Click Banner For More Info See All Sponsors

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

This site is now closed permanently to new posts.
We recommend you use the new Townsy Cafe!

Click anywhere but the link to dismiss overlay!

Page 36 of 162 FirstFirst ... 26 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 46 86 136 ... LastLast
Results 1,051 to 1,080 of 4857

  • Share this thread on:
  • Follow: No Email   
  • Thread Tools
  1. TopTop #1051
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mockingbirds

    This morning
    two mockingbirds
    in the green field
    were spinning and tossing

    the white ribbons
    of their songs
    into the air.
    I had nothing

    better to do
    than listen.
    I mean this
    seriously.

    In Greece,
    a long time ago,
    an old couple
    opened their door

    to two strangers
    who were,
    it soon appeared,
    not men at all,

    but gods.
    It is my favorite story--
    how the old couple
    had almost nothing to give

    but their willingness
    to be attentive--
    but for this alone
    the gods loved them

    and blessed them--
    when they rose
    out of their mortal bodies,
    like a million particles of water

    from a fountain,
    the light
    swept into all the corners
    of the cottage,

    and the old couple,
    shaken with understanding,
    bowed down--
    but still they asked for nothing

    but the difficult life
    which they had already.
    And the gods smiled, as they vanished,
    clapping their great wings.

    Wherever it was
    I was supposed to be
    this morning--
    whatever it was I said

    I would be doing--
    I was standing
    at the edge of the field--
    I was hurrying

    through my own soul,
    opening its dark doors--
    I was leaning out;
    I was listening.

    - Mary Oliver
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #1052
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Affirmation After Evidence It’s Still Kali Yuga

    It’s still true what he said long ago,
    the world is upside down.

    But the trees are not upside down,
    nor the grass,
    nor the breeze,
    nor the hills,
    nor the sea,
    nor the stunning, constant sky.

    And even cities, at 3 AM
    when the greed-spigot’s shut off
    and everyone’s gone
    somewhere we can’t see—
    or silenced by snow—
    can be places of silent wonder.

    Although when we walk here
    we must bring with us
    the freshness of a higher realm,

    let us not forget
    there are allies,
    many quiet,
    steadfast allies.

    - Max Reif
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  4. Gratitude expressed by:

  5. TopTop #1053
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Work Is

    My brother comes home from work
    and climbs the stairs to our room.
    I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
    one by one. You can have it, he says.

    The moonlight streams in the window
    and his unshaven face is whitened
    like the face of the moon. He will sleep
    long after noon and waken to find me gone.

    Thirty years will pass before I remember
    that moment when suddenly I knew each man
    has one brother who dies when he sleeps
    and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

    and that together they are only one man
    sharing a heart that always labors, hands
    yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
    for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

    All night at the ice plant he had fed
    the chute its silvery blocks, and then I
    stacked cases of orange soda for the children
    of Kentucky, one gray boxcar at a time

    with always two more waiting. We were twenty
    for such a short time and always in
    the wrong clothes, crusted with dirt
    and sweat. I think now we were never twenty.

    In 1948 in the city of Detroit, founded
    by de la Mothe Cadillac for the distant purposes
    of Henry Ford, no one wakened or died,
    no one walked the streets or stoked a furnace,

    for there was no such year, and now
    that year has fallen off all the old newspapers,
    calendars, doctors' appointments, bonds,
    wedding certificates, drivers licenses.

    The city slept. The snow turned to ice.
    The ice to standing pools or rivers
    racing in the gutters. Then bright grass rose
    between the thousands of cracked squares,

    and that grass died. I give you back 1948.
    I give you all the years from then
    to the coming one. Give me back the moon
    with its frail light falling across a face.

    Give me back my young brother, hard
    and furious, with wide shoulders and a curse
    for God and burning eyes that look upon
    all creation and say, You can have it.

    - Phillip Levine
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  6. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  7. TopTop #1054
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    August

    When the blackberies hang
    swollen in the woods, in the brambles
    nobody own, I spend

    all day among the high
    branches, reaching
    my ripped arms, thinking

    of nothing, cramming
    the black honey of summer
    into my mouth; all day my body

    accepts what it is; In the dark
    creeks that run by there is
    this thick paw of my life darting among

    the black bells, the leaves; there is
    this happy tongue.

