Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Blue Worlds Surround Me



through twisted alleys in the labyrinth he led me
we were locked in our skin and lost there together
son of a famous father, who else could I turn to?
but dark was his mirror, as dark as the maze—

our shadows long and sudden on new discovered walls
revealed by morning sun a prison, vast but roofless
in one direction alone the hope of freedom was held
above us stretched an alluring, crisp sheet of sky

from his fertile mind, full-blown, the idea emerged
a brief, bright flare in the forge of his famous cunning
delicate and difficult were the means of our egress
feathers and wax he found by the faith he had fostered

neither too high nor too low he constantly cautioned
moisture at one end, heat at the other threatened
the fastening and weight of the wings he had fashioned
with slow, prudent purpose; yet mine fluttered impatient

the thrill and the glory of it, the feathered ease
as I sailed higher than ever, higher even than he
blue worlds surround me, ocean, heaven, weave and whirl
I beat my exultant wings... higher, they say, higher

a dripping of the loosened wax, a scattering of feathers
headlong flung, furious falling, wings and limbs atangle
no ears to hear the swift spiral splash of my plucked ball of body
no eyes to see the carpet of seaweed close and congeal as waters swallow me

- Hari Meyers

[Larry Robinson]

Last Adam on 14th St

On the way to the optometrist inadvertently
I cut in front of a woman hurrying
towards a subway turnstile —
Jesus Fucking Christ
she mutters; immediately, I see
The King of Kings on the platform,
chaste in desert schmered schmatta,
head covered in the world’s greatest hoodie.

He jukes around the station as if manifesting
survival of the stylish—
pushing the masses right and left,
branding them sheep and goat,
thanking the mutton for feeding the hungry,
binding the horns of selfish cloven hoofed billys.

The carpenter’s a genie,
minimizing razzle-dazzle,
magnifying maggots,
meat of the matter—
not what I expected to see
on my way
for bifocals.

Stand clear of the closing doors,

My visual field
has expanded
in ways
inexplicable.

Twenty dollar copayment!

Have a vision once,
expect another,

bumping into the Anointed One
blessing his caffeinated flock
in an wireless hole.

Ah, if He and I never meet again,
I’ll search for sourdough
and bits of herring
on laps of bleary-eyed commuters

Why do I more joyfully give directions
to a stranger then high five
a methadone raving beggar?

Guide me, Rabbi . . .

- Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

Bird Prophet Rising


Since you are asking who will save the Earth,
I’ll tell you right now-- it won’t be some holy Jehovah,
or the particle physicists, or the pimping politicos,
or anything high and mighty floating in the sky above you,
but the earth itself lifting its frilly skirt, curling past
the idiot brain, plunging clean to lung, to gut, to feet.

And then, go figure, those feet will start dancing https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-01-19_10-52-24.png
like Bojangles, and the gut, forgetting all about
the God in heaven, will pen breathless love letters
to the mud it’s made of, and the lungs will burst
their bloody balloons with such a pure and plangent
draught that even the idiot brain will throb in its skull
like the northern lights.

Mark my words, the eighty percent of your gray-matter
that is currently incommunicado, this planet is about
to colonize like some Plymouth Rock in drag.
The pilgrims will toss their bloody crucifixes for kindling,
and the Injuns are going to bake them a Sweet Jesus
mashed from cornmeal and the wheeling stars.

And these shall be the signs of it-- somewhere a CEO
will wake up stammering, “There never was a lotus
that lowballed the mud.” And a Five Star General
will declare, “The sun never called the rain its enemy.”
And somewhere a jilted lover will confide,
“The rose doesn’t feel cheated when the bee absconds
with its fragrance.” And a geezer will exclaim,
“The waxing moon and the waning moon
are the very same moon.”

That’s right-- from that day onwards the following
will be deemed proofs of God’s existence:
that the river never runs away from the sea;
that a pine has yet to hoard its own cones;
that the hummingbird fits the flower;
that the grain doesn’t refuse the reaper;
that the winter never forgets the spring.

And, finally, that the big-brained dummy
who does indeed forget everything,
just remembered that he forgot it.
He’s asked a little birdie to remind him.
That bird is about to spill the beans.

- Richard Schiffman

[Larry Robinson]

Fresh

To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.
To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.
Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.
What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

The Good Life

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
There are the wind’s sighs that are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the tree outside.
The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.
The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climates of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.

- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

In the Museum of Your Last Day


There is a coat on a coat hook in a hall. Work-gloves
in the pockets, pliers and bent nails.

There is a case of Quaker State for the Ford.
Two cans of spray paint in a crisp brown bag.

A mug on a book by the hi-fi.
A disk that starts on its own: Boccherini.

There is a dent in the soap the shape of your thumb.
A swirl in the glass when it fogs.

And a gray hair that twines
through the tines of a little black comb.

There is a watch laid smooth on a wallet.
And pairs of your shoes everywhere.

A phone no one answers. A note that says Friday.
Your voice on the tape talking softly.

- Patrick Phillips

[Larry Robinson]

When You Are Oldhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-01-23_10-13-16.png

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

that day


for bill kortum


down pouredhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-01-24_15-04-45.png
the rain
backlit
shimmering drops
puddle smash


the edge
is seen
unknown
to fear
your pace
is relative


cast
your legacy
far wide
everywhere
in between


your presence
in the present
made
future sense


fierce kind
effective
gentleman warrior.


- Richard Retecki

[Larry Robinson]

for bill


he is felt
in the whispering cold
of a thousand scenes
the warmth of summer suns
in shadows that sail
up Sonoma Mountain
the crimson fire
of coastal sunsets
the green silence
of Armstrong Woods
in the bird fest
of the Bay Front Marshes
in the tight angular landscape
of the Valley of the Moon
in the wind shaped hills
of the Merced Hills
in the slithering stream
of the Russian River
in the tight light vistas
of Knights Valley and Mark West
in the ruggedness
of the Mayacamas and Mendocino Highlands
in the patterned rolling
of Alexander Valley
in the sulpherness
of the Cedars


communities vital pulsing
he is felt
and remembered
in all these places and more.


- Richard Retecki

[Larry Robinson]

Sometimes you pick up the newspaper and you think it’s Cain and Abel out there. But sometimes it feels as though it’s Cain against Cain. You can’t tell who’s the good guy.
Nadeem Aslam


Brothers


When there's not enough to eat,
nothing to feed the spirit,
to clothe the mind in novelty,
we wander.
Migratory animals,


We step into occupied
Territory, call it our own,
Plant crops, rape
The women, the land.
We reap our rewards, turn


Blind to acrimony,
Centuries of injury.
Our defeated brothers and sisters
Plant revenge, seek to sow
Justice. What god


Exalts one brother over
The other? Blesses one then,
Curses the other
So peace can never
be possible?


In all of us: a Cain,
condemned by god—
Rejected, vilified brother,
Jealous of our brother, made so
By our jealous god.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

We are Transmitters

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

There Are Some Things You Just Don’t Talk About

Fresh cut greens. The house sweeter,
This time of year, with cookies
gingerbread, candy canes and cinnamon.
She woke up earlier than her sister, and
They crept downstairs. The tree, a candle in the dark.

