Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Last Words
for Harry

I love you, repeated
Four times over
Your daughter, ours
Listening to your breath
Quiet as the moments
Between the chimes
On the Hour.

I love you, you
Told her. I stood
outside your circle
Self-exile of years
Years that allowed us
To love each other
In ways marriage couldn't.

I love you
your gift to her,
To me to know
Your anger, disappointment
Dissipated.

I love you, you said
To who? What?
Four times over.
The penultimate perhaps to Life
The last to Love itself
As you fell into eternity's embrace.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

A Man's A Man for A' That

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Our toils obscure, an a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that.
Their tinsel show, an a' that,
The honest man, tho e'er sae poor,
Is king o men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord,'
What struts, an stares, an a' that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
His ribband, star, an a' that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Their dignities, an a' that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth.
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may
[As come it will for a' that],
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world, o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.

- Robert Burns

[sandoak]

And it has a lovely tune as well....


A Man's A Man for A' That

...

[Larry Robinson]

Belonging

The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.

Earth changes,
and home
becomes different
places.

You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one
place.

To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more.

You have stars
in your bones
and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
terrain in each eye.

You belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.

- Alla Renee Bozarth

[Larry Robinson]

won’t you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

- Lucille Clifton

[Larry Robinson]

The Mystery of You



If you’re not careful,

you can give your

whole life away


one chapter at a time.

Rarely living your own

wild nature.


Thinking

you will have time

later


to follow that beckoning

inner compass

- Kay Crista

[Larry Robinson]

Ermeo di San Francesco
At the Hermitage of St. Francis in Assisi

If he were to speak to me today, he would smile
slightly, laughing at my concerns about this, about
that. He would extend his hand, opened palm,
inviting me to sit down, to find my spot exactly
where I am. If today he were to speak to me, he
would open his arms to the comforts of life right
here, on this ground where I stand, the sun baking
my back, the cool rock supporting me. Without
words, he would tell me, wherever I am I can lay
my head, wherever I walk is the place to be. He
would point to the sky, the trees, the ground below
my feet, cup his ear to the birds, the breeze, the
words that need not be spoken.

- Clara Rosemarda

[Larry Robinson]

Becoming Bostonian

I hear the music of seven languages
on a four-block stretch of Harvard Square,
see the copper glow of the Hancock
Tower at sunset, feel the familiar
bump of cobblestones under my feet.
Mark Twain said people in New York ask
"How much is he worth?" while Bostonians
ask "How much does he know?" That burning
desire to discover keeps the city humming,
yet we’re grounded in history, too,
still treading on sidewalks made of
baked clay. I stand
one night on Beacon Hill, gaze up at the
few stars city lights allow to shine,
feel myself stretched between past and future
the pull of the earth on which
our forefathers stood, the pull of the moon,
which they could not have dreamed their descendants
would visit. Or perhaps they did.
One historian reports that
"there were books on Beacon Hill while wolves
still howled from the summit." Perhaps some
Englishman closed his book one night and stood
where I stand, dreaming of what we’ve become.

- Lawrence Kessenich

[Larry Robinson]

Disillusion

I would be simple again,
Simple and clean
Like the earth,
Like the rain,
Nor ever know,
Dark Harlem,
The wild laughter
Of your mirth
Nor the salt tears
Of your pain.
Be kind to me,
Oh, great dark city.
Let me forget.
I will not come
To you again.

- Langston Hughes

[Larry Robinson]

The Place for No Story


The coast hills at Sovranes Creek;
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Over rock shaped like flame;
The old ocean at the land’s foot, the vast
Gray extension beyond the long white violence;
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks:
This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen. No imaginable
Human presence here could do anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion.

- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

When Giving is All We Have



One river gives

Its journey to the next.



We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,

We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.


- Alberto Ríos

[Larry Robinson]

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned?

Wait 'til I whup George Foreman's behind.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

His hand can't hit what his eyes can't see.

Now you see me, now you don't.

George thinks he will, but I know he won't.

I done wrassled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale.

Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick.

I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.

- Muhammad Ali
(1942-2016)

[Larry Robinson]

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection


Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.


- Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Larry Robinson]

Halle Berry Caught in Disneyland Without Makeup

Imagine my excitement
the fire in my blood
as my greedy fingers click through to the photo,
a lead story on this end-of-August Saturday,
the trees so dry they cannot cry
for want of tears.
America,
we need more news like this!
Forget the poisoning of bees by the billions
or their connection to our own mortality.
Forget the plight of millions
living on the streets
sans food, sans work, sans medicine.
Give us more serial killers, inflated to hero size
project their likenesses on every billboard
teach their names as school yard jump rope rhymes.
Pen graphic novels around them
etch them on video game platforms around the world.
Forget the melting ice caps
rain forest decimation
the mounting molestations by pedophile priests
the commerce of women around the globe.
Serve us more Donald Trump, please
with extra vitriol spewed from blanched lips
the small American flag smirking from his lapel.
And please, keep them coming
those photos of celebrities who dared to do the unthinkable:
leave their mansions without the shield of makeup.

- Sandra Anfang

[Larry Robinson]

For Someone Who Did You Wrong

Though its way is to strike
In a dumb rhythm,
Stroke upon stroke,
As though the heart
Were an anvil,
The hurt you sent
Had a mind of its own.

Something in you knew
Exactly how to shape it,
To hit the target
Slipping into the heart
Through some wound-window
Left open since childhood.

While it struck outside,
It burrowed inside,
Made tunnels through
Every ground of confidence.
For days, it would lie still
Until a thought would start it.

Meanwhile, you forgot,
Went on with things
And never even knew
How that perfect
Shape of hurt
Still continued to work.

Now a new kindness
Seems to have entered time
And I can see how that hurt
Has schooled my heart
In a compassion I would
Otherwise have never learned.

Somehow now
I have begun to glimpse
The unexpected fruit
Your dark gift had planted
And I thank you
For your unknown work.

