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  1. TopTop #781
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of*Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the*desert
    A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again, but now I know*
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep*
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    - William Butler Yeats
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  2. TopTop #782
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Becoming A Redwood

    Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
    start up again. The crickets, the invisible
    toad who claims that change is possible,

    And all the other life too small to name.
    First one, then another, until innumerable
    they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

    Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
    fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
    snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

    And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
    can bear to be a stone, the pain
    the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

    Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
    rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
    and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

    The old windmill creaks in perfect time
    to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
    and the last farmhouse light goes off.

    Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
    these hills and packs of feral dogs.
    But standing here at night accepts all that.

    You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
    moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
    part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

    Part of the grass that answers the wind,
    part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows
    there is no silence but when danger comes.

    - Dana Gioia
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  3. Gratitude expressed by:

  4. TopTop #783
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Old Devotée



    I know what it is to live

    a simple life of nothing.

    Like the monk who bows

    and prays and sits

    every day in death-like routine.

    The ages do not trumpet his renown

    for wisdom and peace.

    He writes nothing and cannot write.

    He does his devotions which no one marks,

    and he makes no boast, no sound.

    He is surrounded by a million like himself

    for miles of generations

    backward and forward. If they earn

    God’s smile it is everything to them

    and enough. To make a sect of a smile

    they know is not within their hand. O my closed eyes!

    O my beautiful life

    - Bruce Moody
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  5. TopTop #784
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    SONNET LXXIII: THAT TIME OF YEAR THOU MAYST IN ME BEHOLD


    That time of year thou mayst in me behold
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
    Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
    In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
    As after sunset fadeth in the west,
    Which by and by black night doth take away,
    Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
    In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
    That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
    As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
    Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
    This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
    To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

    - William Shakespeare
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  6. TopTop #785
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Parable

    First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
    in order that our souls not be distracted
    by gain and loss, and in order also
    that our bodies be free to move
    easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
    whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
    should we have a purpose, against which
    many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
    corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
    whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
    pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
    a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
    glimmering among the stones, and not
    pass blindly by; each
    further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
    so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
    like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
    which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
    and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
    so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
    Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
    some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
    to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
    hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
    (after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
    preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
    we could see this in one another; we had changed although
    we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
    from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
    in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
    believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
    in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.

    - Louise Gluck
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  7. TopTop #786
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

    Every year we have been
    witness to it: how the
    world descends
    into a rich mash, in order that
    it may resume.
    And therefore
    who would cry out

    to the petals on the ground
    to stay,
    knowing, as we must,
    how the vivacity of what was is married

    to the vitality of what will be?
    I don’t say
    it’s easy, but
    what else will do

    if the love one claims to have for the world
    be true?
    So let us go on

    though the sun be swinging east,
    and the ponds be cold and black,
    and the sweets of the year be doomed.

    - Mary Oliver
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  8. Gratitude expressed by:

  9. TopTop #787
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Man In The Dead Machine
    High on a slope in New Guinea
    The Grumman Hellcat
    lodges among bright vines
    as thick as arms. In 1943,
    the clenched hand of a pilot
    glided it here
    where no one has ever been.

    In the cockpit, the helmeted
    skeleton sits
    upright, held
    by dry sinews at neck
    and shoulder, and webbing
    that straps the pelvic cross
    to the cracked
    leather of the seat, and the breastbone
    to the canvas cover
    of the parachute.

    Or say the shrapnel
    missed him, he flew
    back to the carrier, and every
    morning takes the train, his pale
    hands on the black case, and sits
    upright, held
    by the firm webbing.

    - Donald Hall
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  10. Gratitude expressed by:

  11. TopTop #788
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eagle Affirmation

    You’ve got to understand that sighting the pair
    of eagles over the block, right over our house,
    not more than twenty feet above the roof,
    so massive their wings pull at the corrugated
    tin sheeting even with gentlest tilt, counteracts
    bitterness against all the damage I see and hear
    around me on an exclusively crisp blue morning,
    when clarity is pain and even one small missing
    wattle tree, entirely vanquished since I was last here
    at home—I still find this hard to say—is agony;
    a region is not a pinpoint and a different compass
    works in my head, having magnetics for all
    directions and all pointing to one spot
    I know and observe as closely as possible;
    and even one small vanished or vanquished
    wattle tree is agony close to death for me,
    where I find it hard to breathe to feed myself
    to get past the loss; but the pair of eagles
    still appearing and keeping their sharp
    and scrupulous eyes honed, overrides
    this ordeal, though I wish their victims
    life too and their damage is traumatic
    as anything else; that’s as much sense
    or nonsense as I can make in such blue light.

