Poem for today

[Larry Robinson]

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.


I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.


I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.


- Pablo Neruda
(Translated by Mark Eisner)

[Larry Robinson]

THE EXPLOSION

Love isn’t a bomb bursting, though at the same time,
that’s really what it is.
It’s like an explosion that lasts a whole lifetime.
It comes out of that breakage they call knowing yourself,
and it opens wider and wider,
colored like a quick cloud of sunlight that rolls through time
so that an afternoon becomes all existence, or better, all
existence is like one long afternoon,
like a roomy afternoon full of love, where
all the light in the universe suddenly gathers, suddenly in
a whole lifetime,
until at last its full, its all formed and ripened at the top
and from there the fullest light comes down, the light that
unrolls and unfolds
like a huge wave, like a huge light that lets us look on each other
at last.

We’ve gone over all the soul’s smallest details.
Yes, we’re the lovers who fell in love one afternoon.
We’ve gone over that soul so slowly, always surprised to find
it still larger in the morning.
The same way that afternoon lovers, lying there,
uncovered, go over and over their glowing body, absorbed in
themselves,
And in that afternoon all the light comes out and bursts and
grows,
And its been an endless afternoon of love,
And then later if we get lost in the dark, if we
never see each other again, we would still recognize each other.

But ours is a long afternoon that lasts a lifetime. We give
each other life,
as if we were lying down and your soul, my love,
having shifted into this life-place, is like a huge body
that I devoted myself to one endless afternoon.
I’ve loved you every moment of that afternoon.
And now, that isn’t the sunset falling over there, that’s
all of life falling; and that isn’t the sun sinking:
its life itself coming to an end, and I love you.
I love you and this afternoon is ending,
This luxurious, breathing afternoon where we’ve been making love.
A life gone by all together like an afternoon,
The years were just an hour during which I’ve gone into your soul,
slowly uncovering it, minute by minute.
Because what’s just finishing over there could be life, is life.
But the first flash is finishing here and now
and now you are fully revealed in the ripening and the sparks,
And it was an afternoon, a breaking wave, and the
summit and the lights at the top are all open now,
And you are here and we have each other.

- Vincent Alexandre
(translated by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

The Song of Wandering Aengus


I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old from wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

LOVE AFTER LOVE


The day will come when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say,

sit here, eat.



You will love again the stranger who was yourself.



Give wine, give bread.

Give back your heart to itself,

to the stranger who has loved you all your life,

whom you ignored for another,

who knows you by heart.



Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.



Sit. Feast on your life.


- Derek Walcott

[Larry Robinson]

Steelhead Valentine


Every year on Valentine's Day I celebrate the return of the steelhead,
Oncorhynchus mykiss (their species name). Mykiss-what could be more perfect?

Whether the run is late or early, on Valentine's Day they are always in the
river, thrusting upstream, in the laguna, in the creeks, heading home in an
ecstatic urgency, driven back to their natal beds to spawn. If you watch the
creeks in patient silence you will see them. If you listen at night, you
will hear them leaping, slapping cradles in the gravel bars.

They are here right now, as you read this--a thread of the culture of this
place that stitches you to the people who came before you, just as they
stitch the land to the sea, returning nutrients with their very bodies. The
carcasses of those that die feed critters all the way up the food
chain--that osprey flying overhead a month from now, those river otters I
saw last year up at Fitch Mountain.

When you reach for your beloved, think of them. Half in air, he stutters
across shallows, rushing to reach her. Veiled in dark water, she glides over
the gravel. They are dancing when your hands entwine. He circles over her
back. They weave the water in figure eights. She turns on her side, a
rainbow through rain.

To hold them in you heart is to value an old companion. To hold them in
yourheart is to keep clean cold water in our creeks. To hold them in your
heart is to protect our streams from toxins and sediment, to keep our hills
forested, to restore our urban waterways.

Once by streamside with my lover, we saw a steelhead fly up from the froth
of a waterfall, fall back, leap again, fall back, leap again. Love and
instinct. Without them, what would life be?

- Elizabeth Carothers Herron

[Larry Robinson]

The Greeting

You have been traveling.
I can see it in your eyes –
the unknown roads demanding new belief.
The light of your will in submission
to the pattern bringing us together.

I have been busy waiting,
putting fresh flowers on the table,
filling the lamps with kerosene,
arranging (as well as I could)
everything, so that you might feel
that you had arrived
at the right place
at the right time.

