Click Banner For More Info See All Sponsors

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

This site is now closed permanently to new posts.
We recommend you use the new Townsy Cafe!

Click anywhere but the link to dismiss overlay!

Page 34 of 162 FirstFirst ... 24 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 44 84 134 ... LastLast
Results 991 to 1,020 of 4857

  • Share this thread on:
  • Follow: No Email   
  • Thread Tools
  1. TopTop #991
    stonebeadmaker
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    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
    Thanks for posting this extremely beautiful and relevant piece. I have had the good luck of meeting Geneen Marie through work that she does with her friend ,ecopsychologist and vision quest leader Bill Plotkin. She is an amazing writer and this piece gives us an excellent insight into her thought process. Where did you come across this at?
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  2. TopTop #992
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At Lake Scugog

    1.
    Where what I see comes to rest,
    at the edge of the lake,
    against what I think I see
    and, up on the bank, who I am
    maintains an uneasy truce
    with who I fear I am,
    while in the cabin’s shade the gap between
    the words I said
    and those I remember saying
    is just wide enough to contain
    the remains that remain
    of what I assumed I knew.

    2.
    Out in the canoe, the person I thought you were
    gingerly trades spots
    with the person you are
    and what I believe I believe
    sits uncomfortably next to
    what I believe.
    When I promised I will always give you
    what I want you to want,
    you heard, or desired to hear,
    something else. As, over and in the lake,
    the cormorant and its image
    traced paths through the sky.

    - Troy Jollimore
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  3. Gratitude expressed by:

  4. TopTop #993
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Wish to Be Generous

    All that I serve will die, all my delights,
    the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
    the silent lilies standing in the woods,
    the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
    will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
    in its own age. Let the world bring on me
    the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
    my little light taken from me into the seed
    of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
    to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
    like a tree in a field, passing without haste
    or regret toward what will be, my life
    a patient willing descent into the grass.

    - Wendell Berry
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  5. Gratitude expressed by:

  6. TopTop #994
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode To That Green Harmonica

    Oh, how you made my heart weep
    that full moon night in the mountain pines.
    Your sound crying the tears
    of hundreds of blues players
    who wailed their losses to the night
    and the distant stars

    Your sound carried enough loneliness
    to make the heavens moan
    and rain for months.

    Oh, you beautiful green harmonica.
    Your shine worn down by sliding hands -
    the hands easing out low breathy shimmers
    caressing the empty places, the broken hearts
    of lonely sweethearts
    weeping In the night.

    I pick you up like the marvelous treasure
    you are - and gently kiss
    your lips.

    You ask only my breath,
    my simple breath,
    that makes you nearly shiver
    out of my hand.

    You are full to bursting
    with sorrowful blues
    falling in the darkness.

    Your sound calls in the love sick cowboy,
    the tired cook,
    the railroad man too tired to go to bed,
    the little child too alive
    to go to sleep while your sounds
    curl in his ears.

    With all your sad moans
    your green is still the greenest green
    that ever a harmonica was - let someone else
    try to find a greener green
    than you.

    That's it! You beautiful green harmonica.
    That's it!

    Maybe you once were black
    with all the sorrows of the world.
    Perhaps those darkening tones
    easing from such tiny holes,
    like sand through a sieve,
    filtered out the hurtful parts.

    You took only the honeyed leavings
    of bleeding passion
    and allowed them into the air.

    And the trees heard!
    Yes, the trees heard and gave you back
    their beauty, their greenest green
    of praising spring.
    Oh, you beautiful green harmonica
    Oh! Oh! Oh-hh!

