Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[gardenmaniac]

as the days grow longer
my spirit soars
I look forward to
a/nother year filled with
these goods:

- family
- food
- friends
- health
- times

add a dash of prosperity
sprinkle liberally with love

share with all who wish to partake

[Larry Robinson]

Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity


I will need a birch tree, a maple, a redwood, a white pine, a sequoia, a
cedar, a palm tree.

I want soil from Nigeria, Palestine, the Himalayas, Mississippi,
Auschwitz, Newtown, Alcatraz.

I want water from the Ganges River, Glacier Bay, the Sea of Galilee, the
Tigris and Euphrates, the Pacific and the Atlantic, the River Jordan,
the Dead Sea, Lake Bonaparte.

I want air from Kathmandu, Calcutta, Cairo, Nazareth, Athens, the Arctic
Circle,
Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, Baghdad, Kabul.

I want near me a bison, a wolf, an eagle, a silverback gorilla, a
giraffe, a kitten, a
fawn, a black bear, a polar bear, a golden retriever.

From the waters, I want a humpback whale, a porpoise, a sea turtle, a
manta ray, a
flounder, a harp seal.

From the heavens I want a comet, a rainbow, a lightning bolt, a blue
moon, a summer
storm, a snowy night, a mauve and golden sunrise.

I want fire from my morning candle, the farthest star in the Milky Way,
a campfire
in the Adirondacks, the altar at St. Joseph's Provincial House, the
funeral pyres in
Varanasi, the Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

I want a vestment made of materials from Gujarat, India; Lhasa, Tibet;
Cape Town,
South Africa; St. John's, Newfoundland; Oslo, Norway; northern Ireland;
central
Australia; East Germany; and South Central Los Angeles.

I want co-celebrants from an Ethiopian village, a Harlem tenement, a
nursing home in Selma, a prisoner in Guantanamo, a Harvard Law class,
the Smokey Mountain garbage dump in Manila, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I want bread kneaded and pressed by the hands of millionaires,
chambermaids,
sherpas, Bolivian tin workers, emigrants and immigrants from a hundred
countries,
three Fortune 500 CEOs, nine Exxon board members, 14 Chicago gang
members,
and seven out of work shrimpers from the Gulf of Mexico.

I want a choir of Chinese peasants, Israeli kindergartners, Japanese
Bonsai masters,
Navajo weavers, Zuni potters, Tlingit totem pole makers, and African
diamond miners.

Once assembled, we will celebrate the sacrament that contains them all.
We will sing till the earth wobbles in her orbit, give praise and thanks
till wine runs from the sugar maple. We will bow to the holiness we see
in each other forgiving the past, blessing the present, committing to a
future that is good for everyone.
And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.

- Jan Phillips

[sandoak]

A perfect New Year's Blessing. Thank you, Larry!

Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity
...

And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.

- Jan Phillips

[Larry Robinson]

You and Art


Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face -
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.


- William Stafford




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Larry Robinson]

All Her Life, She was Old


All my life, my Nana was old.
She was born old, quiet and thoughtful.
She always had false teeth, that
Clicked when she talked.


She always wore glasses with thick
Yellowed lenses.
A corona of white hair
Always framed her wizened, wrinkled face.


My Nana, born old,
Always gathered with other
Old women, my aunts, or neighbors
Or neighbors who were my aunts—


Women she’d known
All my life—born old, too.
They sat on couches
Or stoops and gossiped


About the weather, each other or
Old men and grandchildren.
If they worried,
I was unaware.


Life was lived, nothing more,
Which is all that is necessary
If one is born old.


- Rebecca del Rio




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Carly]

This is how I always saw my Nana.

All Her Life, She was Old


All my life, my Nana was old.
She was born old, quiet and thoughtful.
She always had false teeth, that
Clicked when she talked.
...

[Larry Robinson]

A Note to the Alien on Earth


Here, in the interest of time, some words to work with,
assuming you’re pretending to be a man
or woman and understand English. If this should find you,
know that I’m glad to help any way I can.

A letter beginning “Dear Friend” is not from a friend.
A “free gift” is redundant and not free.
A teenager is sex with skin around it.
The one word used as much as “I” is “me.”

People who are politically correct,
which means never offending by what they say,
will lie about other things, too. Be careful with them.
And people insulting groups of people may

look in the mirror too much or not enough.
What you say is not what anyone hears.
Be wary of one who is always or never sad.
And try to be patient with us. It looks bad,
but we’ve only had a few hundred thousand years.


- Miller Williams
(1930-2014)

[Larry Robinson]

Nothing is Forever
and
Everything is Forever.

They are the same in memory
like hopes that never arrive
beaming at my door
or do
and stay far into evening’s shadows.