Hello
I am so glad you could come.
And in honor of our being here together
let us make a scratch on the wall of the cave.
We could talk.
We could begin with idle chatter.
I’ll start
I’ll say, “I love you.”

- James Haba

[Larry Robinson]

MY SON READING HAN-SHAN

A frog squatting on a pond rock, my son
reads thousand year old eight line poems.
He reads and laughs, turns the page
and reads and laughs, shoulders rolling.
Han-shan, my old friend, now his too!
When the wind awakens the voice in pines
and sends mink scurrying toward shore,
he reads and laughs, teeth white as waves.

- James Lenfestey

[Larry Robinson]

February Rose


Against the sticks of winter

all barren, brown, and grey,


when the roots hold back their energy

in hopes of warmer days


so early in the season,

and for no apparent reason,


on stem of green

a spot of sunburst glows:


a solitary,

February

rose.

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

Why Regret?

Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?

- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

Salt

I thought of kneeling. I thought of cold
monastery stone and the red velvet cushions
at the communion rail -- a reverence
history could not contain.

What is history? -- the bones of a dead mouse.
His scarred face was the first mystery. Six
veils to reach the dark pulse of his arm --
Salome dancing for John the Baptist’s head.

I have found God in the least likely places --
the dog sleeping beside my chair
is inhabited by God. I could go into the street
and tell everyone God sleeps in my house

in the body of a dog! Who would believe me?
You have your own moments.
I too have lain in the night
beside my lover and heard God breathing.

Intention was the second mystery.
When my father died
his skin was like Michelangelo’s marble,
his veins the hidden rivers that sustained him

through five children, two wives, deaths, wars
even prison. Under the skin
where the blue vein pulsed, I saw
my grandmother’s heart flutter.

I leaned toward the pale gate
of the scarred stranger’s elbow, my tongue
reverent to the taste of salt.
The impulse to worship is always there.

It is the diamond in the water, the deer
last night, dreamily over the fence in the fog
for the shimmering lick in the field.

- Elizabeth Herron

[Larry Robinson]

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

- Izumi Shikibu
(Translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani)

[Larry Robinson]

Aristotle

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her, your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.
This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes –
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle –
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall
too much to name, too much to think about.


And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair, and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

- Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

GETTING THERE

You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You're there. You've arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want
To be? You'll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveller's dream
Under the last bill
Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another journey without
regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.


- David Wagoner

[Larry Robinson]

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

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, the 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 eternity.

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's 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 wrestlers' sinews
grew long 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

[Larry Robinson]

PAX

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
To be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the
mistress
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world,
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of a master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

An Introduction to Some Poems

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Particularly the Redbud



Walking down an unknown street,

thinking about the path I took to get here,

I am startled: crimson blossoms

fall from ancient trunks.



Redbud, here!

The shower of petals transports me

halfway across the country to

thirty springs ago—redbud, dogwood,

yellow crocus in late snow.



This conjunction of disparates,

this discovery—all the redbuds:



preparation for this moment.



- Fran Claggett

[Larry Robinson]

Optimism
*
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs -- all this resinous, unretractable earth.
*
- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

What If We Were Alone?

What if there weren't any stars?
What if only the sun and the earth
circled alone in the sky? What if
no one ever found anything outside
this world right here? -- no Galileo
could say, "Look -- it is out there,
a hint of whether we are everything."

Look out at the stars. Yes -- cold
space. Yes, we are so distant that
the mind goes hollow to think it.
But something is out there. Whatever
our limits, we are led outward. We glimpse
company. Each glittering point of light
beckons: "There is something beyond."

The moon rolls through the trees, rises
from them, and waits. In the river all
night a voice floats from rock
to sandbar, to log. What kind of listening
can follow quietly enough? We bow, and
the voice that falls through the rapids
calls all the rocks by their secret names.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Walking West

Anyone with quiet pace who
walks a gray road in the West
may hear a badger underground where
in deep flint another time is

Caught by flint and held forever,
the quiet pace of God stopped still.
Anyone who listens walks on
time that dogs him single file,

To mountains that are far from people,
the face of the land gone gray like flint.
Badgers dig their little lives there,
quiet-paced the land lies gaunt,

The railroad dies by a yellow depot,
town falls away toward a muddy creek.
Badger-gray the sod goes under
a river of wind, a hawk on a stick.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Skunk Cabbage

Dust of fresh snow on frost heaved earth
January’s brown stalks flutter in the breeze.
A quest in search of skunk cabbage,
a plant both common and magical,
first wildflower of spring
using the stored energy in its roots
to create a bubble of warmth
in its strange purplish spathe
like hands cradling a candle flame.