    - Doug von Koss
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  7. TopTop #995
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Buckeye

    Heading up the Tuolomne
    one early July evening
    the steep slopes slant back and away
    from the movement of water

    a pale tawny boneyard of trees
    stretches river bank to ridgeline.
    The skeletal clatter of limbs
    sours the day, this encounter
    with so much death. In the narrows,
    those dry sculpted shapes become clear.
    Like a dream the trouble melting
    in a comedy of error.
    It is the buckeye, thousands strong
    summer deciduous, proud, bare.
    Other trees beginning to bloom and fruit,
    watch the buckeye leaves curl in the heat,
    wonder what’s wrong, as the miscreant tree
    papers the ground with fandangos of
    spiraled, sunburned currency.

    The buckeye, clearly out of step,
    its towering white panicles
    coming too late in the season
    and rivaling each bride’s bouquet.
    November buckeye is still bare
    and bent with fruit, leathery pears
    that drape then crack then let go
    the smooth amber seed the Pomo
    made a mash of these and poured it
    into the river to stun the fish
    and carried the nub of the nut
    around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
    January finds other trees napping,
    while buckeye opens her monkey’s fist
    of leaves, each little open hand gestures

    hang on, I am here to tell you
    the others are coming, in time,
    all will be coming in good time.

    - Penelope La Montagne
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  8. TopTop #996
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On the Nature of Things

    The squawking crow
    flies down from the redwood tree
    to tell me
    he is not a crow.

    Not bird, not passerine bird
    of the family Corvidae,
    nor mind nor body
    nor thing.

    And not a crow.

    In fact, he says,
    he hasn't even been
    discovered yet.

    When I was young I dreamt
    I climber marble stairs
    toward a room that held
    The Book of What Each Thing Is.
    Golden light poured down those stairs
    from a room so high
    I could never see it.

    From that book
    I would learn
    what is crow,
    what is redwood,
    what am I.

    Crow tells me
    the black of his wings
    is deeper than any book.

    Friends, there are hours
    I have no greater grief,
    no greater joy.

    I will never know
    what I am.

    Crow
    flies down often
    to tell me so.

    - Len Anderson
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  9. Gratitude expressed by:

  10. TopTop #997
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dead Pets



    They come between dreams

    soft focus tails wagging,

    whiskers electric.


    The ones we have named.

    Wide-eyed refugees

    we carried home in cars

    or in arms curled around

    trembling ribs.


    They return like blood

    to fill again a thick vein

    on the surface of sensation.

    The tactile plasma

    of Patch, Lucky, and Tigger

    still checking our pulse.


    Those we once called mine,

    understand

    it is we who were once theirs.

    They see us now

    as children see ghosts

    and other lost souls.

     
    - Eric Ashford
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  11. TopTop #998
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith




    Every summer
    I listen and look
    under the sun’s brass and even
    in the moonlight, but I can’t hear

    anything, I can’t see anything -----
    not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
    nor the leaves
    deepening their damp pleats,

    nor the tassels making,
    nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
    And still,
    every day,

    the leafy fields
    grow taller and thicker -----
    green gowns lofting up in the night,
    showered with silk.

    Ans so, every summer,
    I fail as a witness, seeing nothing -----
    I am deaf too
    to the tick of the leaves,

    the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet ----
    all of it
    happening
    beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.

    And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
    Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
    Let the wind turn in the trees,
    and the mystery hidden in dirt

    swing through the air.
    How could I look at anything in this world
    and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
    What should I fear?

    One morning,
    in the leafy green ocean
    the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
    is sure to be there.

    - Mary Oliver
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  12. TopTop #999
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Snake
    A snake came to my water-trough
    On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
    To drink there.
    In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
    I came down the steps with my pitcher
    And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
    me.

    He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
    And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of
    the stone trough
    And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
    And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
    He sipped with his straight mouth,
    Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
    Silently.

    Someone was before me at my water-trough,
    And I, like a second comer, waiting.

    He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
    And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
    And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
    And stooped and drank a little more,
    Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
    On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
    The voice of my education said to me
    He must be killed,
    For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

    And voices in me said, If you were a man
    You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

    But must I confess how I liked him,
    How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough
    And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
    Into the burning bowels of this earth?

    Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured?
    I felt so honoured.

