Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

There Is No One But Us


There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand nor a pure heart
on the face of the earth,
but only us,
a generation comforting ourselves
with the notion that we have come at an awkward time,
that our innocent fathers are all dead
- as if innocence had ever been -
and our children busy and troubled,
and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly,
made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures,
and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.


- Annie Dillard

[Larry Robinson]

Candles in Babylon


Through the midnight streets of Babylon
between the steel towers of their arsenals,
between the torture castles with no windows,
we race by barefoot, holding tight
our candles, trying to shield
the shivering flames, crying
"Sleepers Awake!"
hoping
the rhyme's promise was true,
that we may return
from this place of terror
home to a calm dawn and
the work we had just begun.


- Denise Levertov

[Larry Robinson]

Do Not Be Ashamed


You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Samhain
(The Celtic Halloween)
In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to movehttps://lionsandlilies.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/images.png
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.


Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil


that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.


I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings


arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.


- Annie Finch

[Larry Robinson]

Harvest


It’s autumn in the market—
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They’re beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth—
Inside, they’re gone. Black, moldy—
you can’t take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.
Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.
Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.
At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.
The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground’s so hard the farmers think
it isn’t worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?
And then the frost comes; there’s no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.
I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.
What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.
- Louise Gluck

[Larry Robinson]

Does It Matter?

Does it matter? - losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter? - losing you sight?
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter-those dreams in the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you’re mad;
For they know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

- Siegfried Sassoon

[Timothy Gega]

Does It Matter?

Does it matter? - losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter? - losing you sight?
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter-those dreams in the pit?
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you’re mad;
For they know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

- Siegfried Sassoon
:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

[Larry Robinson]

Endless Streams and Mountains


Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters steaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,
seeing this land from a boat on a lake
or a broad slow river,
coasting by.

The path comes down along a lowland stream
slips behind boulders and leafy hardwoods,
reappears in a pine grove,

no farms around, just tidy cottages and shelters,
gateways, rest stops, roofed but unwalled work space,
—a warm damp climate;

a trail of climbing stairsteps forks upstream.
Big ranges lurk behind these rugged little outcrops—
these spits of low ground rocky uplifts
layered pinnacles aslant,
flurries of brushy cliffs receding,
far back and high above, vague peaks.
A man hunched over, sitting on a log
another stands above him, lifts a staff,
a third, with a roll of mats or a lute, looks on;
a bit offshore two people in a boat.

The trail goes far inland,
somewhere back around a bay,
lost in distant foothill slopes
& back again
at a village on the beach, and someone’s fishing.

Rider and walker cross a bridge
above a frothy braided torrent
that descends from a flurry of roofs like flowers
temples tucked between cliffs,
a side trail goes there;

a jumble of cliffs above,
ridge tops edged with bushes,
valley fog below a hazy canyon.

A man with a shoulder load leans into the grade.
Another horse and a hiker,
the trail goes up along cascading streambed
no bridge in sight—
comes back through chinquapin or
liquidambars; another group of travelers.
Trail’s end at the edge of an inlet
below a heavy set of dark rock hills.
Two moored boats with basket roofing,
a boatman in the bow looks
lost in thought.

Hills beyond rivers, willows in a swamp,
a gentle valley reaching far inland.

The watching boat has floated off the page.

●

At the end of the painting the scroll continues on with seals and
poems. It tells the a further tale:

“—Wang Wen-wei saw this at the mayor’s house in Ho-tung
town, year 1205. Wrote at the end of it,

‘The Fashioner of Things
has no original intentions
Mountains and rivers
are spirit, condensed.’

‘. . . Who has come up with
these miraculous forests and springs?
Pale ink
on fine white silk.’

Later that month someone named Li Hui added,

‘. . . Most people can get along with the noise of dogs
and chickens;
Everybody cheerful in these peaceful times.
But I—why are my tastes so odd?
I love the company of streams and boulders.’

T’ien Hsieh of Wei-lo, no date, next wrote,

‘. . . The water holds up the mountains,
The mountains go down in the water . . .’

In 1332 Chih-shun adds,

‘. . . This is truly a painting worth careful keeping.
And it has poem-colophons from the Sung and the
Chin dynasties. That it survived dangers of fire and
war makes it even rarer.’

In the mid-seventeenth century one Wang To had a look at it:

‘My brother’s relative by marriage, Wên-sun, is learned and
has good taste. He writes good prose and poetry. My broth-
er brought over this painting of his to show me . . .’

The great Ch’ing dynasty collector Liang Ch’ing-piao owned it,
but didn’t write on it or cover it with seals. From him it went into
the Imperial collection down to the early twentieth century. Chang
Ta-ch’ien sold it in 1949. Now it’s at the Cleveland Art Museum,
which sits on a rise that looks out toward the waters of Lake Erie.

●

Step back and gaze again at the land:
it rises and subsides—

ravines and cliffs like waves of blowing leaves—
stamp the foot, walk with it, clap! turn,
the creeks come in, ah!
strained through boulders,
mountains walking on the water,
water ripples every hill.

—I walk out of the museum—low gray clouds over the lake—
chill March breeze.

●

Old ghost ranges, sunken rivers, come again
stand by the wall and tell their tale,
walk the path, sit the rains,
grind the ink, wet the brushes, unroll the
broad white space:

lead out and tip
the moist black line.

Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns.

Streams and mountains never stay the same.


Note: A hand scroll by this name showed up in Shansi province, central China, in
the thirteenth century. Even then the painter was unknown, “a person of the Sung
Dynasty.” Now it’s on Turtle Island. Unroll the scroll to the left, a section at a time, as
you let the right side roll back in. Place by place unfurls.

- Gary Snyder

[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 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]

28915Please Call Me by My True Names


Don't say that I will depart tomorrow -
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

- Thich Nhat Hanh


https://plumvillage.org/news/our-beloved-teacher-in-hospital/?mc_cid=7b29d4695d&mc_eid=fd3ed12f1a

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn


All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
Fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall,
But each leaf is fringed with silver.


- Amy Lowell

[Larry Robinson]

Convergences


At sixteen he dismisses his mother with contempt.
She hears with dread the repulsive wave’s approach
and her fifty-year-old body smothers under water.


An old man loses half his weight, as if by stealth,
but finds in his shed his great-grandfather’s knobbly cane,
and hobbles toward youth beside the pond’s swart water.


She listens to the dun-colored whippoorwill’s
three-beat before dawn, and again when dusk
enters the cornfield parched and wanting water.


He imagines but cannot bring himself to believe
that the dead woman enters his house disguised
or that the young rabbi made vin rouge from water.