- John O’Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

Denouement


Sometimes
led
into discovery
scarcely informed
what perils
lie ahead
yet trusting
the way is right and clear
rich with adventure
stops in his tracks:
Wait. Wait. Is this journey

Recklessness or Fate?
Faith or Resignation?
Wisdom or Folly?

Still the pilgrim pushes on,
eyes open to unseen things
divining the path home
fears unspoken
ever forward
to survive
tempests and dashed hopes
everything hinging
on the very next living moment
to present
itself.

- Larry Kenneth Potts

[Larry Robinson]

Rubai One


Birds mistook Saint Francis for a tree.

May I be so free
of nervous haste, ambition, and regret
so in the extirpation of thought
innocence and improvisation
may tell the dawn each day afresh
that fresh is what it is.

The nickname of God is Now.

- Bruce Moody

[sandoak]

I doubt that birds mistook St. Francis for a tree. I'm sure they knew exactly who he was.


Rubai One


Birds mistook Saint Francis for a tree.

May I be so free
of nervous haste, ambition, and regret
so in the extirpation of thought
innocence and improvisation
may tell the dawn each day afresh
that fresh is what it is.

The nickname of God is Now.

- Bruce Moody

[Larry Robinson]

Things to Think

Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

- Robert Bly

[Larry Robinson]

School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
- wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell - on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

- Diane Ackerman

[REALnothings]

this is beautiful, and so universal!
When I was a kid in the '50s in a suburb of St. Louis (should write something about this),
old Miss Rossi, the kind Principal of Flynn Park School, surrounded by an almost forest-like park, took to the PA system every morning to recite for us the Flynn Park Prayer and the Flynn Park Creed. This was all before the laws preventing sectarian public school prayer, and indeed I still remember The Flynn Park Prayer, part of it at least, with great love, as it too was just totally universal! It began, "KInd, heavenly, father, Help us to receive this day as a gift from your hands, and to use it earnestly and joyously..." I could look up the rest, but I remember that part because it is MEMORABLE, and, well, I still try to do that! ♥

School Prayer

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
- wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell - on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.

- Diane Ackerman

[Larry Robinson]

36296

(graphics by wacco Ronaldo :tiphat:)

[Larry Robinson]

Counting on Sunday

He didn't have his
Heart in his sermon.
If he did, it didn't Show up in any enthusiasm
In his voice.
And I didn't have
My restless soul
In church.
If I did, I wouldn't Have counted
The 823 bricks
On the wall.
Outside one Of the48
Window panes
Behind the 16
White shutters
That helped shade
The sunlight
Off the 11 crosses,
2brass, 4 on cloth,
1 on a plaque that's nailed
To the rail that leads
To the wooden one
That's carved on the altar
Just left of the
Wooden one that holds
The page numbers
That face
The one in concrete On the baptismal font
That stands beside
The organist
Who is married To the preacher who
Has a silver one
Hanging around his neck
As he speaks to
10 women, 8 men
And 4 children
Who sit in 21pews
That hold 161 Hymn books
Under 78 electric candles
That shine on
5 doorknobs
And 2 flags That stand
Over 11 eyeglasses,
7 necklaces,
2 flower arrangements,
1 hair bow,
1 bow tie,
1 silver barrette,
And a sermon
In a pear tree.

- Margaret Vaughn
( poet laureate of Tennessee)

[Dorothy Friberg]

Yeah, I've sat through some boring sermons; used to count the pieces of glass in the stained glass windows.


Counting on Sunday

He didn't have his
Heart in his sermon....

[Larry Robinson]

Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now--whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they just stand there looking the way they look
when we're looking; surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade--surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptyness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

It fell to me


It fell to me.
I don’t know why.
How can we know these things?
It fell to me to dismantle,
to take down the fortifications,
to take apart myself
not so to destroy
but to try to understand,
to hope to know
the inner workings
of a single human heart
and go from there—
to Auschwitz,
for example,
as an end point
of all that brought us there
or as a new beginning for me,
my own very private mirror
that shows a heart quite able
to morph such an image
of unspeakable acts
reflected there
never, never to be done again
into others of their kind
that go unnoticed, unseen,
unrecognized as such
until their carnage has been done
and then we say once more,
“Never again! Never again!”,
to ourselves and go on—
to drones over Pakistan
for example, run by little boys
with joy sticks and video cams
from half a universe away
and think, no doubt,
if they think at all
of what they do,
of what we ask them to do
in our name and with our money,
think, no doubt, that they are fighting evil.
“A silly comparison,” you say,
“Auschwitz and drones.
What have you learned
in all your dismantling
if this is where you end—
with drones and joy sticks?”
And where would you suggest I look, dear listener,
that I might understand more clearly
what I am complicit in—
Orlando, perhaps?
Where, dear listener, would you look?
Where would you look?

- Bill Denham

[Larry Robinson]

Inclination

One's throat must be like a garden
And one's eyes like windows
through which love passes;
And one's stature
Must be like a tree
that rises out of rocks;
And poetry must be like a singing bird,
Perching on the highest branch of a tree,
Breaking the heavy silence of the world.

