotten grain, they grind.
Ere kaching! go registers of cash,
Let’s see this website print and sell this trash!

-- Dixon Wragg

[Dixon]

Very nice indeed, Christine--but I might be biased ;^D

That post was enjoyeD
How much...lots, say I
And throw into the miX
No shortage of wry.. humor, and O
Know you’re read daily, maN
So Dixon, dear poet, write on, wragg on!

[Larry Robinson]

Greed


Hope is the deaf man who has often heard of our dying,
but hasn't heard of his own death or contemplated his own end.

The blind man is Greed: he sees the faults of others,
hair by hair, and broadcasts them from street to street,


but of his own faults his blind eyes perceive nothing.
The naked man fears his cloak will be pulled off,


but how could anyone take the cloak of one who is naked?
The worldly man is destitute and terrified:


he possesses nothing, yet he dreads thieves.
When death comes, everyone around him is lamenting,


while his own spirit begins to laugh at his fear.
At that moment the rich man knows he has no gold,
and the keen-witted man sees that talent does not belong to him.


- Jellaludin Rumi


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Kar Amal-râ dân keh marg-e mâ shenid
marg-e khvod na-shenid va naql-e khvod na-did
Hers nâ-biyânast binad mu be-mu
`ayb-e khalqân va be-guyad ku be-ku
`Ayb-e khvod yek zarreh cheshm-e kur-e u
mi na-binad garcheh hast u `ayb ju
`Ur mi tarsad keh dâmânesh be-ranad
dâman-e mard-e barahneh kay darand
Mard-e donyâ mofles ast va tars-nâk
hich u-râ nist az dozdânesh bâk
Vaqt-e margesh keh bovad sad nawheh pish
khandeh âyad jânesh-râ zin tars-e khvish
n zamân dânad ghani kesh nist zar
ham zaki dânad keh bod u bi honar


-- Mathnawi III:2628-2635
Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
"Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance"
Threshold Books, 1996
(Persian transliteration courtesy of Yahyá Monastra)

[Larry Robinson]

Falcon Moon



From the glow of dawn a moon appeared
It swept from the sky—speared me with its eyes

With me in its talons, to the sky it soared--
Like a hawk which snatches a songbird by force

I glanced at myself--no me to be seen
The moon of mercy pared my body to a soul

Formless I flew, just seeing the moon--
The moon, and the world lit in its gleam

In the soul I traveled, with the moon as my beacon
Lay bare the secret of the time before time

Sky, and then sky, all merged with the moon
The raft that is me was drowned in the sea

Without the force of that Sunburst of Shams
Neither the moon nor the sea can be seen.


- Jelalludin Rumi
Ghazal 19
(Translation by Shantanu Phukan)






Falcon Moon

Dar Charkh-e sahargah yaki mah ayan shud
Vaz charkh bazer amad o bar ma nigran shud

Chun baz ke birbayad murghi ba-gahe said
Birbud mara an mah o bar charkh ravan shud

Dar khud chun nazar kardam, khud ra banadidam
Zeera ke dar an mah tanamaz lutf chun jan shud

Dar jan chun safar kardam juz mah nadidam
Ta sirr-e tajalliye azal jumle bayan shud

Na charkh-e falakjumle dar an mah firo shud
Kashtiyye vujudam hame dar bahr-e nihan shud

An bahr bazad mauj o khirad baz bar amad
V-avaz dar afgand, chunin gasht o chunan shud

An bahr kafi kard ba har pareh az an kaf
Naqshi zi falan amad o jismi zi fulan shud

Be daulate makhdumiye shams al haqi tabrez
Nai mah tavan didan, o nai bahr tavan shud

[Larry Robinson]

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and
barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green
and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to
awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high
hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.


- Dylan Thomas

[Larry Robinson]

Ice Cream Truck Mystery


Every summer night, although the fog turns
evenings cool in Northern California,
one dilapidated ice cream truck,
pink as the strawberry
in a block of Neapolitan,
putts down my street.