Within the poem he and she—hot, cold, and luke—
converge into flesh of vowels and consonant bones
or into uncanny affection of earth for water.


- Donald Hall

[Larry Robinson]

Crescent Moon


Last night I spied the crescent moon again
Her beautiful delicate face hovering shyly over the trees
Is it really a month since last we danced together?

Returning later I look in vain for her
She has already slipped away behind the trees

This morning I seem to see her everywhere
The curve of the cat's leg in the sun
The swirl of water circling in the sink
The smile of a friend

So nice to glimpse her through the trees
So nice of her to think of me.


- Tim Walters

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn's Crucible


In autumn’s cool chamber,
Beauty builds a fire.
Pen-point becomes
flint, and paper tinder
when the leaves are
paler than the thin
afternoon moon
that’s as transparent
as a cloud
and the evergreens stand by
watching their deciduous cousins
self-immolate,
each burning
unique.
Autumn's long farewell
leaves time
to fare
well.



- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

Serving with Gideon

Now I remember: in our town the druggist
prescribed Coca-Cola mostly, in tapered
glasses to us, and to the elevator
man in a paper cup, so he could
drink it elsewhere because he was black.

And now I remember The Legion—gambling
in the back room, and no women but girls, old boys
who ran the town. They were generous,
to their sons or the sons of friends.
And of course I was almost one.

I remember winter light closing
its great blue fist slowly eastward
along the street, and the dark, then, deep
as war, arched over a radio show
called the thirties in the great old U.S.A.

Look down, stars—I was almost
one of the boys. My mother was folding
her handkerchief; the library seethed and sparkled;
right and wrong arced; and carefully
I walked with my cup toward the elevator man.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Touched by An Angel https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-11-20_14-55-33.png
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
- Maya Angelou

[Larry Robinson]

Claim


Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was,
the dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. Claiming me
like anything else: the round luck
of her supper dish or the bliss
of rabbits, their infinite
grassy cities. Her lips
and teeth circled
and pressed, tireless
pressure of the world
that pushes against you
to see if you're there,
and I could feel myself
inside myself again, muscle
to bone to the slippery
core where I knew
next to nothing
about love. She wrapped
my arm as a woman might wrap
her hand through the loop
of a leash-as if she
were the one holding me
at the edge of a busy street,
instructing me to stay.


- Kasey Jueds

[Timothy Gega]

Claim


Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was,
the dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. Claiming me
like anything else:

of a leash-as if she
were the one holding me
at the edge of a busy street,
instructing me to stay.


- Kasey Jueds

:heart: adorable poem :heart:

[AllorrahBe]

I could almost feel her hot breath on my wrist as she encircled it with her jaw...
so real!
:heart:


:heart: adorable poem :heart:

[Timothy Gega]

I could almost feel her hot breath on my wrist as she encircled it with her jaw...
so real!
:heart:

Yes, AllorahBe, this poet has such a great imagination, (if even in a metaphorical way).

[Roland Jacopetti]

Fantastic, Larry!


Claim

Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was,
the dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. ...

[Larry Robinson]

Turkeys


<tbody>
Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.

</tbody>


- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

The Big Heart


“Too many things
are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”
W. B. Yeats


Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of
conch shells,
they speak back with the wine
of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.
They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.


- Ann Sexton

[Larry Robinson]

An Invitation


Make of your kitchen a hearth
where you warm and nourish your life.


Make of the sky over your town your temple
where you refresh yourself daily.

Make of the people in your town your Beloved
to rediscover with kindness each day.

Make of the earth of your town your own garden
where you gaze with attention each day.

Make of your life a steady flame of delight.

Look around you in this moment and see
how all of this, pierces us with pain and such happiness.


- Elizabeth Garber

[Timothy Gega]

:WaccoRays:
An Invitation

...
Make of the sky over your town your temple
where you refresh yourself daily.

[Larry Robinson]

Benediction


There is so much to know, so much to love, so much to share
Let us go forth and minister.


There are forsaken elements in each of us,
Abandoned dreams, neglected fears, breast closet skeletons,
Tremendous possibilities as yet untapped.
Let us minister to ourselves.


There are broken relationships among the people.
Friends we need to touch,
Partners we need to love,
Enemies we need to forgive.
Let us minister to each other.


There is a sorrow in the land.
War, Pollution, Injustice,
A tragic squandering of immense worth.
Let us minister to our world.


And there is a forgotten cry within us all.
A deafening Silence,
Largely unheeded but ever beckoning.
Home, home, home it calls,
An explosion of Joy waiting to be born.
Let us minister to our Source.


There is so much to know, so much to love, so much to share.
Let us go forth this day and minister.


- Dan O'Neal

[Larry Robinson]

The Light Arrested


When we have passed the Day of the Dead
and have seen the light drawn out thin
on the horizon like vague ships,
and Night and Cold are two kings on the land

and a third enters, the Pacific Ocean
raising itself in colossal waves silently
over the western slopes, flooding the earth
and falling on the interior plains

then our hearts, then our hearts
are fish in a trackless ocean
and we find that this is heaven, this cold
motionless place and the light arrested

for everything we see— the fields and fences
and the trees and the surging fog—
is filled with that luminous presentness
here from before the start of time.

- Lee Perron

[Larry Robinson]

Grace

Thanks & blessing be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessing to them who share it
(& also the absent & the dead.)
Thanks & blessing to them who bring it
(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want -- for their hunger
sours the wine
& robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.

© Rafael Jesús González 2014



Gracias

Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte - su hambre
hace agrio el vino
y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
por la justicia y la paz.

© Rafael Jesús González 2014

(The Montserrat Review, número 6, primavera 2003;
postulado para el premio de la paz Hobblestock;
derechos del autor)

[Larry Robinson]

To a Passer-By on Thanksgiving Day


Gentle Reader,
it is good that you have paused
along your way, accepting
the silent invitation of these lines


For it was you I had in mind
when I sat to write these words,
you, holding a paper cup
of lukewarm dark roast coffee
and a satchel filled with groceries,
or you, clutching the dog’s leash
in one hand, with the other
pushing a stroller around the corner,
and even you, whom I had not
imagined in such precise terms


For you I drew my pen across the empty page
as earlier I drew my garden rake
again and again through withered grass
and over the buried front walk,
metal tines clawing wet concrete
gathering sodden maple leaves,
potent gift of high summer sun
turning then returning now to earth


For you I cleared a solitary path
prepared the way for your lonely passage
so that a mere moment of your journey
through the detritus of this world
might be blessed by an open space
awaiting your arrival,
conspicuous in its care,
this page inscribed in answer
to the ground now scraped bare.