Christmas morning and the fat tree was flaming
tinsel and multicolored lights, topped
by an electric star, real icicles frozen in the window
like teeth, and snow drifting up like a tongue.
The house was silent with unspoken words.

She wanted a different bride doll than the one she got,
One more delicate, with finer features and porcelain skin
A dress with more lace, less satin, more petticoats,
ringlets that were vertical, the blonde paler
than this honey hair that hugged the doll’s fresh face.
Her mother had chosen the wrong one, and
She feels guilty her about her own deep longings.
Her mother is in the hospital still bleeding.

She can see that her father was young then with thick
John Kennedy hair, horn-rimmed glasses,
A plaid wool robe and a misleading smile, caught
In the black and white picture, from that day to this!
That Christmas, had to go on for our sake, despite
The still birth. No words to soften the winter edge to the air.

Thinking of it now the emotions are deckled edges,
the memory is an old photograph of her first imperfect Christmas.
Nothing can be done now to make it better but compassion.

- Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

Women Without Facelifts

Their smiles are strikingly similar. Withouthttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-01-29_13-37-04.png
vanity's masks and the veil of self conscious,
their wrinkly lips are lithe and unabashed.
Released at long last from image anxiety,
their glances are permeable, resonant, maps of
song lines and good will. The feast is in the
moment -- amusing, inevitable, tender or harsh
and all that's galling isn't worth the trouble.
Silence is power, grief a B Minor blues, and
sensuality? -- think evergreen branches awash
in warm summer afternoon rain. And to laugh!
is to vanish away into never and always,
cells and cymbal selves circling and winking
like fireflies, like frost breath, like stars.

- Cynthia Poten

[Larry Robinson]

The Book


Each heart carries the true book of its life.
Torn pages, a broken binding,
underlined or blacked-out passages, sure --
but the book, flapping in wind and rain
or lying open in a sunlit garden whispers
faintly as a pigeon's wing-beat across
a sunrise bay: This book is true.


We think we can read it through
the glare our own lives make. We think
we can write and read the story we are in
though the story drifts away with each telling
over cocktails, updated resume or paid obituary:
Those easy words that push away the true.


The book shadows the shadows our bodies make.
It refuses to sneeze in our dust turned to dust.
This is the book, in the end, we cannot read.
This is the book, from the beginning, that reads us.
Clasped to our breast like a romantic folly
we take to the grave where it is never so true.


- Mike Dillon

[Larry Robinson]

Phoenix

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,https://fedgeno.com/chronos/chronos1_files/phoenix.jpg
made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.
The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice


disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers' ties
with the sword of death


put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom


crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden


how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting


how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Ghazal 1591, translated by Nader Khalili)






In less than ten days, on Saturday, February 7, lovers of the spoken word from all over the Bay Area will arrive at Rumi's Caravan to refuel with the beauty, mystery, and wisdom of Rumi, Hafiz, and the mystic poets.

We always see a surge in demand for tickets during the final week. And, sadly, in recent years, we've had to turn folks away for lack of seats.

Now, therefore, is the best time to invite friends to join you or to recommend tickets to folks who would also appreciate the celebration.

In order to accommodate everyone who wants to come, we added a 3 pm matinee performance this year.

And we've also just announced a special Group Rate for groups of six or more for the matinee. We trust this will satisfy the demand for seats.

TICKETS are available online at https://rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com (https://rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com/)

These events are benefits/fundraisers for the Center for Climate Protection.

We are deeply grateful for this opportunity to co-create with you an experience so beautifully expressed by Artistic Director Kay Crista:

"With ecstatic poetry, a potency of feeling slips in with the words, bypasses the brain, pierces the heart, and enters directly into the soul . . . and we are uplifted, effortlessly, like grace."

We look forward to soul-lifting with you.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” ~ Rumi

PS, To learn more about Rumi’s Caravan, please “like” our page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan (https://www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan)

[Larry Robinson]

Animal Graves


The mower flipped it belly up,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-02_10-55-09.png
a baby garter less than a foot long,
dull green with a single sharp

stripe of pale manila down its back,
same color as the underside
which was cut in two places,

a loop of intestine poking out.

It wouldn't live,
so I ran the blades over it again,

and cut it again but didn’t kill it,

and again and then again,
a cloud of two-cycle fuel smoke
on me like a swarm of bees.

It took so long
my mind had time to spiral
back to the graveyard

I tended as a child
for the dead ones, wild and tame:
fish from the bubbling green aquarium,

squirrels from the road,
the bluejay stalked to a raucous death
by Cicero the patient, the tireless hunter,

who himself was laid to rest
one August afternoon
under a rock painted gray, his color,

with a white splash for his white splash.

Once in the woods I found the skeleton
of a deer laid out like a diagram,

long spine curved like a necklace of crude, ochre spools
with the string rotted away,

and the dull metal shaft of the arrow
lying where it must have pierced

not the heart, not the head,
but the underbelly, the soft part
where the sex once was.

I carried home the skull
with its nubs of not-yet-horns
which the mice had overlooked,

and set it on a rock
in my kingdom of the dead.

Before I chopped the little snake
to bits of raw mosaic,

it drew itself
into an upward-straining coil,
head weaving, mouth open,

hissing at the noise that hurt it.

The stripe was made
of tiny paper diamonds,
sharp-edged but insubstantial,

like an x-ray of the spine
or the ghost beginning to pull away.

What taught the snake to make itself
seem bigger than it was,
to spend those last few seconds

dancing in the roar
and shadow of its death?

Now I see, though none exists,
its grave:

harebells withered in a jar,
a yellow spiral
painted on a green-black stone,

a ring of upright pine cones for a fence.
That’s how the deer skull lay in state

until one of the neighborhood dogs
came to claim it,

and carried it off to bury
in the larger graveyard of the world.

- Chase Twichell

[Larry Robinson]

The deer lay down their bones


I followed the narrow cliff side trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clambered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
Hung like a bird's nest on the precipice brink a small hidden clearing,
Grass and a shallow pool. But all about there were bones lying in the grass,clean bones and stinking bones,
Antlers and bones: I understood that the place was a refuge for wounded deer; there are so many
Hurt ones escape the hunters and limp away to lie hidden; here they have water for the awful thirst
And peace to die in; dense green laurel and grim cliff
Make sanctuary, and a sweet wind blows upward from the deep gorge. - I wish my bones were with theirs.
But that's a foolish thing to confess, and a little cowardly. We know that life
Is on the whole quite equally good and bad, mostly gray neutral, and can be endured
To the dim end, no matter what magic of grass, water and precipice, and pain of wounds,
Makes death look dear. We have been given life and have used it - not a great gift perhaps - but in honesty
Should use it all. Mine's empty since my love died - Empty? The flame-haired grandchild with great blue eyes
That look like hers? - What can I do for the child? I gaze at her and wonder what sort of man
In the fall of the world . . . I am growing old, that is the trouble. My children and little grandchildren
Will find their way, and why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-seven, ten years more or less,
Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf
Who has lost his mate? - I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision: who drinks the wine
Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment
New discovery may lie. The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
bones: I must wear mine.


- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-04_11-25-42.png
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

- Jelalludin Rumi


Rumi's Caravan posted in 15th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION of MYSTIC POETRY – Three Events in One Day – Please RSVP & Share (https://www.facebook.com/n/?events%2F1585583911671679%2Fpermalink%2F1604793886417348%2F&aref=345754985&medium=email&mid=b3b49ffG221f7683G149bcd69Ge5G3ee6&bcode=1.1423002834.AbnbE7E3MMrug74U&n_m=lrobpoet%40sonic.net)

Rumi's Caravan (https://www.facebook.com/n/?profile.php&id=459828594127905&aref=345754985&medium=email&mid=b3b49ffG221f7683G149bcd69Ge5G3ee6&bcode=1.1423002834.AbnbE7E3MMrug74U&n_m=lrobpoet%40sonic.net)

It looks likely that the 7 pm show may sell out. Good seats remain for the 3 pm Matinee. Matinee seats are $20* (*$10 per ticket when bought for a group of six or more. Tea and home-made cake included for about the price of a movie.)

[Larry Robinson]

The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune


Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.


The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others:
they act only from the self -
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Silence Of The World

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover,
no more angelic beings left to be kissed
into the claustrophobia of flesh,
no more temples giving light
from open doors into bitter winter nights, no more
curious weasel who leaves
her black ring frozen in the air,
no more tooth that gnaws through gum and bones into
the cathedral of the mouth.
No more splat when singer spits
mouthwash into the washbasin after the concert,
no more “Quit yer bawlin!”
from punk principal to slob schoolboy
when sore mother hauls
small boy into classroom by sore ear.
No more young woman in large hat in profile
in afternoon light saying, “So what, darling?
I don’t hate you. I love you. So what?”
No more flutesman trudging through snow
on 125th Street on the last Sunday morning of his jeopardy.
No more husband saying, “Snack bar’s the other way.”
No more wife replying, “You aren’t going to eat again, are you?”
No more husband replying, “I don’t want to eat,
I was just telling you where the snack bar is.”
No more wife replying, “For Chrissake! I know where it is.”
No more caesura or else everything one endless caesura,
no more feminine rhyme such as “lattice” and “thereat is,”
no more parallelismus membrorum panting in one ear,
no more Neruda’s slowly deepening voice saying,
“Federico, te acuerdas, debajo de la tierra . . .”
From across the valley the thud of an axe
arrives later than its strike
and the call of goodbye slowly separates itself
little by little from the vocal chords of everything.

- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you've broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come.


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Coleman Barks translation)








Rumi's Caravan (https://www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan/photos/a.460399960737435.1073741829.459828594127905/662314977212598/?type=1&fref=nf)
LADIES and GENTLEMEN, please welcome Rumi’s Caravan.
The Caravan has traveled across exotic cultures and belief systems, forward to the future and back to the origins of the cosmos. Along the way, it’s picked up the wisdom of the sages, learned by heart the voices of loving-kindness, and experienced the ecstasy of union with the divine.
Now, the Caravan and its band of god-intoxicated drunkards is pulling into Santa Rosa to unpack its precious cargo.
There is still room in the tent for a few souls who long to participate in the beauty and mystery of the two worlds. Come co-create with us a heart-opening experience.
“Ours is not a caravan of despair,” – Rumi.
ONLY 1 DAY LEFT - Some good seats remain
TICKETS: rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com. (https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Frumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com%2F&h=SAQH2bqNT&enc=AZMMQjIcaD3C4sxtYMxvXZ2RUGacah4d-nMg7-cyy9nrgJUi0YBu1Darthlyc6jbCuOeNeqlvvJk6pcvfbbqKLLf42S7js9W81L6ota48tAbX4gfpH1CegrnXq5NFfatOPzMFpIe8Dv6dXg3zIsJHCoEGzhH70SXKXpxlLeU4NxdtA&s=1)
- 3 pm Matinee - $20* (*And only $10 per ticket when bought for a group of six or more. Tea and home-made cake included for about the price of a movie. Bring a caravan to the Caravan!)
- 7 pm Performance - $35
LEARN MORE: www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/ (https://www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/?ref=22)

[Larry Robinson]

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

- Robert Creeley

[Roland Jacopetti]

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
...
- Robert Creeley

What a beautiful Creeley poem, Larry. He was part of the local scene when we lived in Bolinas 1970-74. The town, with its close community and artists of all sorts part of daily life, was a lot like Sebastopol. Thank you!

[Larry Robinson]

The Icelandic Language

In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.

But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.

The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.

In this language, you can't chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.

Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.


- Bill Holm

[Roland Jacopetti]

Quadruple gratitude, Larry!


The Icelandic Language

In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

...

[Larry Robinson]

Magic Words


In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[sandoak]

Thank you, Larry. "Icelandic Language" and "Magic Words" are perennial soul favorites.

29844


Magic Words


In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[Larry Robinson]

I Happened To Be Standing
I don't know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can't really
call being alive
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don't know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don't. That's your business.
But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be
if it isn't a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.


- Mary Oliver

[BManna]

Fascinating. The "other Indian" (of India) culture also tells of a time (Sat Yuga, era of Truth) when beings were so pure that their words would manifest. Thank you Larry.


Magic Words

In the very earliest time, 29844
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[Larry Robinson]

Complaints


The dead complain we lack
the skill to keep them buried.
But that's the grave's job
and there's no safe burial ground.
They'll shine up through the earth
spreading their affection.


They're offered refuge
under markers and memorials
but they refuse and wait
for us in unlit places
tapping their white canes
with the terrible patience
of those possessing time.


In the slow caress of years,
our weight is doubled by
the burden of others
we cultivate and carry,
and deep in the future
our children keep us alive.


- Ruth Daigon

[sandoak]

Beautiful poem, Larry. Here's a related painting, Fox Walks with Those Who Are Gone But Still Loved:

29870

You can see it at Sebastopol Gallery.


Complaints


The dead complain we lack
the skill to keep them buried.
But that's the grave's job
and there's no safe burial ground.
They'll shine up through the earth
spreading their affection.


They're offered refuge
under markers and memorials
but they refuse and wait
for us in unlit places
tapping their white canes
with the terrible patience
of those possessing time.


In the slow caress of years,
our weight is doubled by
the burden of others
we cultivate and carry,
and deep in the future
our children keep us alive.


- Ruth Daigon

[Larry Robinson]

<tbody>
Water Comes Upon Us


We wander the blossom filled meadow
of a newly birthed common
spring in our blood, the taste of spring

on our skin, in our hair. Spring is in
the songs of the wending words
floating between us, words taken

from the latest film, the latest book, the news.
We give each other the music of our mouths,
hard land crunching beneath our heels,

note the young trees with their first blooms.
For decades I have watched you - young girl
in a frilly dress belted by guns and holsters -

leap from the blue bridge into the Niagara.
Your determination was a lovely dive,
a dare, your platinum hair an unwilling

accessory to grace. As you flew off
between paper mill and docks, I climbed hills
backwards to face the bay, my Golden Gate.