    - Mary Oliver
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  8. Gratitude expressed by:

  9. TopTop #1055
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lemonade Stand

    When I was six,
    My Mom promised to help me set up a lemonade stand
    to sell lemonade to the big boys
    who played stickball in the street
    in front of our house in Granada Hills.
    But in my excitement
    I peppered her with
    too many questions."One more question. . ." she warned.
    A minute later I lost my lemonade stand.

    Since then
    I have never been much excited
    about anything.
    Never desiring anything with much ardor,
    never feeling anything with much pain.
    Accepting only things which came easily,
    which seemed to be
    overly exciting women
    and underly exciting jobs.

    I became a Buddhist
    because Buddhists
    are supposed to eliminate
    all desire and passion,
    which is very easy for a guy who lost
    his lemonade stand.
    But my Buddhist soul
    longs to be a Catholic (Italian!)
    or Jewish (Paul Newman!)
    or even a Texan (Caballero!).
    I want to sing arias
    outside my Italian girlfriend's window.
    I want to dance to Hava Nagila.
    Also with my Italian girlfriend.
    I want to ride a Palomino horse
    across the Texas plains,
    the breasts of my Italian girlfriend
    pressed into my shoulders.
    Sadly, my songs, dances and rides
    were done with insufficient passion and excitement.

    There are worse things
    than losing your lemonade stand.
    But in my dreams
    I'm on my deathbed
    a pink plastic hospital cup
    full of the holy yellow elixir
    falls to the floor,
    and in my dying breath
    I utter the words,
    "Lemonade stand..."
    My Italian girlfriend
    wailing by my side.

    - Greg Kimura
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  10. Gratitude expressed by:

  11. TopTop #1056
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Phone Call
    I can hear words in your breath,
    words alien to any language
    but audible as you sleep.
    Sometimes you will speak words
    as you dream,
    but tonight it is the breath itself
    that speaks a sustained prayer
    from your breast.

    Morning, and your side of the bed is empty.
    I stare at the impression your body has made
    wondering how long
    before I too, fell into the vocal chamber
    of a dreaming flesh.

    Over breakfast, pouring coffee,
    buttering toast, we make small talk.
    When the phone rings
    it is I that get up to answer it.
    Your sister in tears on the line.
    Father dead, massive stroke,
    in the background,
    the sound of weeping relatives.

    I look across at you,
    as you sip orange juice.
    Now I remember the words
    of your breath last night.
    How you were not praying
    but chanting a spell against
    the coming of the dawn.

    - Eric Ashford
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  12. Gratitude expressed by:

  13. TopTop #1057
    RexCasteel
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This poem could easily be read aloud, irreverent and hilarious.

    There is also another way...

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

    When I was six...

    There are worse things
    than losing your lemonade stand.
    But in my dreams
    I'm on my deathbed
    a pink plastic hospital cup
    full of the holy yellow elixir
    falls to the floor,
    and in my dying breath
    I utter the words,
    "Lemonade stand..."
    My Italian girlfriend
    wailing by my side.

    - Greg Kimura
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  14. TopTop #1058
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Were They Like?

    Did the people of Viet Nam
    use lanterns of stone?
    Did they hold ceremonies
    to reverence the opening of buds?
    Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
    Did they use bone and ivory,
    jade and silver, for ornament?
    Had they an epic poem?
    Did they distinguish between speech and singing?

    Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
    It is not remembered whether in gardens
    stone gardens illumined pleasant ways.
    Perhaps they gathered once to delight in blossom,
    but after their children were killed
    there were no more buds.
    Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
    A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
    All the bones were charred.
    it is not remembered. Remember,
    most were peasants; their life
    was in rice and bamboo.
    When peaceful clouds were reflected in the paddies
    and the water buffalo stepped surely along terraces,
    maybe fathers told their sons old tales.
    When bombs smashed those mirrors
    there was time only to scream.
    There is an echo yet
    of their speech which was like a song.
    It was reported their singing resembled
    the flight of moths in moonlight.
    Who can say? It is silent now.