- Seth H. Truby

[Larry Robinson]

Gratitude


I often think I’m good
at gratitude.
Say “thank you”
to the Goddess for divine right timing
when I’m down at the sea
and I
look up at the sky
at just the right moment to see
that big brown pelican
glide gracefully over me.


Or take that first bite
out of a fresh picked red apple
let the juice roll around in my mouth
and thank the tree
for giving it to me.


Me, me, me
yes, my gratitude
is all about me
and all the gifts
I joyfully receive.


- Lilith Rogers

[Lilith Rogers]

Thanks, Larry. I'm grateful to you for posting a poem every day and for posting MY poem today.

Blessings. Lilith


Gratitude


I often think I’m good
at gratitude.
Say “thank you”
to the Goddess for divine right timing
when I’m down at the sea
and I
look up at the sky
at just the right moment to see
that big brown pelican
glide gracefully over me.


Or take that first bite
out of a fresh picked red apple
let the juice roll around in my mouth
and thank the tree
for giving it to me.


Me, me, me
yes, my gratitude
is all about me
and all the gifts
I joyfully receive.


- Lilith Rogers

[Larry Robinson]

Lines For Winter


Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.


- Mark Strand
(1934-2014)

[Larry Robinson]

Chicken Scratchings for the Soul

It wasn’t one of my better meditations
It started out with promise…
I had a vision
My heart was encased in concrete
God’s chisel had cracked it open to
Reveal a brilliant white and gold core of light
And I thought,
“What’s so scary about this?”
Why did I resist my heart being broken open
If dormant inside is a gold and white light?
Which got me thinking…

About chickens
And eggs
After all chickens are protected by a shell until they have to
Bust through just to survive
The next sensible thought would have been something like
We have a choice where a chicken doesn’t

Or a more sensible thought would have been
I’m meditating…..

Instead, I thought about breakfast
Fried eggs, actually
Which made me wonder where does all that bad cholesterol
Go when the egg becomes a chicken?
Which made me think about fried chicken
Which I don’t eat
So then I thought about oil
Why is hydrogenated oil so bad
But coconut oil is the new good?
Which made me think of other uses for coconut oil
But decided - better not go there
And then I remembered

I remembered

I’m meditating
Once again I repeated the name of God
Ehiyeh Asher Ehiyeh
I am that which I am

And I began to fall
Backward
Like a child floating slowly onto a lofty down comforter
Sinking slowly downward
Into myself
And for a minute
OK, for a one, one thousand, two, one thousand

I forgot

I forgot God’s name
My name
Chickens and eggs
And for one very brief moment
There was no pain
Anywhere
No floods, war, child slavery, taxes, discrimination
Broken cell phone service or emails to answer
There was just this blissful moment
Silence

Silence

And then I thought
“What was I thinking?”
Oh yeah, chickens
And then the chime rang
20 minutes…gone…already?
Like I said, it wasn’t a very fruitful meditation
Just chicken full


- Sally Churgel

[Timothy Gega]

Hilarious<o:p></o:p>
:thumbsup:


Chicken Scratchings for the Soul


Like I said, it wasn’t a very fruitful meditation
Just chicken full


- Sally Churgel

[Larry Robinson]

Zazen, Wired & Tired
It’s like thrashing out past the breakers
into the opaque green swells,
the alien salt a thrill. The beach
is lightbulb-white, and sears
whoever lies down on it to rest.
An animal chooses this place
for its den and winters here,
sleeping month after month
in the musk of its own absence
so it can awaken more fully human.
Sitting zazen is like trying to be a tree.
I’m bad at it, impatient. I want the way
into the sap and wood to be violent, athletic,
so I keep my mind chopping at it, asking
how can I become the tree, if I am the tree?


- Chase Twichell

[Larry Robinson]

Auschwitz-Birkenau


To awaken herehttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-03_11-30-04.png
Is to hear silence
Shrieking in cold,
Empty corridors, to awaken


In a heart hewn
By fear, a darkness
Closed to compassion.
Any kindness


Is all kindness--a treachery
We must enter, allow to enter us--
Ask us, "who are you here
In this hallowed hell?"


No where to step
Where ash hasn't fallen,
Where cruelty hasn't walked,
Fed on our tender fear.


Who am I in this
Enormous evil?
A dog waiting at a platform?
Or the child terrified of dogs,


Clutching a brother's hand?
A boy alive forever,
Forever frightened so we
Will know what we can do.


I move through ghosts, numb.
Like others, I am dumb,
In respectful, awful silence,
Save for voices screaming,


Who I am? Am I
The selfless priest crammed
In a standing cell, dying
For a stranger who survived?


Who am I here in history's
Hall of horrors? Walls lined
With visages, victims
Who haven't yet imagined


What we can do--will do.


Not Nazis, not
Germans, but humans
Did this. We
Do this now.


To awaken here is
To see that casual blue
Chip in the sky's
Somber gray soul,


Innocent opening
letting light flow down,
Bless this damned,
Degraded place.


To awaken here,
Is to know one's
Darkness, and not
Turning from it, see that light.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Waiting For A Ride


Standing at the baggage passing time:
Austin Texas airport—my ride hasn’t come yet.
My former wife is making websites from her home,
one son’s seldom seen,
the other one and his wife have a boy and girl of their own.
My wife and stepdaughter are spending weekdays in town
so she can get to high school.
My mother ninety-six still lives alone and she’s in town too,
always gets her sanity back just barely in time.
My former former wife has become a unique poet;
most of my work,
such as it is is done.
Full moon was October second this year,
I ate a mooncake, slept out on the deck
white light beaming through the black boughs of the pine
owl hoots and rattling antlers,
Castor and Pollux rising strong
—it’s good to know that the Pole Star drifts!
that even our present night sky slips away,
not that I’ll see it.
Or maybe I will, much later,
some far time walking the spirit path in the sky,
that long walk of spirits—where you fall right back into the
“narrow painful passageway of the Bardo”
squeeze your little skull
and there you are again
waiting for your ride


- Gary Snyder

[gardenmaniac]

existential meltdown in 64 beats



fleeting moments

joys and sorrows whizzing by then gone forever
do what you can work hate love and desire enjoy

damage repair
such is life in the vacuum of endless space eternal time
partake of the fullness of life prepare for an endless nothing

[Larry Robinson]

Magnitudes


Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come
But relentless when it does. It has to do
With catastrophic change, and with the limit
At which one order more of Magnitude
Will bring us to a qualitative change
And disasters drastically different
From those we daily have to know about.

As with the speed of light, where speed itself
Becomes a limit and an absolute;
As with the splitting of the atom
And a little later of the nucleus;
As with the millions rising into billions—
The piker’s kind in terms of money, yes,
But a million2 in terms of time and space
As the universe grew vast while the earth
Our habitat diminished to the size
Of a billiard ball, both relative
To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves,
The doubling numbers, the earth could accommodate.

