Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Shirt


The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians


Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band


Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze


At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--


The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out


Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.


A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once


He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--


Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt
ballooning."
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked


Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans


Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of
Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,


Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,


The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the
sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:


George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit


And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,


The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the
characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.


- Robert Pinsky

[Larry Robinson]

Tipping Point


Oh yes the trails of tears are now trails of blood.
Oh yes the defenseless will be shown no mercy.

Oh yes extinction builds fine walls.
Dead bodies of birds, butterflies, tiny frogs
starfish summer meadows spring flowers
the innocent oceans whole forests and jungles.

Their crime: to be beautiful.

Inside sanctuaries once inviolable for prayer
our brothers and sisters
kneeling sometimes with hands clasped or their heads to the ground
are gunned down.

Their crime: to pray to give thanks to God

Our sisters and brothers refugees and immigrants
are hunted terrorized condemned.

Their crimes: to seek peace safety a home for a family freedom

And those who are different in faith or form or who they love
are blamed for all the ills of the world

Their crime: to be different

Oh yes the dead bodies of dreamers
ripen in the desert, simmer in the sun
bleached white turn to dust.

Their crime: to dream.

beaten black and blue piles up. The river stinks
of blood rancid defenseless blood and tears.

A wall of death will not be enough.

Oh yes Saturn insatiable gorges on his children.
The homeless are scooped up like candy.
The refugees lapped like ice cream.
But it will never be enough.

This useless wall of useless fear and hate and greed.
The skull grins and squats on its ephemeral throne
on the wall of blood.

Surely we must ask ourselves have we had enough?
Is this the tipping point at last?

- Gail Onion

[Larry Robinson]

For My Mother

Once more
I summon you
Out of the past
With poignant love,
You who nourished the poet
And the lover.
I see your gray eyes
Looking out to sea
In those Rockport summers,
Keeping a distance
Within the closeness
Which was never intrusive
Opening out
Into the world.
And what I remember
Is how we laughed
Till we cried
Swept into merriment
Especially when times were hard.
And what I remember
Is how you never stopped creating
And how people sent me
Dresses you had designed
With rich embroidery
In brilliant colors
Because they could not bear
To give them away
Or cast them aside.
I summon you now
Not to think of
The ceaseless battle
With pain and ill health,
The frailty and the anguish.
No, today I remember
The creator,
The lion-hearted.

- May Sarton

[Larry Robinson]

Tracking at Auschwitz


Went tracking at Auschwitz,
looking for animal signs-
tracks, scat, anything.


There was plenty of human spoor but
the only life I saw
was a raptor
perch hunting
from a
bent steel post
of a once electrified
barbed wire
fence.


- George Gittleman

[Ronaldo]

Photo from Holocaust Memorial near Legion of Honor San Francisco.

Tracking at Auschwitz


Went tracking at Auschwitz,
looking for animal signs-
tracks, scat, anything.


There was plenty of human spoor but
the only life I saw
was a raptor
perch hunting
from a
bent steel post
of a once electrified
barbed wire
fence.


- George Gittleman

[Larry Robinson]

To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzhak Rabin

Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know that you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another,
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Half-and-Half


You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.


At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across face, of date-stuffed' mamool.


This morning we lit the slim white candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests weren't fighting
in the church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.


A woman opens a window -- here and here and here
placing a vase of blue flowers,
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
She is making a soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

Kill The Poets

Kill the poets
Kill them all!
Who cares if the spirit calls?
Let me sit and scratch my balls.
Kill the poets
Kill them all!

Kill the poets
It's time to fight
Stunning metaphors
And sudden insight
The hidden meaning in a raven's call.
Me, I'm ready for some football!
Kill the poets
Kill them all!

Kill the painters
It's the same damn breed.
We've got TV so where's the need?
False perspective and plein air
Making us see what isn't there.
Look, reds are reds and blues are blues.
I'm happy with my Fox snooze.
Kill the painters
Let's get them too!