    And yet those voices:
    If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

    And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more
    That he should seek my hospitality
    From out the dark door of the secret earth.

    He drank enough
    And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
    And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,
    Seeming to lick his lips,
    And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
    And slowly turned his head,
    And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,
    Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
    And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

    And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
    And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
    A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
    Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
    Overcame me now his back was turned.

    I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
    I picked up a clumsy log
    And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

    I think it did not hit him,
    But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste.
    Writhed like lightning, and was gone
    Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
    At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

    And immediately I regretted it.
    I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
    I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

    And I thought of the albatross
    And I wished he would come back, my snake.

    For he seemed to me again like a king,
    Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
    Now due to be crowned again.

    And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
    Of life.
    And I have something to expiate:
    A pettiness.
    - D.H. Lawrence

    Taormina, 1923
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  13. TopTop #1000
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Barefoot Boy

    Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace;
    Blessings on thee, little man,Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
    With thy turned-up pantaloons,
    And thy merry whistled tunes;
    With thy red lip, redder still
    Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
    With the sunshine on thy face,
    From my heart I give thee joy,—
    I was once a barefoot boy!
    Prince thou art,—the grown-up man
    Only is republican.
    Let the million-dollared ride!
    Barefoot, trudging at his side,
    Thou hast more than he can buy
    In the reach of ear and eye,—
    Outward sunshine, inward joy:
    Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!

    Oh for boyhood’s painless play,
    Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
    Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
    Knowledge never learned of schools,
    Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
    Of the wild-flower’s time and place,
    Flight of fowl and habitude
    Of the tenants of the wood;
    How the tortoise bears his shell,
    How the woodchuck digs his cell,
    And the ground-mole sinks his well;
    How the robin feeds her young,
    How the oriole’s nest is hung;
    Where the whitest lilies blow,
    Where the freshest berries grow,
    Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
    Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
    Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
    Mason of his walls of clay,
    And the architectural plans
    Of gray hornet artisans!
    For, eschewing books and tasks,
    Nature answers all he asks;
    Hand in hand with her he walks,
    Face to face with her he talks,
    Part and parcel of her joy,—
    Blessings on the barefoot boy!

    Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
    Crowding years in one brief moon,
    When all things I heard or saw,
    Me, their master, waited for.
    I was rich in flowers and trees,
    Humming-birds and honey-bees;
    For my sport the squirrel played,
    Plied the snouted mole his spade;
    For my taste the blackberry cone
    Purpled over hedge and stone;
    Laughed the brook for my delight
    Through the day and through the night,
    Whispering at the garden wall,
    Talked with me from fall to fall;
    Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
    Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
    Mine, on bending orchard trees,
    Apples of Hesperides!
    Still as my horizon grew,
    Larger grew my riches too;
    All the world I saw or knew
    Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
    Fashioned for a barefoot boy!

    Oh for festal dainties spread,
    Like my bowl of milk and bread;
    Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
    On the door-stone, gray and rude!
    O’er me, like a regal tent,
    Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
    Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
    Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
    While for music came the play
    Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
    And, to light the noisy choir,
    Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
    I was monarch: pomp and joy
    Waited on the barefoot boy!

    Cheerily, then, my little man,
    Live and laugh, as boyhood can!
    Though the flinty slopes be hard,
    Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
    Every morn shall lead thee through
    Fresh baptisms of the dew;
    Every evening from thy feet
    Shall the cool wind kiss the heat:
    All too soon these feet must hide
    In the prison cells of pride,
    Lose the freedom of the sod,
    Like a colt’s for work be shod,
    Made to tread the mills of toil,
    Up and down in ceaseless moil:
    Happy if their track be found
    Never on forbidden ground;
    Happy if they sink not in
    Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
    Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
    Ere it passes, barefoot boy!

    - John Greenleaf Whittier
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  14. TopTop #1001
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Supple Deer

    The quiet opening
    between fence strands
    perhaps eighteen inches.

    Antlers to hind hooves,
    four feet off the ground,
    the deer poured through.

