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  1. TopTop #1771
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
    And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
    Before doing that, though, they should learn
    How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain,
    the snow and moon.

    - Ikkyu
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  3. TopTop #1772
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    October


    The first rain fell early this morning
    disappeared into the dry peaks
    like quiet tears shed by abandoned gods
    who still keep watch, waiting for prayers

    The rains will keep falling now
    the river will slowly rise, and the silence
    Gray winds will sift long psalms of mist
    soft fingers searching for prayers


    - Cynthia Poten
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  5. TopTop #1773
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eleventh Hour


    start over
    one giant step
    back to square one
    the first hop-scotch box
    where I balance precariously
    on one foot... barely breathing
    only this time shyly smiling instead
    of biting my lip and twitching my face
    it doesn’t matter now if I lose my balance
    and fall completely outside the box and never
    again follow the rules of a game created by men
    strutting on the cutting edge of lust and destruction
    today I trade in reason for the willingness to surrender
    the sequential and linear for the outbreath of thirty three
    whirling dervishes at the center of my soul’s insistent longings
    finally knowing I may enter any square at any time (or not)
    and finding myself (and you) at the portal of the eleventh
    hour which is just a room without walls, floors or ceiling
    safely resting in a rapidly expanding limitless space of
    requiescence where we find no pushing or pulling of
    any kind only a forgiveness and abiding trust in
    the unfolding of each moment bubbling into
    the next and the next one bursting with a
    light of its own which is something like
    love and is accompanied by a hum
    so deep it can only travel thru all
    matter and carries you with it
    until you have completely
    forgotten your self and
    simply ripple out into
    circles beyond
    any death


    - Fran Carbonaro
    Last edited by Barry; 10-01-2013 at 01:35 PM.
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  7. TopTop #1774
    Beverly Riverwood's Avatar
    Beverly Riverwood
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fran, you are a wonderful poet. I loved reading this poem, and am sending it on to my daughter/poet. All the best, Bev Riverwood
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Eleventh Hour

    start over
    one giant step
    back to square one
    the first hop-scotch box
    where I balance precariously
    on one foot... barely breathing...
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  9. TopTop #1775
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Start seeing everything as God
    But keep it a secret
    Become like a man who is awestruck
    and nourished, listening to a golden nightingale
    sing in a beautiful foreign language
    while God nests invisibly upon its tongue.
    Hafiz, who can you tell in this world
    That when a dog runs up to you
    wagging its ecstatic tail,
    you bend down and whisper in its ear
    "Beloved, I am so glad that you are happy to see me,
    Beloved, I am so glad, so very glad, that you have come."


    - Hafiz
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  11. TopTop #1776
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ghost Road Song


    for my father, 11/19/1927 – 6/27/2009


    I need a song.
    I need a song like a river, cool and dark and wet,
    like a battered old oak; gnarled bark,
    bitter acorns,
    a song like a dragonfly:
    shimmer - hover - swerve -
    like embers, too hot to touch.


    I need a song like my father’s hands:
    scarred, callused, blunt,
    a song like a wheel,
    like June rain, seep of solstice,
    tang of waking earth.


    I need a song like a seed:
    a hard and shiny promise,
    a song like ashes:
    gritty, fine, scattered;
    a song like abalone, tough as stone,
    smooth as a ripple at the edge of the bay.


    I need a song so soft, it won’t sting my wounds,
    so true, no anger can blunt it,
    so deep, no one can mine it.


    I need a song with a heart wrapped in barbed wire.


    I need a song that sheds no tears,
    I need a song that sobs.
    I need a song that skates along the edge of black ice,
    howls with coyotes,
    a song with a good set of lungs,
    a song that won’t give out, give up,
    give in, give way:
    I need a song with guts.


    I need a song like lightning, just one blaze of insight.


    I need a song like a hurricane,
    spiraled winds of chaos,
    a snake-charming song,
    a bullshit-busting song,
    a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-Creator song.
    I need a song that rears its head up like a granite peak
    and greets the eastern sky.


    I need a song small enough to fit in my pocket,
    big enough to wrap around
    the wide shoulders of my grief,
    a song with a melody like thunder,
    chords that won’t get lost,
    rhythm that can’t steal away.
    I need a song that forgives me my lack of voice.


