Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The New Horizon




There’s a storm coming
the air changes subtly
something inside
shifts
turns
twists toward a new horizon


Sleepers awake
change is at our doors
promising a new deal
and all our comforts
wither
in the misery
of our reluctance


Fear anger grief
calling us
from our couches and beds
screens cocktails jobs
our desperate diversions
May we find the courage
each day to welcome
this new horizon
even meet with gladness
whatever strange guest
may arrive at our door


No one can rob
what I have offered
freely
No one can strip me
of what is most essential


I love what is
even
when it’s devastation
everything made sacred
by my welcoming



- Kay Crista

[Larry Robinson]

In This Place
(An American Lyric)


There’s a poem in this place—

in the footfalls in the halls

in the quiet beat of the seats.

It is here, at the curtain of day,

where America writes a lyric

you must whisper to say.



There’s a poem in this place—

in the heavy grace,

the lined face of this noble building,

collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square

where protest chants

tear through the air

like sheets of rain,

where love of the many

swallows hatred of the few.

There’s a poem in Charlottesville

where tiki torches string a ring of flame

tight round the wrist of night

where men so white they gleam blue—

seem like statues

where men heap that long wax burning

ever higher

where Heather Heyer

blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant

of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising

its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—

a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,

strutting upward and aglow.

There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas

where streets swell into a nexus

of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,

where courage is now so common

that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

There’s a poem in Los Angeles

yawning wide as the Pacific tide

where a single mother swelters

in a windowless classroom, teaching

black and brown students in Watts

to spell out their thoughts

so her daughter might write

this poem for you.

There's a lyric in California

where thousands of students march for blocks,

undocumented and unafraid;

where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom

in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.

She knows hope is like a stubborn

ship gripping a dock,

a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer

or knock down a dream. 



How could this not be her city

su nación

our country

our America,

our American lyric to write—

a poem by the people, the poor,

the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,

the native, the immigrant,

the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,

the undocumented and undeterred,

the woman, the man, the nonbinary,

the white, the trans,

the ally to all of the above

and more?

Tyrants fear the poet.

Now that we know it

we can’t blow it.

We owe it

to show it

not slow it

although it

hurts to sew it

when the world

skirts below it.

Hope—

we must bestow it

like a wick in the poet

so it can grow, lit,

bringing with it

stories to rewrite—

the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated

a history written that need not be repeated

a nation composed but not yet completed.

There’s a poem in this place—

a poem in America

a poet in every American

who rewrites this nation, who tells

a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth

to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—

a poet in every American

who sees that our poem penned

doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

There’s a place where this poem dwells—

it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell

where we write an American lyric

we are just beginning to tell.

- Amanda Gorman

(Amanda Gorman is America’s first Youth Poet Laureate. This poem was written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress.)

[Larry Robinson]

On the Pulse of Morning




A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.


But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow,
I will give you no hiding place down here.


You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words


Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me;
But do not hide your face.


Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.


Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.


Come, clad in peace,
And I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the Rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.


There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say they Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.


They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today.
Come to me,
Here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.


Each of you, descendant of some passed-
On traveler, has been paid for.


You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.


You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede,
The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.


Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.


Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.


Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.


The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space
To place new steps of change
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.


Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
And into your brother's face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope--
Good morning.


- Maya Angelou

[REALnothings]

You've outdone yourself today, Larry old boy!
THANK you!
THANK you, Maya Angelou!
(THIS is what the Silence is saying!
THIS IS our salvation!
This is the cure for all our ills,
I do believe!)

[Larry Robinson]

The Hill We Climb

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

We braved the belly of the beast.

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

And this effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

This is the era of just redemption.

We feared at its inception.

We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

Our blunders become their burdens.

But one thing is certain.

If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

We will rise from the sun-baked South.

We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn balloons as we free it.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

If only we’re brave enough to be it.

- Amanda Gorman

[REALnothings]

Amanda Gorman is rightly the "poet of the day", this post-Inauguration Thursday, but I want to share a Comment under my re-posting of Maya Angelou's masterpiece on my Facebook page yesterday (as I often do with Larry's poems):
My friend Douglas wrote:
"One of the greatest poems ever written on the earth. I have read it, and explored the meaning of it’s vast and multi-layered words, three to four hundred times, with my drug-treatment and mental health patients"
And I replied, "I agree 100%!"