    No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

    I don't know how a stag turns
    into a stream, an arc of water.
    I have never felt such accurate envy.

    Not of the deer:

    To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

    - Jane Hirshfield
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  15. Gratitude expressed by:

  16. TopTop #1002
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Having Come This Far

    I've been through what my through was to be
    I did what I could and couldn't
    I was never sure how I would get there

    I nourished an ardor for thresholds
    for stepping stones and for ladders
    I discovered detour and ditch

    I swam in the high tides of greed
    I built sandcastles to house my dreams
    I survived the sunburns of love

    No longer do I hunt for targets
    I've climbed all the summits I need to
    and I've eaten my share of lotus

    Now I give praise and thanks
    for what could not be avoided
    and for every foolhardy choice

    I cherish my wounds and their cures
    and the sweet enervations of bliss
    My book is an open life

    I wave goodbye to the absolutes
    and send my regards to infinity
    I'd rather be blithe than correct

    Until something transcendent turns up
    I splash in my poetry puddle
    and try to keep God amused.

    - James Broughton
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  17. Gratitude expressed by:

  18. TopTop #1003
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Into These Knots

    Tell us how the soul is bound and bent
    into these knots, and whether any ever
    frees itself from such imprisonment.
    —Canto XII, Inferno 


    I say, Without a God there is no hell.
    There’s only this—. She rustles for her keys.
    The apple tree sheds petal after petal.

    She says, Let’s take you to the hospital.
    The petals spin like sparks. I close my eyes
    and say, Without a God there is no hell,

    and there is only this. It’s just as well.
    The lawn is red and white. She asks, Who says?
    How do you know? The wind fells every petal.

    She says, Let’s take you to the hospital.
    I cannot breathe. I cannot tell her, Yes—.
    Because without a God there is no hell,

    as she whispers, Talk to me, I know I will
    clamber—but not toward heaven, toward the sky,
    eyes winking behind petal after petal.

    The rope-burnt bark will flake away and fall.
    Knot on my neck, the rest would be so easy:
    I’ll pray, Without a God there is no hell,
    then slip through petals—through petal after petal.

    - Ashley Anna McHugh
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  19. TopTop #1004
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Sign in My Father's Hands

    - for Frank Espada

    The beer company
    did not hire Blacks or Puerto Ricans,
    so my father joined the picket line
    at the Schaefer Beer Pavilion, New York World’s Fair,
    amid the crowds glaring with canine hostility.
    But the cops brandished nightsticks
    and handcuffs to protect the beer,
    and my father disappeared.

    In 1964, I had never tasted beer,
    and no one told me about the picket signs
    torn in two by the cops of brewery.
    I knew what dead was: dead was a cat
    overrun with parasites and dumped
    in the hallway incinerator.
    I knew my father was dead.
    I went mute and filmy-eyed, the slow boy
    who did not hear the question in school.
    I sat studying his framed photograph
    like a mirror, my darker face.

    Days later, he appeared in the doorway
    grinning with his gilded tooth.
    Not dead, though I would come to learn
    that sometimes Puerto Ricans die
    in jail, with bruises no one can explain
    swelling their eyes shut.
    I would learn too that “boycott”
    is not a boy’s haircut,
    that I could sketch a picket line
    on the blank side of a leaflet.

    That day my father returned
    from the netherworld
    easily as riding the elevator to apartment 14-F,
    and the brewery cops could only watch
    in drunken disappointment.
    I searched my father’s hands
    for a sign of the miracle.

    - Martin Espada
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  20. TopTop #1005
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Emperor of Ice-Cream

    Call the roller of big cigars,
    The muscular one, and bid him whip
    In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
    Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
    As they are used to wear, and let the boys
    Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
    Let be be finale of seem.
    The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

    The Emperor of Ice-Cream

    Take from the dresser of deal,
    Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
    On which she embroidered fantails once
    And spread it so as to cover her face.
    If her horny feet protrude, they come
    To show how cold she is, and dumb.
    Let the lamp affix its beam.
    The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

    - Wallace Stevens
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  21. TopTop #1006
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hatred

    See how efficient it still is,

    how it keeps itself in shape -

    our century's hatred.