    I need a song that forgives my lack of forgiveness.


    I need a song so right
    that the first note splinters me like crystal,
    spits the shards out into the universe
    like sleek seedlings of stars; yes,
    that’s the song
    I need,


    the song to accompany you
    on your first steps
    along the Milky Way,
    that song with ragged edges,
    a worn-out sun;
    the song that lets a burnt red rim
    slip away into the Pacific,
    leaves my throat
    healed at last.


    - Deborah Miranda
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  13. TopTop #1777
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What The Dog Perhaps Hears


    If an inaudible whistle
    blown between our lips
    can send him home to us,
    then silence is perhaps
    the sound of spiders breathing
    and roots mining the earth;
    it may be asparagus heaving,
    headfirst, into the light
    and the long brown sound
    of cracked cups, when it happens.
    We would like to ask the dog
    if there is a continuous whir
    because the child in the house
    keeps growing, if the snake
    really stretches full length
    without a click and the sun
    breaks through clouds without
    a decibel of effort,
    whether in autumn, when the trees
    dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
    too high for us to hear.
    What is it like up there
    above the shut-off level
    of our simple ears?
    For us there was no birth cry,
    the newborn bird is suddenly here,
    the egg broken, the nest alive,
    and we heard nothing when the world changed.


    - Lisel Mueller
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  15. TopTop #1778
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Night Heralds


    There are beatings in life so bad – I don’t know –
    beatings as from God’s hatred – as if
    the depths of everything we ever put up with
    jammed in the soul! – I don’t know –

    Not many – but they exist…. trenches cut
    into the fiercest face and the strongest back.
    They are the horses of Attila,
    night heralds sent us by Death,

    mad crazes of the Savior of the soul
    away from a loving faith Fate damned,
    bloody blows – rifle cracks –
    like bread that burns hot from the oven.

    And Man – poor poor Man! He turns his eyes –
    as when someone for attention behind one claps hands –
    he turns his crazy eyes, and everything alive
    clogs like a bog of guilt in that glare.

    There are blows in life so hard – I don’t know –

    - César Vallejo
    (From Los Heraldos Negros
    Translated by Bruce Moody)
    Last edited by Barry; 10-05-2013 at 02:30 PM.
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  17. TopTop #1779
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mother Lode

    in a dream I discovered jewels
    buried deep in magma
    glistening through rock and mud
    colored and shimmering
    pulsing like stars

    the magma became flesh
    the jewels our shared minerals and molecules
    collective struggles under murky loads
    pulsing like heartbeats

    it won’t work to mine them out with picks and pulleys
    or frack them with blasts of chemicals
    or slice them with lasers and scalpels
    they belong where they are embedded embodied
    inside safe waiting

    waiting soft stillness
    settling to reveal sparkles
    unfurling furiously from the deep
    our essence
    our future

    have you discovered them yet?

    in a dream I discovered jewels
    buried deep in magma
    glistening through rock and mud
    colored and shimmering
    pulsing like stars

    the magma became flesh
    the jewels our shared minerals and molecules
    collective struggles under murky loads
    pulsing like heartbeats

    it won’t work to mine them out with picks and pulleys
    or frack them with blasts of chemicals
    or slice them with lasers and scalpels
    they belong where they are embedded embodied
    inside safe waiting

    waiting soft stillness
    settling to reveal sparkles
    unfurling furiously from the deep
    our essence
    our future

    have you discovered them yet?


    - Sharon Bard
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  18. TopTop #1780
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Abstraction / Mandala / Morning LIght


    the single stone
    at the foot of the mountain
    the hole in the sky
    where the day goes
    the hole in the earth
    where the breath goes
    the wholeness of being
    where the psyche moves
    toward

    you get the quiet
    the solitude

    awake and yes

    alone

    what joy
    there is
    though
    in quiet
    some kind of freedom and not a disaster at all

    a gift of silence
    a gift of motion
    a gift of lean words and times and belly

    move around the fire
    into words

    morning light
    sun out there
    somewhere soon

    broken is the shadow side
    of together
    broken is the shadow side
    of home
    broken is the winter within


    - Jack Crimmins
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  20. TopTop #1781
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Here Today

    Here today
    Gone tomorrow

    A grey hair
    Falls onto a white page

    Me reading
    The sign & the symbol

    Not many days left
    In my personal calendar


    - Robert Leverant
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  22. TopTop #1782
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)



