Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Second Coming

Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of*Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the*desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know*
That twenty centuries of stony sleep*
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

[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

[Larry Robinson]

The Old Devotée



I know what it is to live

a simple life of nothing.

Like the monk who bows

and prays and sits

every day in death-like routine.

The ages do not trumpet his renown

for wisdom and peace.

He writes nothing and cannot write.

He does his devotions which no one marks,

and he makes no boast, no sound.

He is surrounded by a million like himself

for miles of generations

backward and forward. If they earn

God’s smile it is everything to them

and enough. To make a sect of a smile

they know is not within their hand. O my closed eyes!

O my beautiful life

- Bruce Moody

[Larry Robinson]

SONNET LXXIII: THAT TIME OF YEAR THOU MAYST IN ME BEHOLD


That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

- William Shakespeare

[Larry Robinson]

Parable

First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and loss, and in order also
that our bodies be free to move
easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
should we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.

- Louise Gluck

[Larry Robinson]

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

The Man In The Dead Machine
High on a slope in New Guinea
The Grumman Hellcat
lodges among bright vines
as thick as arms. In 1943,
the clenched hand of a pilot
glided it here
where no one has ever been.

In the cockpit, the helmeted
skeleton sits
upright, held
by dry sinews at neck
and shoulder, and webbing
that straps the pelvic cross
to the cracked
leather of the seat, and the breastbone
to the canvas cover
of the parachute.

Or say the shrapnel
missed him, he flew
back to the carrier, and every
morning takes the train, his pale
hands on the black case, and sits
upright, held
by the firm webbing.

- Donald Hall

[Larry Robinson]

Eagle Affirmation

You’ve got to understand that sighting the pair
of eagles over the block, right over our house,
not more than twenty feet above the roof,
so massive their wings pull at the corrugated
tin sheeting even with gentlest tilt, counteracts
bitterness against all the damage I see and hear
around me on an exclusively crisp blue morning,
when clarity is pain and even one small missing
wattle tree, entirely vanquished since I was last here
at home—I still find this hard to say—is agony;
a region is not a pinpoint and a different compass
works in my head, having magnetics for all
directions and all pointing to one spot
I know and observe as closely as possible;
and even one small vanished or vanquished
wattle tree is agony close to death for me,
where I find it hard to breathe to feed myself
to get past the loss; but the pair of eagles
still appearing and keeping their sharp
and scrupulous eyes honed, overrides
this ordeal, though I wish their victims
life too and their damage is traumatic
as anything else; that’s as much sense
or nonsense as I can make in such blue light.

- John Kinsella

[Larry Robinson]

Often I Imagine The Earth

Often I imagine the earth
through the eyes of the atoms we’re made of—
atoms, peculiar
atoms everywhere—
no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end,
soaring together like those
ancient Chinese birds
hatched miraculously with only one wing,
helping each other fly home.

- Dan Gerber

[Larry Robinson]

Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven't been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

- Ellen Bass

[Larry Robinson]

Rest

I ask
these hands
to touch
the body
on the
burning pavement.
It lies.
Bereft.

There are no flowers
no wreaths...
no one weeps.
The spinning wheels
that tore its heart
have gone.
Gone...
Rushing to
that eight am appointment.
To pick up a child from school?
Or perhaps,
perhaps to meet a lover?
To hold someone in arms that
are lonely. To smile.
To kiss.

Into this moment
It stepped.

This furry creature
from the woods....
Its heart pounding
with
this
thing.

This thing that
runs in
the bosom of
the wild,
its shadow caught
in the laden
sweep
of the wing of an owl.
That sudden woosh...
thrashing air
through the fleeting glance
of ghost eyes.
This thing.
This thing
that comes
to me at twilight
in the perfumed mystery
of jasmine.
That sudden
startling
scent...
stunning my feet.

This thing.

It ran fierce in the
creature who
stepped
from the woods
to the road,
into this
other world.
Its feet
stumbled.
Unsure, it turned its head.
Then.
Rushing wheels and
the theft
of dignity.

I ask
these hands
to touch
the body
on the
burning pavement.
To return grace.
To bring the pieces
back
to the woods...
To make a home
in the wild
for
Rest.