- Hamid Reza Rahimi

[REALnothings]

:heart: OH, YEAH! :heart:

[Ronaldo]

A bit of color and Paul Klee's birds.
36346

[Larry Robinson]

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
- John Donne

[Larry Robinson]

Pulse Night Club Orlando, FL 6/12/16, 1:49 am

I am Xavier, I am Juan, I am Enrique
You are Amanda, Frankie and Angel
We are Mercedes, Christopher and Luis
We are 6 degrees of separation
Which means there is no separation

If I could have been there at 1:49 am
I would have taken each person by the hand
Led them outside said, Look at those stars
Go home now - be safe

If I could have been there at 12:49 am
I would have kept Omar Mateen
From entering
Instead I’d take his hand
Say go home, go home
To your heart
Go home to your humanity
There you can find safety
There you will find you are not separate

I would, if I could, turn his hate into tears
I would say the distance between
Your dreams and my longing is
The distance between
Each heartbeat
I would say that we are all us
There is no you and them
Only the disconnections
of you/them in your own heart

It’s the truth that hurts the most
If I had been there at 1:49 am
I could not have done a thing

Nor could God
God gave us choice and will
We choose what we will
God says choose life
Choose life

This night
God cries with us
And asks us to remember
They are us

Choose love
Choose life

- Sally Churgel

[Larry Robinson]

For All The Fathers

For all the fathers with us and gone,
the ones who worked in factories
and taught us to drive cars,
the ones who knew how to put a worm on a hook
and how to get a fish, flopping, off of it.

For all the fathers, lonely on their couches,
ash trays on their bellies, the smell
of cigarettes on their hands, the blare
of the television drowning out the voices
of those too difficult to remember,
even some of those still living and breathing
in the same room.

For all the fathers reaching for their books
turning to the pages of poetry that give music
to the sounds trapped inside them, turning
the pages of manuals that informed their hands
on how to make furniture for the family, toys
for the grandchildren, cradles for the neighbor’s children
adopted from Vietnam.

For all the fathers who once, when boys, looked up
to see their own fathers standing in the place
of the men who came before them, men
who loved a good story, a certain spring flower,
the smell of dust rising after a rain.

For all the fathers who could not give
what was expected of them
and showed this by their absence, gone
in a bottle, gone on a rampage, gone
on an assignment. Gone. Gone. Gone.

For all the fathers who lifted and carried groceries
over water, babies up mountains, children off to bed,
war stories untold for decades, and memories from childhood
they could not speak of even to the ones they loved.

For all the fathers in good health and ill, for their strength
and their weariness, the dwindling away of possibility
into the wrinkles and bald spots we remember
before the final good-byes. For all the fathers,
the silent, the speaking, and the fathers
all of their young boys will become.

- Ann Arbor

[REALnothings]

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

[Larry Robinson]

The Real Work

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

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

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

A Cautionary Tale

I woke from a dream
of a circle of men where
the most basic elements of men's work
had been forgotten
where the distrust and fear anger
in men was not met with
wisdom where being here to make a racket had primacy
where we forgot to ask if we
could agree that there would be no violence
no physical violence this week
where we were reluctant to share
even our names and praise with
men we did not know
laughter and poetry singing were
thrown out, just get 'em out of here
someone said, "just punch him
in the face. I'll pay your
legal bills." it was a dark time
it was hell.

- Mark Gardiner

[Larry Robinson]

You Cannot Kill Me

I am not only I
but a multiplicity of souls
I have always been here
I will always be back
I was your uncle, your 5th grade teacher, your cousin
I will be your grandson, your niece, the boy next door
you can erase my words
and a new Sappho, Rumi, Whitman, Stein, Lorca, Lorde
will emerge and write what I wrote
even more beautifully
you can shatter my statues
and a new Michelangelo
with a sharper chisel and a stronger arm
will make grander statues
you can silence my singing
and a new Bessie Smith
will sound a bluer note
I have always been here
indivisible, essential
to the human spirit
firebird I am
feathered serpent
in every opposition
I am
the tender collapse
that always happens
before a song
rises up
to heaven
you see
I cannot die
you cannot
kill me


- Franklin Abbott

[Larry Robinson]

Campo dei FioriRelated Poem Content Details

In Rome on the Campo dei Fiori
baskets of olives and lemons,
cobbles spattered with wine
and the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
with rose-pink fish;
armfuls of dark grapes
heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
they burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
the taverns were full again,
baskets of olives and lemons
again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
in Warsaw by the sky-carousel
one clear spring evening
to the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
the salvos from the ghetto wall,
and couples were flying
high in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
would drift dark kites along
and riders on the carousel
caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
blew open the skirts of the girls
and the crowds were laughing
on that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
that the people of Rome or Warsaw
haggle, laugh, make love
as they pass by the martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
of the passing of things human,
of the oblivion
born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying,
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
or peddled their white starfish,
baskets of olives and lemons
they had shouldered to the fair,
and he already distanced
as if centuries had passed
while they paused just a moment
for his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
forgotten by the world,
our tongue becomes for them
the language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
and many years have passed,
on a new Campo dei Fiori
rage will kindle at a poet's word.

- Czeslaw Milosz
Warsaw, 1943
(Translation by Louis Iribarne)

[Larry Robinson]

My Dad As A Young Man
c. 1930

His father told him to drive the car without the brakes.
He never forgot the thump of the woman landing on the hood

at the corner where he couldn't slow down to turn, she
stepped in front of the grill, the hood ornament a terrible witness.

Over the decades, he said things like, Mary, I couldn't stop.
or I saw a woman crossing the street. Never the story

beginning middle end. Either he told me she died or I just knew it.
I played my own scene of what might have happened.

His heart stopped or beat wildly or maybe both. Brain said
no, No, NO. He opened the car door, got out, stood upright.

Bright blood on packed white snow. Felt hat flung far
from her body. Fur-topped boots without her feet in them.

Screams of her friend sounded far away. And other cars,
cars with equipment that worked, brakes that worked, stopped.

All the drivers looked like his father, the robust real estate man
glaring through windshields at the son who read aloud from books.

Little details before he could look at her. A woman he'd never know,
couldn't recognize but who would spend the rest of his life with him.

- Mary L. Barnard

[Larry Robinson]

A Map to the Next World
for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

- Joy Harjo

[Dorothy Friberg]

For my nightmare, it would be a bicyclist on one of our narrow winding back roads wearing dark clothing and invisible in the shade of overgrown trees. Although I am sure this poem is about responsibility in keeping equipment safe, there is also responsibility on the part of the victim as well.