We hadn't met, of course, but I thought
I heard you say, Lean into me like a wave.
We rode the water as the water wanted -

smooth at times, then rough. Stars landed their light
on the slick deep blue of it
or turned to us their black backs.

We walk and I say The apple blossoms of young trees
fade so soon, but you are in the middle of a story
pulling a girl to shore, pulling me, those falls

roaring in the distance, and I know,
as that water always knew, something about
electricity, how we'd go over together.

- Katherine Hastings

</tbody>

[Larry Robinson]

Meeting at Night


The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.


Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
- Robert Browning

[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

[BothSidesNow]

Oh, YES, thank you for this, Larry--one of my favorites of all time--surely one of the greatest, loveliest poems of all time. Janet


The Song of Wandering Aengus
...

[Larry Robinson]

Premonition At Twilight


The magpie in the Joshua tree
Has come to rest. Darkness collects,
And what I cannot hear or see,
Broken limbs, the curious bird,
Become in darkness darkness too.
I had been going when I heard
The sound of something called the night;
I had been going but I stopped
To see the bird restrain his flight.
The bird in place, the shadows dropped
As if they waited in the light
Before I came for centuries
For something I could never see;
And what it was became itself,
And then the bird, and then the tree;
And then the force behind the breeze
Became at last the whole of me.


- Philip Levine
(1928-2015)

[Larry Robinson]

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night


No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
against our faces and mixing with your tears
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and your mouth soft and warm
no moon no stars no jagged pain
of lightning only my impotent tongue
and the red rage within my brain
knowing that the chilling rain was our forever
even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man
with no certainties but love and history.”
“But our children must grow up with certainties
and they will make the revolution.”
“By example we must show the way so plain
that our children can go neither right
nor left but straight to freedom.”
“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and praying that like the rain
returns to the sky you would return to me again.


- Etheridge Knight

[Timothy Gega]

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night


No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
against our faces and mixing with your tears
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and your mouth soft and warm
no moon no stars no jagged pain
of lightning only my impotent tongue
and the red rage within my brain
knowing that the chilling rain was our forever
even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man
with no certainties but love and history.”
“But our children must grow up with certainties
and they will make the revolution.”
“By example we must show the way so plain
that our children can go neither right
nor left but straight to freedom.”
“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and praying that like the rain
returns to the sky you would return to me again.


- Etheridge Knight

What a beautiful poem, Larry.:heart:

[Larry Robinson]

<tbody>
An Abandoned Factory, Detroit


The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.


Beyond, through broken windows one can see
Where the great presses paused between their strokes
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught
In the sure margin of eternity.
The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes
Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought,


And estimates the loss of human power,
Experienced and slow, the loss of years,
The gradual decay of dignity.
Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour;
Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears
Which might have served to grind their eulogy.


- Philip Levine


</tbody>

[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 hill
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]

I Know the Truth

I know the truth – forget all other truths!
No need for anyone on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what will you say, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep beneath the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.


- Marina Tsvetaeva

[Larry Robinson]

Give It Time


The river is of the earth
and it is free. It is rigorously
embanked and bound,
and yet is free. "To hell
with restraint," it says.
"I have got to be going."
It will grind out its dams.
It will go over or around them.
They will become pieces.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Eatin' With Sticks


When you think about it,
eatin’ with sticks
is the natural thing to do;


that is, without getting all
sociological about it,
it makes logical sense


to handle your food
with these smooth extensions
of your fleshy fingers --


that way, the hot
is truly cool,
bit by hit making its way


south to your mouth
as you choose
what you chews,


chowing down on, say,
succulent shoots of bamboo
with sticks of bamboo


as you come full circle
in the ecological
sense of things,


which makes good sense
and shouldn’t
bamboozle any bambino


with a lick of sense,
a lick of taste,
and elders demonstrating


the social, logical value
of a world not to waste,
slash, stab at random,


not to just scoop around
like so many grains
of surplus and plenty.


Moreover, sticks
are never alone --
as in “sticks together,”


they are paired
like the very stereo
parts of the body --


arms, hands, legs, feet,
ears, eyes, molars,
nostrils of the nose,


with all of those
working together ricely,
in sync, as we eat. . .


But wait -- what’s missing?
Right -- a whole person
does not a society make. . .


Thus, as any unshaven sage
in a mountain hermitage
will instruct you,


“You need a bowl, baby!”
Which is to say,
“You can’t go it alone!”


And even a hermit
wouldn’t be here
if it weren’t for


sticks and bowls,
the whole enchilada
of Yin and Yang,


of boys and girls,
of what makes the world
worth sitting down with,


wherever you are,
blessing the bowl
of food, community,


collective memory,
creative heritage,
the grains, the noodles


that wouldn’t have it
any other way:
“Eat us with STICKS!”


- Lawson Fusao Inada

[BothSidesNow]

This one is just pure fun--all the wordplay and luscious echoing sounds (without getting all / sociological about it, which I'd rather not, too). Thanks, Larry. Janet


Eatin' With Sticks

When you think about it,
eatin’ with sticks
is the natural thing to do;
...

[Larry Robinson]

Difference


The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures,
these elaborate sacks


of nothing? All they seem
is shape, and shifting,
and though a whole troop


of undulant cousins
go about their business
within a single wave's span,


every one does something unlike:
this one a balloon
open on both ends


but swollen to its full expanse,
this one a breathing heart,
this a pulsing flower.


This one a rolled condom,
or a plastic purse swallowing itself,
that one a Tiffany shade,


this a troubled parasol.
This submarine opera's
all subterfuge and disguise,


its plot a fabulous tangle
of hiding and recognition:
nothing but trope,


nothing but something
forming itself into figures
then refiguring,


sheer ectoplasm
recognizable only as the stuff
of metaphor. What can words do


but link what we know
to what we don't,
and so form a shape?


Which shrinks or swells,
configures or collapses, blooms
even as it is described


into some unlikely
marine chiffon:
a gown for Isadora?


Nothing but style.
What binds
one shape to another


also sets them apart
— but what's lovelier
than the shapeshifting


transparence of like and as:
clear, undulant words?
We look at alien grace,


unfettered
by any determined form,
and we say: balloon, flower,


heart, condom, opera,
lampshade, parasol, ballet.
Hear how the mouth,


so full
of longing for the world,
changes its shape?


- Mark Doty

[BothSidesNow]

Hear how the poet, the real poet, so full/ of longing for the world, gives the world shape and sound, through the labor of love. Thank you, Mark Doty--and Larry. Janet


Difference

The jellyfish
float in the bay shallows
like schools of clouds,
a dozen identical — is it right
to call them creatures,
these elaborate sacks

...

[Larry Robinson]

Meditation on a Sonoma County Rosehttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-24_14-07-43.png
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-24_14-02-06-1.png



In February I'd tended to her rising buds

and took only what she would give me.

Then stepping back for a moment

I stared long at her bare arms

reaching skyward in solemn promise.


Already, her awakening spoke of Spring,

remembering deep roots, warm soil,

a blue and future sky.


