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  1. TopTop #931
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Daisies

    It is possible, I suppose that sometime*
    we will learn everything*
    there is to learn: what the world is, for example,*
    and what it means. I think this as I am crossing*
    from one field to another, in summer, and the*
    mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either*
    knows enough already or knows enough to be*
    perfectly content not knowing. Song being born*
    of quest he knows this: he must turn silent*
    were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead*
    oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly*
    unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display*
    the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't*
    mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course*
    I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and*
    narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?*
    But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,*
    to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;*
    for example - I think this*
    as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -*
    the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the*
    daisies for the field.*

    -*Mary Oliver*
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #932
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Listen for the Beloved

    Listen for the Beloved.

    The walls fall down.


    Listen for the Beloved.

    The stories wither to dust.


    Listen for the Beloved.

    The crockery dances in the cupboards.


    Listen for the Beloved.

    The animals obey their masters.


    Empty your pockets.

    You do not live in a tiny tent,

    solitary in your peapod warmth

    by a dwindling fire.



    No, your tent is the sky.

    And that lump in your throat

    is not coal.

    Neither is it gold.

    It is not even yours.


    Set free the herd

    chained to your doorstep.

    Set free the millers

    honed to your wheel.


    There is water aplenty

    overflowing the

    cup of the Beloved.

    Drink by her soul hand.



    - Gary Horvitz
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  4. TopTop #933
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Passover

    Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .
    and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
    -Exodus 12: 7 & 13

    They thought they were safe

    that spring night; when they daubed
    the doorways with sacrificial blood.
    To be sure, the angel of death
    passed them over, but for what?
    Forty years in the desert
    without a home, without a bed,
    following new laws to an unknown land.
    Easier to have died in Egypt
    or stayed there a slave, pretending
    there was safety in the old familiar.

    But the promise, from those first
    naked days outside the garden,
    is that there is no safety,
    only the terrible blessing
    of the journey. You were born
    through a doorway marked in blood.
    We are, all of us, passed over,
    brushed in the night by terrible wings.

    Ask that fierce presence,
    whose imagination you hold.
    God did not promise that we shall live,
    but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
    brilliant in the desert sky.

    - Lynn Ungar
    Last edited by Barry; 04-20-2011 at 03:30 PM.
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  5. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  6. TopTop #934
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
    and on the opposite mountain I am searching
    for my little boy.
    An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
    both in their temporary failure.
    Our voices meet above the Sultan’s Pool
    in the valley between us. Neither of us wants
    the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels
    of the terrible Had Gadya machine.

    Afterward we found them among the bushes
    and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying.

    Searching for a goat or a son
    has always been the beginning
    of a new religion in these mountains.

    - Yehuda Amichai
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  7. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  8. TopTop #935
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Between

    But it’s the cave I want to know.
    Not how He left, rose, became a something
    again. But what happens in the cave.

    Not blood, not body, not wine stamped with the memory
    of blood, but the space between breath
    and breath where we are nowhere

    to be found.
    Someone weeps outside.
    Someone tugs at the boulder.
    Someone clings to a torn lock of His hair.

    And inside, in the still, lightless air
    the turning back
    into everything.

    - Kim Rosen
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  10. TopTop #936
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wellfleet Shabbat

    The hawk eye of the sun slowly shuts.
    The breast of the bay is softly feathered
    dove grey. The sky is barred like the sand
    when the tide trickles out.

    The great doors of Shabbat are swinging
    open over the ocean, loosing the moon
    floating up slow distorted vast, a copper
    balloon just sailing free.

    The wind slides over the waves, patting
    them with its giant hand, and the sea
    stretches its muscles in the deep,
    purrs and rolls over.

    The sweet beeswax candles flicker
    and sigh, standing between the phlox
    and the roast chicken. The wine shines
    its red lantern of joy.

    Here on this piney sandspit, the Shekinah
    comes on the short strong wings of the seaside
    sparrow raising her song and bringing
    down the fresh clean night.


