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  1. TopTop #2761
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Optimist’s Bag

    It slouches on the foyer table
    tries to look invisible
    but its innards jive
    like a troop of spider monkeys
    playing Twister in a pillow slip.
    Like Pinocchio in the cavern of Monstruo’s belly
    they holler, let us out!
    Desire is the loudest.
    It rattles the buckles from
    deep within the leather folds.
    Loneliness picks up the chorus
    in call and response.

    Next the twins, tenderness and hope—
    smooth white hands soft as school girls’—
    pick at the lock
    while tongues of connection
    slide over the gaping rim
    and force it open
    like a bellows pushing air
    fanning the lilies of lust.

    Your eyes track the play-by-play
    like dreamtime pupils.
    When you reach for it
    the bag plays dead.

    - Sandra Anfang
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 01-28-2016 at 12:35 PM.
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  2. TopTop #2762
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wedded to the Darkness

    Only when the storm comes
    roaring off the wild California coast
    bringing its raging rain and wind
    swirling around the edges of my fears
    can I know the power
    of the magnificent roots of the old oak tree
    clinging like a net of tangled hair
    twisted and knotted into the earth
    wedded to the dark
    holding the swaying branch-laden tree
    firmly to its source.
    Only then can I feel
    and bow down to the darkness
    to the fertile terrain
    where life is held and nourished
    Only then can I know
    I depend on the darkness for light.


    - Judith Shiner
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  3. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  4. TopTop #2763
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Otter Sight

    After three days of rain
    the Laguna is doing its old job -
    keeping the river from flooding downstream.
    A vast sheet of water welcomes
    incoming flights of mallards and grebes.
    Egrets poke around the margins,
    their serpentine stealth yielding
    bounties of frogs and crawdads.

    Ripples spreading around the bend of the current
    herald their whiskered faces:
    the otters I have long heard of
    but never, until now, seen.

    The new neighbor says
    “I bought the place for the view.”
    I say “You got a good one.”

    - Larry Robinson
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 01-30-2016 at 12:46 PM.
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  5. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  6. TopTop #2764
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Millennium blessing

    There is a grace approaching
    that we shun as much as death,
    it is the completion of our birth.

    It does not come in time,
    but in timelessness
    when the mind sinks into the heart
    and we remember.

    It is an insistent grace that draws us
    to the edge and beckons us to surrender
    safe territory and enter our enormity.

    We know we must pass
    beyond knowing
    and fear the shedding.

    But we are pulled upward
    none-the-less
    through forgotten ghosts
    and unexpected angels,
    luminous.

    And there is nothing left to say
    but we are That.

    And that is what we sing about.

    - Stephen Levine
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 01-31-2016 at 02:08 PM.
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  7. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  8. TopTop #2765
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Grace2.jpg
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    Added my Illustration & typography to the poem.
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  9. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  10. TopTop #2766
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dear Sebastopol -

    Hard not to get dizzy, here, under tides of scent -
    how they grade and terrace the air.

    salt thick tang of wet earth fat with limestone
    against sweet rot of wind falls.

    Pine sap town built on stolen ground.
    Wagon rutted streets. Hills once lush

    with redwood and oak, cleared
    to the root for acres of orchards.

    Century-wide berths of scrub oaks
    smoldering in the Laguna de Santa Rosa

    A train that carried its screaming
    weight down Main Street for nearly 100 years.

    But the WPA mural on the post office wall
    still frames the hard won promise:

    neat rows of apple trees
    flanked by white chicken coops.

    Once, your accepted story swallowed me under its bell glass sky.

    Now I wake slowly. Learn to waver
    in the air above what history we’ve learned,

    sense what’s pushing up underneath.

    - Iris Jamahl Dunkle
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-01-2016 at 01:04 PM.
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  12. TopTop #2767
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    O, Pilgrim!

    O pilgrim, where have you been?
    Where are you now?

    While you have been searching the world
    the Beloved has been here all along
    waiting for you.

    Let the caravan carry you home
    to your deepest heart’s desire.
    The treasure you sought was buried in your own garden.

    Come home, o wanderer, and behold the face in the mirror.
    Look behind the eyes and see the One
    who has been searching for you.

