Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Flammable


Like roadside weeds, dried
leeched of color
bleached pale,


foxtail, wild oat, rattlesnake grass
their thin throated rasp
and rustle lost in the breeze.

Unheard, unseen,
men and women mass
waiting, fuel for the match—

the spark of anger
flicked into the crowd
leaps to life, becomes

a rolling wave of flame
roaring across the shocked land

thick air, clogged with smoke
the vengeful bones of those who burn.

When they are but ashes
smothering the land
winter skies will weep

and in the spring
roadside flowers will blaze
bright with color.

- Lisa Shulman

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn Passage

On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.

On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.

On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”

“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,

September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,

glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates

even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns

florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.

- Elizabeth Alexander

[Larry Robinson]

Better Than Expected

Things were not as bad as I had thought.
The scrape in the fender of the rented car
could be hidden with a little white paint
before I returned it to the agency.

This CD of new age music, which I just liked it first,
with its that synthetic wind of pulsing jellyfish,
does a remarkable job of slowing down my heart.

Merely to have survived to this point
is already the most unlikely triumph;
to still be breathing and trying to improve.

Things are definitely better than expected.
I'm not on trial for anything.
I have given up on the idea of great success.
The oncologist says the X Ray shows no “abnormalities.”

We are always trying to come to a decision,
always in a place where we are making up our minds
whether this soup is good, the flowers pretty,
whether we are fortunate, or poor.

All my life I have been
loved by women,
held up by water,
ignored by war.
I have outlasted the voluntary numbness
I required to remain alive.

Why shouldn't I be able,
why shouldn't I be able now
to walk down the street,

under the overhanging trees,
and raise my arms and say
that the ring shaking down from the leaves
is not an inconvenience but it's joy?

- Tony Hoagland
(November 19, 1953 - October 23, 2018)

[Larry Robinson]

The New Dark Ages

Thunderstorms stir me up—
the stillness right before
the first close tremor,
the pond shivering
at the height of summer,
the field full-blown, going to seed.
But this storm scares me.
A foreign climate occupies the land.
When nature was God, in my childhood,
I wasn't afraid. Snow buried the town,
the river flooded it,
lightning set the woods on fire.
In months the damage bandaged itself
with mosses and ferns.
This storm comes from another
world, here by mistake,
its rain blistering the birch leaves.
Has it been weaponized?
No one knows what to expect
of a storm with human parents.

- Chase Twichell

[Larry Robinson]

Sometimes


Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest

breathing
like the ones
in the old stories

who could cross
a shimmering bed of dry leaves
without a sound,

you come
to a place
whose only task

is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests

conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.

Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and

to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,

questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,

questions
that have patiently
waited for you,

questions
that have no right
to go away.

- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

Ground of Truth


Does greed win?
Can it outrun justice?
Does it subsume truth?
I think it eats itself like a hungry boar
Gobbling away at itself until
It destroys every vestige, every morsel, every crumb.
Left are the teeth of truth
Telling the stories that lies cannot obliterate.
The tongue may deceive but the eyes cannot
Disguise a malicious intent just as
The rose cannot perfume away the rot of evil.
Ah, but the lilies of the field in all their glory
Stand tall as sentinels of truth and goodness.
Their beauty covers greed’s detritus
As it becomes the scented soil of tomorrow’s dreams
And Truth sprouts anew to show us in rainbow hues
The arc of justice and honesty.


- Pat Morgan

[Larry Robinson]

The Diameter Of The Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.

- Yehuda Amichai

(translated by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell)

[Larry Robinson]

On a Day Like Today


We are feeling the first
glint of shock that our
ancestors felt the day they
were expelled from Spain.

Now our restive hands
are sensing the first drops
of pelting rain that fell on
loved ones who boarded an
unspeakable train.

We remember those who wore
yellow stars and perhaps those
times are not so far away.

Maybe soon on a day like today
we will see crescent moons on
the sleeves of those who have
no place to pray.

Glance upwards at the angry
sky casting an ominous pall
over the frightened heads of
brown-skinned children who
are pleading: why?

The latest version of “it can’t
happen here” is no longer
news from a distant
shore; it’s here at our door.

My hope is that you and I will
awaken and be vigilant on
behalf of all that we hold to
be dear,

And my prayer is that our tired
eyes can see and our broken
hearts can hear.