But these poets
They have got to go
Making us remember what we've always known
We like our dull and ordered lives -
Here come the poets with their long knives
We read our lines and play the part -
Some poet kicks over the apple cart

Kill the poets
It's a good start
Quick!
Take their heads
Before
They take your heart

- Jim Knowles

[Larry Robinson]

From the Diary of an Almost-Four-Year-Old


Tomorrow, the bandages
will come off. I wonder
will I see half an orange,
half an apple, half my
mother's face
with my one remaining eye?
I did not see the bullet
but felt its pain
exploding in my head.
His image did not
vanish, the soldier
with a big gun, unsteady
hands, and a look in
his eyes
I could not understand.


If I can see him so clearly
with my eyes closed,
it could be that inside our heads
we each have one spare set
of eyes
to make up for the ones we lose.


Next month, on my birthday,
I'll have a brand new glass eye,
maybe things will look round
and fat in the middle —
I've gazed through all my marbles,
they made the world look strange.


I hear a nine-month-old
has also lost an eye,
I wonder if my soldier
shot her too—a soldier
looking for little girls who
look him in the eye—
I'm old enough, almost four,
I've seen enough of life,
but she's just a baby
who didn't know any better.


- Hanan Ashwari

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi has been a central player in the struggle for a Palestinian homeland. A tireless campaigner for human rights, she has distinguished herself in both the academic and political arenas. Her academic expertise has played a vital role in the development and recognition of Palestinian culture, while her longstanding political activism on behalf of the Palestinian people has contributed greatly to the establishment of an independent and self-governing Palestine.

Dr. Ashrawi received her Bachelor and Master's degrees in literature in the Department of English at the American University of Beirut. After earning her Ph.D. in Medieval and Comparative Literature from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Dr. Ashrawi returned to her homeland in 1973 to establish the Department of English at Birzeit University on the West Bank. She edited the Anthology of Palestinian Literature. She is the author of The Modern Palestinian Short Story: An Introduction to Practical Criticism; Contemporary Palestinian Literature under Occupation; Contemporary Palestinian Poetry and Fiction; and Literary Translation: Theory and Practice.

[Larry Robinson]

I took her name…


I never thought to change my name.
Born knowing it was women I loved,
we did not have the custom reserved
for others. Marriage was not a possibility
even though we lived together,
worked together, shared everything—
dreams, clothes, dogs, bed.


After fifty four years,
during which life changed
around us, laws that had seemed
written in stone, opened up
new ways of thinking about our lives.
We married, thinking it was for the cause
but found it was really for us.


Still, we never thought to change
our names. Until…
Until, not the way we planned it,
(we were to be together, somehow)
she was gone. I alone remained
living for both of us, and I wrote a poem,
signed it as usual, then, almost without
thinking, added the hyphen
and her name became mine:


- fran claggett-holland

[Larry Robinson]

Are There Not Still Fireflies?

Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signaling to us
our manifest destiny?

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[M/M]

wondering when L Ferlinghetti wrote this poem I found this:
https://www.nationalbook.org/lawrenc...erarian-award/

at end of his talk in accepting the Literarian Award in 2005, he says:

The dominant American mercantile culture may globalize the world but it is not the mainstream culture of our civilization. The true mainstream is made, not of oil but of literarians, publishers, bookstores, editors, libraries, writers and readers, universities and all the institutions that support them. That is the real mainstream of our civilization.

It will survive, if anything survives, after the electricity goes off and electronic civilization fades away, when Nature strikes back in retaliation for what the dominant culture is doing to it. Coming to your local theater soon, the day after tomorrow. See you at the show.

I’ll end with a poem I wrote just before 9/11:

Are there not still fireflies?

(thank you to both Larry's )

Are There Not Still Fireflies?

Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signaling to us
our manifest destiny?

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Larry Robinson]

Repeating History


In Krakow, on the hour
A trumpeter recalls
an interrupted call, warning invasion,
A warning arrested by an arrow
piercing the psyche
of a peoples. Repeat


Everywhere, injuries
enshrined, history felt
Repeatedly, wounds
remembered. The wounded, dead
forgotten by the bowman,
marksman, indifferent
bomber. Forgotten by the one
who ordered the arrow.


We repeat, but cannot
delete fear, erase blood.
We repeat slights and stabs,
rapes and rage of the ages.