Lots to see on the way.
Flock of turkeys,
marching single file across the trail…
one, two, …seventy-five, seventy-six.
And the dark upright skeletons of cockle burr plants.
Burr after burr, hooked barbs
and double seeds inside every one,
one will sprout this spring, and one the next,
a natural insurance policy for survival.
These fed the multitudes of Carolina parakeets,
who fly no more in these faster paced days.

Harley told me this plant biography,
one long ago summer day
as I painfully plucked the burrs from my dogs,
sending an arrow of beauty into a dark, cussing moment.
He seemed old then, full of jokes and
facts he slipped in about how he loved this natural world.

After the hike and the miracle of
flowers in the frozen ground,
we go to the hospital to see Harley, now ninety six,
bruised arms and wasted body,
swathed in sheets and confusion, and still
a glimmer in his eyes.
He takes the chocolate malt, and sips hard
through his straw while we talk,
old stories pulled from the cobwebs of memory,
taking their last bow in the afternoon’s pale light.

“My hands are cold”, he says as I take the cup,
and wrap my hands around his,
the strength and warmth of mine
cradling what seems now so cold and frail.
The strength and warmth of mine,
hewn long ago from these shadowy roots I now hold,
like the skunk cabbage,
returning last summer’s sun to this day.

- Alan Cohen

[Larry Robinson]

Finally

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shape of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shape of flesh, everchanging
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of body for body,
unending light.
You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Traveling At Home

Even in a country you know by heart
it’s hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes.
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
can be the bud of a new direction. The
natural correction is to make intent
of accident. To get back before dark
is the art of going.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Be Angry With The Sun

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years

Be angry with the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You
are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a leader and the dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes

At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine a.m. downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
in a hip three-piece linen suit
with shoulder-length blond hair and sunglassed
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with short skirt and coloured stockings
on the way to his architect's office

And the two scavengers up since four a.m.
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses and long hair
about the same age as the Mercedes driver

And both scavengers gazing down
as from a great distance
at the cool couple
as if they were watching some odourless TV ad
in which everything is always possible

And the very red light for an instant
holding all four close together
as if anything at all were possible
between them
across that small gulf
in the high sea
of this democracy.

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Larry Robinson]

In The Book

A hand appears.
It writes on the wall.
Just a hand moving in the air,
and writing on the wall.

A voice comes and says the words,
"You have been weighed,
you have been judged,
and have failed."

The hand disappears, the voice
fades away into silence.
And a spirit stirs and fills
the room, all space, all things.

All this in The Book
asks, "What have you done wrong?"
But The Spirit says,
"Come to me, who need comfort."

And the hand, the wall, the voice
are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.
The story ends inside the book,
but outside, wherever you are --

It goes on.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

My Memorial

At my memorial stop for a moment
and look up. There, you'll see me in the shadowed
corner of the room, above the windows where
the light has made its way through the branches of trees
and window frames. Or perhaps you might catch
a glimpse of me peering down from my perch in some
blue-green place on the branch of a springly olive tree
near a clear aqua lake. You'll know me. I'll try to sneak
in a comment or two, a dance or five, a song or twelve,
maybe a poem from some remembered autumn
day with you by the waterfall. If you hear me or feel
me moving through you on some whim--a twitch
in you left calf, a breeze in your lungs, the urge
to shake it up, I'll hope you move with it, sing
the song that wants to come, or grab the hands
next to you and start something. Let me sing and dance
from my grave, because you know how I hate to miss a party.
Lend me your body or your soul
for a moment or two. We'll dance and sing
together, you and I. We were never far apart anyway--
only one breath, or the width of skin. Together now--
step two three, step two three--waltz with me.
Or let's fly away on some beam of light and land
in a new life.

In the spring you may see me
as a tiny new shoot shining
as dew, delicate as lace, green as love,
making my way through the dark
earth, or opening my mouth as some
wrinkled, ageless new voice in this
symphony of life. And here where I am,
know that I'll carry your love with me
where ere I go always, because love
is the only thing that lasts.
We'll always be together--you and I.