My Dad As A Young Man
c. 1930

His father told him to drive the car without the brakes.
...

[Larry Robinson]

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.


- Maggie Smith

[Larry Robinson]

A Song Of Peace

I closed my eyes in darkness
and opened them in light,
and over the world,
like a flag unfurled,
was a sweet sound and a holy sight.

A dove spread wings of magic;
its shadow was golden and broad,
and the people of earth,
in a passion of birth,
had shattered an ancient sword.

Oh, why is my country hated
and made such a thing of scorn,
this fruitful place
with its varied race,
this land where I was born?

And why is my country darkened,
when the rest of the world is light,
and cloaked in fear
of things once dear,
and weak in its frightful might?

And why are the people silent,
and where is the ancient song
that mankind found
was freedom's sound,
to shatter injustice and wrong?

We'll not have our country hated!
Our country is strong and grand.
Oh, be not dismayed
by those who betrayed
the heritage of our land.

If a song can be made so simple,
if a word can become a creed,
then the sound of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

Ask not why the land is silent;
let the people measure their toil,
and the human race
will share its grace
with the lonely folk of our soil.

Its grace is new and holy,
and peace is the dream of the world,
and the people of earth
in a passion of birth
will see their banner unfurled.

The banner is pure and sacred,
enough of the swine who destroy!
Enough of the night,
the world is bright-
and the future is filled with-joy.

Our cup is running over
with the graft and the lies and the hate,
and the renegade
is too well paid
with our broken dreams and our children's fate.

We'll open our eyes in the darkness,
and boldly look to the light,
and call to our side
with earnest pride
our people who dwell in the night.

And they'll see the dove so holy,
so pure and wide of wing,
wide as the earth
in its passion of birth-
with a joyful song to sing.

And the lilt will be made so simple,
and the word will become a creed,
and the song of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

- Howard Fast

[aFlowerChild]

Oh MY~ I hope I never look at a bird
to only think of a stone that might come by
Or receive a kindness from a stranger
even while thinking there might be one to bag me
I hope that I ever see the world as delightful and beautiful
Never mind the stains.


Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.


- Maggie Smith

[Larry Robinson]

The Dugout

They like it here
shaded from the sun, drinking Gatorade
in the dugout among the solitude
of brothers.

After one strikes out
or misses a ball,
angry fathers climb the gated fence
that separates spectators
from players and curse.
All night only the male crickets chirp,

nocturnal and cold-blooded.
They take on the temperature
of their surroundings.
They run the top of one wing
along the teeth
at the bottom of the other.

Their wings up and open
like acoustical sails, the sound relentless
and unending.

- Jill Bialosky

[Larry Robinson]

The House Dog’s Grave

I’ve changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.
So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you’d soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking pan.
I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the night through
I lie alone.
But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read–and I fear often grieving for me–
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.
You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope than when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.
No, dear, that’s too much hope: you are not so well cared for
As I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided. . . .
But to me you were true.
You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

- Robinson Jeffers

[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

[Larry Robinson]

Marrying Tricia Nixon

I woke up this morning recalling that Thanksgiving Day in 1962
when my seventeen-year-old self, having moved on, like a skin-shedding snake,
from his terrible, world-ending imaginings during the Cuban Missile Crisis the previous month,
had persuaded my boss, Dudley Stephenson, the wimpish,
vaguely effeminate bachelor librarian at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher
(with forty-seven lawyers then California's third-largest law firm),
to drive up Doheny Drive to Trousdale Estates, in the upper reaches of Beverly Hills,
park in front of Richard Nixon's house, and indulge the fantasy of a kid,
not two years liberated from the banal exile of foster care,
that my hero with the five o'clock shadow,
no doubt still licking his wounds from his recent loss of the California governor's race,
would drive out in his powder blue Oldsmobile 98,
take note of me, cheer up immediately,
and come to decide that I should, of course, marry Tricia.

- Bill Dickinson

[Larry Robinson]

America: A Prophecy (excerpt)

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.

For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.

- William Blake

[Larry Robinson]

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the
Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly
accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his
freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

- W. H. Auden

[BothSidesNow]

Thanks to this grieving praising poem, many more than a few thousand think of this day every year. Thanks to you, Larry. Janet


In Memory of W. B. Yeats
...

[Larry Robinson]

Foreseeing


Middle age refers more
to landscape than to time:
it’s as if you’d reached
the top of a hill
and could see all the way
to the end of your life,
so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,
but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time
you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,
the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty
of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can’t help
but admire it from afar,
especially now, while it’s simple
to re-enter whenever you choose,
lying down in your life,
waking up to it
just as you always have—
except that the details resonate
by virtue of being contained,
as your own words
coming back to you
define the landscape,
remind you that it won’t go on
like this forever.


- Sharon Bryan


“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
- Wendell Berry

[Roland Jacopetti]

One of my favorite poems by one of the great poets of the age. Thanks, Larry.
Roland


In Memory of W. B. Yeats
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
...

- W. H. Auden

[Larry Robinson]

Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion
You dweller in the dark cabin,
To whom the watermelon is always purple,
Whose garden is wind and moon,

Of the two dreams, night and day,
What lover, what dreamer, would choose
The one obscured by sleep?

Here is the plantain by your door
And the best cock of red feather
That crew before the clocks.

A feme may come, leaf-green,
Whose coming may give revel
Beyond revelries of sleep,

Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,
So that the sun may speckle,
While it creaks hail.

You dweller in the dark cabin,
Rise, since rising will not waken,
And hail, cry hail, cry hail.

- Wallace Stevens

[Larry Robinson]

#PHILANDOCASTILE

My granddaughter just turned four,
she holds as many fingers in the air and smiles,
our ancestral gap between her two front teeth,
her pearly face blushed.

She loves to sing and stands beside me
on a chair to help with food prep,
asks surprisingly complex questions
I often struggle to explain to her satisfaction.