    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Abstraction / Mandala / Morning LIght


    the single stone
    at the foot of the mountain
    the hole in the sky
    where the day goes
    the hole in the earth
    where the breath goes
    the wholeness of being
    where the psyche moves
    toward

    you get the quiet
    the solitude

    awake and yes

    alone

    what joy
    there is
    though
    in quiet
    some kind of freedom and not a disaster at all

    a gift of silence
    a gift of motion
    a gift of lean words and times and belly

    move around the fire
    into words

    morning light
    sun out there
    somewhere soon

    broken is the shadow side
    of together
    broken is the shadow side
    of home
    broken is the winter within


    - Jack Crimmins
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  24. TopTop #1783
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer


    I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
    inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
    to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
    I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
    and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
    and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
    in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
    so often laughing at funerals, that was because
    I knew the dead were already slipping away,
    preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
    And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
    my teeth, it was because I knew where the

    had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
    be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
    and I stood still, and while they stood
    quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
    ‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
    in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
    into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
    When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
    I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
    ‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
    in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
    When they asked me would I like to contribute
    I said no, and when they had collected
    more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
    When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
    and then went off by myself and did more
    than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
    ‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
    of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
    everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
    Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
    thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
    I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
    way to come to the truth. It is one way.


    - Wendell Berry
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  26. TopTop #1784
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Love

    In violent flight
    from tree to feed
    her whole body
    a heartbeat
    an armor of feathers
    with one fine eye
    fierce she comes again
    to flower.

    - Danielle Bryant
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  27. TopTop #1785
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Poem on Hope

    It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
    For hope must not depend on feeling good
    And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
    You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
    Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
    …And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
    Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
    The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
    Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

    Because we have not made our lives to fit
    Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
    The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
    Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
    Of what it is that no other place is, and by
    Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
    Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
    For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

    Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
    Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
    Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
    And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
    Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
    In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
    And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
    They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

    This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
    Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
    when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
    when they ask for your land and your work.
    Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
    And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
    Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
    In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
    Speak to your fellow humans as your place
    Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
    Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
    Before they had heard a radio. Speak
    Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

    Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
    From the pages of books and from your own heart.
    Be still and listen to the voices that belong
    To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
    There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
    By which it speaks for itself and no other.

    Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
    Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
    Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
    Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
    And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
    Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
    Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
    The likeness of people in other places to yourself
    In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
    Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
    As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

    No place at last is better than the world. The world
    Is no better than its places. Its places at last
    Are no better than their people while their people
    Continue in them. When the people make
    Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

    - Wendell Berry
    Last edited by Barry; 10-11-2013 at 03:36 PM.
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  29. TopTop #1786
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prairie Restoration Project


    The Midwest is a huge flat kitchen table I am sitting at,
    drinking rusty water, looking at a huge flat field
    out the window. The field’s the actual
    size of loneliness, emptied of people.
    With my looking, I try to gather
    its birds picking at some seeded thing, its combed
    pattern of plow-strokes, its gravel on a road
    dividing field from field, to pull them all in close
    against the way looking at it feels
    like a dispersal. As if to feel how each
    bit of gravel could be back
    with its mountain again or deep in the ground,
    or at least to understand how it isn’t, & won’t be
    in this life, I roll the fragments
    between thumb and forefinger, every
    jagged edge and ridge, each smooth lip,
    scallop, curve, non-descript
    pebbles upon pebbles of it. Where have you been. Loneliness
    whose sheep I gather from pasture,
    herding them now into a very small pen. Always, one
    is missing, or I lost count, counted wrong, never knew
    how many we started off with. When is it
    that the singular became
    this countless many, as if a thing bearing
    no name to begin with
    had shattered. What’s that called, at the beginning—
    whatever grew in the field or grazed there.
    How we blink and chew and find ourselves
    cubicle-hunched, tightened under humming fluorescents,
    shrinking down in rented mud. Dutifully visiting
    the raised square of dirt someone called garden, poking it
    with little heart, having signed the shitty contract
    for the dim apartment where the appliances
    only half-work, and each passing night
    breaks their backs even further. I counted wrong.
    I remember what a mountain was
    was dry macaroni glued to a sheet of paper
    in a kitchen in the later part of the last century. I picked
    the pieces off each by each in boredom or nervousness;
    they ticked dryly against the side of a paper cup.
    How many fields like this there are ahead of us, blue
    with the absence of tallgrass.
    I am sitting at the table, and what do I know of sheep.
    - Ari Banias
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  31. TopTop #1787
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Traveling Through Cultures of Eyes


    I passed through a city where I was seen.
    A city of living in the eyes,
    a city of presence.
    where to look carefully is a developed art,
    a slow, thoughtful practice.