    - Denise Levertov
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  15. TopTop #1059
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Our Valley

    We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
    when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
    of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
    when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
    you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
    believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
    something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
    the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

    You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
    have no word for ocean, but if you live here
    you begin to believe they know everything.
    They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
    a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
    slowly between the pines and the wind dies
    to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
    your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

    You have to remember this isn't your land.
    It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
    and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
    that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
    who carved a living from it only to find themselves
    carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
    so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
    wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

    - Phillip Levine
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  16. TopTop #1060
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Epiphany

    Just as I gave up waiting
    and turned back to tend the fire,
    the full moon rose over the Mogollon Rim,
    sending a flashflood of light
    racing up the narrow canyon.

    Sometimes the distance
    between the ordinary and the sacred
    is no greater than the width
    of a moonbeam.

    - Larry Robinson
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  17. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  18. TopTop #1061
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from 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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  19. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  20. TopTop #1062
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Shop



    Lightning falling on the helpless,


    a surge of pearl out of the rock

    covering the rock, this life torn into a hundred pieces,

    and one of those pieces a ticket

    to let me back into my life.



    A spirit world divided into eight sections, one a scroll.

    Eight scrolls in the parchment of your face.

    What kind of bird am I becoming, kneeling like a camel,

    pecking at the fire like an ostrich?



    You and I have worked in the same shop for years.

    Our loves are great fellow workers.

    Friends cluster there, and every moment we notice

    a new light coming out in the sky.

    Invisible, yet taking form, like Christ coming through

    Mary. In the cradle, God.

    Shams, why this inconsistency

    that we live with love,

    and yet we run away?

    - Jellaludin Rumi

    (tr. Coleman Barks)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  21. TopTop #1063
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Poetry Comes to Me

    It comes blundering over the
    Boulders at night, it stays
    Frightened outside the
    Range of my campfire
    I go to meet it at the
    Edge of the light

    - Gary Snyder
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  22. TopTop #1064
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Inventing A Horse

    Inventing a horse is not easy.
    One must not only think of the horse.
    One must dig fence posts around him.
    One must include a place where horses like to live;

    or do when they live with humans like you.
    Slowly, you must walk him in the cold;
    feed him bran mash, apples;
    accustom him to the harness;

    holding in mind even when you are tired
    harnesses and tack cloths and saddle oil
    to keep the saddle clean as a face in the sun;
    one must imagine teaching him to run

    among the knuckles of tree roots,
    not to be skittish at first sight of timber wolves,
    and not to grow thin in the city,
    where at some point you will have to live;

    and one must imagine the absence of money.
    Most of all though: the living weight,
    the sound of his feet on the needles,
    and, since he is heavy, and real,

    and sometimes tired after a run
    down the river with a light whip at his side,
    one must imagine love
    in the mind that does not know love,

    an animal mind, a love that does not depend
    on your image of it,
    your understanding of it;
    indifferent to all that it lacks:

    a muzzle and two black eyes
    looking the day away, a field empty
    of everything but witch grass, fluent trees,
    and some piles of hay.

    - Meghan O’Rourke
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  23. Gratitude expressed by:

  24. TopTop #1065
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode to the Fish

    Nights, when I can’t sleep, I listen to the sea lions
    barking from the rocks off the lighthouse.
    I look out the black window into the black night
    and think about the fish stirring the ocean.
    Muscular tuna, their lunge and thrash
    churning the water to froth,
    whipping up a squall, storm of hunger.
    Herring cruising, river of silver in the sea,
    wide as a lit city. And all the small breaths:
    pulse of frilled jellyfish, thrust of squid,
    frenzy of krill, transparent skin glowing
    green with the glass shells of diatoms.
    Billions swarming up the water column each night,
    gliding down at dawn. They’re the greased motor
    that powers the world, whirring
    Mixmaster folding the planet’s batter.
    Shipping heat to the Arctic, hauling cold
    to the tropics, currents unspooling around the globe.
    My room is so still, the bureau lifeless,
    and on it, inert, the paraphernalia of humans:
    keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides—
    opalescent abalone, pearl earrings.
    Only the clock’s sea green numerals
    register their small changes. And shadows
    the moon casts—fan of maple branches—
    tick across the room. But beyond the cliffs
    a blue whale sounds and surfaces, cosmic
    ladle scooping the icy depths. An artery so wide,
    I could swim through into its thousand pound heart.