- Bruce Silverman

[Larry Robinson]

were they singing

were they
singing, praying, daydreaming
was the Rabbi droning on
maybe they were sleeping
I used to fall asleep in church

the embrace of shabes peace
brought them to the shul that day
where unsuspected terror struck

senseless serial assaults
spike my blood pressure
even evoke a momentary outrage
then fade
often before the next news cycle begins

this one
threatens my balance
spinning dizzy falling
on my knees immobile
stuck in centuries old tear soaked mud
not ready to resurrect

what is this sorrow
I am not a Jew
what is this compulsion to
tightly hold this pain
as if letting go would shatter a trust
but with whom

tomorrow
time
the grand arbiter
may work its magic
begin to crowd out
yesterday’s biddings

but today
aware the sound of breaking glass
has never cost me more than
just an inconvenience
today
eighty years since Kristallnacht
today I am a Jew

- JoAnn Smith

[Larry Robinson]

At a Country Funeral


Now the old ways that have brought us
farther than we remember sink out of sight
as under the treading of many strangers
ignorant of landmarks. Only once in a while
they are cast clear again upon the mind
as at a country funeral where, amid the soft
lights and hothouse flowers, the expensive
solemnity of experts, notes of a polite musician,
persist the usages of old neighborhood.
Friends and kinsmen come and stand and speak,
knowing the extremity they have come to,
one of their own bearing to the earth the last
of his light, his darkness the sun’s definitive mark.
They stand and think as they stood and thought
when even the gods were different.
And the organ music, though decorous
as for somebody else’s grief, has its source
in the outcry of pain and hope in log churches,
and on naked hillsides by the open grave,
eastward in mountain passes, in tidelands,
and across the sea. How long a time?
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide my
self in Thee. They came, once in time,
in simple loyalty to their dead, and returned
to the world. The fields and the work
remained to be returned to. Now the entrance
of one of the old ones into the Rock
too often means a lifework perished from the land
without inheritor, and the field goes wild
and the house sits and stares. Or it passes
at cash value into the hands of strangers.
Now the old dead wait in the open coffin
for the blood kin to gather, come home
for one last time, to hear old men
whose tongues bear an essential topography
speak memories doomed to die.
But our memory of ourselves, hard earned,
is one of the land’s seeds, as a seed
is the memory of the life of its kind in its place,
to pass on into life the knowledge
of what has died. What we owe the future
is not a new start, for we can only begin
with what has happened. We owe the future
the past, the long knowledge
that is the potency of time to come.
That makes of a man’s grave a rich furrow.
The community of knowing in common is the seed
of our life in this place. There is not only
no better possibility, there is no
other, except for chaos and darkness,
the terrible ground of the only possible
new start. And so as the old die and the young
depart, where shall a man go who keeps
the memories of the dead, except home
again, as one would go back after a burial,
faithful to the fields, lest the dead die
a second and more final death.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught

- Richard Rogers

[REALnothings]

You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught...

WONDERFUL choice!

Here is the song on YouTube One of the most memorable from childhood! I can tell because of the indelible memory of it, and the tears that well up, still.

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one….it's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
Infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.


- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated from the German by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

In the Event of Another Morning

In the event of another morning,
I ask all those inclined to a violent act,
of whatever sort, physical, psychological, economic,
to remember your mother’s breast and
the soft sound of her breath in your ear.
If you lost your mother, remember your longing and your pain.
Remember your beating heart and your dying day.

In the event of another morning,
I ask all those inclined to a violent act
to remember the pinprick of recognition
in the perception of their hallowed face.
Remember that time dismisses all beings equally
and honor is the coin of the realm.

In the event of another morning,
consider allowing yourself to be held
by those whom you would harm, feeling
the gentle warmth of their arms, and
the yearning of your heart.

In the event of another morning,
let not the hardship of the sowing
rob you of the richness of the harvest
that will come with your patience.

In the event of another morning,
might we know together the fresco of our passions
and study the patterns of our birthright.

In the event of another morning,
there will be lessons and we would be wise to listen.

In the event of another morning, may the sun rise on your forgiving face.

- Tim Hicks

[Larry Robinson]

The Earth Is Dying

The earth is dying.
We sit in hospice, we few
who are willing
to bear witness.
People say –
My life is fine,
difficult at times,
but fine.
The rent gets paid.
There is food in the refrigerator.
The sun rose this morning.

But in my lifetime
half the creatures of the sea
have died.
The plankton is full of plastic.
Turtles eat it and are full
of plastic as well, and sometimes
they are trapped in the plastic islands
filling our heating oceans.
The glaciers are disappearing,
almost before our eyes.