Its driver is an old man in a turban,
quite serene,
whom I make out to be a Sikh.
Its tune the traditional:
“Turkey in the Straw,”
always of mysterious relevance to ice cream,
which repeats on a calliope
with a monotony like migraine.

I have never known a soul to buy his goods:
not parent, child, the adolescent boys
out shooting baskets in the neighbor’s driveway
nor the girls next door
pretending not to watch the boys.

And so I’d like to think
this is the ice cream truck of evening prayer:
his one last daily meditation on
the Omnipresent in all neighborhoods.
He practices compassion and good will
in the face of apathy and bad music,
careful of the children,
circumventing potholes,
ego, anger, lust, attachment, greed.

As stars come out
in the branches of the bo trees,
alone as Jesus,
riding in his pink mystery,
this one man’s caravan drives by,
recalling the Unknowable
for all of us.

- Laurie Kirkpatrick

[Larry Robinson]

Feathered Alignment


When gun point ideologies
breathe their final blood stained sigh
and the glare of mourning the broken world
fades to a darkling pink
the way white petals sometimes do

When greed has crushed the last bed of ferns
held in feathered alignment
by only a faintly wind in the once was forest
will you remember then to love the child
whose no machine and inborn tongue
could lead us home?


- Cynthia Poten

[Larry Robinson]

I Have News for You




There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood


and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.


There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable


and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings


do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives


as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;


and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.


Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,


who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.


Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.


I have news for you-
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room


and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.


- Tony Hoagland

[Larry Robinson]

Ode to the Oat


Ah, most noble oat,
How grand a grain you are!
The stuff of brawn and bone,
of Scottish Highlander.


Your golden seeds
are pummeled flat,
and soaked and cooked as meal.
Stick to the ribs
(and pots and bowls) . . .
Endurance is so real!


The rosy glow
of children's cheeks
Betrays the breakfast grain.
A good day's start
will last two weeks
before they eat again.


- Karl Frederick

[Larry Robinson]

Constant


We live for constants,
Rain in winter, the cat
Curled like a furry comma
On the edge of the bed.


Sometimes, many times
These don’t come, instead
There is drought, the father dies,
The mother grows old.


The constant is this:
The mind insists, persists in the insane
Circle of creation from chaos.
Make order of mystery.


“Listen to me,” it shouts.
So we listen.
Constant chatter, constant need
Growing like a curse.


The constant is this:
Life is chaos, disintegration, blooming
Anew into order and collapsing
Again to blossom into something more perfect,
Then chaos, disintegration and on.


We watch helplessly, entranced
Like the magician’s audience,
The hypnotist’s mark.


Nothing to do but join hands,
Bow heads, say blessings
To the capricious, wild
original god.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

A Blessing for a Wedding
Today when persimmons ripen
Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
Today when windows keep their promise to open
Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
Today when someone you love has died
or someone you never met has died
Today when someone you love has been born
or someone you will not meet has been born
Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
Today, let this light bless you
With these friends let it bless you
With snow-scent and lavender bless you
Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days
- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

Honey At The Table

It fills you with the soft
essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
a trickle soft as a hair that you follow
from the honey pot over the table


and out the door and over the ground,
and all the while it thickens,


grows deeper and wilder, edged
with pine boughs and wet boulders,
pawprints of bobcat and bear, until


deep in the forest you
shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,


you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
bits of the tree, crushed bees — a taste
composed of everything lost, in which everything
lost is found.


- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

I will be traveling until mid-July so this will be the last poem I post until I return. May you all stay safe and at ease.
Larry


Start Close In

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way of starting
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people's questions,
don't let them
smother something
simple.

To find
another's voice
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes a
private ear
listening
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don't follow
someone else's
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don't mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don't take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step you don't want to take.



- David Whyte

[Barry]

On behalf of myself and the many Waccos who are nourished and inspired by the poems you share with us daily, thank you, Larry, thank you!

May your travels be full of wonder!

I will be traveling until mid-July so this will be the last poem I post until I return. May you all stay safe and at ease.
Larry

[Larry Robinson]

The Return


Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.


Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces


of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.


Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.


If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,


you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.