We are all a history.
Redacted, invented
History of our innocence
And their guilt.


We carry culture, albeit
Ignorant of the original
Root, a curious explorer
Into darkness, into


Separation from a whole
Which held us, hewed a
Path toward empathy, a forked
Road now, moving


Away from each other,
Ourselves.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

The Farmer’s Wife
(In memory of Masako)


She sold tomatoes, corn and peppers
from the wooden stand
by their Fresno farm
surrounded by melon fields
and orange groves.
Apt at the calculator,
she figured out profits
no matter how meager.
In winter
she wore wool checkered shirts.
In summer
a light blouse sufficed
In the intense Central Valley heat.


By day
she hoisted crates of produce
and soothed customers.
In late evening
she walked with her husband
by the irrigation canals.
She could tie a kid’s shoes
tell a good story
or just listen.
She collected family photos
dolls
figurines
and laughed at the clutter.


She survived
sickness
the depression
the internment camp at Tule Lake
and raised four children
who became
doctors
teachers
entrepreneurs.


At eighty-three
she died well-loved
but not yet famous.


- Laura Blatt

[Larry Robinson]

To Earth the Mother of All


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


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


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


Happy are we who you delight to honor!


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


(May they take no delight in war)


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


(May they seek peace for all peoples)


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


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


- Homeric Hymn XXX adapted by Elizabeth Roberts

[Larry Robinson]

Dance of the Macabre Mice

“In the land of turkeys in turkey weather” -W. Stevens


The president smiles to himself, he loves war
And another one is coming soon.
Each day we can feel the merriment mount
In government offices and TV studios
As our bombers fly off to distant countries.

The mortuaries are being scrubbed clean.
Soon they’ll be full of grim young men laid out in rows.
Already the crowd gurgles with delight
At the bird-sweet deceits, the deep-throated lies
About our coming battles and victories.

Dark-clad sharpshooters on rooftops
Are scanning the mall for suspicious pigeons,
Blind men waving their canes in the air,
Girls with short skirts and ample bosoms
Reaching deep into their purses for a lighter.

- Charles Simic

[Larry Robinson]

Hadeel's Song


Some words are hard to pronounce—
He-li-cop-ter is most vexing
(A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible)
But how it can stand still in the sky
I cannot understand—
What holds it up
What bears its weight
(Not clouds, I know)
It sends a flashing light—so smooth—
It makes a deafening sound
The house shakes
(There are holes in the wall by my bed)
Flash-boom-light-sound—
And I have a hard time sleeping
(I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but no one scolded me).


Plane—a word much easier to say—
It flies, tayyara,
My mother told me
A word must have a meaning
A name must have a meaning
Like mine,
(Hadeel, the cooing of the dove)
Tanks, though, make a different sound
They shudder when they shoot
Dabbabeh is a heavy word
As heavy as its meaning.


Hadeel—the dove—she coos
Tayyara—she flies
Dabbabeh—she crawls
My Mother—she cries
And cries and cries
My Brother—Rami—he lies
DEAD
And lies and lies, his eyes
Closed.
Hit by a bullet in the head
(bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills,
my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes)
What’s the difference between a shell and a bullet?
(What’s five-hundred-milli-meter-
Or eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?)
Numbers are more vexing than words—
I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two
But what happens after ten-and-ten,
How should I know?
Rami, my brother, was one
Of hundreds killed—
They say thousands are hurt,
But which is more
A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf)
I cannot tell—
So big—so large—so huge—
Too many, too much.


Palestine—Falasteen—I’m used to,
It’s not so hard to say,
It means we’re here—to stay—
Even though the place is hard
On kids and mothers too
For soldiers shoot
And airplanes shell
And tanks boom
And tear gas makes you cry
(Though I don’t think it’s tear gas that makes my mother cry)
I’d better go and hug her
Sit in her lap a while
Touch her face (my fingers wet)
Look in her eyes
Until I see myself again
A girl within her mother’s sight.


If words have meaning, Mama,
What is Is-ra-el?
What does a word mean
if it is mixed
with another—
If all soldiers, tanks, planes and guns are
Is-ra-el-i
What are they doing here
In a place I know
In a word I know—(Palestine)
In a life that I no longer know?