Not until the first of May were my attentions

rewarded full circle:

ecstatic and irresistable,

one delirously pink vortex burst open,

sweeping me away

in whispered crescendos of

perfumed applause.


- Larry Kenneth Potts

[Larry Robinson]

February

Winter. Time to eat fathttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-25_10-21-43-1.png
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around herehttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-02-25_10-23-46.png
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and the pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
- Margaret Atwood

[Larry Robinson]

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers . . .

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

- Michael Ondaatje

[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]

The Soldiers in the Garden



Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.

The poet was dying;
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said;
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to senor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
the lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the soldiers
vanish from the garden.


- Martin Espada

[Larry Robinson]

Kyoto: March
A few light flakes of snow
Fall in the feeble sun;
Birds sing in the cold,
A warbler by the wall. The plum
Buds tight and chill soon bloom.
The moon begins first
Fourth, a faint slice west
At nightfall. Jupiter half-way
High at the end of night-
Meditation. The dove cry
Twangs like a bow.
At dawn Mt. Hiei dusted white
On top; in the clear air
Folds of all the gullied green
Hills around the town are sharp,
Breath stings. Beneath the roofs
Of frosty houses
Lovers part, from tangle warm
Of gentle bodies under quilt
And crack the icy water to the face
And wake and feed the children
And grandchildren that they love.


- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

True North


That other compasshttps://www.yourinnercompass.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/.pond/compassquilt.jpg.w300h299.jpg
you bought in the city
is no good to you now.
Before darkness comes
give it away.


Pause in your confusion.
Stand quiet in the fading light.


Say, "I am lost."
Say, "Where is my life waiting?"
Say, "I want an answer!"


Then, in the gathering dusk,
some quiet part of you
may begin to open.


Call it your inner compass rose.


Call it the home of your true north,
as constant as Polaris
in the night sky.


If there is an aroma
faint in the evening breeze
take a grateful breath and
move in that direction.


Your road will be there,
glowing in the moonlight.


Say, "Thank you for this blossom."

Your compass rose has opened.
You must go north.


- Doug Von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-03-02_13-22-41.pngYou are cordially invited to join us for a soul-nourishing afternoon of poetry read and recited by your friends and neighbors.

The Sebastopol Center for the Arts is hosting its annual Favorite Poems gathering this coming
Sunday, March 8 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.

Sebastopol Center For the Arts


Directions (https://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?rtp=adr.~pos.38.4001388549805_-122.825286865234_282+S.+High+Street%2c+Sebastopol%2c+CA+95472_Sebastopol+Center+For+the+Arts_(707)+829-4797&where1=282+S.+High+Street%2c+Sebastopol%2c+CA+95472)Website (https://www.sebarts.org/)



Address: 282 S. High Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (https://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?cp=38.40014~-122.8253&where1=Sebastopol%20Center%20For%20the%20Arts&ss=ypid.YN873x3531631427756548030&FORM=SNAPST)

[Larry Robinson]

Language in the Mouth of the Enemy


I am afraid that this poem
will contribute to the destruction of Israel.
I am afraid that if I visit Adel Handal and his family
in Bethlehem one more time
I am betraying the Jewish state.
If I go to Daher's Vineyard and plant an olive tree,
if I teach the women of Nahalin poetry,
if I give voice to their rage,
what great-aunt of mine shot in the back
before an unmarked grave will have died then,
again for nothing?
If I love the suffering of the Palestinians - it is so bright -
more than the suffering of my own,
if I work for a better life for that dark-eyed boy
in Aida refugee camp who chased after our bus with arms
spread like a hawk's wing-span - who lifted a finger
to save the child in Warsaw, Lodz, Berlin? -
If that boy grows strong and straps a bomb
or worse, writes an article, a play, the perfect
argument against the Jewish state
then what have I done? What have I
done? What have
I done?


- Elana Bell

[wingpoet]

Elana is one of my favorite poets, and this one of my favorite poems. Thanks for giving it a wider audience, Larry.


Language in the Mouth of the Enemy

I am afraid that this poem
...

- Elana Bell

[Larry Robinson]

i keep trying

i can’t

my pen keeps tearing the paper

anger
hurt
grief

bears down

were I using a quill
my paper would be
a failed sumi painting

the sun shines through our breakfast window

isis atrocities continue unabated
not just the beheadings
but the everyday killing of old ones and children
infants

my wife loves me

no longer a democracy
america prioritizes
the fortunes of a few
above the rest of us
crumbling roads and bridges
no jobs for desperate youth

i love my parents

steve,
you’ve wrought
elegant white earbuds
covering brains
that craze
when exposed to 30 minutes




of silence



faulkner said
man will prevail

over flooded cities
drought
firestorms
famines

our young buckeye trees
leaf out
in bright green

what
i scream
am I to do
with this pen


- Trout Black

[Larry Robinson]

If You Knew

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

- Ellen Bass

[BothSidesNow]

Oh! Such wisdom, its images & narratives so strong they might actually stick, for once.
If We Knew. (If we remembered.) Thank you, Larry. Janet


If You Knew...

[Larry Robinson]

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour


Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.


- Wallace Stevens

[Larry Robinson]

Elegy for the Living

We wash up side by side
to find each other

in the speakable world,
and, lulled into sense,

inhabit our landscape;
the curve

of that chair draped
with your shirt;

my glass of  water
seeded overnight with air.

After this bed
there’ll be another,

so we’ll roll
and keep rolling

until one of  us
will roll alone and try to roll

the other back — a trick
no one’s yet pulled off — 

and it’ll be
as if   I dreamed you, dear,

as if   I dreamed this bed,
our touching limbs,

this room, the tree outside alive
with new wet light.

Not now. Not yet.

- Kathryn Simmonds

[Larry Robinson]

Being a Person


Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here to make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone's dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn't be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important. How you
listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Great Blue Heron


As I wandered on the beachhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-03-09_09-36-29-2.png
I saw the heron standing
Sunk in the tattered wings
He wore as a hunchback’s coat.
Shadow without a shadow,
Hung on invisible wires
From the top of a canvas day,
What scissors cut him out?
Superimposed on a poster
Of summer by the strand
Of a long-decayed resort,
Poised in the dusty light
Some fifteen summers ago;
I wondered, an empty child,
“Heron, whose ghost are you?”


I stood on the beach alone,
In the sudden chill of the burned.
My thought raced up the path.
Pursuing it, I ran
To my mother in the house
And led her to the scene.
The spectral bird was gone.
But her quick eye saw him drifting
Over the highest pines
On vast, unmoving wings.
Could they be those ashen things,
So grounded, unwieldy, ragged,
A pair of broken arms
That were not made for flight?
In the middle of my loss
I realized she knew:
My mother knew what he was.


O great blue heron, now
That the summer house has burned
So many rockets ago,
So many smokes and fires
And beach-lights and water-glow
Reflecting pinwheel and flare:
The old logs hauled away,
The pines and driftwood cleared
From that bare strip of shore
Where dozens of children play;
Now there is only you
Heavy upon my eye.
Why have you followed me here,
Heavy and far away?
You have stood there patiently
For fifteen summers and snows,
Denser than my repose,
Bleaker than any dream,
Waiting upon the day
When, like grey smoke, a vapor
Floating into the sky,
A handful of paper ashes,
My mother would drift away.