    How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

    How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

    It's not like other feelings.

    At once both older and younger.

    It gives birth itself to the reasons

    that give it life.

    When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.

    And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.


    One religion or another -

    whatever gets it ready, in position.

    One fatherland or another -

    whatever helps it get a running start.

    Justice also works well at the outset

    until hate gets its own momentum going.

    Hatred. Hatred.

    Its face twisted in a grimace

    of erotic ecstasy.

    Oh these other feelings,

    listless weaklings.

    Since when does brotherhood

    draw crowds?

    Has compassion

    ever finished first?

    Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?

    Only hatred has just what it takes.

    Gifted, diligent, hard working.

    Need we mention all the songs it has composed?

    All the pages it has added to our history books?

    All the human carpets it has spread

    over countless city squares and football fields?

    Let's face it:

    it knows how to make beauty.

    The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.

    Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.

    You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins

    and a certain bawdy humor to be found

    in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

    Hatred is a master of contrast -

    between explosion and dead quiet,

    red blood and white snow.

    Above all, it never tires

    of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner

    towering over its soiled victim.

    It's always ready for new challenges.

    If it has to wait awhile, it will.

    They say it's blind. Blind?

    It has a sniper's keen sight

    and gazes unflinchingly at the future

    as only it can.

    - Wislawa Szymborska
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  22. TopTop #1007
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Inclination


    One's throat must be like a garden
    And one's eyes like windows
    through which love passes;
    And one's stature
    Must be like a tree
    that rises out of rocks;
    And poetry must be like a singing bird,
    Perching on the highest branch of a tree,
    Breaking the heavy silence of the world.

    - Hamid Reza Rahimi
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  23. Gratitude expressed by:

  24. TopTop #1008
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Overland to the Islands

    Let's go—much as that dog goes,
    intently haphazard. The
    Mexican light on a day that
    ‘smells like autumn in Connecticut’
    makes iris ripples on his
    black gleaming fur—and that too
    is as one would desire—a radiance
    consorting with the dance.
    Under his feet
    rocks and mud, his imagination, sniffing,
    engaged in its perceptions—dancing
    edgeways, there's nothing
    the dog disdains on his way,
    nevertheless he
    keeps moving, changing
    pace and approach but
    not direction—‘every step an arrival.’

    - Denise Levertov
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  25. TopTop #1009
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    An Affirming Flame


    Defenseless under the night
    Our world in stupor lies;
    Yet, dotted everywhere,
    Ironic points of light
    Flash out wherever the Just
    Exchange their messages:
    May I, composed like them
    Of Eros and of dust,
    Beleaguered by the same
    Negation and despair,
    Show an affirming flame.

    - W.H. Auden
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  26. TopTop #1010
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Listening


    You wept in your mother’s arms
    and I knew that from then on
    I was to forget myself.

    Listening to your sobs,
    I was resolved against my will
    to do well by us
    and so I said, without thinking,
    in great panic, To do wrong
    in one’s own judgment,
    though others thrive by it,
    is the right road to blessedness.
    Not to submit to error
    is in itself wrong
    and pride.

    Standing beside you,
    I took an oath
    to make your life simpler
    by complicating mine
    and what I always thought
    would happen did: I was lifted up in joy.

    - David Ignatow
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  27. TopTop #1011
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Beautiful It Is


    It flows out of mystery into mystery: there is no beginning—

    How could there be? And no end—how could there be?

    The stars shine in the sky like the spray of a wave

    Rushing to meet no shore, and the great music

    Blares on forever, but to us very soon

    It will be blind. Not we, nor our children nor the human race

    Are destined to live forever, the breath will fail,

    The eyes will break—perhaps of our own explosive vile

    Vented upon each other—or a stingy peace

    Makes parents fools—but far greater witnesses

    Will take our places. It is only a little planet

    But how beautiful it is.