- Diane LaRae Bodach

[Larry Robinson]

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

- Wallace Stevens

[Larry Robinson]

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

- Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

[Larry Robinson]

I Will Not Die An Unlived Life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,
To allow my living to open me,
To make me less afraid,
More accessible;
To loosen my heart
Until it becomes a wing,
A torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,
To live so that which came to me as seed
Goes to the next as blossom,
And that which came to me as blossom,
Goes on as fruit.

- Dawna Markova

[Larry Robinson]

Streets

A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.

One more window dark
in this city, the figs on his branches
will soften for birds.

If we stand quietly enough evenings
there grows a whole company of us
standing quietly together.
overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees
and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing,
drops her purple hem.
Each thing in its time, in its place,
it would be nice to think the same about people.

Some people do. They sleep completely,
waking refreshed. Others live in two worlds,
the lost and remembered.
They sleep twice, once for the one who is gone,
once for themselves. They dream thickly,
dream double, they wake from a dream
into another one, they walk the short streets
calling out names, and then they answer.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

Sonnet XXIX

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

- William Shakespeare

[Larry Robinson]

The Inner History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So a the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

Tracks

The small birds leave cuneiform
messages on the snow: I have
been here, I am hungry, I
must eat. Where I dropped
seeds they scrape down
to pine needles and frozen sand.

Sometimes when snow flickers
past the windows, muffles trees
and bushes, buries the path,
the jays come knocking with their beaks
on my bedroom window:
to them I am made of seeds.

To the cats I am mother and lover,
lap and toy, cook and cleaner.
To the coyotes I am chaser and shouter.
To the crows, watcher, protector.
To the possums, the foxes, the skunks,
a shadow passing, a moment's wind.

I was bad watchful mommy to one man.
To another I was forgiving sister
whose hand poured out honey and aloe;
to that woman I was a gale whose lashing
waves threatened her foundation; to this
one, an oak to her flowering vine.

I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons,
bat-faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.

- Marge Piercy

[Larry Robinson]

Spring


With a whoop and a fling
blossoms she brings,
it's April, it's April, it's April,
she sings.

Pop out to see
my purple tablecloth billow
waves of songbird
on branches and twigs
pink and white bursts.

Step lively to
Fall's rattling shells,
crows' flap 'n gab,
buzzing wings and legs.

Under the gliding moon
owls beat the meadow
blazing with thirst,
eight stalk silken eyes sip,
my million morning tears.

- Raphael Block

[Larry Robinson]

Easter Exultet

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!

- James Broughton

[Larry Robinson]

Lost Love

Who could advise ones' heart to still its beat,
Till love shows a faultless path;
Thereby casting a shadow over passions flames
And leaving lovers alone to grope in darkness
Toward their separate ends?

'Twas the witches and their warnings
With soft spoken spells, whispered as wisdom,
That fomented our fears.

But now.
As those devils go to meddle
In someone Else's joy,
Look into the still luminous light
Of your now muted soul,
Where love and truth yet sleep
Yearning to be given life once more.

'Ti's through faith and courage
That you must go on.
For there is no life without love.
But only a forced, and tired, bravery,
That grinds us into dust
With its never ending mantra,
Survive,
Survive,
Survive.

- Ron Harding

[Larry Robinson]

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along the shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Ah, not to be cut off

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

[Larry Robinson]

The Art of Blessing the Day

This is the blessing for rain after drought:
Come down, wash the air so it shimmers,
a perfumed shawl of lavender chiffon.
Let the parched leaves suckle and swell.
Enter my skin, wash me for the little
chrysalis of sleep rocked in your plashing.
In the morning the world is peeled to shining.

This is the blessing for sun after long rain:
Now everything shakes itself free and rises.
The trees are bright as pushcart ices.
Every last lily opens its satin thighs.
The bees dance and roll in pollen
and the cardinal at the top of the pine
sings at full throttle, fountaining.

This is the blessing for a ripe peach:
This is luck made round. Frost can nip
the blossom, kill the bee. It can drop,
a hard green useless nut. Brown fungus,
the burrowing worm that coils in rot can
blemish it and wind crush it on the ground.
Yet this peach fills my mouth with juicy sun.

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

This is the blessing for a political victory:
Although I shall not forget that things
work in increments and epicycles and sometime
leaps that half the time fall back down,
let's not relinquish dancing while the music
fits into our hips and bounces our heels.
We must never forget, pleasure is real as pain.