And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you've returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies


and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear


your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.


- Geneen Marie Haugen

[Barry]

Welcome back, Larry! No prickly questions here! Just gratitude!

The Return

Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey..

[Larry Robinson]

Soul And The Old Woman

What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awareness,
the deeper the soul, and when

such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around. It’s
so simple to tell one who

puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from
the real thing. We know the taste

of pure water. Words can sound like a poem but not have
any juice, no flavor to

relish. How long do you look at pictures on a latrine
wall? Soul is what draws

you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman
who sits outside by the door

in the sun. She’s half blind, but she has what soul loves
to flow into. She’s kind, she weeps.

She makes quick personal decisions and laughs so easily.


- Jellaludin Rumi
( translated by Coleman Barks)

[Larry Robinson]

Bouganvillea


I like the inner lives of the silverware; the fork,
the spoon, the knife. I appreciate
how they each have a different reference toward
god, how the fork is Muslim,
the spoon, like a stone, is Buddhist, how the knife
is Roman Catholic—
always worried, always having
a hard time forgiving people, the knife kneeling
down in Ireland and Africa. In San Francisco
my lamp has become a temple.
Every time I turn it on the light moves out across
the room like a meditation,
like a bell or a robe
the way it covers everything and doesn’t want to
kill. Light is the husband
and everything it touches is its bride, the floor,
the wall, my body,
the bronze installation in Hayes Valley
its bride. The lamp chants
and my clothes, my hat thrown in the corner of the room
chants back: nothing, nothing. In my next life
I’ll have no fingers, no toes. In my next life I’ll be
a bougainvillea. A Buddhist monk
will wake up early on Sunday morning and not be a fork
and not be a knife, he will look down at the girl
sleeping in his bed like a body of water,
he will think about how
he lifted her up like a spoon to his mouth all night, and walk
into the courtyard and pick up the shears
and cut a little part of me, and lie me down next to her mouth
which is breathing heavily and changing all the dark in the room to light.


- Matthew Dickman

[Larry Robinson]

Sligo Glen: Walking Out Of Silence


And then, after,
when you'd turned back
by the way you came,
back toward
the mouth of the Glen
you'd entered
noisiliy just an hour before,
calling to the others
and you reached again,
but this time alone
the invisible line
where
you could mark exactly
when you began to hear
the sounds of the road
and the machines and the blank
cries of everyday commerce,
so that for a moment you could
retrace that one single step
back into the Glen
and immerse yourself
instantly
in the quiet
source of revelation
you had felt
only a moment before,


as if under water,
as if slipping back
into the river
of silence running between
the tree lined walls
and then you could practice
leaving and
returning in your own body,
through your own breath,
inward and outward,
descending and
entering and reentering the silence
and shelter of your own
narrow valley of aloneness,
from interiority
to conversation
and back.


So that you suddenly realized
you were given
the complete and utter gift
of your own transparency,


the revelation of your
own ex act boundary with
the world.


The frontier
between silence and speech
exactly
the line you must cross
to give yourself
while saving yourself,


the gleam in your heart
and your eye,
another sun rising,
the old memories alive
after a long night of absence
and the world again
suddenly worth
risking,
worth seeing,
worth innocence,
worth everything.


- David Whyte

[meherc]

God, I love poetry.

Sligo Glen: Walking Out Of Silence


And then, after,
when you'd turned back
by the way you came,
back toward
the mouth of the Glen
you'd entered
noisiliy just an hour before,
calling to the others
and you reached again,
but this time alone
the invisible line
where
you could mark exactly
when you began to hear
the sounds of the road
and the machines and the blank
cries of everyday commerce,
so that for a moment you could
retrace that one single step
back into the Glen
and immerse yourself
instantly
in the quiet
source of revelation
you had felt
only a moment before,


as if under water,
as if slipping back
into the river
of silence running between
the tree lined walls
and then you could practice
leaving and
returning in your own body,
through your own breath,
inward and outward,
descending and
entering and reentering the silence
and shelter of your own
narrow valley of aloneness,
from interiority
to conversation
and back.