    - Robinson Jeffers
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  28. TopTop #1012
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Old Interior Angel

    Young, male and
    immortal as I was,
    I stopped at the first sight
    of that broken bridge.

    The taut cables snapped
    and the bridge planks
    concertina-ed
    into a crazy jumble
    over the drop,
    four hundred feet
    to the craggy
    stream.

    I sat and watched
    the wind shiver
    on the broken planks,
    as if by looking hard
    and long enough
    the life-line
    might spontaneously
    repair itself
    -- but watched in vain.

    An hour I sat
    in the clear silence,
    checking each
    involuntary movement
    of the body toward
    that trembling
    bridge
    with a fearful mind,
    and an emphatic
    shake of the head.

    Finally, facing defeat
    and about to go back
    the way I came
    to meet the others.

    Three days round
    by another pass.

    Enter the old mountain woman
    with her stooped gait,
    her dark clothes
    and her dung basket
    clasped to her back.

    Small feet shuffling
    for the precious
    gold-brown
    fuel for cooking food.

    Intent on the ground
    she glimpsed my feet
    and looking up
    Said "Namaste"
    "I greet the God in you"
    the last syllable
    held like a song.

    I inclined my head
    and clasped my hands
    to reply, but
    before I could look up
    she turned her lined face
    and went straight across
    that shivering chaos
    of wood
    and broken steel
    in one movement.

    One day the hero
    sits down,
    afraid to take
    another step,
    and the old interior angel
    limps slowly in
    with her no-nonsense
    compassion
    and her old secret
    and goes ahead.

    "Namaste"
    you say
    and follow.

    - David Whyte
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  29. TopTop #1013
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When Your Ship

    When your ship, long moored in harbor
    gives you the illusion of being a house,
    put out to sea.

    Save your boat’s journeying soul,
    and your own pilgrim soul,
    cost what it may.

    - Helder Camara
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  30. Gratitude expressed by:

  31. TopTop #1014
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Animal Is Spiritual

    she calls out in a loud bark
    from her doorstep as she sees me walk her way,
    still halfway up the block. It’s Nika,
    the German Shepherd
    who greets and licks everyone,
    her slow, arthritic walk
    and coat worn bare
    to the black skin of her back, sign
    of the sloughing off of the flesh.
    I try to understand
    what she means by this.

    Animal is Spiritual,
    she barks again and again, and as I approach
    she walks out to the street,
    does not look for traffic,
    crosses to my side and waits for me.

    She nuzzles my pant leg, I pet her and say,
    You have a point—
    the survival advantage of softened interpersonal boundaries
    among kin in social animals could well drive a pleasure response
    that might be conditioned by the touch of a hand, the nave of a
    church, or a voice howling a hymn to the moon.
    She licks my cool hand with her warm tongue.

    But surely you would admit,
    I go on,
    the Animal embraces more
    than the Spiritual and the Spiritual may well embrace more
    than the Animal.

    She looks up at me as if I have lost my mind.
    I can read it in her eyes: Animal is Spiritual.

    But then, what can I expect of anyone
    with the limited symbolic capacity
    of a Canis familiaris?
    And I am embarrassed
    to have even talked with her.

    I take her by the collar back to her doormat,
    tell her to be a good
    spiritual dog and stay on her
    side of the street. I go on with my walk.

    At the end of the block I turn to see
    a truck and a car stop and she
    in the middle of the road,
    as if she does not care
    if she lives or dies. The drivers gesture,
    but she pays them no mind. She just looks at me
    with those eyes again—I,
    another animal, a fifty-eight-year-old biped,
    in the middle of the street, yelling,
    Oh saint among dogs,
    please get out of the road!

    I, who still don’t know what
    Animal is, what
    Spiritual is.


