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  1. TopTop #1861
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Death Poem



    This human body truly is the entire cosmos
    Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling
    This tender abiding in "my" life
    Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
    Linking with all pre-phenomena
    Flashing to the distant horizon
    From "right here now" to "just this"
    Now the horizon itself
    Drops away -
    Bodhi!
    Svaha.


    - Myogen Steve Stucky
    (Steve Stucky, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, died on New Year's Eve. He wrote this poem three days before his death.)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-06-2014 at 01:51 PM.
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 11 members:

  3. TopTop #1862
    MichaelGest
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    DEAD ZEN MASTERS
    The guru says
    Death dies and life lives.
    The Roshi says that the horizon drops away.
    Who is this seeing thus?
    The seen is made by the seer.
    Where no thoughts is no dust.
    Where no thinking,
    No bear scat, no eschatology.

    found somewhere within beleif,
    the shards of loss, our grief

    by Michael Gest

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



    This human body truly is the entire cosmos
    Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling
    This tender abiding in "my" life
    Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
    Linking with all pre-phenomena
    Flashing to the distant horizon
    From "right here now" to "just this"
    Now the horizon itself
    Drops away -
    Bodhi!
    Svaha.


    - Myogen Steve Stucky
    (Steve Stucky, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, died on New Year's Eve. He wrote this poem three days before his death.)
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  5. TopTop #1863
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Be Of Use
    The people I love the best
    jump into work head first
    without dallying in the shallows
    and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
    They seem to become natives of that element,
    the black sleek heads of seals
    bouncing like half-submerged balls.

    I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
    who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
    who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
    who do what has to be done, again and again.

    I want to be with people who submerge

    in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
    and work in a row and pass the bags along,
    who are not parlor generals and field deserters
    but move in a common rhythm
    when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

    The work of the world is common as mud.
    Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
    But the thing worth doing well done
    has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
    Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
    Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
    but you know they were made to be used.
    The pitcher cries for water to carry
    and a person for work that is real.

    - Marge Piercy
    Last edited by Barry; 01-07-2014 at 12:37 PM.
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  7. TopTop #1864
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I've broken through to longing
    Now, filled with a grief I have
    Felt before, but never like this.
    The center leads to love.
    Soul opens the creation core.
    Hold on to your particular pain.
    That too can take you to God.


    - Jellaludin Rumi
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  9. TopTop #1865
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Spanish Ballad


    That barista, Mother,

    with the dark-roast eyes
    and the silver nail
    through her left eyebrow,


    who pulls the handle
    of the espresso machine
    with such imperial ennui
    – Mom, does she not know

    that she is killing me?
    I have heard she is a pagan
    though of noble family born,
    related to the Grossmans of Detroit

    or the Shaughnesseys of Darien
    – but she is finer that that tribe,
    with her dragon-tattooed arms
    and her skin as smooth and pale

    as the end page of a
    vampire novella.
    She scares me speechless with desire,
    but I would give a million

    to see her smile
    and even more to tell a joke
    that would make her actually
    choke in laughter

    and send the spray
    of that eight-ounce energy drink
    uncontrollably bursting
    from her beautiful nose.


    - Tony Hoagland
    Last edited by Barry; 01-09-2014 at 03:04 PM.
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  11. TopTop #1866
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In This Season of Waiting


    Under certain conditions,

    when the moon in the western sky
    seems frozen there, for instance

    even as the sun is rising in the east,
    so that soon two sides of the coin
    will be facing each other;

    or when the snow
    which is a stranger here
    fills our trees with its cold flowers;

    when the single
    bluejay at the feeder
    is so still

    it could be enameled there,
    then the earth becomes an emblem
    for whatever we believe.


    - Linda Pastan
    Last edited by Barry; 01-10-2014 at 03:01 PM.
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  13. TopTop #1867
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Future Perfect


    Where you were
    before you were born,
    and where you are
    when you're not anymore
    might be very close.
    Might be the same place,
    though neither is
    as slippery
    as being here but
    imagining where
    you will have been-
    that point
    where things land,
    are finished, over, and
    gone but not yet.