You don’t want to hear this.
I don’t want to hear this.
But how will the children breathe
when the oxygen producers are gone?
How will they live
when there is no clean water to drink?

Oh, I will be gone by then,
dead and beyond caring.
But I have children,
and my children have children,
still wide-eyed and excited
by life and possibility.

We are called
to bear the unbearable.
She is dying, and so
we are dying.
Will you be with Her?
Will you give Her
your tears?

- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

This Is How I Voted Today


This is how I voted today.
I went to the woods and dug a hole
under fern in leaf rot and luminous fungi

into which I pressed my mouth and screamed
a long hot uncreated vowel containing
the first and last letters of every alphabet.
I signed my vote with my tears,
it was ratified by planetary silence
groans of Adam's first wife from far below
heaved out of the groundlessness
where she is gowned in seamless glistening mycellia.

Only then did I realize what I'd voted for
the abolition of Republicans and Democrats,
the downfall of spires and hierarchies,
the dissolution of superpacs and
$50,000 a plate dinner parties
in Hollywood and the Hamptons,
the deconstruction of the Constitution into a single
proto-Hebraic rune,
inscribed on a cavern wall somewhere under
the vast and indecipherable border
between Mexico and Arizona.

The overthrow of male and female hegemony,
the annihilation of both capitalism and socialism,
the eradication of black and white by a rainbow of tears,
the renaissance of family farms and local small-business collectives
spawning an exquisite tapestry of bio-regional economies where
no mention is ever made of "government."

Where politics evaporates into folk music story-telling
fermented cabbage useful tools
and the gentle heroics of mere listening.

I voted for the mule that Jesus rode into the city
proclaiming forgiveness of all debts
which is the same mule Laotzu rode out
beyond the wall of China.

Which is also the mule that Rumi sat backwards on
stumbling Westward into exile
gazing Eastward toward eternal loss--
that mule I tell you will be president!

I voted to compost and manure the floor of the Senate
entangling every politician in a web of hemp moss
mushrooms and deer pellets.
I voted to turn the dome of Congress all abuzz
into a giant hummingbird feeder.

I voted for the reclamation of all human skin
with musky forests of golden fur.

My vote was the sound of Yes in every tongue
the co-whispering of all leaves
the council of trees
the un-clink of gold and emeralds returning to
veins in stone the echo of a primal Sigh
that meant to sing the color green
but accidentally created the stars.

- Fred LaMotte

[REALnothings]

AMEN!

And add this one to it, as well!

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

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

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

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

~ Hafiz

From:
https://www.thebarefootjourney.com/single-post/2015/12/22/Cast-All-Your-Votes-for-Dancing

[Larry Robinson]

The Ancient Ones


From the beginning
We have been with you.
We are the Ancient Ones
And we remember.

We remember the time when there was only love,
The time when all breathing was one. 

We remember the seed of your being 

Planted in the belly of the vast black night. 


We remember the red cave of deep slumber, 

The time of forgetting, 

The sound of your breath, 

The pulse of your heart. 


We remember the force of your longing for life,

The cries of your birth 

Bringing you forth.

We are the Ancient Ones 

And we have waited 
and watched.
You say that you cannot remember that time


That you have no memory of us. 

You say that you cannot hear our voices 

That our touch no longer moves you. 

You say there can be no return 


That something has been lost, 

That there is only 
silence.
We say the time of waiting is over. 

We say the silence has been broken. 


We say there can be no forgetting now. 

We say, 
Listen.
We are the bones of your grandmother's grandmothers. 

We have returned now, 

We say you cannot forget us now, 


We say we are with you
And you are us. 


Remember,
Remember.

- Patricia Reis

[Dorothy Friberg]

Tell that to Trump!

[Larry Robinson]

Adrift

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

- Mark Nepo

[Larry Robinson]

They


The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race,
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'



'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'
And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange.'

- Siegfried Sassoon

[Larry Robinson]

The Paradox


I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.


I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.


White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.


Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.


Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.


Down to the grave will I take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife;
Then shalt thou see me and know me—
Death, then, no longer, but life.


Then shalt thou sing at my coming,
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of Death.


Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I’ll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.


- Paul Laurence Dunbar
(June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His parents were slaves. He died at 33 from tuberculosis.

[Larry Robinson]

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

- Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) spent much of his short, adult life as a volunteer soldier for the British military during World War I.
He wrote vivid and terrifying poems about modern warfare. Owen was killed by machinegun fire just days before the end of the war.

[REALnothings]

What a powerful poem!