    - John Kinsella
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  12. TopTop #789
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Often I Imagine The Earth

    Often I imagine the earth
    through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—
    atoms, peculiar
    atoms everywhere—
    no me, no you, no opinions,
    no beginning, no middle, no end,
    soaring together like those
    ancient Chinese birds
    hatched miraculously with only one wing,
    helping each other fly home.

    - Dan Gerber
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  13. Gratitude expressed by:

  14. TopTop #790
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pray for Peace

    Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
    Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
    his suffering face bent to kiss you,
    Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
    Adonai, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
    that she may lay her palm on our brows,
    to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
    to Inanna in her stripped descent.

    Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
    of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
    to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
    Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

    Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
    pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
    and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
    If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
    climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

    Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
    for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
    Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
    Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
    each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

    Make the brushing of your hair
    a prayer, every strand its own voice,
    singing in the choir on your head.
    As you wash your face, the water slipping
    through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
    softest thing on earth, gentleness
    that wears away rock.

    Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
    Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
    the fragile case we are poured into,
    each caress a season of peace.

    If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
    Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
    Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
    Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

    When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
    to the video store, let each step
    be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
    that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
    Or crush their skulls.
    And if you are riding on a bicycle
    or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
    of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
    we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

    And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
    a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
    or delivering soda or drawing good blood
    into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
    with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

    With each breath in, take in the faith of those
    who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
    who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

    Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
    feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
    that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
    Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

    Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
    Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
    around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
    of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
    Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
    your prayer through the streets.

    - Ellen Bass
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  15. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  16. TopTop #791
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rest

    I ask
    these hands
    to touch
    the body
    on the
    burning pavement.
    It lies.
    Bereft.

    There are no flowers
    no wreaths...
    no one weeps.
    The spinning wheels
    that tore its heart
    have gone.
    Gone...
    Rushing to
    that eight am appointment.
    To pick up a child from school?
    Or perhaps,
    perhaps to meet a lover?
    To hold someone in arms that
    are lonely. To smile.
    To kiss.

    Into this moment
    It stepped.

    This furry creature
    from the woods....
    Its heart pounding
    with
    this
    thing.

    This thing that
    runs in
    the bosom of
    the wild,
    its shadow caught
    in the laden
    sweep
    of the wing of an owl.
    That sudden woosh...
    thrashing air
    through the fleeting glance
    of ghost eyes.
    This thing.
    This thing
    that comes
    to me at twilight
    in the perfumed mystery
    of jasmine.
    That sudden
    startling
    scent...
    stunning my feet.

    This thing.

    It ran fierce in the
    creature who
    stepped
    from the woods
    to the road,
    into this
    other world.
    Its feet
    stumbled.
    Unsure, it turned its head.
    Then.
    Rushing wheels and
    the theft
    of dignity.

    I ask
    these hands
    to touch
    the body
    on the
    burning pavement.
    To return grace.
    To bring the pieces
    back
    to the woods...
    To make a home
    in the wild
    for
    Rest.

    - Araliya Navaratne
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  17. TopTop #792
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Epiphany on Highway One

    Maybe I’d been working too hard
    or maybe I was just looking forward to meeting a friend for a hike
    or maybe it was just time

    but my brain stuttered
    when I saw the group of small brown cattle
    grazing intently
    bunched together
    headed toward the old
    tilted roadside barbed
    wire fence
    for the small green shoots among the dun parched fall
    grasses

    up alongside the high road
    on the coastal highway
    where the sky feels
    somehow closer,
    and all at once I
    could see that everything that had ever
    happened had led up to this moment
    as if only for the sake of this very one
    soon to be gone forever
    and that my existence made no sense at all
    of course!
    because it was begotten in a miracle
    and everything had since unfolded

    and that these all were
    God’s minutes,
    and therefore
    God’s breath, in a sense,
    was blowing through my lungs
    and God’s blood was
    flowing through my veins,
    and it was all I could do
    to keep the car from literally lifting
    off the road,
    because it is really true,
    isn’t it, that we are all alive
    in miracle, nothing less?