- Araliya Navaratne

[Larry Robinson]

Epiphany on Highway One

Maybe I’d been working too hard
or maybe I was just looking forward to meeting a friend for a hike
or maybe it was just time

but my brain stuttered
when I saw the group of small brown cattle
grazing intently
bunched together
headed toward the old
tilted roadside barbed
wire fence
for the small green shoots among the dun parched fall
grasses

up alongside the high road
on the coastal highway
where the sky feels
somehow closer,
and all at once I
could see that everything that had ever
happened had led up to this moment
as if only for the sake of this very one
soon to be gone forever
and that my existence made no sense at all
of course!
because it was begotten in a miracle
and everything had since unfolded

and that these all were
God’s minutes,
and therefore
God’s breath, in a sense,
was blowing through my lungs
and God’s blood was
flowing through my veins,
and it was all I could do
to keep the car from literally lifting
off the road,
because it is really true,
isn’t it, that we are all alive
in miracle, nothing less?

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God,

and in my own face in the glass;

I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name.

And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality.....it is idle to try to alarm me.

- Walt Whitman

[Larry Robinson]

KITES

Every thing, every sensation, every
Occurrence, common or not,
Is miracle.
Who said anything had to exist, anyway?

It is all joy,
And we are kites
Held aloft in the joy
By all that we cannot see,
Though we sense the movement that carries us,
The breath that ripples the thin paper
Of our longing.

- bSue

[Larry Robinson]

Here

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

- Grace Paley

[Larry Robinson]

Keeper of Last Glances

Every night under the vault of stars
Birds are lost in flight or a snake sloughs his skin,
But what if a man feels the forlorn longing
For the invisible and inconceivable realm?

Sometimes I see them, the departed
with their bearded congregation bending
In reverence or swaying like a creaky, rusty swing
filling the neighborhood with phantoms, filling up time

Like nets on empty piers like moons
in the hug of the sky appealing for permanence

A presence comes upon the blur of ground
It might be the dust of the moon in which I see
a hand in a disappearing farewell wave, eyes
of friends hovering far up in the kite-like flutter
In the twilight of last appearance when the keeper
of mortal things lets go the string.

- Richard Meyers

[richsiva]

Beautiful poems. Rilke is a master. D.H.Lawrence exquisite.

[Larry Robinson]

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom,
no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law,
brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves,
the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword,
are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion,
woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web,
man friendship.
The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen,
frowning fool shall be both thought wise,
that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots;
the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air,
the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow;
nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius;
lift up thy head!
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on,
so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty,
the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish,
so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black,
the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads;
but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or too much.

- William Blake

[Ice Queen]

Thank you Larry Robinson for the wonderful poems you post. If I read nothing else on Waccobb, I always read your poems. As to Highway One by O'brien, he'd better take a good look now because soon that natural setting will be overtaken by vineyards as the rest of Sonoma Coounty has been over the past 30 years.

Epiphany on Highway One

Maybe I’d been working too hard
or maybe I was just looking forward to meeting a friend for a hike
or maybe it was just time

but my brain stuttered
when I saw the group of small brown cattle
grazing intently
bunched together
headed toward the old
tilted roadside barbed
wire fence
for the small green shoots among the dun parched fall
grasses

up alongside the high road
on the coastal highway
where the sky feels
somehow closer,
and all at once I
could see that everything that had ever
happened had led up to this moment
as if only for the sake of this very one
soon to be gone forever
and that my existence made no sense at all
of course!
because it was begotten in a miracle
and everything had since unfolded

and that these all were
God’s minutes,
and therefore
God’s breath, in a sense,
was blowing through my lungs
and God’s blood was
flowing through my veins,
and it was all I could do
to keep the car from literally lifting
off the road,
because it is really true,
isn’t it, that we are all alive
in miracle, nothing less?

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

The Rhythm of Each

I think each comfort we manage-
each holding in the night, each opening
of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
fever sponged, each dear thing given
to someone in greater need-each
passes on the kindness we've known.

For the human sea is made of waves
that mount and merge till the way a
nurse rocks a child is the way that child
all grown rocks the wounded, and how
the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
strangers who in their pain
don't seem so strange.

Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
is how we pray and suffer by turns,
and if someone were to watch us
from inside the lake of time, they
wouldn't be able to tell if we are
dying or being born.

- Mark Nepo

[Larry Robinson]

Myrtle

Wearing her yellow rubber slicker,
Myrtle, our Journal carrier, has come early through rain and darkness
to bring us the news.
A woman of thirty or so, with three small children at home,
she's told me she likes
a long walk by herself in the morning.
And with pride in her work,
she's wrapped the news neatly in plastic -
a bread bag, beaded with rain,
that reads WONDER.
From my doorway I watch her flicker from porch to porch as she goes,
a yellow candle flame
no wind or weather dare extinguish.