    - Lia Purpura
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  14. TopTop #1868
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    New Year’s Prayer 2014

    As I have encountered the Dharma in this life,

    And from time to time been interested in practising it,
    I must have accumulated some merit during my past lives.

    Throughout this life I have admired, been inspired by,
    And, on occasion, had the courage to emulate my master,
    So I must have gathered a little more merit.

    Though shallow, my trust in the Three Jewels is absolute,
    And I am convinced that they alone will not mislead me –
    Surely a sign of their unfailing blessings.

    From time to time I am moved
    By the teachings of the Buddha and his followers,
    Which must mean that, at some point, I’ve done something right.

    Now and then, when required to make an offering,
    I feel ashamed of my own miserliness,
    And so the Dharma must have entered my mind to some extent.

    As, once in a blue moon,
    I catch myself trying to impress others,
    My random condemnation of ego must have had some effect.

    Although the feeling is rare and short-lived,
    I have empathized with those who are destitute,
    So, however seldom, I must have some heart.

    By the power of all this merit and virtue,
    May I not attain enlightenment
    Until every other sentient being has reached enlightenment before me.

    By the power of the merit of not wanting enlightenment
    Ahead of all other suffering beings,
    May I not become enlightened
    Until everyone else has reached enlightenment before me.


    - Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
    Last edited by Barry; 01-12-2014 at 01:28 PM.
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  16. TopTop #1869
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thomas

    “What shall I do with the life left to me?”
    I didn’t need proof. Any more.
    He had blessed me with His gaze.
    Many times. Many times he had looked.
    Into me. And His look made me
    look back into Him. All the others.
    All the others put on their clothing.
    But I – He gave me
    The Immaculate Dispensation. Above
    All. Above all.
    No job. Just this. Examine it. This Gift.
    Doubt. This Immense Gift.
    Two Things. Doubt. And
    Looking in it. You can erase everything
    you think you know about me. And
    to help you, I shall remove to Chennai.
    In the luxury of a cave on Little Mount
    I sit and putter. On the beach, I preach.
    I tell them what I do and Who
    looked at me and Whose look was A Word.
    “Christianity came to India first.”
    Too bad. I offered the distillation
    of that Look. Too bad about Christianity.
    Regret? No. They heard many words.
    I heard the One He never spoke.


    - Bruce Moody
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  17. TopTop #1870
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Moon Path

    (To my wife, Betty)

    A pearl floating in a cloudless sky,

    the moon has paved the bay.
    It has laid down a path of rippling silver across the water
    leading from here to where?
    Beyond beyond.

    From my window in the hills
    I watch an unreal world
    toy-sized cars and ships and trains
    movement without sound
    noisy engines beyond hearing
    calm and silent.
    Not really.
    I know the people who drive the distant freeway
    are troubled souls drowning in the daily terror and trivia
    as I have for a lifetime.

    Official lies, bleak prophesies.
    The soils of Africa are planted with the bones of children.
    Mad Arabs have turned their god into a butcher.
    The head of Citibank insists he deserves every penny he stole.
    Rich and poor, lives driven by the fuel of greed and desperation.
    Do they ever catch a glimmer of the moon path
    and the great quiet that waits to be found
    on the far side of the horrors?

    There beyond Mount Tam and the Golden Bridge
    the world of stars that bless us with lordly beauty and indifference.
    Always there.
    Always there, waiting.
    The moon. The path. The quiet.

    I remember another moon-bright night like this years past.
    The old Dodge parked up a dark street in Thousand Oaks,
    the best young lovers could do to find seclusion.
    You leaned across me in the car to look out the window.
    "What a beautiful moon," you said.
    I can remember the warm softness of your body pressed against me
    and the countless kisses that followed
    each, though we did not know it at the time, a pledge that said
    "I will stay with you. I will be here at the last."
    Were we ever that young?

    Did I know at some level of the mind
    when I chose you to be my one love
    that you would do more to lead me to the path
    than any words of wisdom?
    Sensitive and innocent, we deserved a better world.
    But what we got was a swamp of illusions
    where madmen contend for the dross of life.

    "Do you know this samsara?" Baker Roshi once asked me, smiling,
    as if laughter were the best answer to despair.
    You don't escape it. You don't work your way out.
    Then what?
    You wait.
    Until?
    Until you realize, "hey, I'm already on the path."
    No place to go.
    Nothing to do.
    Wait.