So that you suddenly realized
you were given
the complete and utter gift
of your own transparency,


the revelation of your
own ex act boundary with
the world.


The frontier
between silence and speech
exactly
the line you must cross
to give yourself
while saving yourself,


the gleam in your heart
and your eye,
another sun rising,
the old memories alive
after a long night of absence
and the world again
suddenly worth
risking,
worth seeing,
worth innocence,
worth everything.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

Losing Steps


1
It's probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it's clear
you've begun to leave
fewer people behind.


Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you're like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,


your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he'd have been part of the air


that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they're saying,
He's lost a step.


2
In a few more years
it's adult night in a gymnasium
streaked with the abrupt scuff marks
of high schoolers, and another step


leaves you like a wire
burned out in a radio.
You're playing defense,
someone jukes right, goes left,


and you're not fooled
but he's past you anyway,
dust in your eyes,
a few more points against you.


3
Suddenly you're fifty;
if you know anything about steps
you're playing chess
with an old, complicated friend.


But you're walking to a schoolyard
where kids are playing full-court,
telling yourself
the value of experience, a worn down


basketball under your arm,
your legs hanging from your waist
like misplaced sloths in a county
known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.


- Stephen Dunn

[RexCasteel]

I have a feeling that wisdom only comes with a decline in power.

Losing Steps


1
It's probably a Sunday morning...

[Larry Robinson]

Become Part Of The Truth

When school and mosque and minaret
get torn down, then dervishes
can begin their community.


Not until faithfulness turns into betrayal
and betrayal into trust
can any human being
become part of the truth.


Not until a person dissolves,
can he or she know
what union is.


There is a descent into emptiness.
A lie will not change
the truth with just
talking about it.


While you are still yourself,
you're blind to both worlds.


That ego-drunkenness
will not let you see.
Only when you are cleansed of both,
will you cut the deep roots
of fear and anger.


- Jellaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks from The Soul of Rumi)

[Larry Robinson]

Stand firmly, sit serenely, mutter profoundly, sing outrageously and dance all the way to your death.


- James Broughton

[Larry Robinson]

STUBBORN DONKEY


Silence is a stubborn donkey
whose master turns toward
home again and again
and the ass has his own
destination that even his
god doesn't know.


Do not try to tame the donkey
or the silence
or the master...
turn towards home
and bow to what god
arrives at the well.


- Lizbeth Hamlin

[Larry Robinson]

Hands


I should hate to lose them in a freakish accident.
They have brought me much covert pleasure.
Like shell-less crabs;
they have leased their homes, rested as itinerant workers,
travelling between finger grasps.
They have been my living.


Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by hands.
He understood that if you could draw them,
you could shape cathedrals from water.
You could see the inner workings
of a hidden language.


I turn them over, as I would
a page of scripture, eager for more light.
Every pound of flesh takes the strain,
works cantilevers, pulls ropes
just to open them above gravity.


I half expect to see,
engraved on the skin of my palms, little faces,
old lovers, a long dead dog, Da Vinci
smiling between a wrinkled Mona Lisa.
Goya working alone in the uncertain darkness
of a broken life.


Yesterday I spiced ground pork.
As the meat caressed my fingers,
my hands felt like two nursing sows.
Fingers know their mother.
They know that to pray with greasy hands
and an appetite, is a perfect redemption


At times, I want to clean them
like seabirds caught in an oil slick.
Then I remember,
they still miss all my fumbled catches.
They wash me every day, as I wash them.


- Eric Ashford

[Larry Robinson]

The English Are So Nice!
The English are so nice
so awfully nice
they are the nicest people in the world.
And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice
about your being nice as well!
If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it.
Americans and French and Germans and so on
they’re all very well
but they’re not really nice, you know.
They’re not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?
That’s why one doesn’t have to take them seriously.
We must be nice to them, of course,
of course, naturally—
But it doesn’t really matter what you say to them,
they don’t really understand—
you can just say anything to them:
be nice, you know, just be nice
but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn’t understand.
Just be nice, you know! oh, fairly nice,
not too nice of course, they take advantage—
but nice enough, just nice enough
to let them feel they’re not quite as nice as they might be.


- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

Luminism



And though it was brief, and slight, and nothing
To have been held on to so long, I remember it,
As if it had come firm within, one of the scenes
The mind sees for itself, night after night, only
To part from quickly and without warning. Sunlight
Flooded the valley floor and blazed on the town’s
Westward facing windows. The streets shimmered like rivers,
And trees, bushes, and clouds were caught in the spill,
And nothing was spared, not the couch we sat on
Not the rugs, nor our friends, staring off into space.
Everything drowned in the golden fire. Then Philip
Put down his glass and said: “This hand is just one
In an infinite series of hands. Imagine.”
And that was it. The evening dimmed and darkened
Until the western rim of the sky took on
The purple look of a bruise, and everyone stood
And said what a great sunset it had been.This was a while ago,
And it was remarkable, but something else happened then--
A cry, almost beyond our hearing, rose and rose,
As if across time, to touch us as nothing else would,
And so lightly, we might live out our lives and not know.
I had no idea what it meant until now.


- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

Because Even The Word Obstacle Is An Obstacle


Try to love everything that gets in your way;
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she'll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren't supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he'll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.


- Allison Luterman

[Larry Robinson]

Water Shed


The green expanse of duck weed
Parts and there he sits,
Proud - or so I imagine -
In all his feathered irridescence,
Shedding water with neither thought nor effort.


The late Spring rains
Fall on Sonoma Mountain and English Hill,
Dancing down the Laguna and Atascadero Creek.
So Wintergreen becomes Summergold.


But where are salmon, the steelhead,
The pronghorn and the grizzly?


There is so much for us to grieve now,
So much lost that we will never see again.
And yet so much still arising
That we have only begun to dream.


Can we shed despair
As we shed our tears
And see with clearer eyes
The shining form now emerging?


- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
- Mary Oliver

[poetrytalks]

Hi Larry,
a poem from my book is similar to yours:

Home

Grief casts a shadow
on the worn linoleum floor,
but there’s sunshine all around
and yellow daffodils in my yard.
A vision emerges from fecund compost
of decaying dreams,
amidst a graveyard with memory tombstones
that mark the dead.
New growth rises from the ashes
of failed pursuits.
This dream is finer and truer than the rest,
and brings a fullness of content
that radiates comfort head to sole.
A lifetime of seeking for my place
has revealed
that home is living in my truth.
May you always feel the bliss
of knowing you are home.

©2004, Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian

Water Shed


The green expanse of duck weed
Parts and there he sits,
Proud - or so I imagine -
In all his feathered irridescence,
Shedding water with neither thought nor effort.


The late Spring rains
Fall on Sonoma Mountain and English Hill,
Dancing down the Laguna and Atascadero Creek.
So Wintergreen becomes Summergold.


But where are salmon, the steelhead,
The pronghorn and the grizzly?


There is so much for us to grieve now,
So much lost that we will never see again.
And yet so much still arising
That we have only begun to dream.


Can we shed despair
As we shed our tears
And see with clearer eyes
The shining form now emerging?


- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Forget
Forget the suffering
You caused others.
Forget the suffering
Others caused you.
The waters run and run,
Springs sparkle and are done,
You walk the earth you are forgetting.

Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
A childlike sun grows warm.
A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
You are led by the hand once again.

The names of the rivers remain with you.
How endless those rivers seem!
Your fields lie fallow,
The city towers are not as they were.
You stand at the threshold mute.
- Czeslaw Milosz
(translation by Robert Hass)

[Larry Robinson]

Invisible Work


Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.


There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.


- Alison Luterman

[Larry Robinson]

The Argonaut

I am old and have not prospered.
I possess only my thoughts. I have accumulated only
memories.
And I am mad. Insane.
It is my solace.
One cannot fail at madness.
It is my truth.
It is my freedom.
To whom does a mad man make account?
I am not judged for the quality of my madness.
Like the retarded. I am left alone. To explore.
To discover.
This is the new frontier.
I am the argonaut.


- Richard Manley