    - Marge Piercy
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  12. TopTop #937
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Seven Stanzas at Easter


    Make no mistake: if He rose at all
    it was as His body;
    if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit,
    the amino acids rekindle,
    the Church will fall.

    It was not as the flowers,
    each soft spring recurrent;
    it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
    eleven apostles;
    it was as His flesh: ours.

    The same hinged thumbs and toes,
    the same valved heart
    that--pierced--died, withered, paused, and then regathered
    out of enduring Might
    new strength to enclose.

    Let us not mock God with metaphor,
    analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
    making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
    credulity of earlier ages:
    let us walk through the door.

    The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
    not a stone in a story,
    but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
    time will eclipse for each of us
    the wide light of day.

    And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
    make it a real angel,
    weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
    the dawn light, robed in real linen
    spun on a definite loom.

    Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
    for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
    lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
    by the miracle,
    and crushed by remonstrance.

    - John Updike
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  13. TopTop #938
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    BirdBath

    only this
    matters: this ecstatic
    baptism

    this standing on stick-
    thin legs where the singing
    creek pools at the lip
    of the waterfall

    only this
    ruby-feathered
    chest diving to meet
    its reflection

    this beak piercing
    again and again that quivering
    surface, these wings half-
    unfolding, a ruffle

    of joy guiding rivers
    of light a tumble
    of droplets dressed
    in rainbows along your hidden
    spine

    shattering all
    decorum beneath
    blue branches in quiet

    assent. . .

    - Elizabeth Reninger
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  14. TopTop #939
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Silently a flower blooms,
    In silence it falls away;
    Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
    The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
    This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom;
    The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

    - Zenkei Shibayama
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  15. TopTop #940
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Turtle

    Who would be a turtle who could help it?
    A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet,
    she can ill afford the chances she must take
    in rowing toward the grasses that she eats.
    Her track is graceless, like dragging
    a packing case places, and almost any slope
    defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical,
    she's often stuck up to the axle on her way
    to something edible. With everything optimal,
    she skirts the ditch which would convert
    her shell into a serving dish. She lives
    below luck-level, never imagining some lottery
    will change her load of pottery to wings.
    Her only levity is patience,
    the sport of truly chastened things.

    - Kay Ryan
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  17. TopTop #941
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    God's Mistakes

    In the great city of Paris live all sorts of people,
    Very tall Africans and very short,
    Really tiny Europeans, grown-ups less than five feet tall.

    And every morning on the Metro I see the man with the tumor
    Ballooning from his neck, and the blind Tunisian flute-player.

    And one Sunday, in the bone museum, at the Jardin des Plantes,
    Among the dinosaurs and whales picked clean by time,
    I saw the delicate, intertwined skeletons
    Of fetal Siamese twins afloat in a bottle:

    Marie et Christian, it says--
    In Paris, they even baptize God's mistakes.

    And outside the Pompidou,
    There is the brash and balding mountain man
    With the belly that could stop a train.
    He earns his daily bread by playing the nasty fool
    Before the crowds. How many people? 100? 200?

    He yells, cajoles, and chases them;
    Insults, humiliates, and captures them,
    Then beats them on the head with an air-filled
    Plastic bat or knees them in the crotch.

    When he snatches an Asian tourist girl
    And holds her like a trophy with one arm,
    And with the other strips off his overalls

    And stands before us in his billowing
    Striped white and yellow boxer shorts, guffawing
    At our discomfort and at hers, and points down,
    Down there, beneath that huge belly,

    We all gasp and we all clap,
    Though we're pleased it isn't us.
    He grabs her Nikon and stuffs it down
    His shorts and snaps a snap. Un souvenir, he says.

    But the belly itself, that's the freakish thing.
    It sticks out from his body like an organ of its own,
    Neither sagging like a beer belly nor round like a pregnancy,

    Buy boxy, somehow, like a coffin for a baby,
    Except there are these odd, protruding knots of muscle
    Here and there, as if he built it up like that,

    The way a man might idly sqeeze a rubber ball
    While watching television. As he jerks it up and down,
    Like a puppet, like a Pierrot wooing his Pierrette,
    It's like a brain case

    Surrounding its own intelligence,
    Its blind and foraging hunger and its wiles.

