Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Tourists

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

-*Yehuda Amichai

[Larry Robinson]

INVOCATION

Let us try what it is to be true to gravity,
to grace, to the given, faithful to our own voices,

to lines making the map of our furrowed tongue.
Turned toward the root of a single word, refusing

solemnity and slogans, let us honor what hides
and does not come easy to speech. The pebbles

we hold in our mouths help us to practice song,
and we sing to the sea. May the things of this world

be preserved to us, their beautiful secret
vocabularies. We are dreaming it over and new,

the language of our tribe, music we hear
we can only acknowledge. May the naming powers

be granted. Our words are feathers that fly
on our breath. Let them go in a holy direction.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

[Larry Robinson]

lluminated by The Light


It could be imagined
That a ship, sailing north to Newport with a cargo of sugar and molasses, was shipwrecked on Gay Head.*

It is conceivable
When the ship broke up, the sugar dissolved, the casks of molasses sank, that the Wampanoag salvaged everything that didn't float away, even the ballast stones.

It could be
That the ballast stones from a New England slave ship were the foundation of the first Gay Head Light.

Possibly
They used 340 ballast stones, one for each slave captured in Madagascar, sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, across the Atlantic, and sold in the Caribbean.*

Historians say
The shipwreck would have been a disaster to Newport's two dozen distilleries, wanting sugar and molasses to turn into rum, to*ship out to Africa, to trade for more slaves.

Whereas
The Southern states with vast arable tracts to farm needed slaves, the Northern states, with poor soil and good harbors, looked to the sea.*

Evidently
It was easier to catch people and sell them than it was to catch whales and boil them on board.*

Records show*
Newport had 150 ships dedicated, whole or in part, to the slave trade in 1750. The economy of New England was based on shipping. Shipping meant slaving, whole or in part.

It is said
Everyone profited one way or another; rope makers, tanners, coopers, sail makers, provisioners like cattlemen and farmers, candle makers, vintners, potters, weavers.*Everyone had dirty hands; the Faneuils, the Browns, the Whipples, the Cabots.*Ezra Stiles, while President of Yale, imported slaves.*

Unquestionably
Ships can't be permitted to sink virtually within sight of home port. A light house at Gay Head was essential.

After all,
Business is business.

It is recorded
That America's most noble names endorsed the Gay Head Light. From Nantucket, a Coffin requested it. George Washington approved it. Alexander Hamilton funded it. Paul Revere was tinsmith.*

It is established
That more than half the American ships involved in the African slave trade were out of Rhode Island. Over a span of two hundred years, Newport ships trafficked 300,000 slaves.

It would seem
On the rum leg*of the Triangle Trade, ships sailed up Vineyard Sound, their way made safe by the Gay Head Light.

New England*
Rectitude and pious protests not withstanding, the Gay Head Light, three whites and one red, illuminated the long night of slavery, and waited with indifference for dawn.

-*Julie Jaffe

[Larry Robinson]

Lute Music

The Earth will be going on a long time
Before it finally freezes;
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Give their deeds reasons.
We will be here only
As chemical constituents—
A small franchise indeed.
Right now we have lives,
Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,
Like everybody had once—

Here at the year’s end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

- Kenneth Rexroth

[Larry Robinson]

A Thousand Year of Healing

From whence my hope, I cannot say,
except it grows in the cells of my skin,
in my envelope of mysteries
it hums.
In this sheath so akin to the surface of the earth,
it whispers.
Beneath the wail and dissonance in the world,
hope's song grows.
Until I know that with this turning
we put a broken age to rest.
We who are alive at such a cusp
now usher in
one thousand years of healing!

Winged ones and four-leggeds,
grasses and mountains and each tree,
all the swimming creatures,
even we, wary two-leggeds,
hum, and call, and create the Changing Song.
We remake all our relations.
We convert our minds to the Earth.
In this turning time
we finally learn to chime and blend,
attune our our voices; sing the vision
of the Great Magic we move within.
We begin the new habit,
getting up glad
for a thousand years of healing.