I don’t know what to do with the headlines this morning.
I don’t want fear and hatred to win.

What words can I give you, Lavish,
that could possibly serve?

I can’t get out of my head,
your four-year-old girl comforting you,
you in handcuffs, partner dead.

Your courage, the facts, sir, the facts.
I see it. I hear it.
It's in my mouth, my lungs.
I cannot stop hearing her voice.

Four years old.
Four years old.
Four years, old.

- Kari Gunter-Seymour

[Larry Robinson]

Why I don't go to church (much)

Shit
late to kid's 1st communion mtg
(discretely) remove dripping raincoat in the empy front row
why stand in the back and not sit up front
will never understand people

kind Sr. Pat flushed shiny joyfully
gives her speil
asks 200 parents who here is "holy"?

I most minisculely tilt my head squinting ? trick question
ponder 0.7 seconds, raise my hand she grins even wider, nods at me

Shit again
I turn
of course, no other hands up
I say they all are, Sr. they just forgot

(note to kid: don't ever forget something THAT important)

- Diana Neill

[Roland Jacopetti]

Ah, Catholicism!


Why I don't go to church (much)

Shit
late to kid's 1st communion mtg
(discretely) remove dripping raincoat in the empy front row
why stand in the back and not sit up front
will never understand people

kind Sr. Pat flushed shiny joyfully
gives her speil
asks 200 parents who here is "holy"?

I most minisculely tilt my head squinting ? trick question
ponder 0.7 seconds, raise my hand she grins even wider, nods at me

Shit again
I turn
of course, no other hands up
I say they all are, Sr. they just forgot

(note to kid: don't ever forget something THAT important)

- Diana Neill

[Larry Robinson]

@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem

RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police
officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith,
Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all
their families. And to all those injured.


Let us celebrate the lives of all
As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths
Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace
& chanted Black Lives Matter
Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect
Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,
Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke
Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately
Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find
The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing

Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him
what happened in Afghanistan
what
flames burned inside

(Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot
Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm
& a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was
That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)

This could be the first step
in the new evaluation of our society This could be
the first step of all of our lives

- Juan Felipe Herrera
(America’s Poet Laureate)

[Larry Robinson]

Finding

The Hindus tell the story
that God was trying to choose a place
where He could hide from man.
Where was the last place
that man would think to look
for Him?
And he chose
the human heart.

I have always looked for God—
for my Soul, for that matter—
within.
Psalm 46 says the Lord of Hosts is
within.
Guru Nanak, whoever he is,
said,
So doth thy Lord abide within thee,
Why search Him without?

So when I meditated
I always focused inside.
Somewhere within my heart of hearts.
The upper room.
The inner sanctum.

But, God bless us, language
is powerful.
Within.
Tiny.
Small.
The still, small voice—
barely squeaking from inside
the left ventricle.

Maybe, I thought,
it was like a black hole:
if you go within enough—
past the event horizon—
and on through to another dimension,
it opens out again.

But it never did.

Lately, however,
I have had a different experience.
It is me that is small.
It is me that is hard and tiny.

My soul is large.
My soul surrounds me
and covers me like a blanket.
That desire to have someone
hold you in his arms and
let your head rest on his chest
is what the soul is like.

For the soul is immense.
It extends.
The incarnation is small,
but the soul is huge.
Warm.
Comforting.
Healing.

I like this new vision
of my soul.
I will consider it
a spiritual breakthrough.

But that’s only me.
Little me, the ego,
consciousness,
the body.

One day, all those things
will be gone.
But my soul will remain.
Joyous.
Expansive.
Me, as well.

I have not searched Him without.
I have just reconfigured the relationship.

O My Soul.

For the Creative Forces,
The Great Spirit,
the I-am-that-I-am,
is not without,
or within.
It is everywhere.

- Kerry Lichlyter

[Larry Robinson]

It Doesn’t Feel Like A Time To Write

being black feels like a lot right now.
they shot a man then they shot
the people mourning the man.
they shot a man while he was
a. handcuffed

b. walking away

c. already dead

the terrorists i fear played balled with the cops
or they is the cops. i ain’t got much left to give
these poems, black folks of every kind
of body are dying, & yes at our own
hands too & before you start
pointing fingers wash yo bloody
bloody hands. if you still say
things like we need all the info,
there must be a reason
then i can’t waste
anymore time on you. the world
is burning for real for real – some
some us burning, some staying warm.
i turn to the cards, the stars,
G-d, the gods, my sweet dead, all them
say it’s an age of smoke. i pray to everything
i’ve been taught to pray towards.
i smoke a blunt, drink the last of the whiskey
but nothing brings me peace.
i got a fear of being black in public
& white folks are raised to fear of me.
niggagoraphobia has taken over the nation
& i’ve never been more afraid
of a white man’s temper.
in my dreams all the black folks
turn to ants & America is a toddler
stomping us out – she’s so damn scared
& we can’t get away.
//
i’d be lying if i said i wasn’t scared. every word
i say translate to farewell. joy feels like a kind
of revolt. sometimes i’m just your average
American: too broke & late for brunch, looking
for a new job & hungover, just trying to Netflix
& fuck a little bit then you watch the news or
you hear the worry in your mama’s voice when
she tells you to be careful driving cause the ice
is slick & the cops is bad & she know both
can lead to an accident
//
my friends are in the streets again because again
& again & so forth & how many more?
poems feel so small right now
my little machines fail me
all i’ve ever wanted to say:
1. We are tired of your reality

2. Until we are guilty the same as you

3. We beg for peace but you hear fire!

4. What you call country, we call the reaping

5. Stop killing us

//
America, my sweet boy
your lips turn into a cleaver
when you kiss my neck
//
if a white man who murdered is allowed
to be gentle & a black body murdered
is assumed at fault – if my son gets shot, who
gets mourned? him or the bullet?
//
it doesn’t feel like a time to write
when all my muses are begging
for their lives.
- Danez Smith

[Larry Robinson]

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

- Thomas Gray

[Larry Robinson]

Poem

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane.
The news would pour out of various devices
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

- Muriel Rukeyser

[REALnothings]

good choice, Larry. We have indeed hit another such time...different in the particulars, but I think not in the essence. time to persevere with :heart:

[Larry Robinson]

Sonoma Weekend

Valley hills bake a heated welcome,
soft cat echoes ecstatic purrs,
ears of kangaroo hare watch while
Blue jay screeches questionings.