We stand now in the place and limit of time
Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream,
And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark
Seem on the point of bringing into day
The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up.
One or another nightmare may come true,
And what to do then? What in the world to do?


- Howard Nemerov

[Larry Robinson]

GARDENER’S REMORSE

The garden looked better with that plant gone.
I had pulled the twisted thing up!
Roots and all were now in the street.
It was just all wrong I thought.
Wrong. Really wrong from the very first day.

I had searched and shopped for the scrubby thing.
“A plant perfect for the drought,” the salesman said.
“Slow growing, light or shade, hardy in all climates,
can withstand high heat and low water.”

It wasn’t attractive that first day but those were dry times in ’88
in my few square feet of California.
Like an arranged marriage, I might learn to love this strange cross
between a mutant bonsai cypress
and a poison berry bush from a Disney cartoon.

Three drought years had gone by and one blessed wet one
and that miserable plant still occupied
its almost hallowed ground in my garden.
It seemed an unwelcome peace keeper
separating the exploding South African Gazanias
from the radiant Icelandic poppies.

If it weren’t for its miniscule faded pink blossomshttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-06_10-56-17.png
Doug Van Koss
(pink like the tiny shy flowers on an old doll’s dress)
and if it weren’t for its miniature berries
(that even the sparrows avoided)
and if it weren’t for its seeds looking like crushed
wheat germ kernels on the kitchen floor
I’d say the ugly thing hadn’t moved a cell in four years.
Slow growing? Well, I guess!

I pulled the damn thing up without a tinge of remorse.
Good riddance I thought, to be done with old ugly.
The next day, pondering the cleared spot in the garden,
I heard a voice that had been dead for many years.
“Oh, Dougie, you pulled up a slow growing plant?
How would you like it if someone did that to you?”

- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

Traveling Toward Solstice


The gold of autumn,
deep and burnished,
is not the superficial sizzle
of summer.
Light seems to rise
from deep in the soul
of the Universe;
filtered through layers
of beginnings and endings;
polished by the year’s hopes
and disappointments.
It moves inexorably
toward Solstice
embracing death
and rebirth.

- Ann Marie Cheney

[Larry Robinson]

Astonishment




Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises
and settles, surges and slides.
Under a great eucalyptus,
a boy and girl feel around with their feet
for those small flattish stones so perfect
for scudding across the water.
*
A dog barks from deep in the silence.
A woodpecker, double-knocking,
keeps time. I have slept in so many arms.
Consolation? Probably. But too much
consolation may leave one inconsolable.
*
The water before us has hardly moved
except in the shallowest breathing places.
For us back then, to live seemed almost to die.
One day a darkness fell between her and me.
When we woke, a hawthorn sprig
stood in the water glass at our bedside.
*
There is a silence in the beginning.
The life within us grows quiet.
There is little fear. No matter
how all this comes out, from now on
it cannot not exist ever again.
We liked talking our nights away
in words close to the natural language,
which most other animals can still speak.
*
The present pushes back the life of regret.
It draws forward the life of desire. Soon memory
will have started sticking itself all over us.
We were fashioned from clay in a hurry,
poor throwing may mean it didn’t matter
to the makers if their pots cracked.
*
On the mountain tonight the full moon
faces the full sun. Now could be the moment
when we fall apart or we become whole.
Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.
Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?
Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are.
Before us, our first task is to astonish,
and then, harder by far, to be astonished.


- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

New Tracks
All that marks the rain-pocked sand
are the small holes of sand crabs,
the occasional scallop shell, a beached
jellyfish and the skidding foam from the tide.

On the sandbar a line of pelicans
stand watch as the sandpipers swarm
the edge of the water like ants
as the whitecaps trace the horizon.

The rain has passed for now
and the clouds are breaking overhead,
moving off like the tide withdrawing.
The blue beyond is a depth we don’t know.

When the tide comes in, all this
will be swept away again
and the beach will be cleared
for a new day and new tracks in the sand.

- Newton Smith

[Larry Robinson]

On Being Asked For A War PoemI think it better that in times like theseA poet's mouth be silent, for in truthWe have no gift to set a statesman right;He has had enough of meddling who can pleaseA young girl in the indolence of her youth,Or an old man upon a winter’s night. - William Butler Yeats

[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 )

[Larry Robinson]

A Local Storm


The first whimper of the storm
At the back door, wanting in,
Promised no such brave creature
As threatens now to perform
Black rites of the witch Nature
Publicly on our garden.


Thrice he hath circled the house
Murmuring incantations,
Doing a sort of war dance.
Does he think to frighten us
With his so primitive chants
Or merely try our patience?


The danger lies, after all,
In being led to suppose--
With Lear-- that the wind dragons
Have been let loose to settle
Some private grudge of heaven's.
Still, how nice for our egos.


- Donald Justice

[Larry Robinson]

The Rhythm of Each


I think each comfort we manage-
each holding in the night, each opening
of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
fever sponged, each dear thing given
to someone in greater need-each
passes on the kindness we've known.


For the human sea is made of waves
that mount and merge till the way a
nurse rocks a child is the way that child
all grown rocks the wounded, and how
the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
strangers who in their pain
don't seem so strange.


Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
is how we pray and suffer by turns,
and if someone were to watch us
from inside the lake of time, they
wouldn't be able to tell if we are
dying or being born.


- Mark Nepo

[Larry Robinson]

Eating Poetry


Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.


The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.


The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.


Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.


She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.


I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.


- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

Sweet Darkness


When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.


When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.


There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.


You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.


Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.


Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness


to learn


anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive


is too small for you.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

The Women


In morning, the four women sit at the café
year after year
telling their stories,
eating salads and cakes with tea
and hopeful conversation.


Together
they raised children,
rescued languorous marriages
or did not.


Together
they planned weddings,
welcomed grandchildren,
packed their lifetimes
into sturdy boxes
and downsized their expectations
in brightly colored tops.


At that table in the cafe, together,
they sacrificed and suffered and celebrated
each lightly hued day.


In mourning, the three women sit at the cafe
year after year
retelling stories,
eating salads and cakes with tea
and wistful conversation.


Together
they recalled dates,
rescued their children's marriages
or did not.


Together
they planned outings,
welcomed grandchildren,
packed their lifetimes
into well used boxes
and planned for their exercising
in newly greying shoes.


At that table in the cafe, together,
they suffered with sighs and surrendered
each unlikely day.