Leonard Cohen used the same images to decry the slaughter of part of a generation in the Vietnam era, in his song "Story of Isaac." Here are the lyrics of the first 3 verses (masterful, imo! There's a 4th verse I don't really care for.), and below, a link to a YouTube video of Cohen singing the song:

The door it opened slowly,

My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
And you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
The lake a lady's mirror,
We stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
He looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By the Devil or the Lord.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

[Larry Robinson]

Cinders

With every breath I take
I inhale the ash of homes
where families convened,
the trees that exhaled oxygen
and gave birds a place to rest
I breathe in the Safeway, the Taco Bell
that exploded in the dead of night
and the remains of squirrels and spiders
and grasshoppers, who had nowhere to run
as flames surrounded them


A hundred miles from the fire
There’s not a cloud in the sky
Yet it’s still gray. And cold.
Two small birds chatter outside my office
They can’t stay inside today,
or wear masks to filter the air


A year ago the smoke came from our county
The pall it created spread thick and wide
Today we inhale misery from far away
The singed dreams of our neighbors
Knowing that nothing will ever be as it was
But that from the ashes springs renewal

- Michael Shapiro

[Larry Robinson]

The Laughter of Women

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

velociraptor


she puts her clawed finger to her
terrifying lips & whispers

tell them
tell them predators
only hunt when hungry

of course she means wild predators
not the domesticated cat
contaminated by human whim

when we’re hungry we hunt
when we’re successful we kill
when we kill we eat
then we’re not hungry
all our neighbors relax
we enjoy each other’s beauty

she is light on her feet
the plodding protoceratops lifts his heart
seeing the speed of her dance
across the plain

scents of grasses mingle
with the soft grinding of cretaceous teeth
the rumbling of digestion
heavy legs impressing the soil
bending the blades

the sun falls abundantly & warm
soft colors of skin undulating over muscles
scaled, feathered & fragrant
everyone’s motions fascinate everyone’s eyes
a symphony of effort & repose

velociraptor rejoices
it’s a good day & all around are big & small bodies
breathing, singing praises of abundance & suspense
light on her feet she dances
light on her feet she entertains
she is entertained
not hunting

- Sandy Eastoak

[Larry Robinson]

Compassion

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

- Miller Williams

[Larry Robinson]

The Tubbs Fire from Freestone

It was midnight and I could not sleep.
My window open and barely a hint of smoke,
a gas grill, I thought, or the first fire
this season in a neighbor’s wood stove.
Terrible winds were in the trees
a death rattle shaking of
the pull-down shades
in an open window.
I still did not know why
I could not, could not sleep
in the yet ocean-moist autumn air.

The next morning I woke to a world
now bone dry and strange, oddly metallic,
a coppery sky and its dull shining.
I took a photo of that eerie color
escaping the clouds and burning
into my consciousness.
I drove inland as I always do for coffee
to spark-plug the day. And I saw it,
and pulled over. Blood orange
the sun as I had never seen before.
It scared me the way heat-
lightning did that first time,
of no warning and not knowing
what it was.

I took another picture of that
sun, red siren of warning,
signaling an already charred
County and its remains,
its kiln dried bone fragments,
skeletons of an old world.
A choking smoke
beginning of this other!

It will take years and lifetimes
to sift through the black presence:

the raku-glazed shards,
the inky charcoal earth, now toxic,
the fire bombing of treasures,
landmarks exploded, and everywhere
cars are deader than doornails.

We are all breathing-in melted electronics.
whole stoves, refrigerators, computers,
plus bibles, trees, dead birds. Whole libraries
vanish into our lungs along with the deer.
Black clouds of ash descend
as entire neighborhoods
become unfamiliar, are bequeathed
to the bravery of first responders
still evacuating residents, and
their animals, and fighting fire.
Ambulances scream: a horrible
midnight parade that went on until morning.
Freeways packed, all the way to San Francisco!
A trauma stained beginning of that day
begins a collective story of dying and rising
together for years, companions of that ash.

- Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

It’s Always Been About Wind


It’s early and the top of the oak
wet with dew is swaying, calling me
as it did when I was a boy, and
the birds, singing before we wake,
are the hearts of those who’ve
suffered, reborn as soft things
that sit in trees.

As for me, I’ve become
a hollow bone through which
things long needing to be said
are sung, though I often don’t
know what they mean.

I have been carved out, one
heartache at a time, to make
a clear sound. I don’t cite this
as a principle, just what
happened to me.

I lean my head to the wind
and my heart sings. Then
I eat the song.

- Mark Nepo