- Hanan Ashwari


Two days ago Dr. Hanan Ashwari’s application for a visa to visit the US was denied with no explanation. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-05-...denied-visa-us

[Larry Robinson]

Visiting San Francisco

I wanted to curl up
in the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,
in the sadness of my past being passed.
I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquities
and look at the sarcophagi there.
I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,
sagacious mud of my past,
so I wrote you and said I’d be in town and could we meet.
But you think my past is your present.
You wouldn’t relent, you wouldn’t agree
to dinner or a cup of coffee or even a bag of peanuts
on a bench in North Beach.
You didn’t want to curl up or tour or wallow with me.
You’re still mad, long after the days
have turned into decades, about the ways I let you down.
The four hundred thousand ways.
Maybe I would be, too.
But people have done worse to me.
I don’t think I’m being grotesque when I tell you
I’ve been flayed and slayed and force-fed anguish.
I’ve been a human cataract
plunging through a noose and going to pieces on the rocks.
I’ve been a seagull tethered to Alcatraz.
What can I say, what more can I say, how much more
vulnerable can I be, to persuade you
now that I’ve persuaded myself?
Why can’t you just let it go?
Well, at least I’m in San Francisco.
San Francisco, where the homeless are most at home—
crouching over their tucker bags under your pollarded trees—
because your beauty is as free to them
as to the domiciled in their
dead-bolt domiciles, your beauty is as free to
the innocent as to the guilty.
The fog has burned off.
In a cheap and windy room on Russian Hill
a man on the run unwraps the bandages
swaddling his new face, his reconstructed face,
and looks in the mirror and sees
the face of Humphrey Bogart. Only here
could such a thing happen.
It was really always you, San Francisco,
time won’t ever darken my love for you,
San Francisco.


- Vijay Seshadri

[Ronaldo]

My photos of the Bridge, old friend and and Native San Franciscan Tom Bissinger

Visiting San Francisco
...

[Larry Robinson]

Living Mandala
At a Tshechu, annual sacred festival in Domkhar. Bhutan


1.
Follow me to a small country
where trees in new yellow leaf
stand before black mountains,
where clouds curdle above,
with sun seeping through.
Where distant Himalayas look
like the exquisitely chipped rim
of the world’s sugar bowl.
Sit with me and the local populace
in a monastic courtyard
while temple bells gong
and drums beat out
da-da-DUM-dum-dum.


2.
Watch while a dozen monks
in masks of the zodiac,
in yellow skirts with rainbow
petticoats, emerge from
the temple, their feet bare,
chests, too, but for richly
embroidered bibs and straps.
And on the grass and flagstones,
they dance, whirl and
twirl, lift feet, toss ribboned
crests, ears, horns, gin up winds
with the sticks they carry.
Rooster, ox, rat and all spin like clocks
and counter-clocks, the mandala
of their ring wheeling in a circle game.
The winds blow hot and cold.
The temple horns blow cool.
At last spent, each takes a solo exit,
helped up steps by other monks –
ones not drunk on dance.


3.
After the barest of intervals, the monk dancers
will be back in different masks
to again leave all on the flagstones.
They will repeat all day. Meanwhile
divine jesters will orchestrate with smirk
masks and phallus prods. They grin,
teach steps, poke people, invite themselves
onto audience laps. It’s understood these
tricksters must stay inside the gates.


Cymbals are singing and the monks are
back in red brocade, whirling, holding
swords of purification, and spinning.
Have I ever witnessed someone
dancing themselves into a frenzy
for the enlightenment of my soul?
Yes


- Phyllis Meshulam

[Larry Robinson]

Theories of Time and Space



You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion—dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return

- Natasha Trethewey

[Larry Robinson]

Politics


How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.


- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

On Aging Fiercely


I am going to seed

Look around

All these blessings need scattering

Somewhere

There is an art to Elderhood
It is time to ask the
IMPORTANT question:
Where do I spread all of these seeds
I have collected?

I thought it disloyal at first
To the holy worship of youth
But hiding the baubles of delight
Has become impossible.