The blessing for the return of a favorite cat,
the blessing for love returned, for friends'
return, for money received unexpected,
the blessing for the rising of the bread,
the sun, the oppressed. I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree

of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Attention is love, what we must give
children, mothers, fathers, pets,
our friends, the news, the woes of others.
What we want to change we curse and then
pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can
with eyes and hands and tongue. If you
can't bless it, get ready to make it new.

- Marge Piercy

[Larry Robinson]

One Robe, One Bowl

My Life may appear melancholy,
But traveling through this world
I have entrusted myself to heaven.
In my sack, three sho of rice;
By the hearth, a bundle of firewood.
If someone asks what is the mark of enlightenment
or illusion,
I cannot say "wealth and honor are nothing but dust."
As the evening rain falls I sit in my hermitage
And stretch out both feet in answer.



If you speak delusions, everything becomes a delusion;
If you speak the truth, everything becomes the truth.
Outside the truth there is no delusion,
But outside delusion there is no special truth.
Followers of Buddha's Way!
Why do you so earnestly seek the truth in distant places?
Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your hearts.

- Ryokan
(translated by John Stevens)

[Larry Robinson]

Clam

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its

place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they

have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and

probably a little satisfaction, too. Do not mock them

for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves

being alive. They pull away fromthe light. They pull

down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to be open



But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled shoreward

in a storm. Then they pant, they fill with sand, they have no

choice but must open the smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches

them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the

terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and

what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in

the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,

though not quickly. They also have resources beyond

the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.


- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Famous


The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to the silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men,
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it did.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

For The Raindrop

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river-
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn into sighing;
In this way we learn how water can die into air.

When, after heavy rains, the stormclouds disperse,
Is it not that they've wept themselves clear to the end?

If you want to know the miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,
Look: the shining glass grows green in spring.

It's the rose's unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see -
In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.

- Ghalib (1797-1869)

[Larry Robinson]

On Clergymen Preaching Politics

Indeed, Sir Peter, I could wish, I own,
That parsons would let politics alone;
Plead, if they will, the customary plea,
For such like talk, when o'er the dish of tea:
But when they tease us with it from the pulpit,
I own, Sir Peter, that I cannot help it.

If on their rules a justice should intrench,
And preach, suppose a sermon, from the bench,
Would you not think your brother magistrate
Was a little touched in his hinder pate?
Now which is worse, Sir Peter, on the total
The lay vagary, or the sacerdotal?

In ancient times, when preachers preached indeed
Their sermons, ere the learned learnt to read,
Another spirit, and another life,
Shut the church doors against all party strife:
Since then, how often heard, from sacred rostrums,
The lifeless din of Whig and Tory nostrums!

'Tis wrong, Sir Peter, I insist upon't;
To common sense 'tis plainly an affront:
The parson leaves the Christian in a lurch,
Whene'er he brings his politics to church;
His cant, on either side, if he calls preaching,
The man's wrong-headed, and his brains want bleaching.

Recall the time from conquering William's reign,
And guess the fruits of such a preaching vein:
How oft its nonsense must have veered about,
Just as the politics were in, or out:
The pulpit governed by no gospel data,
But new success still mending old errata.

Were I a king (God bless me) I should hate
My chaplains meddling with affairs of state;
Nor would my subjects, I should think, be fond,
Whenever theirs the Bible went beyond.
How well, methinks, we both should live together,
If these good folks would keep within their tether!

- John Byron

[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

[Larry Robinson]

Advice

Someone dancing inside us
has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp.
the one with black eyes
who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
will be a lot like this one.

- Bill Holm

[Larry Robinson]

Counting

On the first page of the morning paper
if I have the choice,
I prefer to read just the number
of wounded and dead,
how many from bombs,
from land mines and fire fights
avoiding specifics
with no mention ever of
the seeping, spilling, draining,
daily flushings of lives on and into the soil.

With my choice I can add and subtract
how many wounded, how many dead
since the most recent reporting,
shaking my head at countings,
accumulations, timely comparisons
and everyday numbers without a mention of pain,
or of the waning of warmth,
the certainty of stench.

Each day more statistics,
lists made longer in time
12 at the market
20 on the bus
7 in the ambush
32 in the bombing,
531 in the northern area
and what a shame
but there it is
each day a new sum reported,
and among all of the numbers
(numbers, of course, without faces
numbers without blood or body
or mind or emotion
without person)
no person, do you hear?,
no person has been included in the counting.

