Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[RexCasteel]

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

There is also another way...

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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)

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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




[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

[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)

[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)

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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/

[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

[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

[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