[Larry Robinson]

Inaugural

We were told that it is dangerous to touch
And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time
Of disease, our grandmothers
Whole. We imagine an impossible
America and call one another
A fool for doing so. Grown up from the ground,
Thrown out of the sea, fallen from the sky,
No matter how we’ve come, we’ve come a mighty
Long way. If I touch any of you, if I
Shake one hand, I am nearer another
Beginning. Can’t you feel it? The trouble
With me is I’m just like you. I don’t want
To be hopeful if it means I’ve got to be
Naïve. I’ve bent so low in my hunger,
My hair’s already been in the soup,
And when I speak it’s just beneath my self-
Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build
A museum of weapons we soon visit
Just to see what we once were. I forgive us
Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
So we try to fall asleep that way. Where, then,
Shall we put our pains when we want rest?
I don’t carry a knife, but I understand
The desperation of those who do,
Which is why I am recounting the facts
As calmly as I can. The year is new,
And we mean to use our imaginations.
One of us wants to raise George Stinney
From the dead. One of us wants a small vial
Of the sweat left on Sylvia Rivera’s
Headband. Some want to be the music made
Magical by Bill Withers’s stutter.
Others come with maps and magnifying
Glasses and graphite pencils to find
Locations beside the mind where we are not
Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
I, myself, have come to reclaim the teeth
In George Washington’s mouth and plant them
In the backyards of big houses that are not
In my name. My cousins want to share
A single bale of the cotton our mothers
Picked as children. I would love to live
In a country that lets me grow old.
I long. I long for that. We are otherwise
Easily satisfied. Where do we get
Tangerines for cheap? Can we make it
There on the Metro? How hot is the fire
Fairy blister of chocolate chipotle sauce,
And will you judge me if I taste it? But now,
We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
Because it is holy, to the water
Because it swallowed our ancestors,
To the air because we are dumb enough
To decide on something as difficult
As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
My salvation, then accountability
Is what waits. It moves citizens, mends nations.
That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed to witness.
That’s the single item on the agenda
Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood
Spilled this American hour of our lives.
- Jericho Brown

[Larry Robinson]

I Greet You On This New Morning
Moment by moment,
like the resurrection of the gods!
New Sun, New day, new opportunity!

If we don't get it right,
there will be another,
and another,
but let us be here now
to usher in this one
while the Light is full upon us,
new wind filling
the sails of our hearts!

And if there are any
who shrink from this sight,
let their eyes be cleansed
until they see the glory
of human brother-and-sisterhood,
the union of soul and soul,
the opening of time,
the way we need to be...
hearty, smiling, pointing the way forward
to the Realizationof our Pledge:
With Liberty and Justice for ALL!

Sail on, sail on,
Oh mighty ship of state!
Oh, farther!
Oh, farther, farther still!



- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light


Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.


Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes
your heart a chapel,
an altar where
the deepest night
can be seen.
The fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.


- Jan Richardson

[Larry Robinson]

Winter’s Tale


Even from my study at the back
of the house I can hear an orange drop
upstairs, one of the last to grow


on the dwarf tree you bought me
thirty years ago. When it tried
to overtake the window frame


we cruelly lopped side branches and still
it blossomed and bore its bitter progeny
the size and wrinkle of walnuts.


Repotting, we tore the roots apart,
vermiculite clinging like hatchlings
of silverfish to its tendrils. It thrived,


for years you harvested a pint or more.
But as it aged the fruitage thinned
and hoping to replace it, you soaked


handfuls of seeds. Three consented to sprout.
They shot straight up like pole beans,
greedy underlings sucking in


all the light at the front of the house.
Of course they were sterile.
Today, when I hear an orange drop


I don’t let myself think back to the winters
when you’d pick a crop of twenty, thirty
oranges at once, cut each


one open, force the seeds out, add
enough sugar to make my teeth ache,
and boil and boil until the mass


congealed, sheeting off the spoon
in the drear of February while rain
fell on snow, making little pockmarks


like mattress buttons in the pasture
outside the steamy kitchen window,
and life was bleak and sweet and you


made marmalade


- Maxine Kumin

[Larry Robinson]

The Facts of Life 


That you were born
and you will die.