- Carolyn Kizer

[Larry Robinson]

Note to Self: How to Receive Love


Do not shrug offhttps://www.aamft.org/imis15/Images/ConUpdates/grandparent_child_op.jpg
the gift of the
stranger’s smile,
the friend’s embrace,
the grandchild’s hand
in yours.
There are so many ways
to receive love.
All of the offerings,
small and not-so-small,
together could fill
and nourish
your hungry heart,
if only you would
recognize and
welcome them in.

All your life
you have wished to be
one of those regarded as
open-hearted and loving,
The truth is,
it is not that
you give insufficiently.
It is that you do not
replenish the supply
by accepting fully
and consciously
all that is offered
to you.


- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

Shakespeare’s Flowers

Now in February Alstroemeria repossesses spring.
One day the scholars will not pour these words.
The command of nature was never mine.
But that is not to say these flowers, here,
now, alive in their glass, whose waters
their green leaves sully, are not as these poems,
cut, stripped, placed in this glass of verse and
do not speak with what my whole life knows.
- Bruce Moody

[Larry Robinson]

<tbody>
Animals Are Passing From Our Lives


It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.


I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers


that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,


suffering the consumers
who won't meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes


that any moment I'll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife


discovering television,
or that I'll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.


- Philip Levine


</tbody>

[Larry Robinson]

Desire


A woman in my class wrote that she is sickhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=30316&stc=1
of men wanting her body and when she reads
her poem out loud the other women all nod
and even some of the men lower their eyes

and look abashed as if ready to unscrew
their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads
with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none
would think of confessing his hunger

or admit how desire can ring like a constant
low note in the brain or grant how the sight
of a beautiful woman can make him groan
on those first spring days when the parkas

have been packed away and the bodies are staring
at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;
and there was a man I knew who even at ninety
swore that his desire had never diminished.

Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
and the world flares up in an explosion of light?

Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
of their desire, as if each were a criminal
out on parole, a desperado with a long record
of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes

each one from all but the worst company,
and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?

But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,
the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve

of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
and fat possibility swaggers into the world
like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes

the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
for closure, for the completion of the circle,

as if each of us were born only half a body
and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X

across its bald head, to hold out a hand
for each passing woman to slap? Better
to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous

or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination

and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
relief from the self, the prisoner let out
into a small square of sunlight with a single
red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back

against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming
in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?

- Stephen Dobyns

[Larry Robinson]

Born Again Poet

I feel like a born again poet viewinghttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=30341&stc=1
the world with fresh enthusiasm.
Inertia has lifted and my fingers
type with vigor and readiness.
Thoughts deluge the page like a
downpour after a drought and
poems, like spring buds, emerge
with curiosity and longing for
fullness, for expansion. I fantasize
being a word wizard, wearing a sorceror’s
cloak, & pointed hat replete with moon
and stars, depicting whole galaxies
yet to be explored, extending my
arms and, shazam! flowery phrases
shooting out of my fingertips and
dancing on the page. It’s a thought-
stream love affair, a sacred marriage,
and I have been carried over a threshold
from which I may never return.

- Constance Miles

[Califoon]

Gosh, I really appreciate the subjects raised here. Thank you Larry. I wish I were comfortable passing it on to my facebook stream, I'd like to stimulate more conversation on the subject. :thumbsup:


Desire


A woman in my class wrote that she is sickhttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=30316&stc=1
of men wanting her body and when she reads
her poem out loud the other women all nod
and even some of the men lower their eyes

and look abashed as if ready to unscrew
their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads
with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none
would think of confessing his hunger

or admit how desire can ring like a constant
low note in the brain or grant how the sight
of a beautiful woman can make him groan
on those first spring days when the parkas

have been packed away and the bodies are staring
at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;
and there was a man I knew who even at ninety
swore that his desire had never diminished.

Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
and the world flares up in an explosion of light?

Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
of their desire, as if each were a criminal
out on parole, a desperado with a long record
of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes

each one from all but the worst company,
and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?

But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,
the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve

of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
and fat possibility swaggers into the world
like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes

the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
for closure, for the completion of the circle,

as if each of us were born only half a body
and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X

across its bald head, to hold out a hand
for each passing woman to slap? Better
to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous

or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination

and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
relief from the self, the prisoner let out
into a small square of sunlight with a single
red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back

against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming
in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?

- Stephen Dobyns

[Larry Robinson]

Hope and Love
All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the customs of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark.
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.


- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

The Necklace

Take, from my palms, for joy, for ease,
A little honey, a little sun,
That we may obey Persephone’s bees.

You can’t untie a boat unmoored.
Fur-shod shadows can’t be heard,
Nor terror, in this life, mastered.

Love, what’s left for us, and of us, is this
Living remnant, loving revenant, brief kiss
Like a bee flying completed dying hiveless

To find in the forest’s heart a home,
Night’s never-ending hum,
Thriving on meadowsweet, mint, and time.

Take, for all that is good, for all that is gone,
That it may lie rough and real against your collarbone,
This string of bees, that once turned honey into sun.


- Osip Mandelstam
(Translated by Christian Wiman)

[Larry Robinson]

Before The Men's Retreat


She asks: “What is it?”
And I say: “100 men naked in the woods.”
She wrinkles her nose and says: “No clothes?”
And I say: “Sometimes.”
And she says: “What do you do?”
I say: First we removed the coat of corporate soldier, of worker
bee, of boss, of coach, of business owner.
Then we pull off the jacket of marriage.
Toss aside the shoes of parenthood.
The umbrella of son.
The backpack of friend.
The helmet of hero, savior, tough guy.
We pull from our pockets the mantle of lady’s man, lover,
slayer of the weaker sex.
We check in our charm and toss away the pants of romance.
All the roles and expectations we carry about in our
lives, we leave behind like a pile of clothes on the floor.”
She says: “On the floor? That’s what I thought. Then you’re naked?”
Says I: “Not yet. We promise not to engage in physical violence,
then we strip off unnecessary civilization. Toss it in the
pile with all the rest.”
She: “Then you’re naked.”
I: “No. We still hold onto our tattered dysfunctions and
threadbare beliefs like a 10 year old pair of bikini briefs.
That’s the last thing, but we hold fast, because, you know,
those stinking little lies and truths, that stained and
shredded pair of underwear held our life together for 10,
20, 40 years. And only when we can toss that old thing away
are we truly naked”
She blinks and says: “So it’s 100 men in the woods in tattered
underwear.”
I say: “Yes. But over the course of the week, it washes away in
the realm of ritual. Blown away by the breath of spirit.
Cracked open under the scrutiny and support of men. Pried
off by the power of story.”
She stares at me, silent, and then: “Why? ... Why do you do it?”
I say: “So we can see what’s left. That’s us. Naked. We can
hardly recognize ourselves, but that’s who we are. It’s
blinding. Dazzling. Beautiful. Very painful, but very real.
We walk with it. Work with it. Sing songs to honor and
protect it. Wounds are revealed, healed, become our
strength and our shield. Internal lands are explored.
Monsters are banished. And in the end, we bring some
of all this back into life, even as we put our clothes back on.”
She shifts and settles, ponders and pads about the room, then
smiles and says: “Well have a good time then.”