Please give me only the figures,
the numbers of our dead,
numbers easier than names
adding up, as they do, what's subtracted,
impersonally silent, changing,
tearless statistics we will live by.

- Doug Stout

[Larry Robinson]

As a Child Enters the World

As I enter my new family,
May they be delighted
At how their kindness
Comes into blossom.

Unknown to me and them,
May I be exactly the one
To restore in their forlorn places
New vitality and promise.

May the hearts of others
Hear again the music
In the lost echoes
Of their neglected wonder.

If my destiny is sheltered,
May the grace of this privilege
Reach and bless the other infants
Who are destined for torn places.

If my destiny is bleak,
May I find in myself
A secret stillness
And tranquility
Beneath the turmoil.

May my eyes never lose sight
Of why I have come here,
That I never be claimed
By the falsity of fear
Or eat the bread of bitterness.

In everything I do, think,
Feel, and say,
May I allow the light
Of the world I am leaving
To shine through and carry me home.

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

Sabbath Poems

I

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.


Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.


Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.


After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

II

Slowly, slowly, they return
To the small woodland let alone:
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.

Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.

They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Downcomings of the distant light;
They are the advent they await.

Receiving sun and giving shade,
Their life's a benefaction made,
And is a benediction said
Over the living and the dead.

In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind, and we are pleased
To walk on radiance, amazed.
0 light come down to earth, be praised!

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

At the End of April

to César Chávez


At the end of April
the vines already green with buds,
death came to the field-worker,
to the caesar of the grapes dressed in blue,
of the apples in red vestments,
of the onions in white petticoats.

She said to him, "Come, César!"

And took him from the poisoned grapes,
the watermelons, the melons full of ill,
the battles of the furrows,
the ambushes of the ditches,
the Guadalupe standard,
the red and black flag.

But in the furrows
his voice left planted
his longing for justice -
which is to say, his demands
for bread for the hungry,
healing for the sick,
books for the innocent.

His voice will bear fruit
and there will be rejoicing
in the furrows,
in the ditches,
round the tables,
in the land.


- Rafael Jesús González

[Larry Robinson]

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell
All beautiful and splendid things
Blue waves whitened on a cliff
Soaring fire that sways and sings
And children's faces looking up
holding wonder like a cup

Life has loveliness to sell
Music like a curve of gold
Scent of pine trees in the rain
Eyes that love you, arms that hold
And for your spirit's still delight
Holy thoughts that star the night

Spend all you have for loveliness
Buy it and never count the cost
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Sarah Teasdale (1884 - 1933)

[Larry Robinson]

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

- Langston Hughes

[Larry Robinson]

Five Precepts On Happiness

1

Though your friends and family
will likely try
to save you from it,
yours is nobody else’s
business or responsibility.

2

You cannot cause,
manufacture or manipulate it.
It comes, if at all,
as gift to be received
with gratitude.

3

Hope to receive it
and prepare by giving away
what you least want to lose.
On this point
Jesus and Buddha dance.

4

Refuse to carry the burden
of maintaining it.
That’s unnecessary baggage,
will betroth you
to a boulder and a hill.

5

If you receive some,
scatter it like seed.
Sharing assures preservation.
As with manna,
held tight, it rots.

- Bonnie Thurston

[Larry Robinson]

Hiking in the Totsugawa Gorge


pissing

watching

a waterfall

Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

The Cure


Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney's translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

[Larry Robinson]

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Extra, Extra


All hail the yellow flag of spring waving on the earth,
the fields striking light against the bell of the sky
in one triumphant peal announcing revolution.
Sing hail to the marching band in its rows of thousands,
hail to the buds on the branches like droplets of milk
about to bloom in a cup of black tea. Hail breakfast.

All praise to weeds, to fennel, thistle, miner's lettuce,
to foxtail and rattlesnake grass, horseradish, duckweed,
to moss and lichen, to goldenback fern. Praise outlaws.
Praise their persistence and their disregard for safety,
the way they pass through fences as if through open doors.
Praise to the uncountable numbers of their beauty.

And thanks for nothing. Thank you for this embarrassment
of useless gifts, this bright paper covering the box
of earth. Thank you for the fecund grave, the open mouth
of the river in constant, irresponsible flood.
Thanks for all that goes to waste, unasked for, unwanted:
this love, in such profusion, that does not care for us.

- Yosha Bourgea