Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?

Come on,
Sweetheart,
let’s go dancing
while we’ve still
got feet.

- David Budbill
6/13/1940 - 9/25/2016

[Larry Robinson]

L'shonah Tovah


May we learn justice without which there is no peace;
may we learn compassion without which there is no justice.

Que aprendamos justicia sin la cual no hay paz;
que aprendamos compasión sin la cual no hay justicia.



Tashlikh

These are the days of awe -
time of inventory
and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
comes in.
(What have we sown
of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
of justice?)

The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.

When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
with our transgressions
and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.
The days are upon us
to take stock of our hearts.
It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
our teraphim,
our lares.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016
(Arabesques Review, vol. 3 no. 3, 2007; author's copyrights)


Tashlij

Estos son los días de temor -
tiempo del inventario
y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
en la justicia?)

Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.

Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
con nuestros pecados
y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
Están sobre nosotros los días
para hacer inventario del corazón.
Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
nuestros térafim,
nuestros lares.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016

[Larry Robinson]

I’m Listening

I'm listening. But I don't know
If what I hear is silence or God.
I'm listening. But I can't tell
If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness
That at the bounds of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.
I only know I walk like someone
Beheld, Beloved and Known.
And because of this
I put into my every movement
Solemnity and Risk.

- Sophia DeMello-Breyner

[Larry Robinson]

My Mother’s Pears


Plump, green-gold, Worcester’s pride,

transported through autumn skies
in a box marked Handle With Care

sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,
hand-picked and polished and packed
for deposit at my door,

each in its crinkled nest
with a stub of stem attached
and a single bright leaf like a flag.

A smaller than usual crop,
but still enough to share with me,
as always at harvest time.

Those strangers are my friends
whose kindness blesses the house
my mother built at the edge of town

beyond the last trolley-stop
when the century was young, and she
proposed, for her children’s sake,

to marry again, not knowing how soon
the windows would grow dark
and the velvet drapes come down.

Rubble accumulates in the yard,
workmen are hammering on the roof,
I am standing knee-deep in dirt

with a shovel in my hand.
Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,
her glasses glint in the sun.

When my sisters appear on the scene,
gangly and softly tittering,
she waves them back into the house

to fetch us pails of water,
and they skip out of our sight
in their matching middy blouses.

I summon up all my strength
to set the pear tree in the ground,
unwinding its burlap shroud.

It is taller than I. “Make room
for the roots!” my mother cries,
“Dig the hole deeper.”

- Stanley Kunitz

[Larry Robinson]

One Source of Bad Information

There's a boy in you about three
years old who hasn't learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometime it's a girl.

This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
``Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.''

You live with this child, but you don't know it.
You're in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He's uninformed, but he does want

To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He's got six big ideas.
Five don't work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.

- Robert Bly

[Larry Robinson]

Heart Work

Monday. Bronze sunlight
on the worn gray rug
in the dining room where Viva sits
playing her recorder. Pain-ripened sunlight
I nearly wrote, like the huge
vine-ripened tomato
my friend brought yesterday
from her garden, to add to our salad:
meaning what comes
in its time to its own
end, then breaks
off easily, needing no more
from summer.
The notes
of some medieval dance
spill gracefully from the stream
of Viva's breath. Something
that had been stopped
is beginning to move: a leaf
driven against rock
by a current
frees itself, finds its way again
through moving water. The angle of light
is low, but still it fills
this space we're in. What interrupts me
is sometimes an abundance. My sorrow too,
which grew large through summer
feels to me this morning
as though if I touched it
where the thick dark stem
is joined to the root, it would release itself
whole, it would be something I could use.

- Anita Barrows

[Larry Robinson]

Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rookies
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

- Dylan Thomas

[Larry Robinson]

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

I Will Love the Twenty-first Century
Dinner was getting cold. The guests, hoping for quick,
Impersonal, random encounters of the usual sort, were sprawled
In the bedrooms. The potatoes were hard, the beans soft, the meat—
There was no meat. The winter sun had turned the elms and houses
yellow;
Deer were moving down the road like refugees; and in the driveway,
cats
Were warming themselves on the hood of a car. Then a man turned
And said to me: “Although I love the past, the dark of it,
The weight of it teaching us nothing, the loss of it, the all
Of it asking for nothing, I will love the twenty-first century more,
For in it I see someone in bathrobe and slippers, brown-eyed and poor,
Walking through snow without leaving so much as a footprint behind.”
“Oh,” I said, putting my hat on, “Oh.”

- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

The Poet's Task

Whoever isn't listening to the sea this Friday morning,
whoever is trapped inside some
house, office, factory---or mistress
or street corner or coal mine or solitary confinement:
to that person I make my way and without speaking or nodding come up and spring open the cage; and something begins to hum, faint but insistent; a great snapped-off clap of thunder harnesses itself to the weight of the planet and the foam; the hoarse rivers of the ocean rise up, a star shimmers and trills in its rose window, and the sea stumbles, falls, and continues on its way.

Then, with destiny as my pilot,
I will listen and listen harder to keep alive
in my memory the sea's outcry.
I must feel the impact of solid water
and save it in a cup outside of time
so that wherever anyone may be imprisoned,
wherever anyone is made to suffer in the dying year,
I will be there, whispering in the ceaseless tides.
I will drift through open windows,
and, hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying, How can we get to the ocean?
And, without answering, I will pass on
the collapse of foam and liquid sand,
the salty kiss of withdrawal,
the gray keening of birds on the shore.
And so, through me, freedom and the sea
will bring solace to the downcast heart.

- Pablo Neruda
(translated from the Spanish by Alfred Corn)

[Larry Robinson]

Pity The Nation
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose
sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully
as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by
torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but
its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation--oh, pity the people who allow
their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti



"the path to heaven
doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
It’s in the imagination
with which you perceive
this world,
and the gestures
with which you honor it.”

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Memorial Day

In Afghanistan, we pour water
On the stones to keep memories
Alive. So many stories,
So many stones
An army of children
Are employed, keeping
Vigil from Bibi Jawaher's grave.
Bibi, twenty-seven years dead,
Gives them a home, gathering
Place to watch as mourners
Come to remember.

A mother dreams
Her son dying in suicidal flames
A lost love, temporary agony
Assuaged by permanent solution.
Mother's agony indefinite, daily
She pays the boys to water
The stone.

Here the daily dead
Mingle with War's harvest.
The jeweler's mother
Receives daily ministrations,
Her stone bathed
As one might bathe a baby,
Delicate, loving touch
From a boy whose attentions
Buys bread for his family.


Bibi's name disappeared,
Merged into the stone
Is known by fingers
Reading as though by Braille.
Water that remains
In the boys' buckets
Honors her, gratitude remembers her
If only by name, daily.
If she sinned, surely
The stone's frequent ablution
Has made her a saint.

"Death is easy here,"
The stone mason says.
He used to construct
Fireplaces, sculpt monuments,
Money was easy once.
It flowed from foreign coffers
But like their soldiers,
Little stayed behind.
The mason fortunate and flexible
Lives by carving portraits
Of the dead.

The market thrived, alive
Today the cemetery, home
To more and more
Is the City's center.
Every day here is
Day of the Dead, Memorial Day
Every day families picnic
Children play.
Every day the Dead live
Lives surrounded by loved ones.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

This Little Orchid

This little orchid
with its five dark oval leaves hasn’t bloomed
in years, but once

a week I soak the whole pot the way Cindy told me
she does her orchids, and so it lives.
This morning, in a kind of dreamy trance, I lift it

out above the sink, then pour the water over it
in a wavering ribbon I can see right through.
How does thought come? Out of its absence

I’m suddenly in mind of Aleppo. This water
would be a miracle there, the last wells bombed,
the aid convoys blown up before they unload.

Here’s this little orchid with its tender green roots
like worms humped up and reaching for air
above the bark, glistening wet, my hands

curved around the pot the way they might
around the seed of a baby unborn. I’d tell it to go back,
tell it the world is not a safe place, not there –

bloody in the rubble, thirsty and covered with dust.
Later, unpinning a sheet from the line, I press my face
to the smell of sun and autumn oak trees, the sheet

huge for my queen bed, white as a clean
bandage, and here they are again, the children,
their lives with me like ghosts or rue.