    - Theodore Roszak (1933-2011)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-14-2014 at 02:37 PM.
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  18. TopTop #1871
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prayer/Poem

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Put paper on the roll.
    Don’t let the door slam.
    Close the window.

    Ask and listen.
    See people.
    Have a care.
    Would that be too much to ask?

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Let the turtle cross.
    Give the skunk room.
    Look out for the raccoon.

    Welcome the bear on the trail.
    Offer the wolf a lake.
    Leave the glacier in the pass.
    Would that be so much to ask?

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Heal my memory.
    Find me fifty hugs.
    Make me prehensile feet.

    Resurrect my dog.
    Bring back John Lennon.
    Undo chestnut blight.
    Is that so much to ask?

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Multiply birdsong.
    Unfreeze our obsession with leaders.
    Keep bees on the flowers.

    Supply many orgasms.
    Insure sweet fruit.
    Decrease greed.
    Really, is that so much to ask?

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Emblazon our feathers with color.
    Encourage the playfulness of our young.
    Increase our knowledge of languages.

    Awaken poetry.
    Deify beauty.
    Raise up truth.
    Is that too much to ask?

    Would it be too much to ask:
    Stop violence against children.
    Preserve the oceans.
    Cause hope to flourish.

    Steer earth on course.
    Prevent us destroying everything.
    Teach us to love life.
    After all, is that so much to ask?

    - Dale Rosenkrantz
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  20. TopTop #1872
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Candle Hat


    In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
    Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
    Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
    Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
    from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

    But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
    and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
    addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

    He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
    we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
    which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
    a device that allowed him to work into the night.

    You can only wonder what it would be like
    to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
    as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

    But once you see this hat there is no need to read
    any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

    To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
    lighting the candles one by one, then placing
    the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

    Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
    the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

    Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
    with all the shadows flying across the walls.

    Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
    one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
    "Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
    as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
    illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.
    - Billy Collins
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  22. TopTop #1873
    markwjam's Avatar
    markwjam
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    here's another HAT for ye, Larry..thanks for the poem:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zmcg0VOk0

    Mark B.
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  24. TopTop #1874
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hokusai Says


    Hokusai says Look carefully.

    He says pay attention, notice.
    He says keep looking, stay curious.
    He says there is no end to seeing.


    He says Look Forward to getting old.
    He says keep changing,
    you just get more who you really are.
    He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
    as long as it's interesting.


    He says keep doing what you love.
    He says keep praying.
    He says every one of us is a child,


    every one of us is ancient,
    every one of us has a body.
    He says every one of us is frightened.
    He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.


    He says everything is alive -
    shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
    Wood is alive.
    Water is alive.
    Everything has its own life.
    Everything lives inside us.
    He says live with the world inside you.


    He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books.
    It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
    It doesn't matter if you sit at home
    and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees
    and grasses in your garden.


    It matters that you care.
    It matters that you feel.
    It matters that you notice.
    It matters that life lives through you.


    Contentment is life living through you.
    Joy is life living through you.
    Satisfaction and strength
    are life living through you.
    Peace is life living through you.


    He says don't be afraid.
    Don't be afraid.
    Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
    Let life live through you.


    - Roger Keyes
    Last edited by Barry; 01-18-2014 at 02:44 PM.
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  26. TopTop #1875
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fugitive


    This body, like a caved-in greenhouse,

    no longer craves the sun nor traps the heat.

    This body is pungent of loam,
    crushed petals, the rot of leaves and roots,
    the fading breath of summer.

    This body, shape-shifted, is fugitive.

    They will seek it in the sun-blasted hothouse.
    They will find the broken frame, the shards of glass.
    They will finger the shape of absence.

    This body burns with the moon,
    aflame along the path of beaten silver.

    This body reclaims its larger self upon the map of the sky.

    Releasing its scant purchase, this body
    finds its satisfaction in smaller and smaller wonders.