    - Len Anderson
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  32. TopTop #1015
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To die singing!



    To die singing! To pass into death through song!

    I can think of no better way to die.

    Let it be beautiful when I sing the last song.

    Let it be day.

    I would stand with my two feet singing,

    I would look upward with my eyes singing,

    I would have the winds envelop my body,

    I would have the sun to shine upon my body,

    Let it be beautiful when you would slay me,

    (Thou wouldst)

    O Shining One,

    Let it be day when I sing the last song.


    - Thomas Aquinas

    (From 'Adore te devote')
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  33. TopTop #1016
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sonnet

    The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall
    About a dreaming garden still and sweet,
    I hear the unseen bats above me bleat
    Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,
    And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.
    Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet
    For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,
    Cool, white and smooth. So may I reach the hall
    With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear
    With magic sponge can wipe away an hour
    Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,
    Why could a man not loiter in that bower
    Until a thousand painless cycles wore,
    And then—what if it held him evermore?

    - C.S. Lewis
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  34. Gratitude expressed by:

  35. TopTop #1017
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For a New Beginning

    In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
    Where your thoughts never think to wander,
    This beginning has been quietly forming,
    Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

    For a long time it has watched your desire,
    Feeling your emptiness growing inside you,
    Noticing how you willed yourself on,
    Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

    It watched you play with the seduction of safety
    And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
    Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
    Wondered would you always live like this.

    Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
    And out you stepped onto new ground,
    Your eyes young agin with energy and dream,
    A path of plentitude opening before you.

    Though your destination is not yet clear
    You can trust the promise of this opening;
    Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
    That is at one with your life's desire.

    Awaken your spirit to adventure;
    Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
    Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
    For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

    - John O'Donohue
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  36. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  37. TopTop #1018
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Life in a Body

    Francis, who never intended
    To be a saint, called his "Brother Ass",
    An affectionate name for the beast
    That houses our hearts and all the muscle, tissue,
    Sinew and joints that grow drier and older,
    Like late-summer grass, every day.

    "I stretch every morning before
    I get out of bed." She throws one leg
    Over the other, by way of demonstration
    And she is limber as her words
    Are not, coming from vocal cords
    Dry and salty as the Sonoran Desert
    At the Sea of Cortez. My grandmother,
    That same ninety-something years old,
    Fell and broke a hip at sixty.

    My mother, sixty-something then, tells
    Me the story—an old woman as limber
    As I am—all of twenty-something.
    So I stretch and keep
    Stretching until I reach
    Central America, then east to Europe.

    - Rebecca del Rio
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  38. TopTop #1019
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Touched by An Angel

    We, unaccustomed to courage
    exiles from delight
    live coiled in shells of loneliness
    until love leaves its high holy temple
    and comes into our sight
    to liberate us into life.

    Love arrives
    and in its train come ecstasies
    old memories of pleasure
    ancient histories of pain.
    Yet if we are bold,
    love strikes away the chains of fear
    from our souls.

    We are weaned from our timidity
    In the flush of love's light
    we dare be brave
    And suddenly we see
    that love costs all we are
    and will ever be.
    Yet it is only love
    which sets us free.

    - Maya Angelou
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  39. Gratitude expressed by:

  40. TopTop #1020
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Becoming

    Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
    None of us is the same person as yesterday.
    We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
    This downward cellular jubilance is shared
    by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
    and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
    where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
    thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
    Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
    grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle
    a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
    We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
    as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
    except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
    Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.

    - Jim Harrison
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  41. Gratitude expressed by:

Similar Threads

  1. Thank you Larry Robinson
    By JandA in forum WaccoReader
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-11-2009, 02:36 PM
  2. Poem of the day from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 05-20-2008, 09:33 AM
  3. Poems from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: 01-07-2007, 08:45 AM
  4. Measure F Precinct Walk with Larry Robinson
    By Portia in forum General Community
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-06-2006, 02:46 PM

Bookmarks