- Michael Gerber

[Larry Robinson]

The Good Life


When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine


- Tracy K. Smith

[Larry Robinson]

Autumn Rose


Autumn rose lays its petals like eyelids on the last evening light,
On the back of sorrow's delicate hand.


It gathers the huge and powerful irony
Of my tiny life,
And places it gently upon.


Amber hush comes for the blossom and the hour both
And because I cannot swim
We slip together
between the walls of time
Where survival is meaningless
And only this rose
Will know my name.


- BSue

[Larry Robinson]

The Magi


Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.


- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Solstice Poem


The world will not end tonight,
though the wrinkled horsemen
slumped over their antediluvian mounts
are standing by waiting for the cue
and who knows where the trumpeter’s gone by now
itching to wet his whistle ...


though the placards and signs are lined up
against the crumbling walls proclaiming the end is nigh
and the ones on parchment vellum and papyrus
curl in their glass cases as generations
of school kids careen by, oblivious. ...


though the fountain of youth persists beneath
the track at Hialeah or maybe next door
under the ersatz jungle pool at the Four Winds Motel,
plastic pink flamingos fishing the crew cut lawn, ...


though the bomb shelters sink into themselves,
faded labels peeling from crushed and dented cans
whose combined shelf lives equal
a number we have not yet reckoned, ...


though the cryogenic warehouses await occupation
your choice of sheepskin or stainless steel lining
your pod stationed on site or shot into space, ...


though the falling dreams, the flying dreams
the nightly haunting journeys through
an unbound space time confluence...
(Did you ever ride an elevator to the moon? )


though the green leaves furl crimson and gold
and fall in the gusty autumn afternoon
and the sky stalls, a stark white glare
under the wraiths of cloud, the shroud of fog....
though the brewing rain a deluge in the drought, ...


though we are saturate of blood and oil,
the tape loops of disgruntlement,
the strung beads of grievance,
the squandered slain of battlefield and school


and though we grieve the sacrificial lambs,
petals strewn on blind archaic altars,
though we toll the bells and count our losses,
cast our nets, jump from cliffs,
or dive into the cold dark heart to find the molten light,
The world will not end tonight.


- Carla Steinberg

[Roland Jacopetti]

The Magi


Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.


- William Butler Yeats

Isn't it time for Yeats to be reborn? We need him badly!

[Chris Dec]

Dog Ate Joseph

Every other figurine is there in place:
the sheep, their herders, the mother and the infant
But there is no Joseph... the dog ate Joseph
And all I can do is leave an empty space
as we wait until we find a man
to fill the job
to find him finally,
missing in action,
deployed Joseph,
Joseph crushed with anger and fear,
junky Joseph,
crazed Joseph.
The wood woman has no idea she’s a single mother
for in her world, there’s no other kind.
The wise men bring a purple heart, the yellow vest, a folded flag.
The partial creche in the candle light, solemn, serene,
has no idea what is to come.
Because the God-damned dog ate Joseph
Chewed him up and spat him out a splintered stick of a man
who cannot find his way back home.

Chris Dec
2001



The Magi

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

- William Butler Yeats

[Timothy Gega]

Dog Ate Joseph

Every other figurine is there in place:

to find him finally,
missing in action,
deployed Joseph,
Joseph crushed with anger and fear,
junky Joseph,
crazed Joseph....

Love this, Chris Dec., makes me want to both cry and laugh.

[Roland Jacopetti]

Fantastic poem, Chris! A fitting companion to Yeats.


Dog Ate Joseph

Every other figurine is there in place:

[Larry Robinson]

Beannacht
("Blessing")
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

For Bill Kortum (1927-2014) - one of the good ones!


I Have Walked Along Many Roads


I have walked along many roads,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-22_13-43-26.png
and opened paths through brush,
I have sailed over a hundred seas
and tied up on a hundred shores.


Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve seen
excursions of sadness,
angry and melancholy
drunkards with black shadows,


and academics in offstage clothes
who watch, say nothing, and think
they know, because they do not drink wine
in the ordinary bars.


Evil men who walk around
polluting the earth. . .


And everywhere I’ve been I’ve seen
men who dance and play,
when they can, and work
the few inches of ground they have.


If they turn up somewhere,
they never ask where they are.
When they take trips, they ride
on the backs of old mules.


They don’t know how to hurry,
not even on holidays.
They drink wine, if there is some,
if not, cool water.


These men are the good ones,
who love, work, walk and dream.
And on a day no different from the rest
they lie down beneath the earth.


- Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

Toward the Winter Solstice

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.


Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.


Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.


And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.


Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.

- Timothy Steele

[Larry Robinson]

A Christmas Carolhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-24_13-30-27.png


Away in a manger
or a crack house
or under a bridge
or in a bombed-out village
or a refugee camp
or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
some Mary is giving birth.


Even as you read this
a child is being born.


What if one of these were the promised one,
the beacon of hope,
the seed of a new light
in a dark time?


What if they all were?
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?


- Larry Robinson

[REALnothings]

Beautiful. Thank you!
Sharing it onward.
Blessed [and Blessing!] Christmas!

[Roland Jacopetti]

Larry, your gifts are beyond price. Thank you for your wisdom.

Roland


A Christmas Carol

...
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?

- Larry Robinson

[wingpoet]

Larry,
I appreciate your poetry selections so much -- read Chris Dec's "Dog Ate Joseph" at the Healdsburg Literary Guild's Third Sunday Salon this past Sunday, because it was too good not to share. And have passed on many others. And now this wonderful poem, from you. Thank you so much for giving us this beautiful message of hope.
And for lighting our days with poetry.
-- Michelle


A Christmas Carolhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-24_13-30-27.png


Away in a manger
or a crack house
or under a bridge
or in a bombed-out village
or a refugee camp
or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
some Mary is giving birth.


Even as you read this
a child is being born.


What if one of these were the promised one,
the beacon of hope,
the seed of a new light
in a dark time?


What if they all were?
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?


- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

Christmas Trees


(A Christmas Circular Letter)
The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country;
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove
A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,
Yet did in country fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out
A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.
He proved to be the city come again
To look for something it had left behind
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;
My woods—the young fir balsams like a place
Where houses all are churches and have spires.
I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.
I doubt if I was tempted for a moment
To sell them off their feet to go in cars
And leave the slope behind the house all bare,
Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.
I’d hate to have them know it if I was.
Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except
As others hold theirs or refuse for them,
Beyond the time of profitable growth,
The trial by market everything must come to.
I dallied so much with the thought of selling.
Then whether from mistaken courtesy
And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether
From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,
“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”
“I could soon tell how many they would cut,
You let me look them over.”