    - Susan Lamont
    Last edited by Barry; 01-19-2014 at 01:25 PM.
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  28. TopTop #1876
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Orion by the agate sea


    by the drive where the old dogwood tree
    stands with raucous birds in her hair
    and spider fairies sail into the wind


    Orion in your backdrop of solid crows
    where the moon climbs through plums
    and shimmering scales of robins sleep
    waiting for the sun's slick tongue -


    the rip of darkness, the opening of its veins,
    the pulse of dreams rustling like straw-
    you witness everything - a woman's body -
    delineated by wind and silk moving smoke,


    a lone man in a yellow window
    counting dreams,
    the ways that sunlight falls.


    - Katherine Hastings
    (Katherine Hastings is Sonoma County's Poet Laureate)
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  30. TopTop #1877
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stories


    Let me think of the way that story goes
    About the king of time and his long robes.
    The world is breathless for good storytelling.
    Always words find their way out of us
    And our mouths shape them firm and forever.
    Sometimes songs come into us flowing from streams
    Towards places sounds have never been.
    Always other voices are speaking through us.
    Stories wander the royal road of dreams
    With their silent language. Words arrive
    The way the shaman came, the first teller,
    Then came the prophets and their retelling.
    Many sounds faded, forgotten or ripened to return

    Again when synchronicity could acquire its sense of timing.

    Words find their warmth in the moist mouth of revelation.
    These stories cross the far horizons and in time find each other.
    That occurrence is a gift as written records tell the tales
    On stone, on leaf, parchment and on the page of living memory.
    Stories are our eternal bread. They reveal the divine passwords
    At the gates that open to the center of our lives.


    - Richard Meyers
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  32. TopTop #1878
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    After Finding the Body


    The report always says, "the body
    was found by a hiker…a fisherman…a camper in the back country, gathering firewood."
    Stops there, cuts


    to family, an official speaking in regretful, solemn sentences.


    The victim's face smiles from a wedding photo, a passport, a family video—twirling on a backyard swing.


    The hiker, fisherman, or camper who abandoned routine life,
    Returns to an altered world, staggering
    with the weight of unexpected death.
    The body forever carried in a heart.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  34. TopTop #1879
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Went into the Maverick Bar


    I went into the Maverick Bar

    Gary Synder

    In Farmington, New Mexico.
    And drank double shots of bourbon
    backed with beer.
    My long hair was tucked up under a cap
    I’d left the earring in the car.


    Two cowboys did horseplay
    by the pool tables,
    A waitress asked us
    where are you from?
    a country-and-western band began to play
    “We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”
    And with the next song,
    a couple began to dance.


    They held each other like in High School dances
    in the fifties;
    I recalled when I worked in the woods
    and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
    That short-haired joy and roughness—
    America—your stupidity.
    I could almost love you again.


    We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
    under the tough old stars—
    In the shadow of bluffs
    I came back to myself,
    To the real work, to
    “What is to be done.”


    - Gary Snyder
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  36. TopTop #1880
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the Year


    (the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,
    like furry mittens,
    like childhood crouching under tables)
    The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black
    outside our window: clattering cans, the whir
    of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ...
    I see them in my warm imagination
    the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
    heaving the huge cans and running
    (running!) to the next house on the street.


    My vestiges of muscle stir
    uneasily in their percale cocoon:
    what moves those men out there, what
    drives them running to the next house and the next?
    Halfway back to dream, I speculate:
    The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old
    Bloomington a cleaner place
    to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!
    Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,
    let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes
    on truck thirteen!”
    Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,
    another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’
    three kids through Princeton?”
    Or something else?
    Terror?


    A half hour later, dawn comes edging over
    Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like
    a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,
    and over that the black-and-blue of night
    still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave
    their silhouettes against the red, and through
    the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk
    of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,
    like windup toys, tossing little cans—
    and running.


    All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,
    and all day, people fussing at their desks,
    at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison
    tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all
    things that are Caesar’s.


    O garbage men,
    the New Year greets you like the Old;
    after this first run you too may rest
    in beds like great warm aproned laps
    and know that people everywhere have faith:
    putting from them all things of this world,
    they confidently bide your second coming.


    - Phillip Appleman
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  37. TopTop #1881
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The clock struck

    The clock struck twelve times. . .and it was a spade
    knocked twelve times against the earth.