    You are seen;
    you are known
    and you are beloved.

    If your seeking has brought you here at last,
    you know that there is nowhere else to go
    and nothing more to say.

    - Jellaludin Rumi
    (version by Larry Robinson)
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  14. TopTop #2768
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At a Workshop with Bill Plotkin ~ a poem for the beloved

    Called to the gate
    chain-linked to the long wooden fence
    running along the road into Commonmweal

    I wanted to climb over you,
    sit atop the highest bar,
    remembering rodeos
    and other echoes of the forgotten West

    But instead I unhooked the chain
    and sat beside you, inside the enclosed field,
    drawn also by the standing poles
    and the mysterious wires anchoring them
    to the ground and to each other

    Such a powerful symbol of our (post)modern industrial culture

    Let me love YOU!
    You too must be alive,
    carrying within yourself
    some longing for wholeness
    underneath the layers of power, greed and domination
    that have so distorted the promise of your gift
    (thinking of Rilke and how the ore wants to go back into the mountain)

    Just so, the wires and wirelesses of our global interconnection
    want to reach into our deepest beings
    to touch our deeper longings

    Blessings and gratitude
    to those heroes of our day,
    setting free the dirty secrets
    of our wars - against each other
    and against the earth

    The Chelsea Mannings and the Julian Asanges,
    the Edward Snowdens,
    the warriors of the West,
    sparking our imaginations
    with the fires of freedom
    and the passion for justice, integrity and honor

    Respect for ALL beings

    May we discover, in the depths of our own beings,
    the way forward into a world that celebrates
    connection, wholeness,
    ringing forth a song of joy
    over the wires that weave in and out
    of our lives here together
    on this most glorious earth


    - Debora Hammond
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  16. TopTop #2769
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Burning

    Midday sun a smear,
    a shimmering smudge burning behind
    slate skies, burning
    through hopelessness and hope.

    There is always burning.
    Somewhere fields are burning to clear
    for crops: cane, corn, poppies.
    Spirits burn in defiance of helplessness.

    Burning somewhere
    palaces, markets, monuments,
    broad hallways, humble homes alight
    with someone’s certainty.

    Always burning somewhere,
    Bodies burn against bulldozer
    blades poised to bury lies, secrets. Bodies
    in Poland, Guatemala, Bosnia, Iraq, Palestine.

    There is always burning,
    libraries burn, also oil wells,
    dreams, outrage and grief
    Pushed to the grave’s edge.

    In America and Africa
    children burn with hunger, confusion,
    mothers burn with sorrow, outrage.
    Grandmothers gaze at the sun,

    imagine a future
    poised on the sun’s corona, tumbling
    End over dazzling end
    until time itself ends.

    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-04-2016 at 03:36 PM.
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  18. TopTop #2770
    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," we¹ll 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,
    beside 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,
    we¹ll become a mighty kindness.


    - Jelalludin Rumi
    Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
    (Translation by Coleman Barks)
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  20. TopTop #2771
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Guest House


    This being human is a guest house.

    Every morning a new arrival.

    A joy, depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.

    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.

    The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
    meet them at the door laughing,
    and invite them in.

    Be grateful for whoever comes,
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.

    - Jelalludin Rumi
    (Coleman Barks translation)
    Last edited by Barry; 02-06-2016 at 04:20 PM.
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  22. TopTop #2772
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Would An Indigenous Grandmother Do?


    I don’t want to change
    my thoughts.

    I want to change
    the way I think.
    I want to think
    in images, in stories
    spun as threads
    arising long and slow
    out of culture and
    out of the Grandmother Spider
    of indigenous mind.


    I want to learn
    to live in the old ways,
    the ways of spirit.
    I want to see
    the signs and the
    deep, precise wisdom
    of the true ones –
    ancestors, elders, any and all
    trying to inform us that
    there is a way -
    there is a way
    to heal,
    there is a way
    to see,
    there is a way
    to change direction,
    there is a way
    to give the children
    what they need
    to be safe
    to be listening
    to be healthy
    to be whole.