“You could look.
But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”
Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:
“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant
To let him have them. Never show surprise!
But thirty dollars seemed so small beside
The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents
(For that was all they figured out apiece),
Three cents so small beside the dollar friends
I should be writing to within the hour
Would pay in cities for good trees like those,
Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools
Could hang enough on to pick off enough.
A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!
Worth three cents more to give away than sell,
As may be shown by a simple calculation.
Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.
I can’t help wishing I could send you one,
In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

- Robert Frost

[gardenmaniac]

The Night Before Christmas redux

twas the day after christmas and all the thru the store
people were shouting "we need to buy more"
most feared they'd missed out on the best deals of all
so early they got up and drove to the mall

I'm sorry to say it's the 'merican way ...
there's never enough in old Santy Claws sleigh
to fill up that void we buy things we don't need
it's really appalling to witness such greed

I remember when we would behave in this way
only that one late November Friday
we forgot to be grateful for all that we've got
so here's an idea; let's give it a shot

maybe next weekend to start the new year
we can relish our good health and those we hold dear
be grateful for everything good in our lives
our sisters our brothers our husbands and wives



Christmas Trees
...

[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)

[Larry Robinson]

Happiness


There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.


And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.


No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.


It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.


- Jane Kenyon

[REALnothings]

Just beautiful! Will leave anyone, I believe, feeling like a member of the Human Race. (And I believe to evoke that feeling in readers is one of the main purposes of poetry, for, when expressed at the right "angle of vision" and insight: "the universal", truth, and love are all the same thing; eh?

Deeply appreciated!

[cynctysings]

What a lovely, lovely gift this holiday season! Jane Kenyon, one of my favorite poets, is gone too soon from this plane for my liking, but what a treasure trove she left in her wake. Thank you, Larry, for your impeccable sense of what to share with us all. namaste. Cynthi


Happiness


There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.


And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.


No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.


It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.


- Jane Kenyon

[Larry Robinson]

As Ferguson Burns
As Ferguson burns,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2014-12-29_14-26-36.png
I hear the outrage of a people
with lives rendered valueless
once and for all.
A people with hearts that can bleed
onto the streets
without recourse.
As Ferguson burns,
I hear the anguish of a mother
twice destroyed.
First by one man, then by a country
whose justice
does not extend to her flesh.
As Ferguson burns,
I hear the conscience of millions
INDICTED.
Who hoped for more
but expected nothing less.
Who will wait for the flames to be extinguished
during the commercial break.
As Ferguson burns,
I hear the voices of unchecked power
and shudder at the knowledge
that they will come for me one day.
That my day, too, will come
to bleed onto the street
without recourse.
And so,
as Ferguson burns,
I hear the voice inside me chant,
“Burn on.”
Let the fires burn
until every ear
is ripped open.
Let the fires burn
until the weak
the disadvantaged
the oppressed
are not alone
in their hot rage
at the brutal confirmation
of their own expendability.
Let the fires burn
until every city, every town
is on its knees.
Until there is no choice
but for all of us
to burn alone
or rise again
together.
As Ferguson burns,
I hear my voice cry out.
“Burn on.”


- Angel Butts

[Timothy Gega]

Wonderful Poem, Larry. This poem expresses the sentiment of many people today.


As Ferguson Burns
As Ferguson burns,

- Angel Butts

[Larry Robinson]

They carved “Nigger Lover”
On the hood of our car
After Dad came back from Selma
He went because he said he had to
Just like he’d done in ’44
To him it was the same war
Fought in a different uniform
But you there
Breaking windows
Just remember:
You have no right to right
If you do wrong yourself
And revenge is not justice
Just wrong turned inside out


- Mark Steensland

[Timothy Gega]

They carved “Nigger Lover”
On the hood of our car
After Dad came back from Selma
He went because he said he had to
Just like he’d done in ’44
To him it was the same war
Fought in a different uniform
But you there
Breaking windows
Just remember:
You have no right to right
If you do wrong yourself
And revenge is not justice
Just wrong turned inside out


- Mark Steensland
I (personally) was in the riots (as a victim) of the late 60s as a high school student. At the time I felt that these protestors had every right to protest. After all, they are humans and they should be given the same respect and dignity as any other person, (yet they weren’t). <o:p></o:p>
I had truly hoped that we would have turned the corner on this Racism, (a long-longtime ago) but today as we can witness, haters still exist and so does racism. (See GOP comments regarding Pres. Obama). This is such a terrible reflection of Society in America. My best friend and I both joined the US Air Force on our18th birthdays to fight for this freedom. I didn’t go, he returned from Vietnam in a casket. It seems to me that we fight too many foreign wars (for big corporations to expand) yet we cannot fight a real war here at home for Freedom to actually ring in clarity for every citizen here in America. It’s such a pity being #1…(from the bottom).<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>

[Timothy Gega]

PRISONERS OF HATE<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
To create an enemy:
Start with an empty canvas.<o:p></o:p>
Sketch in broad outline the forms of men, women and children.<o:p></o:p>
Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.<o:p></o:p>
Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes, fears that play through the kaleidoscope of every finite heart.<o:p></o:p>
Twist the smile until it forms the downward arc of cruelty.<o:p></o:p>
Exaggerate each feature until man is metamorphasized into beast, vermin, and insect.<o:p></o:p>
Fill the background with malignant figures from ancient nightmares – devils, demons, and myrmidons of evil.<o:p></o:p>
When your icon of the enemy is complete you will be able to kill without guilt and slaughter without shame.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Quote by Sam Keen “Faces of the Enemy" (1986)<o:p></o:p>
(From “Prisoners of Hate” By: Aaron T. Beck, M.D., 1999)<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
©2009 Tim Gega Alpha Moonprayers <o:p></o:p>
Emotional Awareness & Literacy<o:p></o:p>

[Sara S]

For a great vision of corporations and their relation to war, see the film "War Inc."


It seems to me that we fight too many foreign wars (for big corporations to expand) yet we cannot fight a real war here at home for Freedom to actually ring in clarity for every citizen here in America. It’s such a pity being #1…(from the bottom).<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>

[Timothy Gega]

For a great vision of corporations and their relation to war, see the film "War Inc."

Thank you Sara, (Auntie Wacco) for your constant support here. I will check out this movie, "War Inc."

[Larry Robinson]

The Light Beneath Sleep
Sometimes, underneath deep sleep
is a certain diffused glow,
as, in the rainforest, luminous toadstools
glow green among the leaf litter
and beetles crawl about with winking abdomens.
One night when I followed this glow
I came to an upturned tree
that was a kind of cathedral for glowworms
and the light beat against my face, my chest and my hands.
At the end of the corridor of sleep, a dream stands.
It may be that at the end of the corridor of death
there is the walking slightly uphill
through the green fields;
and then the light underneath sleep
is both in front and behind.