Letting go of having
and not-having
allows a wonderful freedom
as my tight-bound heart discovers
it has been trapped by the long muscles of its own wings
and there is nowhere to go
but free.


- Karl Frederick




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.
https://www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan

[Larry Robinson]

“So…what are you?”
Lot’s of people ask when they first meet me.
“I mean, you got hair like sheepskin
eyes that could terrorize
skin like a supremacist
and a ghetto booty
sooo….what are you?”
And I tell them:
I am a breathing math equation
SUBTRACTION
I am the difference
between a cornered woman
and her right to consent
I am what is left
After forced penetration
into fertile motherland
I am sweet yams dug from their beds
and replanted in a foreign climate
MULTIPLICATION
I am the product
of variable factors
Algebraic solution
A substitution of cultures
I am teepee burned to the ground,
and log cabin built in its place
DIVISION
I am a mixed
number, a percentage
of a people, I am a fraction
of a stereotype
My blood is a canal
running between two cities
and I am the bridge
that few from either side
dare to cross
ADDITION
I am the sum of two positive integers
unshackled from a negative history
Their hands outstretched
from opposite sides of a chasm
split by burning crosses and swastikas
I am born from the embrace
of two horizontal bodies
who believe fear is the only problem
worth solving
You ask, what am I?
I am one plus one equals one
I am both sides of a full moon
A human equinox
The changing of seasons
My home is the quiet moment
between dusk and dawn–
the end of one day.
The beginning of the next.


- Kristine Hadeed

[Larry Robinson]

Clear Silhouettes


Let go the torments of your mind
beside a tree
your aches and pains
embrace it as a friend who gives
you ease

suddenly double wings flit
into the canopy
its silhouetted leaves
leap out
clear as your soul itself

with each breath the day meets
you afresh


- Raphael Block

[Larry Robinson]

Drake in the Southern Sea
For Rafael Heliodoro Valle
I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March
And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when
A half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon
That a ship had come alongside
With sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver.
Our helmsman cried out to them to stand off
But no one answered, as though they were all asleep.
Again we called out: “WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM?”
And they said: Peru!
After which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing,
And they ordered me to come down into their longboat
To cross over to where their Captain was.
I found him walking the deck,
Went up to him, kissed his hands and he asked me:
“What silver or gold had I aboard that ship?”
I said, “None at all,
None at all, My Lord, only my dishes and cups.”
So then he asked me if I knew the Viceroy.
I said I did. And I asked the Captain,
“If he were Captain Drake himself and no other?”
The Captain replied that
“He was the very Drake I spoke of.”
We spoke together a long time, until the hour of dinner,
And he commanded that I sit by his side.
His dishes and cups are of silver, bordered with gold
With his crest upon them.
He has with him many perfumes and scented waters in crystal vials
Which, he said, the Queen had given him.
He dines and sups always with music of violins
And also takes with him everywhere painters who keep painting
All the coast for him.
He is a man of some twenty-four years, small, with a reddish beard.
He is a nephew of Juan Aquinas,* the pirate.
And is one of the greatest mariners there are upon the sea.
The day after, which was Sunday, he clothed himself in splendid garments
And had them hoist all their flags
With pennants of divers colors at the mastheads,
The bronze rings, and chains, and the railings and
The lights on the Alcazar shining like gold.
His ship was like a gold dragon among the dolphins.
And we went, with his page, to my ship to look at the coffers.
All day long until night he spent looking at what I had.
What he took from me was not much,
A few trifles of my own,
And he gave me a cutlass and a silver brassart for them,
Asking me to forgive him
Since it was for his lady that he was taking them:
He would let me go, he said, the next morning, as soon as there was a breeze;
For this I thanked him, and kissed his hands.
He is carrying, in his galleon, three thousand bars of silver
Three coffers full of gold
Twelve great coffers of pieces of eight:
And he says he is heading for China
Following the charts and steered by a Chinese pilot whom he captured ...


- Ernesto Cardenal
(Translated by Thomas Merton)

[Larry Robinson]

When You Dance


When you dance the whole universe dances.
All the realms spun around you in endless celebration.
Your soul loses its grip.
Your body sheds its fatigue.
Hearing my hands clap and my drum beat,
You begin to whirl.


- Jellaludin Rumi (translated by Shahram Shiva)



Rumi's Caravan is delighted to welcome Sufi dancer Chelsea Rose who will perform the sublime turn of the whirling dervish at the 7 p.m. performance on Saturday, Feb. 7.

Chelsea is a student of Zen and Sufism. She teaches salsa dancing in Santa Rosa and endeavors to merge movement with passion, prayer, and a healthy dose of fun. She is honored to collaborate with the talented performers of Rumi's Caravan and share the gift of the turn.