- ​Elizabeth Carothers Herron

[Ronaldo]

This Little Orchid

....

[Larry Robinson]

Grief

begin with the pain
of the grass
that bore the weight
of adam,
his broken rib mending
into eve,
imagine
the original bleeding,
adam
moaning
and the lamentation of grass.
from that garden,
through fields of lost
and found, to now, to here,
to grief for the upright
animal, to grief for the
horizontal world.
pause then for the human
animal in its coat
of many colors.
pause
for
the myth of america.
pause for the myth
of america.
and pause for the girl
with twelve fingers
who never learned to cry enough
for anything that mattered,
not enough for the fear,
not enough for the loss,
not enough for the history,
not enough
for the disregarded planet.
not enough for the grass.
then end in the garden of regret
with time’s bell tolling grief
and pain,
grief for the grass
that is older than adam,
grief for what is born
human,
grief for what is not.

- Lucille Clifton

[Larry Robinson]

Testament



And now to the Abyss I pass
Of that Unfathomable Grass...

1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.

2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.



- Wendell Berry

[BManna]

Reading the first three sections of this poem I fall in love, again, more deeply, with Wendell Berry. I'm so grateful for his skillful reflections and I wince hoping it's not his passing which led Larry to publish this selection. Then reading the 4th section I wonder why, again, Wendell Berry neglects to name or praise the female(s), the feminine?

Testament...

[Timothy Gega]

I take umbrage to your potboiler predilection phonemes.

Reading the first three sections of this poem I fall in love, again, more deeply, with Wendell Berry. I'm so grateful for his skillful reflections and I wince hoping it's not his passing which led Larry to publish this selection. Then reading the 4th section I wonder why, again, Wendell Berry neglects to name or praise the female(s), the feminine?

[Larry Robinson]

Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

- Wendell Berry

[BManna]

Thank you Larry!

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

South

In the cold, clear winter air
of Andalusia, I walked
a trail up through pig grass
toward a distant abandoned
farmhouse. No one could live here,
I said aloud, the land is baked clay,
the long summers are withering.
Yet someone did. The one wall
left intact bore the handprint
of a child, the fingers splayed
out to form half a message
in the lost language of childhood.
It said, “You won’t find me!”
Then the wind woke from its nesting
in the weeds and the tall grass
to blow the childish words away.
Almost noon, the distant sun
rode straight above us like a god
aware of everything and like
a god utterly silent. What
could ever grow from this ground
to feed anyone? And who bore
the mysterious child who spoke
in riddles? If we climbed
the hill’s crest we’d find
a higher hill and then another
hill until we reached an ocean
or gave up and turned back
to where the land descends step
by slow step to bring us exactly
here, where we began, stunned
by raw sunlight yet in the dark.

- Philip Levine

[Larry Robinson]

At The Workplace

Today, I vow to regard my co-workers serenely, with
Loving-kindness and without judgment.
This one, who appears not to bathe and has a pungent odor,
That one, who leads the e-mail clique trash-talking the rest of us,
Are merely creatures caught in dukkha, or suffering.
May they one day be made whole and not so messed up,
Or at least be transferred to another department.

- Jenny Allen



“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Vodadahue Mountain

When I feel tall I tell myself
that when the time comes I will know
as the elephant knows as the puma knows
and I will go
to Vodadahue Mountain
by the deep green inlet
by the deep green gorge
and in steady pain I will climb the basalt tower
and on the last ice step before the summit
unmarked by everything but air
I will be still for a long moment
and then let the white mouth of the snowcloud eat me
and there will be only this silence
and the trees at the foot will begin to feed
and I will have paid back all that I have owed
and there will be only this silence.

- Paul Kingsnorth

[Larry Robinson]

My Mother’s Pears

Plump, green-gold, Worcester’s pride,
transported through autumn skies
in a box marked Handle With Care

sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,
hand-picked and polished and packed
for deposit at my door,

each in its crinkled nest
with a stub of stem attached
and a single bright leaf like a flag.

A smaller than usual crop,
but still enough to share with me,
as always at harvest time.

Those strangers are my friends
whose kindness blesses the house
my mother built at the edge of town

beyond the last trolley-stop
when the century was young, and she
proposed, for her children’s sake,

to marry again, not knowing how soon
the windows would grow dark
and the velvet drapes come down.