    I, too,
    want to be whole
    all the way into
    death and, yes,
    I’ll say it,
    beyond death,
    beyond it but not beyond
    the cycle of being -
    the ring, the hoop of
    being together.
    This is the place where
    Love remains, where
    Love sustains, where
    Love comes
    into and through
    all things.
    Love is spirit
    flowing into the life
    of the world.
    Knowing this
    I am left with a question
    to pose to myself:
    What would an
    indigenous grandmother do?

    - Maya Spector
    Last edited by Barry; 02-07-2016 at 01:28 PM.
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  24. TopTop #2773
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A different format using my typography and design, the image is modified from an unattributed Pinterest post.

    Name:  Guest-House.jpg
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  26. TopTop #2774
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Angels


    This is how an angel comes

    out of the earth, upwards

    from the underworld

    when everybody thought

    they came from the light wings

    of the sky - no

    they are massive -

    on nights of rain and sleet, split

    the soil, splash and muddy the grass

    wingspans wide as lakes

    wearing mud armour, they crawl

    full length up rivers and streams

    dam ditches, seep through drains

    penetrate walls, barns, chicken coops

    unsettle bats with wing-beats

    that shake down trees -

    remind us, cradled in our prayers

    how we like to remain dry, sheltered.

    This is how angels come

    mouths full of earth

    spitting verses

    of poetry.

    - Miriam Darlington
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  28. TopTop #2775
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wood and Steel

    first day at sea
    The steel deck hums

    Rolling ocean bringing back dreams
    Of wooden ships and creaking ropes

    Wood once home to squirrel and bird
    Roots knowing darkness and moisture

    This steel ship knows no life
    But for the guest in my cabin

    A ladybug has stowed away with me

    I place her in the steel drawer
    Of the steel desk
    On the steel ship

    I bring her water
    And bits of food
    This ambassador of all living things
    Trapped in a cold steel world

    That bug, a living icon
    Impossibly red with magic black spots
    I fell in love with her
    And all creation at the same time

    But she did not survive

    Heartbroken in mid-Atlantic
    A burial at sea
    Inside a matchbox coffin

    The only wood I could find


    - Brian Narelle
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-09-2016 at 01:34 PM.
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  30. TopTop #2776
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Night She Danced


    A smoky basement in Seville,
    cigar plumes hanging low,
    a single bulb
    with a bent green shade
    lights it all.

    Underneath the singer’s bleeding voice
    an ancient rhythm throbbed
    from an old guitar and there
    on the bottom step,
    something leaned
    against the wall.

    It was then Delilia stood up
    on the pitted mahogany floor,
    and danced the whole history of Andalusia
    out of the night and into the room.

    All those times of exquisite pain
    and painful joy.
    Like the night the grandmother died
    and the grandchild was born in Favencia.
    And that year that the Guadalimar
    leaped from it’s banks and carried away
    the lemon orchard and the mule.
    And the time the bull with the broken horn
    crashed through Alejandro’s bodega
    just before siesta.
    And the time the wine turned to vinegar.
    And the Christmas mass when the priest died.

    It was all there.
    The winter shawl made by Maria Helena
    for the statue of Our Lady.
    And the perfect olives grown by Tio Miguel
    on his dry and scorched huerto.
    The music caught it all in a flaming cauldron
    of blazing heels and chattering castanets.

    Delilia, consumed by Duende, was danced
    by the joy the sorrow, the pleasure the pain,
    the sugar the lemon, the life and the death,
    the laugh and the scream. The pain and the fire.
    Nothing escaped that pulsing dance.
    We could all die! Santo Padre! Death is near!

    Then a sudden dark silence
    caught it all by the throat.
    Madre de dios! What had she done?

    Delilia’s last step
    had smashed it all
    without remorse.

    Death was there that night
    slinking nearer the singer’s heart
    but Death left the basement
    with empty arms.
    No match for the Duende in the room
    the night Della danced flamenco.


    - Doug von Koss
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-10-2016 at 02:35 PM.
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  32. TopTop #2777
    wisewomn's Avatar
    wisewomn
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wonderful poem, Larry. Here's a similar one from R. M. Rilke, translated by C. F. MacIntyre:

    SPANISH DANCER

    As in the hand a match glows, swiftly white
    before it bursts in flame and to all sides
    licks its quivering tongues: within the ring
    of spectators her wheeling dance is bright,
    nimble, and fervid, twitches and grows wide.

