Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Geometry of Water

Ask water
for its diameter dimension circumference,
it will laugh,
scoff even,

“You dividers and geometers,”
it might say,
“contain me all you want,
bind me in your suit of shape or form—
your rectangles, triangles, circles …
Temporary constraints, all,
I will wear them out,
splash over
leak under
punch through
or evaporate from
and congregate elsewhere.
And what do your shapes and sizes have to do with me then?

“My geometry is you,
you shapers and marauders of space,
My formlessness is your form-in-waiting;
You are my splash walking.
Your million billion tributaries
are my river
overflowing
into the living crust,

“If I am not your God,
I am the mother of your God…”
- Gary Turchin

[Larry Robinson]

Water


I think of the times we traced the leaks
in our boat to unknown entrance places.
It was the mystery and the game
that water played with us.
I would comb the shelves
with a small mirror and run my fingers
under ledges to detect wetness.
She would always escape.
Even if I sealed her out one place,
she found the next.
She was always seeking an entrance to my heart.
But I didn't recognize it.


- Mary Morgan

[Larry Robinson]

The History Teacher


Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of the time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid?"
"What do you call the matador's hat?"
The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
The children would leave his classroom
for the playground to torment the weak
and the smart,
mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
while he gathered up his notes and walked home
past flower beds and white picket fences,
wondering if they would believe that soldiers
in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
designed to make the enemy nod off.


- Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

Sleeping in the Forest


I thought the earth remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.


- Mary Oliver

[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]

In November

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.


- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

Wakeup Call


In our age faith versus science
believers state fables with force
ignoring stress on resources
the aquifers are drying


The jet stream snaps at the ice caps
setting bears awash in the sea
tornados chop cities to flatland
typhoons roil ocean and shore


Neo-luddites warn against progress


Insisting cell stems are human - alive
and not to be dissected or studied
That would be a challenge to God
It’s better by far to remain as - we are


Research halted - vision muddied
Cover up cancer with sunscreen
Let disease be ordained without cry
as genetically food can be altered
and the shale is fracked for oil


That takes complex understanding


Robber barons ignore facts
or advancement- count coin
as displacement of fear
and a garbage pit grows in the ocean


While the coral reefs disappear


- Maryann Schacht

[Larry Robinson]

Lay Me Down Out West


There's but one proper way I'd prefer to check out

Just go unnoticed-- no need to be loud
I'll invite my old Shasta--in dog years my match
At twelve he's turned grizzled--I'm seven times that

Deep in the canyon past mesquite and sage
With a view of the river I'll turn the last page
On this long book of life I've been blessed to write
Chock-full of footnotes half stormy-half bright

My wife took her leave and rode on ahead
It's been near a decade since we shared our bed
And the Grandkids are grown they'll be ok
I hope they'll forgive me for going this way

At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
I'll say "adios" to this land I love best-- when I lay me down out West

No you won't find me hog-tied to some city bed
Where they poke you and prod you and watch you to death
The Indian answer seems so much more sane
When you're no longer useful--just drift away

I'll settle for shade ‘neath a tall cottonwood
And ease my boots off 'cause it's high time I should
Take a strong pull of whisky to sweeten the spell
And re-run some highlights from deep in the well

As far as things go I've been lucky enough
But a stray bolt of lightning sure woke me up
I've marvelled at sunsets and lake-mirrored stars
Made my amends and healed 'most my scars

At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
I'll say "adios" to this land I love best--when I lay me down out West

I'll unsaddle Rio--he'll find his way home
And Shasta will follow once he sees he's alone
He won't be too happy I won the race
By jumpin’ the gun through the last corral gate

I'll gladly return what's left to this earth
Not boxed up or buried by civilized curse
It's oddly a comfort I'll soon be devoured
And scattered by critters in the space of some hours

Tomorrow --it's settled--leave nothing to chance
Arouse no suspicion-pin a note at the ranch
The neighbors will wave as I go 'round the bend
They'll say "there's the old man --off riding again"

At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
And say "adios" to this land I love best
See I won't be denied my one last request--as I lay me down out West


- Larry Potts
( L.K. Potts Full Range Music Petaluma, CA)

[Larry Robinson]

America: A Prophecy (excerpt)
The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.
For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.
- William Blake

[Larry Robinson]

American Tune


Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.

Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.

Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.


And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.

But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.


And I dreamed I was dying.

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.

And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.


And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune

oh, but it's all right, it's all right, itís all
right, you can't be forever blessed.

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.


- Paul Simon

[Larry Robinson]

To Earth the Mother of All

I will sing of the well-founded Earth,
mother of all, eldest of all beings.

She feeds all creatures that are in the world,
all that go upon the goodly land,
all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;
all these are fed of her store.

Through you, O Queen, we are blessed
In our children, and in our harvest
and to you we owe our lives.

Happy are we who you delight to honor!

We have all things abundantly:
our houses are filled with good things,
our cities are orderly,
our sons exult with feverish delight.

(May they take no delight in war)

Our daughters with flower-laden hands
play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.

(May they seek peace for all peoples)

Thus it is for those whom you honor,
O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!
Hail Earth, mother of the gods,
freely bestow upon us for this our song
that cheers and soothes the heart!

May we seek peace for all peoples of the well-founded earth


- Homeric Hymn XXX adapted by Elizabeth Roberts

[Larry Robinson]

This Compost 1 Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

- Walt Whitman

[Larry Robinson]

A Mind Like Compost


All this new stuff goes on top
turn it over, turn it over
wait and water down.
From the dark bottom
turn it inside out
let it spread through
sift down even.
Watch it sprout.


A mind like compost.

- Gary Snyder

[Dixon]

Nice poem! It reminds me of "Fresh Garbage", one of the earliest songs on an environmental theme (late 60s), by the wonderful band Spirit. There also the words can be interpreted environmentally or psychologically.

"Fresh Garbage"
lyrics by Jay Ferguson

Fresh garbage!
Fresh garbage!
Look beneath your lid some morning,
See those things you didn't quite consume
The world's a can for
Your fresh garbage . . .

[Larry Robinson]

For All


Ah to be alive

on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
- Gary Snyder

[markwjam]

thanks, Larry.
I also love Greg Brown's recitation of For All,
that opens his "In The Hills Of California" (live at Kate Wolf) album..

Mark B.

For All


Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

In Praise of the Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.


And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.


When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.


Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And hold our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.


Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.


The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.


The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.


The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.


Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.


Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.


That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.


- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

Arms Full of Wildflowers


Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,

love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.


To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic’s world.
Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.


Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.


Even more, gratitude bares her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.


What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet
is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

My Heart's Desire

The thing that frightens me
About my heart's desire
Is that when I get there,
Or, perhaps, on the way,
I might have to dance.
Or improvise some instrument.
And release some cherished
resentment, carried years.

*- Jon Jackson

[Larry Robinson]

Flames

Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.

His ranger's hat is cocked

at a disturbing angle.

His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher's mitts,
crackle into the distance.

He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.

He is going to show them
how a professional does it.*

-*Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?


Berkeley, 1955
- Allen Ginsberg

[Larry Robinson]

A Man Doesn’t Have Time

A man doesn’t have time
To have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
A season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
To laugh and cry with the same eyes,
With the same hands to cast away stones and to gather them,
To make love in war and war in love.

And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
To set in order and confuse, to eat and to digest
What history
Takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time.
When he loves he seeks, when he finds
Her forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
He begins to forget.

And his soul is experienced, his soul
Is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
An amateur. It tries and it misses,
Gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
Drunk and blind in its pleasures
And in its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
The leaves growing dry on the ground,
The bare branches already pointing to the place
Where there’s time for everything.