Near rustling oak and maple, newly
watered bright pink flowers lie
Reality… Possibility…
They too welcome, watch, inquire.

Ember burned memories glow in fire
winter chill grey of second day.
Silent space waits expectantly for
encountered knowing.

Furred meow leaps to glass, watches
small bird becoming. It chirps
and flits from branch to branch
from past and now to what may be.

Cat stretches now on hearth place rug
Content completion in all her moves.
I sit and rock and move unhurriedly
From past, and now, to that in need of me.

Grey then moves from muted tones to
darkness of the night.
An owl is heard in search and hunt
while fire’s coals go cold.

What wills, what needs, what wants to be
first grows in darkness, thrusts thru pain
And then Becomes through choiceful acts
in times like these.

- LynneAnne Forest

[Larry Robinson]

Sabbaths VI
(for Jonathan Williams)


The yellow-throated, the highest remotest voice
of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sycamores,
but one day he came twice to the railing of my porch
where I sat at work above the river. He was too close
to see with binoculars. Only the naked eye could take him in,
a bird more beautiful than every picture of himself,
more beautiful than himself killed and preserved
by the most skilled taxidermist, more beautiful
than any human mind, so small and inexact
could hope to remember. My mind became
beautiful by the sight of him. He had the beauty only
of himself alive in the only moment of his life.
He had upon him like a light the whole
beauty of the living world that never dies.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Open Carry

When I first heard it
I thought it was a term for liquor,
imagined a thin man
swilling in plain sight
from one of those empty amber bottles
that litter the trail
on my morning trek.
They could be almost beautiful
if you turn your head sideways,
a kind of millennial flower:
cubist, hard, transparent.
No ambiguity there.
Men pile into football stadiums
toting semi-automatics
like picnic baskets.
Families stroll the malls of America
loaded for bear.
Watching "The Free State of Jones"
I shield my face as the pigs are
ushered in to lap up the blood,
the floors are mopped with it.
Rifles blast everything that moves
in this kill-or-be-killed dystopia.
At least there was a reason,
a freedom worth fighting for,
my rational mind palavers.
The lone mother, children gathered
in the shelter of her skirts,
hunkered in the mountain's bosom
husband on the front lines,
a shotgun, her only defender.
At a military funeral
I hear the rifle's safety snapping into place
watch the words "bombs bursting in air"
leave the mouths of boys too young to shave.
My mouth is mute with shame for this,
our symbol of renown.

- Sandra Anfang

[Larry Robinson]

I Am a Madman

My thatched cottage stands
just west of Thousand Mile Bridge

this Hundred Flower Stream
would please a hermit fisherman

bamboo sways in the wind
graceful as any court beauty

rain makes the lotus flower
even more red and fragrant

but I no longer hear from friends
who live on princely salaries

my children are always hungry
with pale and famished faces

does a madman grow more happy
before he dies in the gutter?

I laugh at myself -- a madman
growing older, growing madder.

- Du Fu (712 - 770)

[Larry Robinson]

I Hear an Army

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging; foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the Charioteers.


They cry into the night their battle name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.

They come shaking in triumph their long grey hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

- James Joyce

[Larry Robinson]

The Second Coming

Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

[BothSidesNow]

What rough beast, indeed. But not slouching, strutting.


The Second Coming
...
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

“Chin Up, Stiff Upper Lip,”

the father would intone, winking his eyes,
with the accent he pilfered from the movies of his youth,
with the demeanor of the rabbi he never became,
with the style of the Borscht-Belt comedian he couldn’t embody.

“That’s Dad,” the sons would agree, rolling their eyes,
with the sigh of the unwelcome,
with the sarcasm of the unacknowledged,
with the suppressed rage of the uninitiated.

Where does this poem need to go?

Toward the weeping mother who would rub her eyes
with undisguised longing for her carefree youth,
with the comfortable self-pity of her domestic prison,
with the dangerous hunger of an unsatisfied woman?

Or toward the happy gods who would avert their eyes
as they toyed with each other,
as they cast flame and flood down upon mortals,
as they consumed their own children?

What about the sons who pluck out their eyes
as they accept less and less,
as they tolerate more and more,
as they suck in their frozen chests?

Or the city that glazes its eyes in false innocence,
guarding its walls of imagined security,
closing its gates to the impure,
erecting its towers on unstable soil?

Or should we welcome the sons who pry open their eyes
as they demand their inheritance,
as they offer us their essence,
as they envision a world that doesn’t need this poem?

- Barry Spector

[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]

American Dream

American Dream,
American Nightmare
America the beautiful,
prophecy of Blake,
democratic vista of Whitman,

harbinger of a new humanity,
melting pot for Europeans,
Russians, Asians, Middle-Easterners,
Latinos, Hindus, Moslems, Buddhists,
Christians, Jews, Santaria,

Where are you bound?
You future is in your own hands,
grappling with each other
in grim clinch,

The White Mask, inflexible—
not even white, really,
more like “pinko-grey”,
as Kipling said —
firm against the Rainbow?

But is it not all One Spectrum:
under God, indivisible,
and some day with
liberty and justice
for all!

- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

Let America Be America Again


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where it is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That anyone be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free".)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the people! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free".