The splashy bangles
Around my bones keep jangling
sounding like hooray hooray!
Or I admit sometimes ouch ouch!
Which is simply
An invitation
To slow the hell down

Who knew walking
s-l-o-w-l-y
Could be considered graceful
Or even seductive?
I lean towards the latter.

And I will carry no ordinary cane
Already a hand carved
Walking-stick inlaid with
Chakra colored stones waits kindly
Against the far wall.

One day I may use it

As my planting stick
Or perhaps an encouragement
To stand taller
To better see where
I am to scatter
All of the seed-blessing
That are filling my pockets.

- Kristy Hellum

[Ronaldo]

[Larry Robinson]

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf
Pine in North America


Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.
To have the smell of the earth
welcome you to everywhere.
To take it all in, and then,
to reach for your knife.


- Matthew Olzmann

[Larry Robinson]

In The Month of May


In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well things
Lean on each other, how the bees work,
The fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high, then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.


I love you with what in me is still
Changing, what has no head or arms
Or legs, what has not found its body.
And why shouldn't the miraculous,
Caught on this earth, visit
The old man alone in his hut?


And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
Be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
Whose holy bodies are not yet born.
Along the roads, I see so many places
I would like us to spend the night.

- Robert Bly

[Larry Robinson]

Waiting


The best way
to talk to God
is through those
sleeping
on the bus


Be they drunk
or derelict
or coming home
from work
or shopping


so dead tired
that their bones
open easily
to heaven


Those who
sleep on
the bus
are the
swiftest
couriers
of prayers


I find myself
on the same bus
with them
on many
nights


and
write a
note


on the
rhythm of
the bus
starting
and stopping


turning my breath
at each corner


It is always
the same
note to
God


I write


These days
bleed
through
my tongue
and pen


I want to
risk
my faith
with you


I want to ask
only one thing


for you to stop
carrying
the torn bodies
of children
past me


Please
let this end


I don't seek
your blessing
or tears


or any easy way
out of here


My hands
are empty
and barren
as I write


Just let this end



BeauWaiting


The best way
to talk to God
is through those
sleeping
on the bus


Be they drunk
or derelict
or coming home
from work
or shopping


so dead tired
that their bones
open easily
to heaven


Those who
sleep on
the bus
are the
swiftest
couriers
of prayers


I find myself
on the same bus
with them
on many
nights


and
write a
note


on the
rhythm of
the bus
starting
and stopping


turning my breath
at each corner


It is always
the same
note to
God


I write


These days
bleed
through
my tongue
and pen


I want to
risk
my faith
with you


I want to ask
only one thing


for you to stop
carrying
the torn bodies
of children
past me


Please
let this end


I don't seek
your blessing
or tears


or any easy way
out of here


My hands
are empty
and barren
as I write


Just let this end


- Beau Beausoleil

[Larry Robinson]

The Summer Noosphere


Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the planet
as I did?

How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me, the Christ child
that's been coming.

The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.

O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as seen
from outer space.

The song of the world will often take you far from yourself. There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the junction of the trails.
They are yourself.

- Robert Ronnow

[Larry Robinson]

The Seven Streams

Come down drenched, at the end of May,
with the cold rain so far into your bones
that nothing will warm you
except your own walking
and let the sun come out at the day's end
by Slievenaglasha with the rainbows doubling
over Mulloch Mor and see your clothes
steaming in the bright air. Be a provenance
of something gathered, a summation of
previous intuitions, let your vulnerabilities
walking on the cracked sliding limestone
be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty
for understanding what's about
to happen. Stand above the Seven Streams
letting the deep down current surface
around you, then branch and branch
as they do, back into the mountain
and as if you were able for that flow,
say the few necessary words
and walk on, broader and cleansed
for having imagined.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

Family Syllabus

The butterfly is quickly seized and eaten just above their lifted heads
the children had trapped it in the house under glass and card
the father brought it to freedom in the center of the family garden
a Western scrub-jay straightway brought the lesson to a close

In the late afternoon the father glances over his shoulder
the jay and a waxing moon are sitting side by side on a phone wire
the jay says, I know everything that goes on in your garden
the moon says, I bring pale beauty to a darkened world.

- Lee Perron