    Hey, Africain, he yells, and mimes a few steps
    Of a mincing queen. He points to a woman's breasts:
    Pas beaucoup, he sneers. Et vous! he yells,

    Pointing at me, and by now I am embarrassed
    For the human race
    That we all put up with this burlesque:

    The leather-coated dwarf; the acned, tattooed German
    Teenage punk with a symphony of earrings; the bald Italian
    Who gets his head shined with a dirty cloth.

    Still, I stand in my spot on the vast
    And sloping apron of the Pompidou,
    Grinning and embarrassed but pleased with the attention,

    So when he summons me, I go to him,
    Like a penitent to the altar,
    Like a reluctant child to his father.

    He lies down, very gingerly, on his back,
    On a bed of nails, and commands,
    Asseyez-vous sur moi!

    So I sit, right on that thing, that belly.
    He begins to move it, slowly, up and down,

    I am a child again in the park on a seesaw
    The first time I could do it without help.
    My mother is beaming and applauding, as is this crowd,
    At my bad luck and my good nature, as I bounce

    Up and down for all the world a fool to see,
    Having a good old time, until the thing is done,
    And I slide off, to go about my business

    Of being a tourist in the great city of Paris
    Among the albinos and the amputees, the retarded
    And the refugees, the omnipresent unemployable

    Winos and beggars, Maries et Christians, knowing for once
    Exactly which one of God's mistakes I am.

    - Steve Orlen
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  18. TopTop #942
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust
    Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin

    Now you know the worst
    we humans have to know
    about ourselves, and I am sorry,

    for I know that you will be afraid.
    To those of our bodies given
    without pity to be burned, I know

    there is no answer
    but loving one another,
    even our enemies, and this is hard.

    But remember:
    when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
    he gives a light, divine

    though it is also human.
    When a man of peace is killed
    by a man of war, he gives a light.

    You do not have to walk in darkness.
    If you will have the courage for love,
    you may walk in light. It will be

    the light of those who have suffered
    for peace. It will be
    your light.

    - Wendell Berry
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  19. TopTop #943
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Toward The Space Age
    *
    We must begin to catch hold of everything
    around us, for nobody knows what we
    may need. We have to carry along
    the air, even; and the weight we once
    thought a burden turns out to form
    the pulse of our life and the compass for our brain.
    Colors balance our fears, and existence
    begins to clog unless our thoughts
    can occur unwatched and let a fountain of essential silliness
    out through our dreams.
    And oh I hope we can still arrange
    for the wind to blow, and occasionally
    some kind of shock to occur, like rain,
    and stray adventures no one cares about --
    harmless love, immoderate guffaws on corners,
    families crawling around the front room growling,
    being bears in the piano cave.

    - William Stafford
    Last edited by Larry Robinson; 05-01-2011 at 12:17 PM.
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  21. TopTop #944
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Turtle

    breaks from the blue-black
    skin of the water, dragging her shell
    with its mossy scutes
    across the shallows and through the rushes
    and over the mudflats, to the uprise,
    to the yellow sand,
    to dig with her ungainly feet
    a nest, and hunker there spewing
    her white eggs down
    into the darkness, and you think


    of her patience, her fortitude,
    her determination to complete
    what she was born to do----
    and then you realize a greater thing----
    she doesn’t consider
    what she was born to do.
    She’s only filled
    with an old blind wish.
    It isn’t even hers but came to her
    in the rain or the soft wind
    which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.