Rubble accumulates in the yard,
workmen are hammering on the roof,
I am standing knee-deep in dirt

with a shovel in my hand.
Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,
her glasses glint in the sun.

When my sisters appear on the scene,
gangly and softly tittering,
she waves them back into the house

to fetch us pails of water,
and they skip out of our sight
in their matching middy blouses.

I summon up all my strength
to set the pear tree in the ground,
unwinding its burlap shroud.

It is taller than I. “Make room
for the roots!” my mother cries,
“Dig the hole deeper.”

- Stanley Kunitz

[Larry Robinson]

Mountain Water

On the way down from Mt Ranier, on a tour bus we stop
for a birds eye view of Narada Falls. I walk
to the edge of a stream sloping
toward the falls.

I remember Narada as a prince in Indian mythology. Exactly who?
Oh yeah, a musician and storyteller who saw Vishnu only once
in this lifetime— an inspiration for prayer and mantra
the lad would compose along the path.

It’s autumn and I want to feel the chill of water against my skin
so I place a foot on a rock and prepare to kneel and drop
my hands into the shimmering stream. Damn I see
a sign which stops me cold:

Rocks are slippery
Current is strong
If you fall you may
Be battered to death

Stepping away to save my ass I ponder Narada: would he have danced
across boulders if there were a poem in the movement
or if it were a way to bathe Vishnu
with soft tears of devotion?

What I’m getting at is you can look at the artist as hero facing death
in every act of creation, in each song and sand painting, but have
no sense of how he treats his dog, brews his coffee, or even
whether or not he prefers an electric tooth brush.

Still we want to be artists,
want to be heroes,
step on slippery rocks,
save the world.

- Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

You Were Made For This
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Our Great Hope

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.

Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.


Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Author of the best seller Women Who Run with the Wolves

[Larry Robinson]

Advice to Water

Seep in at foundation cracks and out
at gutters and drains. Ram up against
dams and laugh at drywall. Observe
with pleasure how you adjust to one-inch
pipes, faucets and crystal goblets. Bear

the indignity of being poured over your
cousin, crushed ice, and forced to share
a glass with distilled spirits; it makes many
people happy. Condone frogs. Know that along
with earth, wind and fire you are the frequent

embodiment of myth and hope. Accept this
graciously. As our damage to the planet catches
up with us, teach us to respect and conserve you,
love and revere you – something we’ve failed
at, badly. Accept being sucked skyward,

warehoused in dark clouds and pitched down
without notice. Forgive those who call this
“bad weather” -- perhaps too late, we know
that it’s anything but. Look after us, if you’ve
a mind to. Not that we deserve it.

- David Beckman

[Larry Robinson]

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

Above the deep-piled carpet of maple leaves
the madrones are slipping free
of summer’s brown paper wrapping,
eager to show off their new winter coats.

The afternoon rain still drips
from the canopy of oak, fir and pine.
Across the creek a gang of turkeys chuckles
as a nearby woodpecker beats a drum.

The light is passing swiftly now,
passing from the face of this land.
Shadows are lengthening everywhere,
reaching out across our lives.

Should we not, then, dare to love boldly,
more boldly than ever before -
as if the fate of the Earth itself
depended upon our loving?

And still the stars will surely rise,
revealing the Soul’s deep secret:
that the eye can see farther in the dark of night
than ever it could by day.

- Larry Robinson

[Roland Jacopetti]

Wonderful, Larry! The perfect poem for today!

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

...

[Larry Robinson]

Appearances

It lay on cement that wet winter Sunday
red-shafted flicker’s wings spread wide, beak black
pointing to the sky.

Did it fly into its own reflection seen in nearby
windows, into the unreal that looked so true? -
the mirror: invisible pane.

We too can mistake reflection for truth.
any mirror could kill us if we hit it head on.

One day a finch flew into my house.
A glass prison for the bird.

It flew again and again into clear pane until
it gave up for a moment, perched on a
curly willow branch in a pot, grew still.

I raised its entry window, letting a breeze
flow in. The finch felt fresh air’s call to be free.
It flew out at last into the truth of what was.

- Clare Morris