-*Susa Silvermarie

[Larry Robinson]

A Great Need

Out

Of a great need

We are all holding hands

And climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

The terrain around here

Is

Far too

Dangerous

For

That.

-*Hafiz of Shiraz

(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

[Larry Robinson]

The Exchange*

Between Wytheville, Virginia
and the North Carolina line,
he meets a wagon headed
where he's been, seated beside
her parents a dark-eyed girl
who grips the reins in her fist,
no more than sixteen, he'd guess
as they come closer and she
doesn't look away or blush
but allows his eyes to hold
hers that moment their lives pass.
He rides into Boone at dusk,
stops at an inn where he buys
his supper, a sleepless night
thinking of fallow fields still
miles away, the girl he might
not find the like of again.
When dawn breaks he mounts his roan,
then backtracks, searches three days
hamlets and farms, any smoke
rising above the tree line
before he heads south, toward home,
the French Broad's valley where spring
unclinches the dogwood buds
as he plants the bottomland,
come night by candlelight builds
a butter churn and cradle,
cherry headboard for the bed,
forges a double-eagle
into a wedding ring and then
back to Virginia and spends
five weeks riding and asking
from Elk Creek to Damascas
before he finds the wagon
tethered to the hitching post
of a crossroads store, inside
the girl who smiles as if she'd
known all along his gray eyes
would search until they found her.
She asks one question, his name,
as her eyes study the gold
smoldering there between them,
the offered palm she lightens,
slips the ring on herself so
he knows right then the woman
she will be, bold enough match
for a man rash as his name.

-*Ron Rash

[Larry Robinson]

Epic*

It’s you I’d like to see Greece again with
You I’d like to take to bed of cyclamen
You know I nurse a certain myth
about myself *************that I descend
de tribus d’origine asiatique
and am part Thracian or Macedonian
cleaving to a Hellenic mystique
after centuries’ migration inland

a full moon ************rising over the Acropolis
I can repeat the scene *******this time à deux
as then I had no one to kiss
slicing halloumi amid the hullabaloo
of a rooftop taverna in   July
The doors that opened to lovers
pulled like tree roots from darkness * * * *
close upon us now like book covers

The alcove in which we embrace
is cool with brilliant tile
and weirded by a dove’s note ******chase
of ouzo with Uzi *********junta-style
History makes its noise *****we duck
till it passes *****Love we think is our due
Not we think like the epoch
the unchosen thing we’re wedded to

-*Ange Mlinko

[Larry Robinson]

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

Maya Angelou

I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.


- Maya Angelou

[Larry Robinson]

Ancient Continuities


When we change our watchbands
or our shoes every day, don a new
pair of jeans in the morning, build
an entire world economy on faster
replacement; when we wring just an
instant's interest from transient models
of now, will we watch passively
as one age of consumption succumbs
to the next, the next?
If I had our foremothers' wisdom,
I'd feel our drumming heartbeats
link us with Earth's womb
(so nearly emptied now, nearly sealed)
and with the Moon, our ancient
center of time. Only half our mothers'
wisdom remains on the shelf, to be quartered,
quartered and served like a slice of pizza,
separated from the whole round crust.


- Andrea English

[Larry Robinson]

Comprehension

I do not comprehend why mountain reaches for sky with such exuberance,
Why valley curls along the riverbed with such divinity,
Why ravine descends deeper, sometimes, than my despair,
Why hills roll so sweetly out like waves and make me want to walk them,
swim them, dive them,
own them.
They say it’s geography
/geology
/geometry
/human nature
or some combination of all the –ologies and –ometries
and therapies
but I suspect something deeper in the architecture;
like: everything is a reflection of everything else,
like: we are living in a kind of funhouse of mirrors,
that isn’t always fun—
that should be painfully obvious by now—
and for that, mountain reflects sky
reflects valley
reflects river
reflects ravine
reflects despair
reflects divinity
reflects the ink spill of night that hold the stars and galaxies above.