- Greg Kimura

[Larry Robinson]

The Reckoning


All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.


We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.


What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.


- Theodore Roethke

[Larry Robinson]

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

- W.H. Auden

[REALnothings]

I love this poem! One (meaning I) usually thinks of Auden as a "public poet" somehow, mainly. But as a love poet he can be sublime! Here's another one which a friend sent me recently:

SONG
W.H. Auden
The chimney sweepers
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;
The prosperous baker
Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;
The undertaker
Pins a small note on the coffin saying, "Wait till I return,
I've got a date with Love."
And deep-sea divers
Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top,
And engine-drivers
Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;
The village rector
Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;
The sanitary inspector
Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm --
To keep his date with Love.

[REALnothings]

ps: a friend in Walnut Creek was a protege of Auden, as a young man. I'll ask him if he has anything to share.

[Larry Robinson]

Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems

Every revolution needs fresh poems
that is the reason
poetry cannot die.
It is the reason poets
go without sleep
and sometimes without lovers
without new cars
and without fine clothes
the reason we commit
to facing the dark
and
rein ourselves, regularly, to the possibility
of being wrong.
Poetry is leading us.
It never cares how we will
be held by lovers
or drive fast
or look good
in the moment;
but about how completely
we are committed
to movement
both inner and outer;
and devoted to transformation
and to change.

- Alice Walker

[Larry Robinson]

Reading Neruda While Waiting for an Ultrasound


We try hard not to fall into error - like trying to avoid the beehive, though it's where the honey is kept.
Autocorrect wants to make beehive Bernice, wants to turn Neruda into Jerusalem
My own eyes, when they spot The Redress of Poetry on my shelf, see The Red Dress of Poetry.
When i love you less than perfectly, it is the same.
When I am the sand in your soap, it is the same.
Peel back the edge for the honey.


- Michael Sierchio

[Larry Robinson]

Reckoner
You open your mouth—wide, wider—
and voilà, a foggy forest
slips out. Open again and spit
a castle. And so on…for a moat,
a stable, and the ever
sallying-forth dead aunties.
Sure, you can spew a distant fire-chucking
volcano. Or blow a spit-bubble
with a baby in it. What language,
what words will said baby let fly
when you’re nowhere? When you’re
roaming her dreams with her dear deceased
(& why were hers all ball-gowned up?),
when you’re a dirt speck in an earth clod
in a world that’s eventuated…back to
warlessness, back and back to only rats
in the underground, back back back
to fowl becoming fish.
- Nance Van Winckel

[Larry Robinson]

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

- Billy Collins

[Roland Jacopetti]

What a great poem! Just as Al Young is now characterized as "California Poet Laureate Emeritus", let's not ever forget Billy, America's Renowned Poet Laureate Emeritus.


Forgetfulness...

[Ronaldo]

When I forget how to use Google, will I then know that I've gotten truly forgetful?


Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
....

[Larry Robinson]

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Litany


For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they are dreamed and are dead.
from Yeats’ “Easter, 1916”


Enough to know.
They are dreamed.
And are dead.
The litany in my head
Utters their names
One by one.
Dead. Not dead.
Dreamed.
The beginning. Kneel down
On the cold stone floor.
The stone of the heart recalls first
Her name. Mary. The Grandmother,
The grandmother from Wales
Whose voice always took me to the lilt
Of Dylan Thomas.
Then the children: Marietta Walker,
First child of the young bride.
Donald, after her husband,
Who worked in the mine.
Carrie. Bill. Sam. Norval.
The family grew, boys
Following their father
Into the coal-dark days.
The child Kenneth,
The only one never to reach adulthood,
Adored by my mother, Maggie May.
(Maggie May, Margeret, Midge—
Alll names worn by my mother.)
And the youngest: Betty (Mary Elizabeth).
Elbert. Lucy Florence. Robert.
Twelve children and never an angry word
From the parents from Wales, from Scotland.
But the names go on. Chidren
Of their children. Cousins. Brothers.
My knees, on that ancient stone
Known to my memory, have no feeling.
Only telling.
The names
Come faster.
They are hard to say.
And now, in silence,
The stone. My heart. My love.
Say it.
Enough to know.
Dreamed.
And dead.


- Fran Claggett

[Larry Robinson]

Quiet Psalm

Let there be a quiet that falls like grace,
over all of us:
over our hands
which have slowly become guns,
our teeth, now daggers,
and over our hearts,
which explode with the suicide bombs.
Let us take ourselves back
to the first time we saw each other
on the Fertile Crescent,
where we drew water to drink
from the same river,
or back to the first playground
where you asked, What's your name?
and I responded, I am you.
Let us follow this unmentioned history
back in time so that we may see
that the suffering of one
is the suffering of all,
and furthermore,
the responsibility.
Let us gather up our missiles,
our shrapnel, our tanks,
our nuclear threats, and our hatred
and ask:
How could I have thought
to use these against you?
And let there a quiet that falls over us like grace,
as we stand dumbed by the asking.
And then
let there be a Listening

for the deepest of answers.

- Silvio Machado

[Roland Jacopetti]

So beautiful. Thanks again, Larry.


Quiet Psalm
...

[Larry Robinson]

Red Brocade

The Arabs used to say
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he's come from,
where he's headed.
That way, he'll have strength enough
to answer.
Or, by then you'll be such good friends
you don't care.

Let's go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.

No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That's the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.

I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Dorothy Friberg]

This brings to mind Waccobees following the quest of the black bear cub last year at about this time on this website (https://www.waccobb.net/forums/showthread.php?98364-A-bear-near-Sebastopol). Can we all resolve that should such an event recur, that we take whatever measures necessary to preserve the life of these treasured beings. I, for one would gladly contribute to the owner of injured or dead goats in hopes of preserving the larger animal's life.

That bear traveled several miles through whatever wild places were available to it. and the people who killed it over a dead goat live in a wild area very near Boho Grove. Let's make every effort to preserve whatever wildlife we have left as long as we are not in danger and be unified in this effort.


Spring

Somewherehttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-03-27_12-25-43.png
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Reverse Living

Life is tough.
It takes up a lot of your time. All your weekends.
And what do you get at the end of it -
Death - A great reward.
I think that the life cycle is all backwards.
You should die first. Get it out of the way.
Then you live 20 years in an old folks home.
You get kicked out when you're too young.
You get a good watch. You go to work.
You work for 40 years until you are young enough to enter college.
You learn to party until you are ready for High School.
You go to High School, Grade School,
You become a little kid.
You play, you have no responsibilities.
You become a little baby.
You go back into the womb.
You spend the last nine months floating
Only to finish off as a gleam in somebodies eye.

- Lynne Vance

[gardenmaniac]

this is a grand scheme, but knowing what I/we know now, just how innocent could I/we become when regressed to youth and infancy? just sayin' ...