    - Scott O'Brien
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  18. Gratitude expressed by:

  19. TopTop #793
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,

    Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

    Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

    I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

    In the faces of men and women I see God,

    and in my own face in the glass;

    I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name.

    And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

    And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality.....it is idle to try to alarm me.

    - Walt Whitman
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  20. TopTop #794
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    KITES

    Every thing, every sensation, every
    Occurrence, common or not,
    Is miracle.
    Who said anything had to exist, anyway?

    It is all joy,
    And we are kites
    Held aloft in the joy
    By all that we cannot see,
    Though we sense the movement that carries us,
    The breath that ripples the thin paper
    Of our longing.

    - bSue
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  21. Gratitude expressed by:

  22. TopTop #795
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Here

    Here I am in the garden laughing
    an old woman with heavy breasts
    and a nicely mapped face

    how did this happen
    well that's who I wanted to be

    at last a woman
    in the old style sitting
    stout thighs apart under
    a big skirt grandchild sliding
    on off my lap a pleasant
    summer perspiration

    that's my old man across the yard
    he's talking to the meter reader
    he's telling him the world's sad story
    how electricity is oil or uranium
    and so forth I tell my grandson
    run over to your grandpa ask him
    to sit beside me for a minute I
    am suddenly exhausted by my desire
    to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

    - Grace Paley
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  23. TopTop #796
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Keeper of Last Glances

    Every night under the vault of stars
    Birds are lost in flight or a snake sloughs his skin,
    But what if a man feels the forlorn longing
    For the invisible and inconceivable realm?

    Sometimes I see them, the departed
    with their bearded congregation bending
    In reverence or swaying like a creaky, rusty swing
    filling the neighborhood with phantoms, filling up time

    Like nets on empty piers like moons
    in the hug of the sky appealing for permanence

    A presence comes upon the blur of ground
    It might be the dust of the moon in which I see
    a hand in a disappearing farewell wave, eyes
    of friends hovering far up in the kite-like flutter
    In the twilight of last appearance when the keeper
    of mortal things lets go the string.

    - Richard Meyers
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  24. TopTop #797
    richsiva
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Beautiful poems. Rilke is a master. D.H.Lawrence exquisite.
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  25. TopTop #798
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

    In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
    Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
    The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
    Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
    He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
    The cut worm forgives the plow.
    Dip him in the river who loves water.
    A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
    He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
    Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
    The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
    The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom,
    no clock can measure.
    All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
    Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
    No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
    A dead body revenges not injuries.
    The most sublime act is to set another before you.
    If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
    Folly is the cloak of knavery.
    Shame is Pride's cloke.
    Prisons are built with stones of law,
    brothels with bricks of religion.
    The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
    The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
    The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
    The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
    Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
    The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves,
    the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword,
    are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
    The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
    Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
    Let man wear the fell of the lion,
    woman the fleece of the sheep.
    The bird a nest, the spider a web,
    man friendship.
    The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen,
    frowning fool shall be both thought wise,
    that they may be a rod.
    What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
    The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots;
    the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
    The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
    One thought fills immensity.
    Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
    Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
    The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
    The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
    Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
    He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
    As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
    The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
    Expect poison from the standing water.
    You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
    Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
    The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air,
    the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
    The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
    The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow;
    nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
    The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
    If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
    The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
    When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius;
    lift up thy head!
    As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on,
    so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
    To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
    Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
    The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
    Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
    Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
    The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty,
    the hands and feet Proportion.
    As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish,
    so is contempt to the contemptible.
    The crow wish'd every thing was black,
    the owl that every thing was white.
    Exuberance is Beauty.
    If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
    Improvement makes strait roads;
    but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
    Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
    Where man is not, nature is barren.
    Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
    Enough! or too much.