    There is the good solid warmth of the white-coated waiter
    as he brings each course of dishes and heavy white napkins.
    Belen’s youth smiles her delight into our eyes.
    Alcira tells the story from Bergman’s last film and our eyes
    well up in a long look of recognized grief.
    Otilia’s eyes pierce mine with her passionate concern,
    What is happening to my friend’s child?
    The grandmother putting on her white scarf at Plaza de Mayo,
    where the mothers of the disappeared have kept meeting for thirty years,
    returns my honoring look with a long tender sweet smile,
    so familiar I remember my grandmother’s eyes.
    Alicia’s eyes catapult a stream of aliveness.
    Her eyes suspend time, holding me locked into the dance.
    The man with his white shirtsleeves rolled up,
    who murmurs gently in English as we dance
    meets my eyes with anticipation without intrusion,
    in this city where the dance of eyes always precedes the dance.

    The journey home is to pass through cultures of eyes.
    In D.C., the eyes bore holes in the polished floors,
    or ricochet across faces as fast as the clicking heels.
    Back in Maine, eyes glance by with a comfortable vagueness.

    The loss is stunning.

    Just let me find the eyes of the graying curly haired man
    who passed by in the Barrancas de Belgrano,
    looking with a slow focused intelligence,
    without a thread of seduction, just a look of consideration,
    a breath of mature presence passing by.
    I could live my life with a man who looked at me that way.

    But today, it is enough to put on my foul weather gear
    and head out into this spring pelting rain
    wide eyed, watching everything with my strong gaze.


    The black crow walking intently on the brilliant new green.
    My beloved oak pregnant with legions of budding leaves.
    My bay stoked into storm silvered eruptions.
    The roiling ocean of sky
    hurtles over my wide open eyes,
    receiving all of this.
    And every detail of this spring storm
    looks right back at me,
    straight into my eyes, steady,
    and unflinching.

    - Elizabeth Garber
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  33. TopTop #1788
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I will be traveling and mostly out of internet range so this is the last poem I will be posting for the next three weeks. Many blessings to us all.
    Larry


    Earth Dweller


    It was all the clods at once become
    precious; it was the barn, and the shed,
    and the windmill, my hands, the crack
    Arlie made in the ax handle: oh, let me stay
    here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;
    let the sun casually rise and set.
    If I have not found the right place,
    teach me; for, somewhere inside, the clods are
    vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing
    for the saints forever, the shed and windmill
    rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.

    Now I know why people worship, carry around
    magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
    they teach to their children: the world speaks.
    The world speaks everything to us.
    It is our only friend.

    - William Stafford
    Last edited by Barry; 10-14-2013 at 02:29 PM.
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  35. TopTop #1789
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Brief For The Defense


    Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
    are not starving someplace, they are starving
    somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
    But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
    Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
    be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
    be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
    at the fountain are laughing together between
    the suffering they have known and the awfulness
    in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
    in the village is very sick. There is laughter
    every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
    and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
    If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
    we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
    We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
    but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
    the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
    furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
    measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
    If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
    we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
    We must admit there will be music despite everything.
    We stand at the prow again of a small ship
    anchored late at night in the tiny port
    looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
    is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
    To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
    comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
    all the years of sorrow that are to come.