- John Tarrant

[gardenmaniac]

as the days grow longer
my spirit soars
I look forward to
a/nother year filled with
these goods:

- family
- food
- friends
- health
- times

add a dash of prosperity
sprinkle liberally with love

share with all who wish to partake

[Larry Robinson]

Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity


I will need a birch tree, a maple, a redwood, a white pine, a sequoia, a
cedar, a palm tree.

I want soil from Nigeria, Palestine, the Himalayas, Mississippi,
Auschwitz, Newtown, Alcatraz.

I want water from the Ganges River, Glacier Bay, the Sea of Galilee, the
Tigris and Euphrates, the Pacific and the Atlantic, the River Jordan,
the Dead Sea, Lake Bonaparte.

I want air from Kathmandu, Calcutta, Cairo, Nazareth, Athens, the Arctic
Circle,
Mexico City, Port-au-Prince, Baghdad, Kabul.

I want near me a bison, a wolf, an eagle, a silverback gorilla, a
giraffe, a kitten, a
fawn, a black bear, a polar bear, a golden retriever.

From the waters, I want a humpback whale, a porpoise, a sea turtle, a
manta ray, a
flounder, a harp seal.

From the heavens I want a comet, a rainbow, a lightning bolt, a blue
moon, a summer
storm, a snowy night, a mauve and golden sunrise.

I want fire from my morning candle, the farthest star in the Milky Way,
a campfire
in the Adirondacks, the altar at St. Joseph's Provincial House, the
funeral pyres in
Varanasi, the Buddhist temples in Kyoto.

I want a vestment made of materials from Gujarat, India; Lhasa, Tibet;
Cape Town,
South Africa; St. John's, Newfoundland; Oslo, Norway; northern Ireland;
central
Australia; East Germany; and South Central Los Angeles.

I want co-celebrants from an Ethiopian village, a Harlem tenement, a
nursing home in Selma, a prisoner in Guantanamo, a Harvard Law class,
the Smokey Mountain garbage dump in Manila, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

I want bread kneaded and pressed by the hands of millionaires,
chambermaids,
sherpas, Bolivian tin workers, emigrants and immigrants from a hundred
countries,
three Fortune 500 CEOs, nine Exxon board members, 14 Chicago gang
members,
and seven out of work shrimpers from the Gulf of Mexico.

I want a choir of Chinese peasants, Israeli kindergartners, Japanese
Bonsai masters,
Navajo weavers, Zuni potters, Tlingit totem pole makers, and African
diamond miners.

Once assembled, we will celebrate the sacrament that contains them all.
We will sing till the earth wobbles in her orbit, give praise and thanks
till wine runs from the sugar maple. We will bow to the holiness we see
in each other forgiving the past, blessing the present, committing to a
future that is good for everyone.
And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.

- Jan Phillips

[sandoak]

A perfect New Year's Blessing. Thank you, Larry!


Preparing for the Sacrament of Holy Unity
...

And this will be the sacrament of Holy Unity
a welcome to the dawning of an Uncommon Era.

- Jan Phillips

[Larry Robinson]

You and Art


Your exact errors make a music
that nobody hears.
Your straying feet find the great dance,
walking alone.
And you live on a world where stumbling
always leads home.
Year after year fits over your face -
when there was youth, your talent
was youth;
later, you find your way by touch
where moss redeems the stone;
and you discover where music begins
before it makes any sound,
far in the mountains where canyons go
still as the always-falling, ever-new flakes of snow.


- William Stafford




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Larry Robinson]

All Her Life, She was Old


All my life, my Nana was old.
She was born old, quiet and thoughtful.
She always had false teeth, that
Clicked when she talked.


She always wore glasses with thick
Yellowed lenses.
A corona of white hair
Always framed her wizened, wrinkled face.


My Nana, born old,
Always gathered with other
Old women, my aunts, or neighbors
Or neighbors who were my aunts—


Women she’d known
All my life—born old, too.
They sat on couches
Or stoops and gossiped


About the weather, each other or
Old men and grandchildren.
If they worried,
I was unaware.


Life was lived, nothing more,
Which is all that is necessary
If one is born old.


- Rebecca del Rio




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Carly]

This is how I always saw my Nana.


All Her Life, She was Old


All my life, my Nana was old.
She was born old, quiet and thoughtful.
She always had false teeth, that
Clicked when she talked.
...

[Larry Robinson]

A Note to the Alien on Earth


Here, in the interest of time, some words to work with,
assuming you’re pretending to be a man
or woman and understand English. If this should find you,
know that I’m glad to help any way I can.

A letter beginning “Dear Friend” is not from a friend.
A “free gift” is redundant and not free.
A teenager is sex with skin around it.
The one word used as much as “I” is “me.”

People who are politically correct,
which means never offending by what they say,
will lie about other things, too. Be careful with them.
And people insulting groups of people may

look in the mirror too much or not enough.
What you say is not what anyone hears.
Be wary of one who is always or never sad.
And try to be patient with us. It looks bad,
but we’ve only had a few hundred thousand years.


- Miller Williams
(1930-2014)

[Larry Robinson]

Nothing is Forever
and
Everything is Forever.

They are the same in memory
like hopes that never arrive
beaming at my door
or do
and stay far into evening’s shadows.

Letting go of having
and not-having
allows a wonderful freedom
as my tight-bound heart discovers
it has been trapped by the long muscles of its own wings
and there is nowhere to go
but free.


- Karl Frederick




Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.
https://www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan

[Larry Robinson]

“So…what are you?”
Lot’s of people ask when they first meet me.
“I mean, you got hair like sheepskin
eyes that could terrorize
skin like a supremacist
and a ghetto booty
sooo….what are you?”
And I tell them:
I am a breathing math equation
SUBTRACTION
I am the difference
between a cornered woman
and her right to consent
I am what is left
After forced penetration
into fertile motherland
I am sweet yams dug from their beds
and replanted in a foreign climate
MULTIPLICATION
I am the product
of variable factors
Algebraic solution
A substitution of cultures
I am teepee burned to the ground,
and log cabin built in its place
DIVISION
I am a mixed
number, a percentage
of a people, I am a fraction
of a stereotype
My blood is a canal
running between two cities
and I am the bridge
that few from either side
dare to cross
ADDITION
I am the sum of two positive integers
unshackled from a negative history
Their hands outstretched
from opposite sides of a chasm
split by burning crosses and swastikas
I am born from the embrace
of two horizontal bodies
who believe fear is the only problem
worth solving
You ask, what am I?
I am one plus one equals one
I am both sides of a full moon
A human equinox
The changing of seasons
My home is the quiet moment
between dusk and dawn–
the end of one day.
The beginning of the next.