That you will sometimes love enough
and sometimes not.

That you will lie
if only to yourself.


That you will get tired.

That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.

That there will be some things that move you
more than you can say.

That you will live
that you must be loved.

That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
your attention.

That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
of two people who once were strangers
and may well still be.

That life isn’t fair.
That life is sometimes good
and sometimes better than good.

That life is often not so good.

That life is real
and if you can survive it, well,
survive it well
with love
and art
and meaning given
where meaning’s scarce.

That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.

That the structures that constrict you
may not be permanently constraining.

That you will probably be okay.

That you must accept change
before you die
but you will die anyway.

So you might as well live
and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.


- Padraig Ó Tuama

[Larry Robinson]

What will the dead say . . .

to those who mourn the restless souls
who died alone and drowning
hands held by surrogates—

free us from these chains of neglect
and abuse by the many who fostered
deceit and chaos, our spirits like birds
trapped in nets of confusion

hear our calls as we haunt the memories
of the living who choke on tears
flooding hearts broken open to grief
and regret over how and why

stop now and listen as we sound the wind and
shroud the moon our souls drawn to the light
cast between then and forever

release us with your wailing
let us go without asking and
find us in the warmth of the sun
hear us in the waves as they break toward shore
lay us to rest in the still beating heart

- L.L. Stamps

[Larry Robinson]

As You Have Done for Me




There is treasure in you.
Joi Sharp



If you were here

I would put my hand

on your heart

and hold it there

until our breaths

became a single tide,

hold it there until

I could feel the moment

when you remember

your infinite value.

It¹s so easy to forget

we are treasure.

So easy to lose track

of our own immeasurable worth.

The chest rusts shut.

We think we are empty.

Amazing how easily

we are fooled into believe

we¹re paupers.

Sometimes it takes another

to remind us

we have always been

not only the treasure

but also the key.

Though the hinges

are a metaphor,

the treasure is not.

We were made to open,

to share our priceless gift,

to press our hands

to each other¹s hearts

until we all remember.


- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[Larry Robinson]

How to Climb a Mountain


Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you’re lucky, a hawk will
coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you’re lucky,
a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
Level your gaze to the trail you’re on, and even the dark won’t stop you.


- Maya Stein

[Larry Robinson]

Hymn to Matter


Blessed be you harsh matter, barren rock; you who yield only
to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. Blessed
be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untamable passion: you who
unless we fetter you, will devour us. Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible
march, reality ever new born; you who by constantly
shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further in our
pursuit of the truth. Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable
time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations;
you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards of
measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.


- Teilhard de Chardin
(Translation by Bernard Wall)

[REALnothings]

this powerful poem led me to find another lovely one by this great modern Christian mystic;
AND a cool photo of him twirling an umbrella.

https://alifesworkmovie.com/2015/05/...rd-de-chardin/

[M/M]

Chardin's Matter reminds me of Rilke's allusion to Jacob and the Angel:

The Man Watching
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister.

The storm, shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and certainty.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win, it is with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
in the struggle, elongated like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him, as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

[Larry Robinson]

Poem to COVID

I´d turn right away from you
wherever I crossed you in the street
and as you came towards me
I´d quickly go the other way.
Until one day you made it quite clear:
there was nowhere I could go where you wouldn´t be.
Despite all the washing.
And the sanitizing.
And the spraying.
When you finally had me cornered
I was forced to soften and let you in.
Into my lungs, my veins,
my blood and my beating heart.
Now everything I touch inevitably becomes you.
Every breath an exhalation of your voracious self.
And I start to get a hint
of what it felt like to be kept away
isolated, excluded, shut off, sent back
and why you decided to go ahead
and jump over the fence with the “no trespassing” sign
into my virgin immunity.
-so much for fences.
You are running rampant in me now
And I am not planning to stop you.
You´ve made my limbs slower
and my breathing heavier.
My thoughts have condensed into dark formations
and my emotions turned oddly dull.
So I decided to become a playground
for you to go wrecklessly wild in.
All rides freely open for you!
Climb me, swirl through my veins,
turn round in my joins and slide down my bones,
bungee-jump from my head to my feet
-what the heck
Let´s turn this body into a viral funfair!
And once you´re done feasting over me
will you please accept the humble offering
of my body-mind,
and spare my soul?