    And suddenly is made of pure fire.

    Now her glances kindle the dark hair;
    she twirls the floating skirts with daring art
    into a whirlwind of consuming flame,
    from which her naked arms alertly strike,
    clattering like fearful rattlesnakes.

    Then, as the fire presses her too closely,
    imperiously she clutches it and throws it
    with haughty gestures to the floor and watches
    it rage and leap with flames that will not die--
    until, victorious, surely, with a sweet
    greeting smile, and holding her head high,
    she tramples it to death with small, firm feet.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Night She Danced...
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  33. TopTop #2778
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Berryman


    I will tell you what he told me
    in the years just after the war
    as we then called
    the second world war

    don't lose your arrogance yet he said
    you can do that when you're older
    lose it too soon and you may
    merely replace it with vanity

    just one time he suggested
    changing the usual order
    of the same words in a line of verse
    why point out a thing twice

    he suggested I pray to the Muse
    get down on my knees and pray
    right there in the corner and he
    said he meant it literally

    it was in the days before the beard
    and the drink but he was deep
    in tides of his own through which he sailed
    chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

    he was far older than the dates allowed for
    much older than I was he was in his thirties
    he snapped down his nose with an accent
    I think he had affected in England

    as for publishing he advised me
    to paper my wall with rejection slips
    his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
    with the vehemence of his views about poetry

    he said the great presence
    that permitted everything and transmuted it
    in poetry was passion
    passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

    I had hardly begun to read
    I asked how can you ever be sure
    that what you write is really
    any good at all and he said you can't

    you can't you can never be sure
    you die without knowing
    whether anything you wrote was any good
    if you have to be sure don't write

    - W.S. Merwin
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-11-2016 at 02:00 PM.
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  35. TopTop #2779
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blessings for the Tomb, the Cocoon, the Liminal Space

    May you surrender to the tender gravity of your grief and loss

    May you give honor and homage to that which has fallen away

    May you integrate the wisdoms of your passage

    May you feel the sacred burden of your own life in your arms

    May you treat yourself with exquisite kindness and patience

    May you find peace in your cocoon . . . acceptance and surrender

    May you be transformed by your own darkness and rise renewed

    - Kay Crista
    Last edited by Barry; 02-12-2016 at 05:22 PM.
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #2780
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    TheSoldiers In The Garden


    After the coup,
    the soldiers appeared
    in Neruda’s garden one night,
    raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
    cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
    From the bedroom window
    they could have been
    the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
    back from the sea to finish
    plundering the coast.


    The poet was dying;
    cancer flashed through his body
    and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
    Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
    Neruda faced him and said:
    There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
    The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
    apologized to señor Neruda
    and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
    The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.


    For thirty years
    we have been searching
    for another incantation
    to make the solders
    vanish from the garden.


    - Martín Espada
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  39. TopTop #2781
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Touch the Air Softly


    Now touch the air softly, step gently, one, two ...
    I'll love you 'til roses are robin's egg blue;
    I'll love you 'til gravel is eaten for bread,
    And lemons are orange, and lavender's red.


    Now touch the air softly, swing gently the broom.
    I'll love you 'til windows are all of a room;
    And the table is laid, And the table is bare,
    And the ceiling reposes on bottomless air.


    I'll love you 'til heaven rips the stars from his coat,
    And the moon rows away in a glass-bottomed boat;
    And Orion steps down like a river below,
    And earth is ablaze, and oceans aglow.


    So touch the air softly, and swing the broom high.
    We will dust the grey mountains, and sweep the blue sky:
    And I'll love you as long as the furrow the plough,
    As however is ever, and ever is now.