    - William Blake
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  26. TopTop #799
    Ice Queen's Avatar
    Ice Queen
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thank you Larry Robinson for the wonderful poems you post. If I read nothing else on Waccobb, I always read your poems. As to Highway One by O'brien, he'd better take a good look now because soon that natural setting will be overtaken by vineyards as the rest of Sonoma Coounty has been over the past 30 years.
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Epiphany on Highway One

    Maybe I’d been working too hard
    or maybe I was just looking forward to meeting a friend for a hike
    or maybe it was just time

    but my brain stuttered
    when I saw the group of small brown cattle
    grazing intently
    bunched together
    headed toward the old
    tilted roadside barbed
    wire fence
    for the small green shoots among the dun parched fall
    grasses

    up alongside the high road
    on the coastal highway
    where the sky feels
    somehow closer,
    and all at once I
    could see that everything that had ever
    happened had led up to this moment
    as if only for the sake of this very one
    soon to be gone forever
    and that my existence made no sense at all
    of course!
    because it was begotten in a miracle
    and everything had since unfolded

    and that these all were
    God’s minutes,
    and therefore
    God’s breath, in a sense,
    was blowing through my lungs
    and God’s blood was
    flowing through my veins,
    and it was all I could do
    to keep the car from literally lifting
    off the road,
    because it is really true,
    isn’t it, that we are all alive
    in miracle, nothing less?

    - Scott O'Brien
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  27. TopTop #800
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Rhythm of Each

    I think each comfort we manage-
    each holding in the night, each opening
    of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
    pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
    fever sponged, each dear thing given
    to someone in greater need-each
    passes on the kindness we've known.

    For the human sea is made of waves
    that mount and merge till the way a
    nurse rocks a child is the way that child
    all grown rocks the wounded, and how
    the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
    strangers who in their pain
    don't seem so strange.

    Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
    is how we pray and suffer by turns,
    and if someone were to watch us
    from inside the lake of time, they
    wouldn't be able to tell if we are
    dying or being born.

    - Mark Nepo
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  28. TopTop #801
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Myrtle

    Wearing her yellow rubber slicker,
    Myrtle, our Journal carrier, has come early through rain and darkness
    to bring us the news.
    A woman of thirty or so, with three small children at home,
    she's told me she likes
    a long walk by herself in the morning.
    And with pride in her work,
    she's wrapped the news neatly in plastic -
    a bread bag, beaded with rain,
    that reads WONDER.
    From my doorway I watch her flicker from porch to porch as she goes,
    a yellow candle flame
    no wind or weather dare extinguish.

    - Ted Kooser
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  29. TopTop #802
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How It Happens



    The sky said I am watching

    to see what you

    can make out of nothing

    I was looking up and I said

    I thought you

    were supposed to be doing that

    the sky said Many

    are clinging to that

    I am giving you a chance

    I was looking up and I said

    I am the only chance I have

    then the sky did not answer

    and here we are

    with our names for the days

    the vast days that do not listen to us



    - W.S. Merwin
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  30. TopTop #803
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Perhaps the World Ends Here


    The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

    The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

    We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

    It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

    At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

    Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

    This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

    Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

    We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

    At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

    Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

    - Joy Harjo
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  31. Gratitude expressed by:

  32. TopTop #804
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Otherwise

    I got out of bed
    on two strong legs.
    It might have been
    otherwise. I ate
    cereal, sweet
    milk, ripe, flawless
    peach. It might
    have been otherwise.
    I took the dog uphill
    to the birch wood.
    All morning I did
    the work I love.
    At noon I lay down
    with my mate. It might
    have been otherwise.
    We ate dinner together
    at a table with silver
    candlesticks. It might
    have been otherwise.
    I slept in a bed
    in a room with paintings
    on the walls, and
    planned another day
    just like this day.
    But one day, I know,
    it will be otherwise.

    - Jane Kenyon
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  34. TopTop #805
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Faint Music


    Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

    When everything broken is broken,
    and everything dead is dead,
    and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,
    and the heroine has studied her face and its defects
    remorselessly, and the pain they thought might,
    as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves
    has lost its novelty and not released them,
    and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,
    watching the others go about their days--
    likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears--
    that self-love is the one weedy stalk
    of every human blossoming, and understood,
    therefore, why they had been, all their lives,
    in such a fury to defend it, and that no one--
    except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool
    of poverty and silence--can escape this violent, automatic
    life's companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,
    faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

    As in the story a friend once told about the time
    he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him.
    Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash.
    He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge,
    the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon.
    And in the salt air he thought about the word "seafood,"
    that there was something faintly ridiculous about it.
    No one said "landfood." He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch
    he'd reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass,
    scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp
    along the coast--and he realized that the reason for the word
    was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise
    the restaurants could just put "fish" up on their signs,
    and when he woke--he'd slept for hours, curled up
    on the girder like a child--the sun was going down
    and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket
    he'd used for a pillow, climbed over the railing
    carefully, and drove home to an empty house.