We are the tealeaves in our own fortune’s cup,
and the stars mountains and galaxies
are all steeping with us
in this warm ambrosia;
they, casting our die
as we, cast theirs,
spelling each other’s fortunes
like rain spells the flowers’
or Spring spells Winter’s.

- Gary Turchin

[Larry Robinson]

Fear

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my house, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.

to be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.

- Joy Harjo

[Larry Robinson]

Hearing a crow with no mouth
Cry in the deep
Darkness of the night,
I feel a longing for
My father before he was born.


- Ikkyu Sojun

[Larry Robinson]

Searching for the Dharma

You've traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.
So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.

The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung
make heavy baggage.

Here! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers.
Their meaning is the same
but they're much easier to carry.

- Xu Yun

[Larry Robinson]

I Got Heaven...

I swear that, in Gardena, on a moonlit suburban street, There are souls that twirl like kites lashed to the wrists of the living And spirits who tumble in a solemn limbo between 164th And the long river of stars to Amida’s Paradise in the West. As though I belonged, I’ve come from my life of papers and exile To walk among these penitents at the Festival of the Dead, The booths full of sellers hawking rice cakes and candied plums, All around us the rhythmic chant of min’yo bursting through loudspeakers, Calling out the mimes and changes to all who dance. I stop at a booth and watch a man, deeply tanned from work outdoors, Pitch bright, fresh quarters into blue plastic bowls. He wins a porcelain cat, a fishnet bag of marbles, Then a bottle of shōyu, and a rattle shaped like tam-tam he gives to a child. I hear the words of a Motown tune carry through the gaudy air …got sunshine on a cloudy day…got the month of May… As he turns from the booth and re-enters the River of Heaven— These dancers winding in brocades and silk sleeves, A faithlit circle briefly as warm in the summer night.

- Garret Hongo

[Larry Robinson]

Taking Back The Moon

I am taking back the moon
for the lunatics,
the lovers,
and the poets.

The real estate agents
may notice a gap in the night sky,
have to put away their signs.

The scientists can measure
the diamater of this darker
darkness,
triangulate its distance from earth,
and conclude that what's missing
must be the moon.

But I have it right here
under my arm,
wrapped in a notebook
leaking light,
and am coming toward you
with a poem it helped me write.
I pull it out and read by the moon's light:

The Swimmer

He dives into the moon
from the pier on the lake,
hits his target dead center;
and, coming up for air,
finds none.

- Duane Ackerson

[Larry Robinson]

Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings


So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,
So that in his spine a memory of wings
Will make his shoulders tense & bend
Like a thing already flown
When the bracelets of another school of love
Are fastened to his wrists,
Make a law that doesn’t have to wait
Long until someone comes along to break it.


So that in jail he will have the time to read
How the king was beheaded & the hawk that rode
The king’s wrist died of a common cold,
And learn that chivalry persists,
And what first felt like an insult to the flesh
Was the blank ‘o’ of love.
Put the fun back into punishment.
Make a law that loves the one who breaks it.


So that no empty court will make a  judge recall
Ice fishing on some overcast bay,
Shivering in the cold beside his father, it ought
To be an interesting law,
The kind of thing that no one can obey,
A law that whispers “Break me.”
Let the crows roost & caw.
A good judge is an example to us all.


So that the patrolman can still whistle
“The Yellow Rose of Texas” through his teeth
And even show some faint gesture of respect
While he cuffs the suspect,
Not ungently, & says things like ok,
That’s it, relax,
It’ll go better for you if you don’t resist,
Lean back just a little, against me.


- Larry Levis

[Larry Robinson]

Ulysses: Endgame

Hero? Why is it then I tremble,

alone at night, when dead men
with desolate eyes wander
the dark corners of my dreams?