- Ted Kooser

[Larry Robinson]

How It Happens



The sky said I am watching

to see what you

can make out of nothing

I was looking up and I said

I thought you

were supposed to be doing that

the sky said Many

are clinging to that

I am giving you a chance

I was looking up and I said

I am the only chance I have

then the sky did not answer

and here we are

with our names for the days

the vast days that do not listen to us



- W.S. Merwin

[Larry Robinson]

Perhaps the World Ends Here


The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

- Joy Harjo

[Larry Robinson]

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

- Jane Kenyon

[Larry Robinson]

Faint Music


Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

When everything broken is broken,
and everything dead is dead,
and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,
and the heroine has studied her face and its defects
remorselessly, and the pain they thought might,
as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves
has lost its novelty and not released them,
and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,
watching the others go about their days--
likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears--
that self-love is the one weedy stalk
of every human blossoming, and understood,
therefore, why they had been, all their lives,
in such a fury to defend it, and that no one--
except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool
of poverty and silence--can escape this violent, automatic
life's companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,
faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

As in the story a friend once told about the time
he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him.
Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash.
He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge,
the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon.
And in the salt air he thought about the word "seafood,"
that there was something faintly ridiculous about it.
No one said "landfood." He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch
he'd reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass,
scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp
along the coast--and he realized that the reason for the word
was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise
the restaurants could just put "fish" up on their signs,
and when he woke--he'd slept for hours, curled up
on the girder like a child--the sun was going down
and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket
he'd used for a pillow, climbed over the railing
carefully, and drove home to an empty house.

There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties
hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed.
A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick
with rage and grief. He knew more or less
where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill.
They'd have just finished making love. She'd have tears
in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. "God,"
she'd say, "you are so good for me." Winking lights,
a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay.
"You're sad," he'd say. "Yes." "Thinking about Nick?"
"Yes," she'd say and cry. "I tried so hard," sobbing now,
"I really tried so hard." And then he'd hold her for a while--
Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall--
and then they'd fuck again, and she would cry some more,
and go to sleep.
And he, he would play that scene
once only, once and a half, and tell himself
that he was going to carry it for a very long time
and that there was nothing he could do
but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened
to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark
cracking and curling as the cold came up.

It's not the story though, not the friend
leaning toward you, saying "And then I realized--,"
which is the part of stories one never quite believes.
I had this idea that the world's so full of pain
it must sometimes make a kind of singing.
And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps--
First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

- Robert Hass

[Larry Robinson]

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

- Robert Frost

[Larry Robinson]

Stands still:

Stands still:
A bridge between worlds:
Between what is gone
And what lies ahead.

Stands still:
A point to turn upon,
Weaving memory
And destiny.

Stands still:
A pause before waking:
The dream’s imagery
Fleeting, slips away.

Stands still:
A moment, the threshold:
The balance, a pause
at the point
on the bridge
where the Earth
Stands still.

- Morgan Vierhelle

[Larry Robinson]

Worms

Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms
Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,
Of the good they confer on us, that their silence
Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,
Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks
For their keeping the soil from packing so tight
That no root, however determined, could pierce it?

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,
How the weight of our debt would crush us
Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,
The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,
And wanted nothing that we could give them,
Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.
A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,
Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve
An even brighter and lighter master.

Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,
These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp
Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission
Than nature feels in providing for our survival.
Better save our gratitude for a friend
Who gives us more than we can give in return
And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.

"If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"
The lover says, who, having nothing available
In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up
A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.
"A nickel with a hole drilled in the top
So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm
To protect you against your enemies."

For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,
So he might believe she's safe as she saunters
Home across the field at night, the moon above her,
Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,
And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,
As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

- Carl Dennis

[Larry Robinson]

Love Like Salt


It lies in our hands in crystals

too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet
without being given a second thought

It spills on the floor so fine
we step all over it

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

It breaks out on our foreheads

We store it inside our bodies
in secret wineskins

At supper, we pass it around the table
talking of holidays and the sea.

- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

Class Picture, 1984
I am the
one in the middle
from the left in the first row

the boy who pushes me around
in the playground
he is the sixth one
in the sixth row

The girl I have been in love with
since the second grade
is the one with the radiant auburn hair,

next to the teacher

And my friend Mark
is first in the second row
with his sweater sticking out

that is not all -
if you look closer you can see
the Sydney Opera House
in the background

Superman in the distance
holding up a green car
his cape hardly moving in the wind


- Ramesh Dohan