    - Ellen Bass
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  25. Gratitude expressed by:

  26. TopTop #1066
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pax

    All that matters is to be at one with the living God
    to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.
    Like a cat asleep on a chair
    at peace, in peace
    and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
    at home, at home in the house of the living,
    sleeping on the hearth and yawning before the fire.

    Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
    yawning at home before the fire of life
    feeling the presence of the living God
    like a great reassurance
    a deep calm in the heart
    a presence
    as of a master sitting at the board
    in his own and greater being,
    in the house of life.

    - D.H. Lawrence
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  27. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  28. TopTop #1067
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    End of Summer
    An agitation of the air,
    A perturbation of the light
    Admonished me the unloved year
    Would turn on its hinge that night.

    I stood in the disenchanted field
    Amid the stubble and the stones,
    Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
    The song of my marrow-bones.

    Blue poured into summer blue,
    A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
    The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
    That part of my life was over.

    Already the iron door of the north
    Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
    Order their populations forth,
    And a cruel wind blows.

    - Stanley Kunitz


    
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  29. Gratitude expressed by:

  30. TopTop #1068
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

    I know the voice of depression
    Still calls to you.

    I know those habits that can ruin your life
    Still send their invitations.

    But you are with the Friend now
    And look so much stronger.

    You can stay that way
    And even bloom!

    Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From your prayers and work and music
    And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

    Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
    And, my dear,
    From the most insignificant movements
    Of your own holy body.

    Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
    That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
    But then drag you for days
    Like a broken man
    Behind a farting camel.

    You are with the Friend now.
    Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
    What actions of yours bring freedom
    And Love.

    Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
    My ears wish my head was missing
    So they could finally kiss each other
    And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

    O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From your prayers and work and music
    And from your companions' beautiful laughter

    And from the most insignificant movements
    Of your own holy body.

    Now, sweet one,
    Be wise.
    Cast all your votes for Dancing!
    - Hafiz
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  31. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  32. TopTop #1069
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I've Broken Through To Longing

    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
    (translated by Coleman Barks)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  33. Gratitude expressed by:

  34. TopTop #1070
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Zero-Circle

    Be helpless and dumbfounded,
    unable to say yes or no.

    Then a stretcher will come
    from grace to gather us up.

    We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
    If we say "Yes we can," we'll be lying.

    If we say "No, we don¹t see it,"
    that "No" will behead us
    and shut tight our window into spirit.

    So let us not be sure of anything,
    besides ourselves, and only that, so
    miraculous beings come running to help.

    Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
    we will be saying finally,
    with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."

    When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
    we'll become a mighty kindness.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
    ( Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
    translated by Coleman Barks)
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  35. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  36. TopTop #1071
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Translucence

    Once I understood (till I forget, at least)
    the immediacy of new life, Vita Nuova,
    redemption not stuck in linear delays,
    I perceived also (for now) the source
    of unconscious light in faces
    I believe are holy, not quite transparent,
    more like the half-opaque whiteness
    of Japanese screens or lampshades,
    grass or petals imbedded in the paper-thin
    substance which is not paper as this is paper,
    and which permits the passage of what is luminous
    though forms remain unseen behind its protection.
    I perceived that in such faces, through
    the translucence we see, the light we intuit
    is of the alrady resurrected, each
    a Lazarus, but a Lazarus (man or woman)
    without the memory of tomb or of any
    swaddling bands except perhaps
    the comforting ones of their first
    infant hours, the warm receiving blanket ...
    They know of themselves nothing different
    from anyone else. This great unknowing
    is part of their holiness. They are always trying
    to share out joy as if it were cake or water,
    something ordinary, not rare at all.

    - Denise Levertov
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  37. TopTop #1072
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Vacation

    Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
    He went flying down the river in his boat
    with his video camera to his eye, making
    a moving picture of the moving river
    upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
    toward the end of his vacation. He showed
    his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
    preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
    the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
    behind which he stood with his camera
    preserving his vacation even as he was having it
    so that after he had had it he would still
    have it. It would be there. With a flick
    of a switch, there it would be. But he
    would not be in it. He would never be in it.

    - Wendell Berry
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  38. Gratitude expressed by:

  39. TopTop #1073
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blackberry Eating


    I love to go out in late September
    among the far, overripe, icy, black blackberries
    to eat blackberries for breakfast,
    the stalks very prickly, a penalty
    they earn for knowing the black art
    of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
    lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
    fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
    as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
    like strengths or squinched,
    many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
    which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
    in the silent, startled, icy black language
    of blackberry-eating in late September.