Reverse Living... - Lynne Vance

[Larry Robinson]

Beet Poetry

I have seen the best veg of my germination destroyed by cooking:
carrots, beetroot, swedes; mashed with butter by angry chefs at dusk,
or grated and juiced by the illuminated machinery of kitchens
purple-headed onions burning in forgotten pans in neon-lit takeaways
and lettuce, turning, turning:
caught in the starry dynamo of the machinery of saladspinner.
Carrots, who curled, abandoned, on chopping boards; and leeks
who ran through streets in mad dreams screaming “celeriac! celeriac!”.
who rotted down on compost heaps
who sprouted in the supernatural dark of larders,
who were lost, beneath mouse-grey mould on ectoplasmic fridge-door shelves

who were rooted in the shadow of Didcot smokestacks
who cowered in terror under September squash-leaves
who tasted radiant cool flesh, of early-morning marrows
and who wept onion-tears as they contemplated
knifesteel, from hessian sacks and box-scheme crates:
who faced the peeler and the grater in insane fear of casserole
and nightmares of spilt beetrootblood, and gouged potato-eyes

who were macerated, blended, chopped; or marinated overnight with wine:
who leached their flavours into stock, or roasted crisp around the body of a duck
who dreamed of honey-glaze. Chillies,
who spilled their hot seed carelessly on formica worktops, and parsnips
too obscene for supermarket shelves: who were diced and boiled
for pasties and trapped inside the crescents of crusts, or
who found their place in cold cottage-pies

who were gently peeled, and chopped and sliced
with beetroot in the quiet of Oxford kitchens
who were dressed in oil in soft wooden spoonfuls:
who were served in bowls in cornerless rooms,
haunted by the echoes of verse and song
who shared their hearts with loving people,
who dream of broccoli forests and
who understand the power and the poetry
in these thin green stems.

- Jack Prichard


All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
- Shantideva

[Victoria Street]

This one put a smile on my face!
It reminds me of Jiddu Krishnamurti (but with a twist!) who said "Die a little every day" referring to the need to let go of the past in order to make room for the present. As always, thank you Larry!




Reverse Living... - Lynne Vance

[Roland Jacopetti]

Get a job, Beetnik!


Beet Poetry

I have seen the best veg of my germination destroyed by cooking:
carrots, beetroot, swedes; mashed with butter by angry chefs at dusk,
or grated and juiced by the illuminated machinery of kitchens
purple-headed onions burning in forgotten pans in neon-lit takeaways
and lettuce, turning, turning:
caught in the starry dynamo of the machinery of saladspinner.
Carrots, who curled, abandoned, on chopping boards; and leeks
who ran through streets in mad dreams screaming “celeriac! celeriac!”.
who rotted down on compost heaps
who sprouted in the supernatural dark of larders,
who were lost, beneath mouse-grey mould on ectoplasmic fridge-door shelves

who were rooted in the shadow of Didcot smokestacks
who cowered in terror under September squash-leaves
who tasted radiant cool flesh, of early-morning marrows
and who wept onion-tears as they contemplated
knifesteel, from hessian sacks and box-scheme crates:
who faced the peeler and the grater in insane fear of casserole
and nightmares of spilt beetrootblood, and gouged potato-eyes

who were macerated, blended, chopped; or marinated overnight with wine:
who leached their flavours into stock, or roasted crisp around the body of a duck
who dreamed of honey-glaze. Chillies,
who spilled their hot seed carelessly on formica worktops, and parsnips
too obscene for supermarket shelves: who were diced and boiled
for pasties and trapped inside the crescents of crusts, or
who found their place in cold cottage-pies

who were gently peeled, and chopped and sliced
with beetroot in the quiet of Oxford kitchens
who were dressed in oil in soft wooden spoonfuls:
who were served in bowls in cornerless rooms,
haunted by the echoes of verse and song
who shared their hearts with loving people,
who dream of broccoli forests and
who understand the power and the poetry
in these thin green stems.

- Jack Prichard






All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
- Shantideva

[BothSidesNow]

Just listen to those veggies HOWL!
Janet


Beet Poetry...

[Larry Robinson]

Where Is God?

It’s as if what is unbreakable -
the very pulse of life - waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.

- Mark Nepo

[Larry Robinson]

Oración de la lucha del campesino

Enséñame el sufrimiento de los más desafortunados;
así conoceré el dolor de mi pueblo.
Líbrame a orar por los demás
porque estás presente en cada persona.
Ayúdame a tomar responsabilidad de mi propia vida;
sólo así, seré libre al fin.
Concédeme valentía para servir al prójimo
porque en la entrega hay vida verdadera.
Concédeme honradez y paciencia
para que yo pueda trabajar junto con otros trabajadores.
Alúmbranos con el canto y la celebración
para que se eleve el espíritu entre nosotros.
Que el espíritu florezca y crezca
para que no nos cansemos de la lucha.
Acordémonos de los que han caído por la justicia
porque a nosotros han entregado la vida.
Ayúdanos a amar aun a los que nos odian;
así podremos cambiar el mundo.
Amen.

por César E. Chávez, Fundador del UFW (1927-1993)

Robert Lentz



Prayer of the Farm Workers' Struggle

Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
thus I will know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others,
for you are present in every person.
Help me take responsibility for my own life
so that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve my neighbor
for in surrender is there truly life.
Grant me honesty and patience
so that I can work with other workers.
Enlighten us with song and celebration
so that the spirit will be alive among us.
Let the spirit flourish and grow
so that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice
for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
thus we can change the world.
Amen.

by César E. Chávez, UFW Founder (1927-1993)



All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
- Shantideva

[Larry Robinson]

The Seder Dinner
For Sherrye on her 80th birthday

The emerald in the jeweler’s case is magnificent,
for it is rare;
the shimmering green dragonfly in the sun is more so,
for it is not.
Life constantly presents itself in a vast, breathtaking array
of ingredients; to make of it what we will.
A child wishes for an unending menu of desserts,
but the wise cook knows the balance of sweet and bitter,
rich and lean.
She works with what is given, eating each meal
as the feast that it is.
Unconcerned with whether the kitchen is clean
or if the pantry is full for tomorrow,
she savors each bite of the complex and rich stew that has
cooked over time, knowing that it nourishes her with a
deepening wisdom; a satisfying repast.
Live in fullness for all of your days.

- Alan Cohen

[Larry Robinson]

Snowflakes


Ecclesiastes says “for everything there is a season.”
You say “It’s tax season;
it’s baseball season; it’s allergy season;
I’ve got to season the steak on the barbie;
besides, I don’t have time to change the world.”

Goethe tells us of the genius, power and magic in boldness.
You say “What can I do, anyway?
The foxes are guarding the henhouse;
the juggernaught is out of control;
we’re all just snowflakes in a windstorm.”

The mountain asks “Which snowflake, falling,
will be the one to send down the avalanche
to change this entire landscape?”

- Larry Robinson


https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2015-04-06_14-03-16.png

[sandoak]

30715


Snowflakes...

- Larry Robinson