In sweat of sleep, I see Achilles
felled by a single blow to his heel
and feel my own life hanging
by a thread from Penelope’s loom.

With every rise of sun, I cough up
blood and ash from smoldering Troy,
my spittle a blot of a once great city
and its people lost to all of time.

At long last, I set sail for Ithaca, but
my knees quake to think of Penelope,
waiting with her weavings of lonely
days and unravelings of lonelier nights.

What will she read in the red script
of my eyes? The slaughter of women
and children? Hector’s obscene death?
Old Queen Hecuba on her knees?

I must scrub the stench of blood
from my pores, wash Circe’s scent
from my tangled hair, take care only
Penelope’s name falls from my lips.

I will swear to her, if I could begin
again, I would choose to stay and raise
our boy, tend the fields, and grow old
with her by my side.

And yet, as I vow to speak these words,
my hands grow restless for heft of sword
and shield and I long for the company
of old companions at my side.


- Patrice Warrender

[Larry Robinson]

Whatever It Is

Whatever it is
No matter how fast or how deeply you breathe
The colors on the back of your eyelids
The length of your neck or the tilt of your back
Let it go.

Whether it’s wondering what you want
Or how long you’ve been doing this or what you
Think you must learn in this life
Let it go.

No matter if you will be going to a movie tonight
Or whether space extends infinitely in all directions
Whether you will ever have a moment with no end
Let it all go.

No matter if you do not understand at all
Or think you must dissect it until nothing is left
No matter if you are having the experience you desire
Or merely having the experience you are having.
Let it go.

No matter if you ever find pervasive joy
Underneath whatever you mistake for sorrow
Or whether you wish to start this life over again
This is no time to wonder about time.

This is no time to wonder how you got here
Or how many lifetimes it has taken before
You can brandish your luminosity as if it were a light.
It is not yours. Or anyone’s at all.
So let it go.

No matter if you can speak your truth or even know it
Whether you like it or not that is not yours either
So speak your truth as if it belongs to everyone
Because there is no speaker and nothing spoken
And therefore nothing to let go.

You came into my life from a land I had not imagined
Speaking a language I did not know that I could hear
But now that I can hear it spoken in my own heart

I let go of you every day as if it is the last.


- Gary Horvitz

[Larry Robinson]

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

DOWN BY THE SALLEY GARDENS


Down by the salley gardens
my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens
with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy,
as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish,
with her would not agree.


In a field by the river
my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder
she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy,
as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish,
and now am full of tears.


- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Dawn Outside The City Walls

You can see the face of everything, and it is white—
plaster, nightmare, adobe, anemia, cold—
turned to the east. Oh closeness to life!
Hardness of life! Like something
in the body that is animal—root, slag-ends—
with the soul still not set well there—
and mineral and vegetable!
Sun standing stiffly against man,
against the sow, the cabbages, the mud wall!
—False joy, because you are merely
in time, as they say, and not in the soul!

The entire sky taken up
by moist and steaming heaps,
a horizon of dung piles.
Sour remains, here and there,
of the night. Slices
of the green moon, half-eaten,
crystal bits from false stars,
plaster, the paper ripped off, still faintly
sky-blue. The birds
not really awake yet, in the raw moon,
streetlight nearly out.
Mob of beings and things!
—A true sadness, because you are really deep
in the soul, as they say, not in time at all!

- Juan Ramón Jiménez
(Translated by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