    . . .”It’s my turn!” I cried. . .The silence
    answered me: Do not be afraid.
    You will never see the last drop fall
    that now is trembling in the water clock.


    You will still sleep many hours
    here on the beach,
    and one clear morning you will find
    your boat tied to another shore.



    - Antonio Machado
    (translated by Robert Bly)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-25-2014 at 12:59 PM.
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  39. TopTop #1882
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Discontinuous Poems

    The frightful reality of things

    Is my everyday discovery.
    Each thing is what it is.
    How can I explain to anyone how much
    I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

    To be whole, it is enough to exist.

    I have written quite a number of poems
    And may write many more, of course.
    Each poem of mine explains it,
    Though all my poems are different,
    Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

    Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
    I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
    I don't force myself to call it my sister,

    But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
    I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
    I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

    At times I also hear the wind blow by
    And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
    it worth having been born.

    I don't know what others will think who read this;
    But I find it must be good because I think it
    without effort,
    And without the idea of others hearing me think,
    Because I think it without thoughts,
    Because I say it as my words say it.

    Once they called me a materialist poet
    And I admired myself because I never thought
    That I might be called by any name at all.
    I am not even a poet: I see.
    If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
    valuable.
    The value is there, in my verses.
    All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
    of mine.
    - Alberto Caeiro
    (Fernando António Nogueira Pęssoa, 1888 - 1935. Translated By Edouard Roditi)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-26-2014 at 02:32 PM.
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  40. Gratitude expressed by:

  41. TopTop #1883
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rough Metaphors

    Someone said, "There is no dervish, or if there is a dervish,
    that dervish is not there."


    Look at a candle flame in the bright noon sunlight
    if you put cotton next to it, the cotton will burn,
    but its light has become completely mixed
    with the sun.


    That candlelight you can't find is what's left of a dervish.


    If you sprinkle one ounce of vinegar over
    two hundred tons of sugar,
    no one will ever taste the vinegar.


    A deer faints in the paws of a lion. The deer becomes
    another glazed expression on the face of the lion.


    These are rough metaphors for what happens to the lover.


    There's no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He, or she,
    jumps up on the scale opposite eternity
    and claims to balance it.


    And no one more secretly reverent.


    A grammar lesson: "The lover died."
    "Lover" is subject and agent, but that can't be!
    The lover is defunct.


    Only grammatically is the dervish-lover a doer.


    In reality, with he or she so overcome,
    so dissolved into love,
    all qualities of doingness
    disappear.


    - Jelalludin Rumi
    (Version by Coleman Barks)
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  42. Gratitude expressed by:

  43. TopTop #1884
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Turn! Turn! Turn!

    To everything - turn, turn, turn

    There is a season - turn, turn, turn
    And a time for every purpose under heaven

    A time to be born, a time to die
    A time to plant, a time to reap
    A time to kill, a time to heal
    A time to laugh, a time to weep

    To everything - turn, turn, turn
    There is a season - turn, turn, turn
    And a time for every purpose under heaven

    A time to build up, a time to break down
    A time to dance, a time to mourn
    A time to cast away stones
    A time to gather stones together

    To everything - turn, turn, turn

    There is a season - turn, turn, turn
    And a time for every purpose under heaven

    A time of war, a time of peace
    A time of love, a time of hate
    A time you may embrace
    A time to refrain from embracing

    To everything - turn, turn, turn
    There is a season - turn, turn, turn
    And a time for every purpose under heaven

    A time to gain, a time to lose
    A time to rend, a time to sew
    A time to love, a time to hate
    A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

    - Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-28-2014 at 12:26 PM.
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  45. TopTop #1885
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Singer & His Banjo
    for Pete Seeger




    How can I keep from singing?
    he asked hefting his banjo,
    machine he claimed
    surrounded hate
    and forced it to surrender.
    We sang with him
    that we would overcome
    (someday),
    asked where
    had all the flowers gone,
    & as we marched imagined
    all sorts of things
    to do if we had a hammer.

    Gone the way of flowers now,
    the old comrade leaves us
    to our singing, our marching
    with our little hammers
    to bring down citadels of injustice,
    our teaspoons to weight and make
    the see-saw of power teeter
    our way, overcome the demons
    and armies of cold angels,
    and keep despair at bay.