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every one is free.
The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

- Langston Hughes

[Larry Robinson]

Before Evil

Before evil
my own goodness shrinks
before self-righteousness
my voice quavers
before those who know an angry God
with contempt for life
I tremble,
before those who hold
in their minds, in their hands
the lives of others
in hostage for their own,
before absolute Right
I am wrong
I am naked
without weapons
except for this determination
not to be defeated, but instead
to affirm the best in us,
to acknowledge our own power
to survive against whatever odds
and to seize the day
for love, for beauty, for humanity,
to make this day and the days following,
not theirs, not made by those who destroy,
but our own. We are the builders.
This day is in our hands.

- Doug Stout

[Larry Robinson]

American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.

Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.

Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.

But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.

And I dreamed I was dying.

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.

And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.

And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune

oh, but it's all right, it's all right, it's all
right, you can't be forever blessed.

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.

- Paul Simon

[BothSidesNow]

"We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an American tune"--Yes.
Thank you, Larry. And thank you, Paul Simon.

[Larry Robinson]

Another Woman

Another woman
would keep her mouth shut,
not spout fervent beliefs
like a speaker on a soapbox.

Another woman
would have chosen
equity over experience,
settling down or
just plain settling.

Another woman
would have stayed the course,
refusing distraction and
the pangs of the heart
that lead to upheaval.

Another woman
would not vacillate hearing
the voices that preach security and
the voices that harp on ideals.

Another woman
would not succumb to worry,
knowing that it never helps
and only constricts.

Another woman
would revel in her children’s independence
instead of mourning
their day-to-day absence in her life.

Another woman
would live in gratitude every moment
for her sojourn on this gorgeous planet
and not slip into the mundane
routine of forgetting.

But I am not
another woman.
I am this woman,
led by my heart and
pulled by conflicting voices,
a woman who
worries,
mourns,
forgets.

I am this woman,
this aging, outspoken, heart-stirred,
frightened and sometimes grateful woman,
This woman,
with this particular life
and not another.

- Maya Spector

[Roland Jacopetti]

Well, if you had your choice between this great Paul Simon song, and an English drinking song that's really hard for most people to sing that's all about the War of 1812, which would you choose for a national anthem?


American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused....

[wisewomn]

Neither. I'd go for "America, the Beautiful." Easy to sing and more upbeat than "American Tune." JMTC


Well, if you had your choice between this great Paul Simon song, and an English drinking song that's really hard for most people to sing that's all about the War of 1812, which would you choose for a national anthem?

[Larry Robinson]

Be Angry With The Sun

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

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

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

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

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

- Robinson Jeffers

[REALnothings]

It's a powerful and universal poem! There may be a range of opinion about its precise contemporary application.

[BothSidesNow]

Wow. Robinson Jeffers got it! No point in being ANGRY with the sun for setting, etc., etc. Maybe sad and regretful. Not angry.
Thanks, Larry.
Janet

Be Angry With The Sun

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

[Larry Robinson]

Credo


I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, --
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the Light!

- Edwin Arlington Robinson

[wisewomn]

It's interesting to note that Jeffers lived 1887-1962.


It's a powerful and universal poem! There may be a range of opinion about its precise contemporary application.


Be Angry With The Sun

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

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

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

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

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

- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

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]

Consider the Generosity of the One-Year-Old

who has no words to exchange with you yet
and instead offers up her favorite drooled-on blanket
her green rhinoceros as big as she is,
her cloth doll with the long blond pigtails,
her battered cardboard books, swung open on their
soggy pages.

If you were outdoors she would hand you a dead beetle,

a fistful of grass, a pebble,
by way of introduction or just because.

And if, a moment later, she wanted it back,
it would be for the joy of the game
that makes of every simple object an offering:
This is me. Here is who I am.

In the same way, sun
drapes a buttered scarf across your face,
rose opens herself to your glance,
and rain shares its divine melancholy.

The whole world keeps whispering or shouting to you,
nibbling your ear like a neglected lover,
while you worry over matters of finance
of "relationship,"

important issues related to getting and spending,
having and hoarding,
though you were once that baby,
though you are still that world.


- Alison Luterman

[Larry Robinson]

Driving The Car

Getting into my car,
I vow that I will drive with
Mindful care and caution.
If, in fact, this is my vehicle,
For I often step into
Someone else’s car
By accident.
If I have done so now, here in the parking lot of Stop & Shop,
May I smile with self-compassion,
And not curse my cluelessness,
As the cars where I live are all Subarus,
And all the same model, and all the same “jasmine green,”
A bewildering forest of Foresters.

- Jenny Allen

[REALnothings]

funny, where I live
they're all gold
Toyota Camry's
like mine!
Whole parades of them, it seems! :wink:

[Larry Robinson]

A Killing

Black wasps build a nest in the bamboo chime.
I smile as I discover
the lattice of their honeycomb,
gamine youth playing 'round the rim.

Long-limbed dancers, pendant legs
dangle from elegant wasp waists;
my mind spins wild imaginings
around this entomological crèche.

And yet they strafe me when I weed
dive-bomb the cats into the hedge,
dare to cruise the kitchen air
wreck my peace so I make a pledge.

I comb the list of euphemisms.
No poison for me, though the die's been cast:
a heavy stream of soapy water
I trust will be the fix that lasts.

I pass the night in fitful naps.
serenity finds no purchase in my dreams.
My parrot mind yammers on
through backroom murders, shady schemes.

Next morning, when I check the nest
the wasps seem drugged, about to die.
Bodies larded, oiled with glue
they barely lift their wings to fly.

I feel sorrow, but relief as well
for creatures whose only mortal sin
was making their home in a human space.
The cats put on a somber face.

- Sandra Anfang

[Larry Robinson]

Expect Nothing

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
Become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.
Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.
Discover the reason why
So tiny a human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

- Alice Walker

[Larry Robinson]

Rubai Sixty Seven


Enervating and hopeless
you may imagine the work awaiting you.
And you would be right.

Worse still, to succeed now you must be cruel
in order not to feel the wrong you must do.