Calling All Women

Calling all sisters. Calling all
Righteous sisters.
Calling all women. To steal away
To our secret place. Have a meeting
Face to face. Look at the facts
And determine our pace. Calling all
Women.
We want to reach – first and second
And
Third world women
Come together!
Women in and outside the power structure –
Working women,
Welfare women,
Women who feel alienated and isolated
Women who are all frustrated
Women who have given up – women – women
Questioning women – women
Unpolarized and unorganized.
Ostracized. Tired of being penalized
Come help us start to bridge the gaps
Racial, cultural, or generation
We want some action and veneration.
These men, these men they
Just ain’t doing it.
They’ve had hundreds of years
Now they ’bout to ruin it.
Kitchen, office, ex-prison women
Old and young and middle-aged women
Make this scene
Oh yes, and bring your lunch!
Problems, problems common problems
That we make and cause each other
Sister, daughter, old grandmother
Female child you can bring your little brother
Take the subway, grad a cab
Saddle your mule
Bike it, limo
Take a choo-choo, fly
Or pick ‘em up and lay ‘em down.
Socialism, capitalism, communism
Feminism, womanism, lesbianism
Here-and-now or futurism
We just can’t afford a schism
We got to get together or die.
Now is the time for an evolution
Let’s all search and find a solution
For how we’ll make it to the next revolution
Or die.
Oh yes. And don’t forget your lunch!

- Ruby Dee
(1923-2014)

[Larry Robinson]

All ThingsThe brief secrets are still here,
and the light has come back.
The word remember touches my hand,
But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel
Against the occluded sky.
All of the little names sink down,
weighted with what is invisible,
But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.


There isn’t much time, in any case.
There isn’t much left to talk about
as the year deflates.
There isn’t a lot to add.
Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels
Wherever a thing appears,
Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable
in their mute and glittering garb.


All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us
out of the
Blue Ridge.
All afternoon the leaves have scuttled
Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.
And now the evening is over us,
Small slices of silence
running under a dark rain,
Wrapped in a larger.
- Charles Wright
(America's new Poet Laureate)

[Larry Robinson]

Dad

you
were of a generation
who dressed up for
doctor appointments
airline flights
dinner on Sunday night
your operation

now
I take these clothes
home with me
sad new shoes
your good black trousers
a black v neck sweater
a fresh white shirt

you
were of a generation
who revered doctors
loved the flag
found belief easy

you
a good patient
unfailingly polite
had corny jokes
for orderlies
nurses
people in white coats

now
you are gone
and I am left
holding a bag


- Les Bernstein

[Larry Robinson]

For a Father

The longer we live,
The more of your presence
We find, laid down,
Weave upon weave
Within our lives.

The quiet constancy of your gentleness
Drew no attention to itself,
Yet filled our home
With a climate of kindness
Where each mind felt free
To seek its own direction.

As the fields of distance
Opened inside childhood,
Your presence was a sheltering tree
Where out fledgling hearts could rest.

The earth seemed to trust your hands
As they tilled the soil, put in the seed,
Gathered together the lonely stones.

Something in you loved to inquire
In the neighborhood of air,
Searching its transparent rooms
For the fallen glances of God.

The warmth and wonder of your prayer
Opened our eyes to glimpse
The subtle ones who
Are eternally there.

Whenever, silently, in off moments,
The beauty of the whole thing overcame you,
You would gaze quietly out upon us,
The look from your eyes
Like a kiss alighting on skin.

There are many things
We could have said,
But words never wanted
To name them;
And perhaps a word
That is quietly sensed
Across the air
In another’s heart
Becomes the inner companion
To one’s own unknown.

- John O’Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

Just Now I Heard My Father Singing

Just now I heard my father singing
an old, old song he used to sing
when his hands were busy
with something, as mine were until
I heard that voice: he has been dead
for eight years!

Just now I heard my father's laughter.
That, too, came from my mouth.


- Alden Nowlan

[Larry Robinson]

A Praise

His memories lived in the place
like fingers locked in the rock ledges
like roots. When he died
and his influence entered the air
I said, Let my mind be the earth
of his thought, let his kindness
go ahead of me. Though I do not escape
the history barbed in my flesh,
certain wise movements of his hands,
the turns of his speech
keep with me. His hope of peace
keeps with me in harsh days,
the shell of his breath dimming away
three summers in the earth.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

All The Difficult Hours and Minutes

All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

Although the wind

Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.

- Izumi Shikibu
(Translated by Jane Hirshfield )