    - Jack Gilbert
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  37. TopTop #1790
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    welcome back, Larry; what an auspicious reemergence. we (at least my part of 'we') missed you. I trust that you are well, rested, and happy to be back.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    A Brief For The Defense
    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 11-06-2013 at 12:36 PM.
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  39. TopTop #1791
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Homage to a Yoga Mat

    I am the yogi, you are the mat
    however long I've been gone, however I arrive
    you are there to meet me

    you don't expect perfection

    you don't judge my form or habits
    you ask only that I show up

    you are the arms that refuse no embrace
    you accept salty beads of sweat and tears
    dropping warm from a fevered brow

    wherever I've been in this battered world
    however armored I am, you take me in
    such is your power to heal me

    each day I practice
    I vow to peel back the stories
    that can get congested around my heart

    you need only that I lean into my pain
    you ask nothing but my simple breath
    and the heart of a spiritual pilgrim

    ready to be tenderized and rejoined
    into your ocean of compassion
    for all beings great and small

    - andrew zarrillo
    Last edited by Barry; 11-06-2013 at 12:17 PM.
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  40. Gratitude expressed by:

  41. TopTop #1792
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sailing to Byzantium


    I

    That is no country for old men. The young
    In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
    --Those dying generations--at their song,
    The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
    Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
    Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
    Caught in that sensual music all neglect
    Monuments of unageing intellect.


    II

    An aged man is but a paltry thing,
    A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
    Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
    For every tatter in its mortal dress,
    Nor is there singing school but studying
    Monuments of its own magnificence;
    And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
    To the holy city of Byzantium.


    III

    O sages standing in God’s holy fire
    As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
    Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
    And be the singing-masters of my soul.
    Consume my heart away; sick with desire
    And fastened to a dying animal
    It knows not what it is; and gather me
    Into the artifice of eternity.


    IV

    Once out of nature I shall never take
    My bodily form from any natural thing,
    But such a form a Grecian goldsmiths make
    Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
    To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
    Or set upon a golden bough to sing
    To lords or ladies of Byzantium
    Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

    - William Butler Yeats
    Last edited by Barry; 11-07-2013 at 03:23 PM.
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #1793
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Advice


    Someone dancing inside us
    has learned only a few steps:
    the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
    the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
    He hasn't noticed yet the woman
    standing away from the lamp.
    the one with black eyes
    who knows the rumba.
    and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
    from the mountains of Bulgaria.
    If they dance together,
    something unexpected will happen;
    if they don't, the next world
    will be a lot like this one.


    - Bill Holm
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  45. TopTop #1794
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Real Work


    What I would say in one sentence is that, for Americans, the real work is becoming native to North America. The real work is becoming native in your heart, coming to understand we really live here, that this is really the continent we're on and that our loyalties are here, to these mountains and rivers, to these plant zones, to these creatures. The real work involves developing a loyalty that goes back before the formation of any nation state, back billions of years and thousands of years into the future. The real work is accepting citizenship in the continent itself.


    - Gary Snyder
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  47. TopTop #1795
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Kristallnaght


    The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
    Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
    Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
    The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
    They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
    The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
    On all sides.


    The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
    When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
    In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
    And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
    They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
    And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
    When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.


    The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
    Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
    They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
    Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
    Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.


    One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
    A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
    When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
    He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
    And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
    Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
    Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
    With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.


    Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
    And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
    Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
    He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
    When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
    The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
    12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
    Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
    Two days later of his wounds.


    The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
    Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
    Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
    Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
    During the night of November 9-10, 1938, in every place
    Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
    And Jewish institutions.


    Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany
    Nearly two hundred synagogues. They burst into Jewish houses,
    Broke the glass of Jewish businesses and beat up Jews wherever
    They found them. About ninety people were murdered
    And thousands of others were wounded in the street violence.
    The Nazis also arrested thirty thousand Jews and sent them
    To concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau,
    And Sachsenhausen. And on top of all this, the Reich
    Cynically imposed a billion mark penalty
    On the Jewish Community to pay for the damages.


    In Berlin hundreds of truncheon swinging storm troops
    Led the mob in smashing up the glass plate windows
    Of Jewish stores. In the Jewish neighbourhoods of German
    Cities the Nazis lit bonfires. They threw on them to burn
    Torah scrolls, prayer books and whole libraries. Thousands
    Of Germans joined the Storm Troops in the atrocities.
    But many resented the pogrom. People watched in horror
    The roundup; they cried silently behind their curtains.


    On a third floor balcony in Leipzig
    Storm Troops shattered a balustrade and pushed
    An upright oak wood piano over the edge. It plunged like
    A black wingless dragon and fell helplessly to the street.
    It crashed on the pavement with a shocking clamour.
    Its wooden casing had split. The strings stripped bare
    Stood in the middle of the wreckage as an orphan harp
    Screaming with a heartbreaking outcry.