    There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties
    hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed.
    A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick
    with rage and grief. He knew more or less
    where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill.
    They'd have just finished making love. She'd have tears
    in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. "God,"
    she'd say, "you are so good for me." Winking lights,
    a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay.
    "You're sad," he'd say. "Yes." "Thinking about Nick?"
    "Yes," she'd say and cry. "I tried so hard," sobbing now,
    "I really tried so hard." And then he'd hold her for a while--
    Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall--
    and then they'd fuck again, and she would cry some more,
    and go to sleep.
    And he, he would play that scene
    once only, once and a half, and tell himself
    that he was going to carry it for a very long time
    and that there was nothing he could do
    but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened
    to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark
    cracking and curling as the cold came up.

    It's not the story though, not the friend
    leaning toward you, saying "And then I realized--,"
    which is the part of stories one never quite believes.
    I had this idea that the world's so full of pain
    it must sometimes make a kind of singing.
    And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps--
    First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

    - Robert Hass
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  35. Gratitude expressed by:

  36. TopTop #806
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Gift Outright

    The land was ours before we were the land’s.
    She was our land more than a hundred years
    Before we were her people. She was ours
    In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
    But we were England’s, still colonials,
    Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
    Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
    Something we were withholding made us weak
    Until we found out that it was ourselves
    We were withholding from our land of living,
    And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
    Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
    (The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
    To the land vaguely realizing westward,
    But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
    Such as she was, such as she would become.

    - Robert Frost
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  37. TopTop #807
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stands still:

    Stands still:
    A bridge between worlds:
    Between what is gone
    And what lies ahead.

    Stands still:
    A point to turn upon,
    Weaving memory
    And destiny.

    Stands still:
    A pause before waking:
    The dream’s imagery
    Fleeting, slips away.

    Stands still:
    A moment, the threshold:
    The balance, a pause
    at the point
    on the bridge
    where the Earth
    Stands still.

    - Morgan Vierhelle
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  38. TopTop #808
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Worms

    Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms
    Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,
    Of the good they confer on us, that their silence
    Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,
    Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks
    For their keeping the soil from packing so tight
    That no root, however determined, could pierce it?

    Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,
    How the weight of our debt would crush us
    Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,
    The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,
    And wanted nothing that we could give them,
    Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.
    A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,
    Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve
    An even brighter and lighter master.

    Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,
    These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp
    Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission
    Than nature feels in providing for our survival.
    Better save our gratitude for a friend
    Who gives us more than we can give in return
    And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.

    "If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"
    The lover says, who, having nothing available
    In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up
    A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.
    "A nickel with a hole drilled in the top
    So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm
    To protect you against your enemies."

    For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,
    So he might believe she's safe as she saunters
    Home across the field at night, the moon above her,
    Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,
    And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,
    As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

    - Carl Dennis
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  39. TopTop #809
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love Like Salt


    It lies in our hands in crystals

    too intricate to decipher

    It goes into the skillet
    without being given a second thought

    It spills on the floor so fine
    we step all over it

    We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

    It breaks out on our foreheads

    We store it inside our bodies
    in secret wineskins

    At supper, we pass it around the table
    talking of holidays and the sea.

    - Lisel Mueller
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  40. TopTop #810
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Class Picture, 1984
    I am the
    one in the middle
    from the left in the first row

    the boy who pushes me around
    in the playground
    he is the sixth one
    in the sixth row

    The girl I have been in love with
    since the second grade
    is the one with the radiant auburn hair,

    next to the teacher

    And my friend Mark
    is first in the second row
    with his sweater sticking out

    that is not all -
    if you look closer you can see
    the Sydney Opera House
    in the background

    Superman in the distance
    holding up a green car
    his cape hardly moving in the wind


    - Ramesh Dohan
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