Be as dumb as geese who change-off leading
as they victory together across a fresh and ancient sky.

Be dumb if you are dumb.
Be smart if that.
But listen, for you all have the same thing to say:

The come-and-go of God –
that is the gratitude stammering as you voice it.

You have, in yourselves, employment.
An old man tells you this.
Although in no way can you imagine that
in the room of youth that is yours.

Other rooms will come
slowly surprising you.
Your life’s job is to live it to its end.
But your Life’s job awaits you,
stored.

So never mind “correctness” –
that groupspeak of long-faced worthies.

Already you hear this this: I once felt as you feel now.
And didn’t know of
all the rooms to come – I had no idea –
the rooms – the wonderful terrible rooms.

- Bruce Moody

[Larry Robinson]

Horses


In truth I am puzzled most in life
by nine horses.

I’ve been watching them for eleven weeks
in a pasture near Melrose.
Two are on one side of the fence and seven
on the other side.
They stare at one another from the same places
hours and hours each day.
This is another unanswerable question
to haunt us with the ordinary.
They have to be talking to one another
in a language without a voice.
Maybe they are speaking the wordless talk of lovers,
sullen, melancholy, jubilant.
Linguists say that language comes after music
and we sang nonsense syllables
before we invented a rational speech
to order our days.
We live far out in the country where I hear
creature voices night and day.
Like us they are talking about their lives
on this brief visit to earth.
In truth each day is a universe in which
we are tangled in the light of stars.
Stop a moment. Think about these horses
in their sweet-smelling silence.

- Jim Harrison

[Larry Robinson]

Trillium


How ever bad it was, she must have loved the dog, their walks by the river. How the man who brought her here or what he thought no longer mattered. Say she was spindrift. That’s how it felt. Nothing engaged her. Days went by before she’d bathe. She could smell the animal like anguish in her hair and reveled in it. But for the dog she might have hanged herself, or filled her pockets full of stones instead of scraps for Cerberus. Two steps at a time she took the dark staircases. Outside the gates, among the beggar dead, she’d find him, kneel, unlock his chains. He leaned against her, as they walked, his sphinx’s shoulders. What he knew of her of course, no one can say. Call it a nearness like a room you make inside yourself for sorrow. Few are invited in. And she to him? Cerberus was welcome. In spring among the trillium she longed for him. Who could believe it was a pomegranate seed secured her soul? It was the dog that kept her going back.

- Deborah Digges

[Larry Robinson]

Today

The ordinary miracles begin. Somewhere
a signal arrives: “Now,” and the rays
come down. A tomorrow has come. Open
your hands, lift them: morning rings
all the doorbells; porches are cells for prayer.
Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now,
you could close your eyes and go on full of light.

And it is already begun, the chord
that will shiver glass, the song full of time
bending above us. Outside, a sign:
a bird intervenes; the wings tell the air,
“Be warm.” No one is out there, but a giant
has passed through town, widening streets, touching
the ground, shouldering away the stars.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Salty Like Tears


When my daughter moved away to college

was the same week I had to give all our chickens away,

their sweet voices murmuring in the garden no more


was the same week her friend walked into the mountains of the Pacific Coast Trail and disappeared without a trace.

Our candle vigil burning through the days of packing


was not only the time of our own separation

but her dog and my dog, my dog and her, her dog and me,

our pack now 200 miles apart


And that night I read Ellen Bass’ poem

“When You Came Back”,

and for a moment

I felt our lives rewind until you were

once again that little magic bean

growing inside me.


Today I sat in a parking lot

with a bag of chips,

thinking how all my life I’ve had a sweet tooth

but now I want everything

salty like tears.



- Kay Crista

[Larry Robinson]

When You Return

Fallen leaves will climb back into trees.
Shards of the shattered vase will rise
and reassemble on the table.
Plastic raincoats will refold
into their flat envelopes. The egg,
bald yolk and its transparent halo,
slide back in the thin, calcium shell.
Curses will pour back into mouths,
letters un-write themselves, words
siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair
will darken and become the feathers
of a black swan. Bullets will snap
back into their chambers, the powder
tamped tight in brass casings. Borders
will disappear from maps. Rust
revert to oxygen and time. The fire
return to the log, the log to the tree,
the white root curled up
in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly
into the lark’s lungs, answers
become questions again.
When you return, sweaters will unravel
and wool grow on the sheep.
Rock will go home to mountain, gold
to vein. Wine crushed into the grape,
oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in
to the spider’s belly. Night moths
tucked close into cocoons, ink drained
from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds
will be returned to coal, coal
to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light
to stars sucked back and back
into one timeless point, the way it was
before the world was born,
that fresh, that whole, nothing
broken, nothing torn apart.


- Ellen Bass

[Larry Robinson]

A Song on the End of the World


On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.


On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.


And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.


Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

- Czeslaw Milosz
(translated by Anthony Milosz)

[Larry Robinson]

Holding Up The Sky


We women who walk the earthhttps://globalprosperity.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/swap_woman_may10.jpg
petaled with phlox and rhododendrons,
delight in flushing out its beauty

We women are fields of purple daisies
gathered in crystal vases,
singing the virtues of sunshine

Summer is all a ruckus;
squirrel’s pitching walnuts, a clarinet and robin duet,
a whistling bamboo and howling dogs too

We women have extraterrestrial ears
tuned to stellar pulses,
resonating in our veins

We women have meandering muses
drawn to barnyard scents,
and orchards - laden with poetry

Where hens cackle all day,
proud of their creations
made fresh from scratch

We women travel light,
when our eggs are all gone
love keeps us moving

On we climb
guided by sisterly sherpas,
who have been to where we’re going

Above the Redwood spires
diamonds - set in blue,
crown our heads each night

We women are living circles,
some fixed - some wandering
tethered - only by our imagination

We women hold each other up
and let the sky
rest on our shoulders

- Emily Marie Bording