    She can’t see
    herself apart from the rest of the world
    or the world from what she must do
    every spring.
    Crawling up the high hill,
    luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin,
    she doesn’t dream
    she knows
    she is a part of the pond she lives in,
    the tall trees are her children,
    the birds that swim above her
    are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

    - Mary Oliver
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  22. TopTop #945
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For reasons with which I won't bore you, I erroneously attributed yesterday's poem, "Toward The Space Age", to Mary Oliver. It was actually written by William Stafford. This is not to first time - and will probably not be the last time - that I have goofed in this way. My apologies to you, to Mary and to Bill.
    Larry
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  23. TopTop #946
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    White Heron


    What lifts the heron on its two soft kissing kites
    I praise without a name.
    A crouch, a flare,
    A shape thought at the sky, a long stroke through the cumulus of trees
    Then . . . gone.
    Oh, rare!

    Saint Francis, happiest on his knees,
    Would have cried, "Father!"
    Cry anything you please,
    But praise,
    Praise the white original that lights the blue expanse of sky.

    While saints report their doves and rays
    I sit by pond scums 'till the air recites its heron back
    And doubt all else but praise.


    - John Ciardi
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  24. TopTop #947
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blue Heron

    Blue Heron
    symbol of the river city:
    Portland on the Willamette
    and Mighty Columbia.

    August in her stillness
    A heron on the far shore,
    Awesome up close
    a B-52 dices between
    city houses, wings aslant
    to miss the buildings

    Eight foot wingspan
    Acing down gulp koi
    from the backyard pond.

    Mighty hungry kisses
    says the empty pool.
    Mighty hungry kisses.

    - David Bean
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  25. TopTop #948
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hope and Love

    All winter
    the blue heron
    slept among the horses.
    I do not know
    the custom of herons,
    do not know
    if the solitary habit
    is their way,
    or if he listened for
    some missing one--
    not knowing even
    that was what he did--
    in the blowing
    sounds in the dark.
    I know that
    hope is the hardest
    love we carry.
    He slept
    with his long neck
    folded, like a letter
    put away.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  26. TopTop #949
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Blue Egg

    This morning, a great blue heron rose from the swamp like the second coming.
    I'd never seen the high nests in the far off trees until it rose. Green
    buds are pulsing out of the fingers of trees and the long sleep is shaken
    from our bodies as we stumble back into the spotty light. All winter in our
    borrowed home my son has been collecting egg cartons. Every week he stores
    another cardboard carton beneath the sink. "For the chickens, Momma." He
    says. "When we raise chickens, we can sell the eggs." The sky sits above
    the trees-blue as the heron. Blue as a dyed eggs. Blue as a promise. When
    the bird rose this morning he brought what was land bound (our hearts, our
    eyes) up to the possibility of sky.

    - Iris Dunkle
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  27. TopTop #950
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Last-Minute Message for a Time Capsule

    I have to tell you this, whoever you are:
    that on one summer morning here, the ocean
    pounded in on tumbledown breakers,
    a south wind, bustling along the shore,
    whipped the froth into little rainbows,
    and a reckless gull swept down the beach
    as if to fly were everything it needed.

    I thought of your hovering saucers,
    looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down
    so it wouldn't be lost forever --
    that once upon a time we had
    meadows here, and astonishing things,
    swans and frogs and luna moths
    and blue skies that could stagger your heart.
    We could have had them still,
    and welcomed you to earth, but
    we also had the righteous ones
    who worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.

    When you go home to your shining galaxy,
    say that what you learned
    from this dead and barren place is
    to beware the righteous ones.

    - Phillip Appleman
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  29. TopTop #951
    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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  30. TopTop #952
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    We Have A Beautiful Mother

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

    - Alice Walker
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  32. TopTop #953
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Miracle Fair


    Commonplace miracle:
    that so many commonplace miracles happen.

    An ordinary miracle:
    in the dead of night
    the barking of invisible dogs.

    One miracle out of many:
    a small, airy cloud
    yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

    Several miracles in one:
    an alder tree reflected in the water,
    and that it’s backwards left to right
    and that it grows there, crown down
    and never reaches the bottom,
    even though the water is shallow.

    An everyday miracle:
    winds weak to moderate
    turning gusty in storms.

    First among equal miracles:
    cows are cows.

    Second to none:
    just this orchard
    from just that seed.

    A miracle without a cape and top hat:
    scattering white doves.