- Kristine Hadeed

[Larry Robinson]

Clear Silhouettes


Let go the torments of your mind
beside a tree
your aches and pains
embrace it as a friend who gives
you ease

suddenly double wings flit
into the canopy
its silhouetted leaves
leap out
clear as your soul itself

with each breath the day meets
you afresh


- Raphael Block

[Larry Robinson]

Drake in the Southern Sea
For Rafael Heliodoro Valle
I set out from the Port of Acapulco on the twenty-third of March
And kept a steady course until Saturday, the fourth of April, when
A half hour before dawn, we saw by the light of the moon
That a ship had come alongside
With sails and a bow that seemed to be of silver.
Our helmsman cried out to them to stand off
But no one answered, as though they were all asleep.
Again we called out: “WHERE DID THEIR SHIP COME FROM?”
And they said: Peru!
After which we heard trumpets, and muskets firing,
And they ordered me to come down into their longboat
To cross over to where their Captain was.
I found him walking the deck,
Went up to him, kissed his hands and he asked me:
“What silver or gold had I aboard that ship?”
I said, “None at all,
None at all, My Lord, only my dishes and cups.”
So then he asked me if I knew the Viceroy.
I said I did. And I asked the Captain,
“If he were Captain Drake himself and no other?”
The Captain replied that
“He was the very Drake I spoke of.”
We spoke together a long time, until the hour of dinner,
And he commanded that I sit by his side.
His dishes and cups are of silver, bordered with gold
With his crest upon them.
He has with him many perfumes and scented waters in crystal vials
Which, he said, the Queen had given him.
He dines and sups always with music of violins
And also takes with him everywhere painters who keep painting
All the coast for him.
He is a man of some twenty-four years, small, with a reddish beard.
He is a nephew of Juan Aquinas,* the pirate.
And is one of the greatest mariners there are upon the sea.
The day after, which was Sunday, he clothed himself in splendid garments
And had them hoist all their flags
With pennants of divers colors at the mastheads,
The bronze rings, and chains, and the railings and
The lights on the Alcazar shining like gold.
His ship was like a gold dragon among the dolphins.
And we went, with his page, to my ship to look at the coffers.
All day long until night he spent looking at what I had.
What he took from me was not much,
A few trifles of my own,
And he gave me a cutlass and a silver brassart for them,
Asking me to forgive him
Since it was for his lady that he was taking them:
He would let me go, he said, the next morning, as soon as there was a breeze;
For this I thanked him, and kissed his hands.
He is carrying, in his galleon, three thousand bars of silver
Three coffers full of gold
Twelve great coffers of pieces of eight:
And he says he is heading for China
Following the charts and steered by a Chinese pilot whom he captured ...


- Ernesto Cardenal
(Translated by Thomas Merton)

[Larry Robinson]

When You Dance


When you dance the whole universe dances.
All the realms spun around you in endless celebration.
Your soul loses its grip.
Your body sheds its fatigue.
Hearing my hands clap and my drum beat,
You begin to whirl.


- Jellaludin Rumi (translated by Shahram Shiva)



Rumi's Caravan is delighted to welcome Sufi dancer Chelsea Rose who will perform the sublime turn of the whirling dervish at the 7 p.m. performance on Saturday, Feb. 7.

Chelsea is a student of Zen and Sufism. She teaches salsa dancing in Santa Rosa and endeavors to merge movement with passion, prayer, and a healthy dose of fun. She is honored to collaborate with the talented performers of Rumi's Caravan and share the gift of the turn.

TICKETS are available now and make great gifts.
rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com (https://rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com/)

LEARN MORE: www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/ (https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/)

[Larry Robinson]

Nighthttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-01-10_08-40-15.png

how vast
how enormous
how great
this empire
of darkness

and yet
disarmed
by one
needle
of light


- Francisco Alarcon

[Larry Robinson]

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing


Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.


- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining into the World (https://www.katietalbott.com/inspiration/2010/11/22/each-moment-a-white-bull-steps-shining-into-the-world.html)
If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.
Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.
Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.
Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.
And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant----
stroke the white throat,
the heavy trembling dewlaps
you'd come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.
Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it, that was the gift.
Let the envious gods take back what they can.


- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through


Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them


- D.H. Lawrence

[Roland Jacopetti]

Thank you so much, Larry. One of my favorites.
Roland


Song of a Man Who Has Come Through
...
- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

Love Letter from Baghdad


Call me Rabia. I was
named for the Sufi Saint.
Blood pumps through the four
chambers of my heart,
swift and scarlet with joy or slow
and bruised black with sorrow.
We are the same.

This morning, as I pin up wash
in my rubbled court yard,
the long fingers of the sun reach
over the desert and sting my sleepless
eyes like dust, like diesel fumes.
There’s an explosion.
Did you hear it?

My neighbor sinks to the ground
in the folds of her burka,
a dark flower, rocking and keening,
her bloodied grandchild in her arms.
The earth trembles with
the terrible sound of her grief.
We are the same.

I want to share sweet memories
with you, of date palm and pomegranate,
the hay fragrance of saffron, the song
of the nightingale. I invite you
to share yours with me.
We are the same.

Come sister, let’s raise our arms
and begin. We’ll spin
and dance like the Sufis.
It will take as many turns
as there are stars
to make this right.
We do not yet know the steps.


- Gail Barker

[Larry Robinson]

Doha

“Life is an impossible dare”
With eyes fixed on the top of the mountain
Dare to rest in not knowing and gaze instead
On the blank page
the lump of clay
the empty stage
the still fountain
They await only your remembering…..
How you once followed your own curiosity
When each act was an exploration
Back before a thought was an idea
before an urge became a plan
When you were free to doodle, peering
Into the expanse of expression
No hesitating, no fearing
It didn’t matter then how you looked
in other people’s eyes
And it doesn’t matter now….
After all our work, perhaps we can just show up,
honestly and without expectation.

So, with a light touch and much tenderness
Let us proceed, one sound at a time,
Stepping inside the world of each song,
Holding it all so gently,
Grateful for an audience.

- Fran Carbonaro

[Larry Robinson]

Hold Out


Don't squander your precious longing
On what could never fulfill you.
Hold out!
Hold out for the great heart's desire.
And then spend everything you've got;
Like a drunken sailor in port at last;
Like the river leaping wantonly into the arms of the sea!


- Larry Robinson






Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa on Saturday, February 7. Good seats still remain for both the matinee and evening performances. Tickets make great gifts for you and anyone who enjoys the beauty and wisdom of mystic poetry performed in the ecstatic tradition. Please join us.

Get more info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/