    - William Jay Smith
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #2782
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Song


    For some time I thought there was time
    and that there would always be time
    for what I had a mind to do
    and what I could imagine
    going back to and finding it
    as I had found it the first time
    but by this time I do not know
    what I thought when I thought back then

    there is no time yet it grows less
    there is the sound of rain at night
    arriving unknown in the leaves
    once without before or after
    then I hear the thrush waking
    at daybreak singing the new song


    - W.S.Merwin
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  43. TopTop #2783
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee


    I am a feather on the bright sky
    I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
    I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
    I am the shadow that follows a child
    I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
    I am an eagle playing with the wind
    I am a cluster of bright beads
    I am the farthest star
    I am the cold of dawn
    I am the roaring of the rain
    I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
    I am the long track of the moon in a lake
    I am a flame of four colors
    I am a deer standing away in the dusk
    I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
    I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
    I am the hunger of a young wolf
    I am the whole dream of these things
    You see, I am alive, I am alive
    I stand in good relation to the earth
    I stand in good relation to the gods
    I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
    I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
    You see, I am alive, I am alive


    - N. Scott Momaday
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  45. TopTop #2784
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quarantine, 1918


    There were towns
    that knew about the flu before
    it arrived; they had time to imagine the germs
    on a stranger’s skirts, to see how death
    could be sealed in an envelope,
    how a fever could bloom in the evening,
    and take a life overnight.
    A few villages, deep in the mountains,
    posted guards on their roads,
    and no one was allowed to come or go,
    not even a grandmother carrying a cake;
    no mail was accepted and all the words
    and packages families sent
    to one another went unopened,
    unanswered. Trains were told
    not to stop, so they glowed for a moment
    before swaying
    towards some other place. The food
    at the corner store never came
    from out of town and no one went
    to see a distant auntie
    or state fair. For awhile, the outside world
    existed in imagination, in memory,
    in books or suitcases, deep in closets.
    There was nothing but the town itself,
    hiding from what was possible,
    and the children cutting dolls
    from paper, their scissors sharp.


    - Faith Shearin
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  46. TopTop #2785
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Storm

    rain drops strike
    batter black wood
    spark leap collapse
    mirrors of sky

    cypher of lights
    a deluge
    in intricate wild
    steps of rain

    the wind takes rest
    in bright glass
    quieting pools
    dimple daintily

    sinews of clouds
    open the sky to view

    but soon the storm curls
    this corner room a friend
    beating and gusting
    these windows now


    - Kevin Pryne
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  47. Gratitude expressed by:

  48. TopTop #2786
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bedtime


    We are a meadow where the bees hum,
    mind and body are almost one


    as the fire snaps in the stove
    and our eyes close,


    and mouth to mouth, the covers
    pulled over our shoulders,


    we drowse as horses drowse afield,
    in accord; though the fall cold


    surrounds our warm bed, and though
    by day we are singular and often lonely.


    - Denise Levertov
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  50. TopTop #2787
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lines for Winter


    Tell yourself
    as it get cold and gray falls from the air
    that you will go on
    walking, hearing
    the same tune no matter where
    you found yourself -
    inside the dome of dark
    or under the crackling white
    of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
    Tonight as it gets cold
    tell yourself
    what you know which is nothing
    but the tunes your bones play
    as you keep going. And you will be able
    for once to lie down under the small fire
    of winter stars.
    And if it happens that you cannot
    go on or turn back
    and you find yourself
    where you will be at the end,
    tell yourself
    in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
    that you love what you are.


    - Mark Strand
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  52. TopTop #2788
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Lines4Winter.jpg
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    The man pictured has terminal lung cancer, he quit smoking 15 years ago but had no chest x-rays during that period, when he did —it was too late.

    I'll send him Mark Strand's poem "Lines for Winter", now illustrated with his image.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Lines for Winter...
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-22-2016 at 12:46 PM.
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  54. TopTop #2789
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Traveling Through the Dark

    Traveling through the dark I found a deer
    dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
    It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
    that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

    By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
    and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
    she had stiffened already; almost cold.
    I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

    My fingers touching her side brought me the reason --
    her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
    alive, still, never to be born.
    Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

    The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
    under the hood purred the steady engine.
    I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
    around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

    I thought hard for us all -- my only swerving --
    then pushed her over the edge into the river.


    - William Stafford
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 02-23-2016 at 01:04 PM.
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  56. TopTop #2790
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Powwow at the End of the World


    I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
    after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
    and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
    and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
    downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
    that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
    their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
    and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
    and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
    waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
    after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
    and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
    of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
    after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
    as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
    in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
    I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
    that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
    a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
    which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
    by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
    after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
    who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
    how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
    the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
    of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
    with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.


    - Sherman Alexie
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