    - Galway Kinnell
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  40. TopTop #1074
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blackberries by the Roadway

    In scarred roadcuts
    forgotten tracks
    of some otherwise interested
    caterpillar
    lies the bramble

    Sharp Himalayan spines
    protecting the fruit
    that comes wild
    every hot September
    from the thick stalked
    wild blackberry.

    Not wild, really,
    imported and big berried
    just as commercial strawberries
    are larger and less flavorful
    than their wild cousins.

    But those big dull ones
    you know
    that grow big
    in the center of the bunch
    with their shiny, sour
    younger siblings
    all around.

    Sweetness and hard seeds
    and staining purple ink
    a pleasure
    to make
    pope Innocent
    blush.

    They are only black
    till you touch them.

    - David Bean
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  41. Gratitude expressed by:

  42. TopTop #1075
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When school or mosque, tower or minaret get torn down,
    Then Dervishes may begin their community.
    For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
    And betrayal into trust
    Can any human being become part of the truth.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  43. TopTop #1076
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Watching the Jet Planes Dive

    We must go back and find a trail on the ground
    back of the forest and mountain on the slow land;
    we must begin to circle on the intricate sod.
    By such wild beginnings without help we may find
    the small trail on through the buffalo-bean vines.

    We must go back with noses and the palms of our hands,
    and climb over the map in far places, everywhere,
    and lie down whenever there is doubt and sleep there.
    If roads are unconnected we must make a path,
    no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

    We must find something forgotten by everyone alive,
    and make some fabulous gesture when the sun goes down
    as they do by custom in little Mexico towns
    where they crawl for some ritual up a rocky steep.
    The jet planes dive; we must travel on our knees.

    - William Stafford
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  44. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  45. TopTop #1077
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Dakini Speaks

    My friends, let's grow up.
 Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
 Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
 Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
 It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
 Let's grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
 But please, let's not be so shocked by them. 
Let's not act so betrayed,
 As though life had broken her secret promise to us.

    Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
 And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.

    To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
 And her compassion exquisitely precise.
 Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
 She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
 This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
 Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
 We are not children anymore.

    The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost. 
Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.

    © Jennifer Welwood

    https://jenniferwelwood.com/poetry/the-dakini-speaks/
    Last edited by Barry; 02-01-2014 at 08:48 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  46. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  47. TopTop #1078
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When school or mosque, tower or minaret get torn down,
    Then Dervishes may begin their community.
    For only when faithfulness turns to betrayal
    And betrayal into trust
    Can any human being become part of the truth.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  48. TopTop #1079
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Envoy

    One day in that room, a small rat.
    Two days later, a snake.

    Who, seeing me enter,
    whipe the long stripe of his
    body under the bed,
    then curled like a docile house-pet.

    I don’t know how either came or left.
    Later, the flashlight found nothing.

    For a year I watched
    as something—terror? happiness? grief?—
    entered and then left my body.

    Not knowing how it came in.
    Not knowing how it went out.

    It hung where words could not reach it.
    It slept whre l ight could not go.
    Its scent was n either snake nor rat,
    neither sensualist nor ascetic.

    There are opening in our lives
    of which we know nothing.

    Through them
    the belled herds travel at will,
    long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

    - Jane Hirshfield
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  49. TopTop #1080
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Scars

    They tell how it was, and how time
    came along, and how it happened
    again and again. They tell
    the slant life takes when it turns
    and slashes your face as a friend.

    Any wound is real. In church
    a woman lets the sun find
    her cheek, and we see the lesson:
    there are years in that book; there are sorrows
    a choir can’t reach when they sing.

    Rows of children lift their faces of promise,
    places where the scars will be.

    - William Stafford
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  50. Gratitude expressed by:

Similar Threads

  1. Thank you Larry Robinson
    By JandA in forum WaccoReader
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-11-2009, 02:36 PM
  2. Poem of the day from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 05-20-2008, 09:33 AM
  3. Poems from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: 01-07-2007, 08:45 AM
  4. Measure F Precinct Walk with Larry Robinson
    By Portia in forum General Community
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-06-2006, 02:46 PM

Bookmarks