    - Paul Hartal
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  49. TopTop #1796
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lest we forget . . .


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Kristallnaght

    The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
    Into a ditch. . .
    Last edited by Katherine Spiering; 11-10-2013 at 03:17 PM.
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  50. TopTop #1797

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    As the horrid 20th century recedes, let us affirm with all the passion of our hearts and spirits, a world born from its ashes, in which such things are impossible, ANYWHERE. ♥
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  52. TopTop #1798
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Praise of Earth


    We kept on dancing last summer though the dancing had been called subversive.
    We weren't alone at the end of this particular world and knew
    it wouldn't be the last world, though wars
    had broken out on all sides.
    We kept on dancing and with us were the insects who had gathered at the grounds
    in the grasses and the trees. And with us were the stars and
    a few lone planets who had been friends
    with the earth for generations.
    With us were the spirits who wished to honor this beloved earth in any beautiful
    manner. And with us at dawn was the Sun who took the lead
    and then we broke for camp, for stickball
    and breakfast.
    We all needed praise made of the heart's tattoo as it inspired our feet or wings,
    someone to admire us despite our tendency to war, to terrible
    stumbles. So does the red cliff who is the heart
    broken to the sky.
    So do the stones who were the first to speak when we arrived. So does the flaming
    mountain who harbors the guardian spirits who refuse to abandon
    us. And this Earth keeps faithfully to her journey, carrying us
    around the Sun,
    All of us in our rags and riches, our rages and promises, small talk and suffering.
    As we go to the store to buy our food and forget to plant, sing so
    that we will be nourished in turn. As we walk out
    into the dawn,
    With our lists of desires that her gifts will fulfill, as she turns our tears
    into rivers of sweet water, we spiral between dusking and
    dawn, wake up and sleep in this lush palace of creation,
    rooted by blood, dreams, and history.
    We are linked by leaf, fin, and root. When we climb through the sky to each
    new day our thoughts are clouds shifting weather within us.
    When we step out of our minds into ceremonial language we are humbled and amazed,
    at the sacrifice. Those who forget become the people of stone who guard
    the entrance to remembering. And the Earth keeps up her
    dancing and she is neither perfect nor exactly in time.
    She is one of us.
    And she loves the dance for what it is. So does the Sun who calls the Earth
    beloved. And praises her with light.

    - Joy Harjo
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  54. TopTop #1799
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Praise of the Earth

    Let us bless
    The imagination of the Earth,
    That knew early the patience
    To harness the mind of time,
    Waited for the seas to warm,
    Ready to welcome the emergence
    Of things dreaming of voyaging
    Among the stillness of land.

    And how light knew to nurse
    The growth until the face of the Earth
    Brightened beneath a vision of color.

    When the ages of ice came
    And sealed the Earth inside
    An endless coma of cold,
    The heart of the Earth held hope,
    Storing fragments of memory,
    Ready for the return of the sun.

    Let us thank the Earth
    That offers ground for home
    And hold our feet firm
    To walk in space open
    To infinite galaxies.

    Let us salute the silence
    And certainty of mountains:
    Their sublime stillness,
    Their dream-filled hearts.

    The wonder of a garden
    Trusting the first warmth of spring
    Until its black infinity of cells
    Becomes charged with dream;
    Then the silent, slow nurture
    Of the seed's self, coaxing it
    To trust the act of death.

    The humility of the Earth
    That transfigures all
    That has fallen
    Of outlived growth.

    The kindness of the Earth,
    Opening to receive
    Our worn forms
    Into the final stillness.

    Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
    For all our sins against her:
    For our violence and poisonings
    Of her beauty.

    Let us remember within us
    The ancient clay,
    Holding the memory of seasons,
    The passion of the wind,
    The fluency of water,
    The warmth of fire,
    The quiver-touch of the sun
    And shadowed sureness of the moon.

    That we may awaken,
    To live to the full
    The dream of the Earth
    Who chose us to emerge
    And incarnate its hidden night
    In mind, spirit, and light.

    - John O'Donohue
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  56. TopTop #1800
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Singing Images of Fire


    A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different
    shapes.
    . . . all things change when we do.
    The first word, Ah, blossomed into all others.
    Each of them is true.


    - Kukei
    (translated by Jane Hirshfield)
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

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