TICKETS are available now and make great gifts.
rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com

LEARN MORE: www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Larry Robinson]

Night

how vast
how enormous
how great
this empire
of darkness

and yet
disarmed
by one
needle
of light


- Francisco Alarcon

[Larry Robinson]

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing


Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.


- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World
If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.
Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.
Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.
Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.
And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant----
stroke the white throat,
the heavy trembling dewlaps
you'd come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.
Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
Let the envious gods take back what they can.


- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through


Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them


- D.H. Lawrence

[Roland Jacopetti]

Thank you so much, Larry. One of my favorites.
Roland

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through
...
- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

Love Letter from Baghdad


Call me Rabia. I was
named for the Sufi Saint.
Blood pumps through the four
chambers of my heart,
swift and scarlet with joy or slow
and bruised black with sorrow.
We are the same.

This morning, as I pin up wash
in my rubbled court yard,
the long fingers of the sun reach
over the desert and sting my sleepless
eyes like dust, like diesel fumes.
There’s an explosion.
Did you hear it?

My neighbor sinks to the ground
in the folds of her burka,
a dark flower, rocking and keening,
her bloodied grandchild in her arms.
The earth trembles with
the terrible sound of her grief.
We are the same.

I want to share sweet memories
with you, of date palm and pomegranate,
the hay fragrance of saffron, the song
of the nightingale. I invite you
to share yours with me.
We are the same.

Come sister, let’s raise our arms
and begin. We’ll spin
and dance like the Sufis.
It will take as many turns
as there are stars
to make this right.
We do not yet know the steps.


- Gail Barker

[Larry Robinson]

Doha

“Life is an impossible dare”
With eyes fixed on the top of the mountain
Dare to rest in not knowing and gaze instead
On the blank page
the lump of clay
the empty stage
the still fountain
They await only your remembering…..
How you once followed your own curiosity
When each act was an exploration
Back before a thought was an idea
before an urge became a plan
When you were free to doodle, peering
Into the expanse of expression
No hesitating, no fearing
It didn’t matter then how you looked
in other people’s eyes
And it doesn’t matter now….
After all our work, perhaps we can just show up,
honestly and without expectation.

So, with a light touch and much tenderness
Let us proceed, one sound at a time,
Stepping inside the world of each song,
Holding it all so gently,
Grateful for an audience.

- Fran Carbonaro

[Larry Robinson]

Hold Out


Don't squander your precious longing
On what could never fulfill you.
Hold out!
Hold out for the great heart's desire.
And then spend everything you've got;
Like a drunken sailor in port at last;
Like the river leaping wantonly into the arms of the sea!


- Larry Robinson






Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Larry Robinson]

Blue Worlds Surround Me



through twisted alleys in the labyrinth he led me
we were locked in our skin and lost there together
son of a famous father, who else could I turn to?
but dark was his mirror, as dark as the maze—

our shadows long and sudden on new discovered walls
revealed by morning sun a prison, vast but roofless
in one direction alone the hope of freedom was held
above us stretched an alluring, crisp sheet of sky

from his fertile mind, full-blown, the idea emerged
a brief, bright flare in the forge of his famous cunning
delicate and difficult were the means of our egress
feathers and wax he found by the faith he had fostered

neither too high nor too low he constantly cautioned
moisture at one end, heat at the other threatened
the fastening and weight of the wings he had fashioned
with slow, prudent purpose; yet mine fluttered impatient

the thrill and the glory of it, the feathered ease
as I sailed higher than ever, higher even than he
blue worlds surround me, ocean, heaven, weave and whirl
I beat my exultant wings... higher, they say, higher

a dripping of the loosened wax, a scattering of feathers
headlong flung, furious falling, wings and limbs atangle
no ears to hear the swift spiral splash of my plucked ball of body
no eyes to see the carpet of seaweed close and congeal as waters swallow me

- Hari Meyers

[Larry Robinson]

Last Adam on 14th St

On the way to the optometrist inadvertently
I cut in front of a woman hurrying
towards a subway turnstile —
Jesus Fucking Christ
she mutters; immediately, I see
The King of Kings on the platform,
chaste in desert schmered schmatta,
head covered in the world’s greatest hoodie.

He jukes around the station as if manifesting
survival of the stylish—
pushing the masses right and left,
branding them sheep and goat,
thanking the mutton for feeding the hungry,
binding the horns of selfish cloven hoofed billys.

The carpenter’s a genie,
minimizing razzle-dazzle,
magnifying maggots,
meat of the matter—
not what I expected to see
on my way
for bifocals.

Stand clear of the closing doors,

My visual field
has expanded
in ways
inexplicable.

Twenty dollar copayment!

Have a vision once,
expect another,

bumping into the Anointed One
blessing his caffeinated flock
in an wireless hole.