    A miracle, for what else could you call it:
    today the sun rose at three-fourteen
    and will set at eight-o-one.

    A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
    even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
    it still has more than four.

    A miracle, just take a look around:
    the world is everywhere.

    An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
    the unthinkable
    is thinkable.

    - Wislawa Szymborska
    (translation by Joanna Trzeciak)
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  33. TopTop #954
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
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    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Freedom's Plow
    *
    When a man starts out with nothing,
    When a man starts out with his hands
    Empty, but clean,
    When a man starts to build a world,
    He starts first with himself
    And the faith that is in his heart-
    The strength there,
    The will there to build.
    First in the heart is the dream-
    Then the mind starts seeking a way.
    His eyes look out on the world,
    On the great wooded world,
    On the rich soil of the world,
    On the rivers of the world.
    The eyes see there materials for building,
    See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
    The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
    The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
    To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
    Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
    A community of hands to help-
    Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
    But a community dream.
    Not my dream alone, but our dream.
    Not my world alone,
    But your world and my world,
    Belonging to all the hands who build.
    A long time ago, but not too long ago,
    Ships came from across the sea
    Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
    Adventurers and booty seekers,
    Free men and indentured servants,
    Slave men and slave masters, all new-
    To a new world, America!
    With billowing sails the galleons came
    Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
    In little bands together,
    Heart reaching out to heart,
    Hand reaching out to hand,
    They began to build our land.
    Some were free hands
    Seeking a greater freedom,
    Some were indentured hands
    Hoping to find their freedom,
    Some were slave hands
    Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
    But the word was there always:
    Freedom.
    Down into the earth went the plow
    In the free hands and the slave hands,
    In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
    Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
    That planted and harvested the food that fed
    And the cotton that clothed America.
    Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
    That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
    Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
    That moved and transported America.
    Crack went the whips that drove the horses
    Across the plains of America.
    Free hands and slave hands,
    Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
    White hands and black hands
    Held the plow handles,
    Ax handles, hammer handles,
    Launched the boats and whipped the horses
    That fed and housed and moved America.
    Thus together through labor,
    All these hands made America.
    Labor! Out of labor came villages
    And the towns that grew cities.
    Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
    And the sailboats and the steamboats,
    Came the wagons, and the coaches,
    Covered wagons, stage coaches,
    Out of labor came the factories,
    Came the foundries, came the railroads.
    Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
    Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
    Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
    Shipped the wide world over:
    Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
    Came the dream, the strength, the will,
    And the way to build America.
    Now it is Me here, and You there.
    Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
    Seattle, New Orleans,
    Boston and El Paso-
    Now it’s the U.S.A.
    A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
    ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--
    ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
    WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS--
    AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
    AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
    His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
    But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
    And silently too for granted
    That what he said was also meant for them.
    It was a long time ago,
    But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
    NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
    TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
    WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
    There were slaves then, too,
    But in their hearts the slaves knew
    What he said must be meant for every human being-
    Else it had no meaning for anyone.
    Then a man said:
    BETTER TO DIE FREE
    THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
    He was a colored man who had been a slave
    But had run away to freedom.
    And the slaves knew
    What Frederick Douglass said was true.
    With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
    John Brown was hung.
    Before the Civil War, days were dark,
    And nobody knew for sure
    When freedom would triumph
    "Or if it would," thought some.
    But others new it had to triumph.
    In those dark days of slavery,
    Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
    The slaves made up a song:
    Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
    That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
    Freedom will come!
    Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
    Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
    But it came!
    Some there were, as always,
    Who doubted that the war would end right,
    That the slaves would be free,
    Or that the union would stand,
    But now we know how it all came out.
    Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
    We know now how it came out.
    There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
    There was a great wooded land,
    And men united as a nation.
    America is a dream.
    The poet says it was promises.
    The people say it is promises-that will come true.
    The people do not always say things out loud,
    Nor write them down on paper.
    The people often hold
    Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
    And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
    Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
    And faultily put them into practice.
    The people do not always understand each other.
    But there is, somewhere there,
    Always the trying to understand,
    And the trying to say,
    "You are a man. Together we are building our land."
    America!
    Land created in common,
    Dream nourished in common,
    Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
    If the house is not yet finished,
    Don’t be discouraged, builder!
    If the fight is not yet won,
    Don’t be weary, soldier!
    The plan and the pattern is here,
    Woven from the beginning
    Into the warp and woof of America:
    ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
    NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
    TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
    WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
    BETTER DIE FREE,
    THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
    Who said those things? Americans!
    Who owns those words? America!
    Who is America? You, me!
    We are America!
    To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
    We say, NO!
    To the enemy who would divide
    And conquer us from within,
    We say, NO!
    FREEDOM!
    BROTHERHOOD!
    DEMOCRACY!
    To all the enemies of these great words:
    We say, NO!
    A long time ago,
    An enslaved people heading toward freedom
    Made up a song:
    Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
    The plow plowed a new furrow
    Across the field of history.
    Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
    From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
    That tree is for everybody,
    For all America, for all the world.
    May its branches spread and shelter grow
    Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
    KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