- Yehuda Amichai

[Larry Robinson]

Hot December on the Mediterranean

Furious wind rips at the pines
below the sheltered terrace.

Behind the pines, palm fronds, like knives
flash silver with winter sun.

A band of swallows
swoop, defying the weather

chattering like
angry housewives. The old men

gather indoors to read their papers
and lament La Crisis.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

The Soil Of My Soul

To: W.B. Yeats

Tis my prize those childhood woes live buried inside,
The soil of my soul of such matter consorted
And I always return to the same grave to hide
that inferno of shame, youthful ardor aborted.

What do I want with the sun, why would I show my face,
Give me the moonlight and a forest path to walk alone
With the wild mustangs and the paths they trace,
Our nostrils flare, breathing ancient air into bone.

The warriors, old Celts, knew well this potent rage,
In the lovers of old Eire ran the sap of rowan and oak
The modern man lives in a zoo, in a civilized cage,
And lost is the marriage that human to divine may yoke.




- Brian McSweeney

[Larry Robinson]

In memory of Nelson Mandela:

Invictus


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

[Larry Robinson]

Madiba (Nelson Mandela)


Lord take these lines
to the old lion, Madiba
oh how his eyes still shine
so full of life and I,
seem to be wasting mine
see, by the time he was my age
he had already written the next page
in the story of his nation's great future
for so many years he was caged
a mere beast would've choked on rage
but not the noble lion Mandela... Makana...
Madiba!
Great Father!
lift your tattered mane once again!
cross the savannah!
loose your mighty roar to the wind!
shake the heart of the earth mother!
and if she calls you in
break not your stride
you leave us with pride
indeed inside, I am a part of that pride
the tribe, of man,
blind to black or white...
red, gold and green
are the only colors we see
and the only fealty we feel
is to the standard of the Lion
so mighty Lord...
please... take these lines
or better yet take the nine lives
of these false cats wasting time
and give them instead to the humble lion...
Madiba!...
Kukuza kuka Nxele
the journey is never over!

- Oliver Sherman

[Larry Robinson]

Sunday Morning
Verse VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
the dew upon their feet shall manifest.

- Wallace Steven

[Bird Watcher]

Sunday Morning
Verse VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
the dew upon their feet shall manifest.

- Wallace Steven

Wallace "Stevens" -- (sorry, just had to correct. One of my favorite poets.)

[Larry Robinson]

Those Winter Sundays


Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.


I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,


Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?


- Robert Hayden

[Larry Robinson]

The Monk on the Mountain
“Picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly”

Who is that wild-haired monk,
That recluse, hermit,
Living all these years in his cave on the mountainside?

Does he light incense? No.
But he breathes in the dawn mist, heavy with pine scent.

Does he bow to Buddha? No.
But the broken branch of a tree reminds him of suffering and the brevity of life.

Does he chant a sutra? No.
But, every day, at first light and at twilight,
His thick fingers caress his prayer beads.

Prayer beads?
Does this fellow dangle dainty pearls or stroke glossy little globes adorned with silken tassels?
No. His beads are crude, chunky nuts,
Eighteen of them,
Foraged from among fallen leaves and
Strung onto hairs from the tail of an itinerant ox.

And as he fingers the bumpy surface of each nut,
His fingers trace hard edges, soft hollows,
Shapes that rise, fall, disappear
As his breath rises, falls, disappears

So who is this wild-haired monk?
A man like any other, he walks and sleeps,
Eats and shits and goes about his business,
Balancing on the edge of life and death.

Who is this man?
Who is that pine tree?
That drifting cloud?

- Nina Mermey Klippel


(Notes: This poem was inspired by a bracelet of Chinese prayer beads of unknown date, made of lithocarpus, the nut of the stone oak tree, which was exhibited at the Rubin Museum in New York City. The crudeness of the beads brought to mind the character of the wild-haired monk, from a parable in a text by the 13^th century Zen master Dogen called Dotuku (Expressions).