Ah, if He and I never meet again,
I’ll search for sourdough
and bits of herring
on laps of bleary-eyed commuters

Why do I more joyfully give directions
to a stranger then high five
a methadone raving beggar?

Guide me, Rabbi . . .

- Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

Bird Prophet Rising


Since you are asking who will save the Earth,
I’ll tell you right now-- it won’t be some holy Jehovah,
or the particle physicists, or the pimping politicos,
or anything high and mighty floating in the sky above you,
but the earth itself lifting its frilly skirt, curling past
the idiot brain, plunging clean to lung, to gut, to feet.

And then, go figure, those feet will start dancing

like Bojangles, and the gut, forgetting all about
the God in heaven, will pen breathless love letters
to the mud it’s made of, and the lungs will burst
their bloody balloons with such a pure and plangent
draught that even the idiot brain will throb in its skull
like the northern lights.

Mark my words, the eighty percent of your gray-matter
that is currently incommunicado, this planet is about
to colonize like some Plymouth Rock in drag.
The pilgrims will toss their bloody crucifixes for kindling,
and the Injuns are going to bake them a Sweet Jesus
mashed from cornmeal and the wheeling stars.

And these shall be the signs of it-- somewhere a CEO
will wake up stammering, “There never was a lotus
that lowballed the mud.” And a Five Star General
will declare, “The sun never called the rain its enemy.”
And somewhere a jilted lover will confide,
“The rose doesn’t feel cheated when the bee absconds
with its fragrance.” And a geezer will exclaim,
“The waxing moon and the waning moon
are the very same moon.”

That’s right-- from that day onwards the following
will be deemed proofs of God’s existence:
that the river never runs away from the sea;
that a pine has yet to hoard its own cones;
that the hummingbird fits the flower;
that the grain doesn’t refuse the reaper;
that the winter never forgets the spring.

And, finally, that the big-brained dummy
who does indeed forget everything,
just remembered that he forgot it.
He’s asked a little birdie to remind him.
That bird is about to spill the beans.

- Richard Schiffman

[Larry Robinson]

Fresh

To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

The Good Life

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
There are the wind’s sighs that are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the tree outside.
The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.
The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climates of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.

- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

In the Museum of Your Last Day


There is a coat on a coat hook in a hall. Work-gloves
in the pockets, pliers and bent nails.

There is a case of Quaker State for the Ford.
Two cans of spray paint in a crisp brown bag.

A mug on a book by the hi-fi.
A disk that starts on its own: Boccherini.

There is a dent in the soap the shape of your thumb.
A swirl in the glass when it fogs.

And a gray hair that twines
through the tines of a little black comb.

There is a watch laid smooth on a wallet.
And pairs of your shoes everywhere.

A phone no one answers. A note that says Friday.
Your voice on the tape talking softly.

- Patrick Phillips

[Larry Robinson]

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

that day


for bill kortum


down poured

the rain
backlit
shimmering drops
puddle smash


the edge
is seen
unknown
to fear
your pace
is relative


cast
your legacy
far wide
everywhere
in between


your presence
in the present
made
future sense


fierce kind
effective
gentleman warrior.


- Richard Retecki

[Larry Robinson]

for bill


he is felt
in the whispering cold
of a thousand scenes
the warmth of summer suns
in shadows that sail
up Sonoma Mountain
the crimson fire
of coastal sunsets
the green silence
of Armstrong Woods
in the bird fest
of the Bay Front Marshes
in the tight angular landscape
of the Valley of the Moon
in the wind shaped hills
of the Merced Hills
in the slithering stream
of the Russian River
in the tight light vistas
of Knights Valley and Mark West
in the ruggedness
of the Mayacamas and Mendocino Highlands
in the patterned rolling
of Alexander Valley
in the sulpherness
of the Cedars


communities vital pulsing
he is felt
and remembered
in all these places and more.


- Richard Retecki

[Larry Robinson]

Sometimes you pick up the newspaper and you think it’s Cain and Abel out there. But sometimes it feels as though it’s Cain against Cain. You can’t tell who’s the good guy.
Nadeem Aslam


Brothers


When there's not enough to eat,
nothing to feed the spirit,
to clothe the mind in novelty,
we wander.
Migratory animals,


We step into occupied
Territory, call it our own,
Plant crops, rape
The women, the land.
We reap our rewards, turn


Blind to acrimony,
Centuries of injury.
Our defeated brothers and sisters
Plant revenge, seek to sow
Justice. What god


Exalts one brother over
The other? Blesses one then,
Curses the other
So peace can never
be possible?


In all of us: a Cain,
condemned by god—
Rejected, vilified brother,
Jealous of our brother, made so
By our jealous god.


- Rebecca del Rio