- Virginia Francisco

[Larry Robinson]

There Is A Road Always Beckoning



There is a road
always
beckoning.

When you see
the two sides
of it
closing together
at that far horizon

and deep in
foundations
of your own
heart

at exactly
the same
time,

that’s how
you know
it's where
you
have
to go.

That’s how
you know
it’s the road
you
have
to follow.

That’s how
you know
you have
to go.

That’s
how you know.

It’s just beyond
yourself,

it’s
where you
need to be.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

Metaphor To Action


Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform,
who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words,
whether it is the crash of lips on lips
after absence and wanting : we must close
the circuits of ideas, now generate,
that leap in the body's action or the mind's repose.


Over us is a striking on the walls of the sky,
here are the dynamos, steel-black, harboring flame,
here is the man night-walking who derives
tomorrow's manifestoes from this midnight's meeting ;
here we require the proof in solidarity,
iron on iron, body on body, and the large single beating.


And behind us in time are the men who second us
as we continue. And near us is our love :
no forced contempt, no refusal in dogma, the close
of the circuit in a fierce dazzle of purity.
And over us is night a field of pansies unfolding,
charging with heat its softness in a symbol
to weld and prepare for action our minds' intensity.


- Muriel Rukeyser

[Larry Robinson]

You Darkness


You Darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.


Because the fires make a circle of light
so that no one can see you any more.


But the Darkness holds it all.
The shapes, the animals,
The flames and myself.


How it holds them.
All power, All Strength


And it is possible, a great energy is breaking into my body.


I have faith in the night


- Rainier Maria Rilke
(translation by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About


When Rilke travelled through Russia
and studied Saint Francis
and fell in love with the married Salomé
and wrote poems for The Book of Hours,
he could not have known
that over a century later
a woman on another continent
would find herself wrestled by darkness
and find in his poems encouragement
to lean even deeper into darkness
until she could fall in love
with what she feared most.
He could not have known she would
tattoo his words into her memory
and scribe them into her blood
so whenever she walked or lay in the dark
she would have his words ever with her,
and they made her not only more brave
but more wildly alive than she’d been before.
And what if, as his parents had pushed,
Rilke had joined the military
and turned his back on poetry?
And what if he had not gotten himself expelled
from trade school so he could go on
to study literature and art?
What would have become of the woman
a hundred years later
had she not found his poem
and learned from him to love the dark?


- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[REALnothings]

[Larry Robinson]

A Modest Love






The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,

The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;

The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,

And bees have stings, although they be not great;

Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;

And love is love, in beggars as in kings.



Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords;

The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;

The firmest faith is in the fewest words;

The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love:

True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak;

They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.


- Edward Dyer

[Larry Robinson]

The Swan

Across the wide waters
something comes
floating--a slim
and delicate

ship, filled
with white flowers--
and it moves
on its miraculous muscles

as though time didn’t exist,
as though bringing such gifts
to the dry shore
was a happiness

almost beyond bearing.
And now it turns its dark eyes,
it rearranges
the clouds of its wings,

it trails
and elaborate webbed foot,
the color of charcoal.
Soon it will be here.

Oh, what shall I do
when that poppy-colored beak
rests in my hand?
Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband’s company--
he is so often
in paradise.
Of course! 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.
Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those
white wings
touch the shore?


-Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

A Surfeit of Swans

Floating on the river Rhine somewhere
between Amsterdam and Cologne
confronted by this surfeit of swans
do not have a clue what to do with them
as a group when one in a painting
at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum
appeared so snarlingly huge that
it was said to portray a creature
whose wings could shatter
the legs of a grown man like me
were I to dive now into their midst,
open myself to a melee of wind-whipping murder.


- Ed Coletti

[Larry Robinson]

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted


When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,


The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.


Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.


The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.


You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.


At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.


You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.


Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.


Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.


Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.


Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.


Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.


Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.


- John O'Donohue

This will be my final post of Wacco. I offer profound thanks to Barry for the opportunity to share my love of poetry with this community. If any of you wish to continue to read the daily poems, you can send me an email at [email protected] and I will add you to my daily poem list serve. Many blessings to you all!
Larry