    - Langston Hughes
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  34. TopTop #955
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Earth
    *
    Let the day grow on you upward
    through your feet,
    the vegetal knuckles,
    *
    to your knees of stone,
    until by evening you are a black tree;
    feel, with evening,
    *
    the swifts thicken your hair,
    the new moon rising out of your forehead,
    and the moonlit veins of silver
    *
    running from your armpits
    like rivulets under white leaves.
    Sleep, as ants
    *
    cross over your eyelids.
    You have never possessed anything
    as deeply as this.
    *
    This is all you have owned
    from the first outcry
    through forever;
    *
    you can never be dispossessed.
    *
    - Derek Walcott
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  35. TopTop #956
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For My Daughter

    When I die choose a star
    and name it after me
    that you may know
    I have not abandoned
    or forgotten you.
    You were such a star to me,
    following you through birth
    and childhood, my hand
    in your hand.

    When I die
    choose a star and name it
    after me so that I may shine
    down on you, until you join
    me in darkness and silence
    together.

    - David Ignatow
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  36. TopTop #957
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    More Than We Know



    Windows of the building across the way

    facing away from the sun,

    are filled with golden light.

    How can it be?



    They are reflecting

    light reflected from mine.



    Could there be

    accidental gifts

    we give

    without knowing it?


    - Nina Mermey Klippel
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  37. TopTop #958
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ozymandias of Egypt
    *
    I met a traveller from an antique land *
    Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone *
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, *
    Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown *
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command ******
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read *
    Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things, *
    The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed. *
    And on the pedestal these words appear: *
    "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: *
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" *
    Nothing beside remains: round the decay *
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, *
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.

    - P. B. Shelley
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  38. TopTop #959
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Enlightenment

    Forget about enlightenment.

    Sit down wherever you are
    and listen to the wind singing
    in your veins.

    Feel the love, the longing and
    the fear in your bones.

    Open your heart to who you
    are right now, not who you’d
    like to be. Not the saint you’re
    striving to become, but the
    being right there before you,
    inside you, around you.

    All of you is holy.

    You’re already more and less
    than whatever you can know.

    Breathe out, look in, let go.

    - John Welwood
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  39. TopTop #960
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Variation On The Word Sleep


    I would like to watch you sleeping,
    which may not happen.
    I would like to watch you,
    sleeping. I would like to sleep
    with you, to enter
    your sleep as its smooth dark wave
    slides over my head

    and walk with you through that lucent
    wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
    with its watery sun & three moons
    towards the cave where you must descend,
    towards your worst fear

    I would like to give you the silver
    branch, the small white flower, the one
    word that will protect you
    from the grief at the center
    of your dream, from the grief
    at the center I would like to follow
    you up the long stairway
    again & become
    the boat that would row you back
    carefully, a flame
    in two cupped hands
    to where your body lies
    beside me, and as you enter
    it as easily as breathing in

    I would like to be the air
    that inhabits you for a moment
    only. I would like to be that unnoticed
    & that necessary.

    - Margaret Atwood
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