    - Rafael Jesús González
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  47. TopTop #1886
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Becoming A Redwood


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


    - Dana Gioia
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  48. Gratitude expressed by:

  49. TopTop #1887
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mexican Jenny

    1.
    Girls like me
    come from alleys
    from dirt floors
    from cold kitchens
    from one thin blanket.
    Girls like me
    come from fists
    from passing strangers
    from wandering fathers
    from mothers with one heel
    hooked on the bar stool.
    Girls like me
    come from drought
    from war.

    2.
    When I was a child in Acapulco
    I worked for a rich family
    sweeping their kitchen
    washing their dishes.
    One day, after a few nips, the cook,
    who was my mother's friend,
    had said, Come, work for me
    in the big house.
    I stood on a wooden box
    washed dishes stamped with indigo
    trees and flowers, with birds
    like none I'd seen.
    I stood elbow
    deep in dirty water, dreamed
    of far places without greasy pans
    nor the boss's wandering hands.

    3.
    The boss's wife had a red
    silk shawl embroidered
    with many-colored swallows.
    She draped it like a flag on the back of her chair.
    It had come on a ship from Manila,
    from that land of ship builders and sailors,
    of travelers who, years before, brought
    Chinese porcelain and silk to Acapulco.
    Every time I walked by
    I fingered its edges
    and felt like I was dipping my fingers
    into the tide.
    After I'd found the fault lines
    in one cup too many,
    when I'd daydreamed one
    dish too many to pieces,
    the cook ran me off,
    but not before I'd pinched that shawl,
    wrapped it around my waist
    under my dirty skirt.
    Running home
    the silk rubbed
    my legs,
    a river current.

    - Barbara Brinson Curiel
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  51. TopTop #1888
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Keats


    When Keats, at last beyond the curtain
    of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room
    on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini
    Fountain “filling him like flowers,”
    he held his breath like a coin, looked out
    into the moonlight and thought he saw snow.
    He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s
    weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!”
    and there he was, secretly, for the rest
    of his improvidently short life: up to his neck
    in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries
    of street vendors, perfect
    and affectionate as his soul.
    For days the snow and statuary sang him so far
    beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless
    and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow
    of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,”
    may enter you.


    - Christopher Howell
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  53. TopTop #1889

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hi there -

    I am a student of Jennifer Welwood's and this is actually her poem, not "Joyce Wellwood". Can you please change the attribution so it reads "Jennifer Welwood", format the poem correctly to match this formatting and create a link here: https://jenniferwelwood.com/poetry/the-dakini-speaks/

    Thank you in advance, much appreciated.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Dakini Speaks

    My friends,...
    - Joyce Wellwood
    Last edited by Barry; 02-02-2014 at 05:31 AM.
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  54. Gratitude expressed by:

  55. TopTop #1890
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Hearing a Poem Recited, Not Read*

    The poem flew at me
    Little darts, pricking my skin
    piercing my belly, my arms, my eyes
    Flew at me on swift, black wings
    trailing a smoky blur past my ears
    Flew all around me
    furious, then curiously quiet

    No words sounded like words
    read from a page
    They had been lifted
    the night before, years before
    Flipped up, one by one
    letter by letter let fall
    on the tongue and dissolved
    like melting snowflakes trickling down
    through the heart, into the belly
    to the toes, the fingertips
    Pulled back through the blood
    through the brain
    down into the back of the throat
    into the cheeks and spit out
    Little darts of words
    big wings of words
    charging the air all around me
    There were no words, only language
    Tongue moved by muscle and blood

    The poem entered me and exited
    leaving little points of pain and light
    soft feathery strokes on my skin and hair
    Leaving me empty of words

    - Christine Walker


    *For those of you who appreciate hearing poems recited, not read, you will love tonight's Poetry Out Loud event at Santa Rosa's Glaser Center. Students from 11 high schools will compete in poetry recitation to see who will represent Sonoma County at the state level. This free event begins at 7:00 PM and is an absolute delight.
    Last edited by Barry; 02-02-2014 at 02:18 PM.
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

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