Ronaldo
09-22-2020, 09:29 AM
Snyder at Ft Ross in 2013, Nasa moon photo at Arlington VA, 2015— Photoshop merges time and space.
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View Full Version : Poem for the day from Larry Robinson
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Larry Robinson
09-23-2020, 06:10 AM
Eavesdropping on angels
Yesterday, just as Rosh Hashanah was ending,
I managed to slip through the dream time and
heard R.B.G.’s two guardian angels chatting. Said
one: “Oy gevalt, those humans are slow to get it;
a Tzadik’s life, like all lives is scripted for greatness,
but some beings grasp the plan with a fervor that
only gods and angels manifest.” “Oy gatinu” said
the other. “We infuse humans with sacred teachings
and stories that not only the life, but also the death
of such beings becomes a rarified shofar blast that
jolts humankind.” Now we all really get it. We feel it
humming in the rarified air of change within moments
of her passing, we sense it now as the donations swell,
and lesser beings run for cover and choke on their
hypocrisy. Most of all we saw it, and remember with
broken hearts, the subtle impish smile on the face
of this tiny giant as she broke barriers that persisted
for centuries. We sense this rare presence and decorate
it with initials like F.D.R., M.L.K., and of now, R.B.G.
We ask: what doth the lord require of thee but to do
justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy god.
And pump iron at age 85.
- Bruce Silverman
Yesterday, just as Rosh Hashanah was ending,
I managed to slip through the dream time and
heard R.B.G.’s two guardian angels chatting. Said
one: “Oy gevalt, those humans are slow to get it;
a Tzadik’s life, like all lives is scripted for greatness,
but some beings grasp the plan with a fervor that
only gods and angels manifest.” “Oy gatinu” said
the other. “We infuse humans with sacred teachings
and stories that not only the life, but also the death
of such beings becomes a rarified shofar blast that
jolts humankind.” Now we all really get it. We feel it
humming in the rarified air of change within moments
of her passing, we sense it now as the donations swell,
and lesser beings run for cover and choke on their
hypocrisy. Most of all we saw it, and remember with
broken hearts, the subtle impish smile on the face
of this tiny giant as she broke barriers that persisted
for centuries. We sense this rare presence and decorate
it with initials like F.D.R., M.L.K., and of now, R.B.G.
We ask: what doth the lord require of thee but to do
justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy god.
And pump iron at age 85.
- Bruce Silverman
Larry Robinson
09-24-2020, 05:47 AM
I Go Down To The Shore
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall —
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
- Mary Oliver
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall —
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
- Mary Oliver
Larry Robinson
09-25-2020, 06:33 AM
Equinox
Now is the time of year when bees are wild
and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped
loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants
in the bright, late-September out-of-doors.
I have found their dried husks in my clothes.
They are dervishes because they are dying,
one last sting, a warm place to squeeze
a drop of venom or of honey.
After the stroke we thought would be her last
my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped
a nurse across the face. Then she stood up,
walked outside, and lay down in the snow.
Two years later there is no other way
to say, we are waiting. She is silent, light
as an empty hive, and she is breathing.
- Elizabeth Alexander
Now is the time of year when bees are wild
and eccentric. They fly fast and in cramped
loop-de-loops, dive-bomb clusters of conversants
in the bright, late-September out-of-doors.
I have found their dried husks in my clothes.
They are dervishes because they are dying,
one last sting, a warm place to squeeze
a drop of venom or of honey.
After the stroke we thought would be her last
my grandmother came back, reared back and slapped
a nurse across the face. Then she stood up,
walked outside, and lay down in the snow.
Two years later there is no other way
to say, we are waiting. She is silent, light
as an empty hive, and she is breathing.
- Elizabeth Alexander
Larry Robinson
09-26-2020, 07:29 AM
Yom Kippur, 5781
(Day of Atonement, 2020)
The fires raged
and the smoke encircled
the globe.
Eveywhere
people breathed
bitter remnants
of ancient trees,
fleeing, frightened animals,
burning toxins,
particles of human flesh.
Breath deeply now
this bitter communion
of atonement.
- Dianne Monroe
(Day of Atonement, 2020)
The fires raged
and the smoke encircled
the globe.
Eveywhere
people breathed
bitter remnants
of ancient trees,
fleeing, frightened animals,
burning toxins,
particles of human flesh.
Breath deeply now
this bitter communion
of atonement.
- Dianne Monroe
Larry Robinson
09-27-2020, 07:39 AM
Learning
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
it's quiet. "That's him," she said.
- William Stafford
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
it's quiet. "That's him," she said.
- William Stafford
Larry Robinson
09-28-2020, 06:43 AM
They Say Fire Is A Metaphor
I
We weren't ready for everything to go.
We told some gods
we were grateful for what we had
—a paltry thing against infernos.
Broken voices reached us on ether,
discovered their own breath
still ninety-eight point six but choked
like a ghost with fever.
We search for lost ones through what remains
––cement angels, crazed rock, melted
metal cast as pyres—incinerated
by refusal electeds dare not explain.
II
Ash lungs––celestial tea of spider webs,
throats clogged––no relief. Yellow sky.
Clouds swirled like ply unraveling,
smoldering threads.
Brigades of birds shot out, circling alone,
nestlings agape, flame-fed
calls crossed woven twigs, grass,
ephemera destined for indeterminate bone.
Blanketed babes wound in arms for cradles,
ash where they stopped, unsifted mix
of wool, milk, grain, bleached of sound.
Only wind trembles.
Twisted trees, charred limbs affright;
rivers of dust will follow,
swallow trunks, leave glistening stone
arbors twice petrified.
- Lynn Axelrod
I
We weren't ready for everything to go.
We told some gods
we were grateful for what we had
—a paltry thing against infernos.
Broken voices reached us on ether,
discovered their own breath
still ninety-eight point six but choked
like a ghost with fever.
We search for lost ones through what remains
––cement angels, crazed rock, melted
metal cast as pyres—incinerated
by refusal electeds dare not explain.
II
Ash lungs––celestial tea of spider webs,
throats clogged––no relief. Yellow sky.
Clouds swirled like ply unraveling,
smoldering threads.
Brigades of birds shot out, circling alone,
nestlings agape, flame-fed
calls crossed woven twigs, grass,
ephemera destined for indeterminate bone.
Blanketed babes wound in arms for cradles,
ash where they stopped, unsifted mix
of wool, milk, grain, bleached of sound.
Only wind trembles.
Twisted trees, charred limbs affright;
rivers of dust will follow,
swallow trunks, leave glistening stone
arbors twice petrified.
- Lynn Axelrod
Larry Robinson
09-29-2020, 08:33 AM
Avot V'Imahot
Initially I resisted, then ultimately embraced their wisdom, their strength. Every day their truth pulsates through me, for they gave me breath.
L’dor V’dor.
For unimageable numbers, a virus has stricken, and no longer, do they breathe.
For others, it has been a slug of lead or the crush of a knee.
No longer do they breathe.
The battles fought & the skills developed by our ancestors compel me to fight against the destruction of our planet and to resist the scuttling of our democracy - - to pursue justice on behalf of those who no longer breathe, and by standing on the shoulders of our most notorious ancestor, we say: Amen.
- David Salm
Initially I resisted, then ultimately embraced their wisdom, their strength. Every day their truth pulsates through me, for they gave me breath.
L’dor V’dor.
For unimageable numbers, a virus has stricken, and no longer, do they breathe.
For others, it has been a slug of lead or the crush of a knee.
No longer do they breathe.
The battles fought & the skills developed by our ancestors compel me to fight against the destruction of our planet and to resist the scuttling of our democracy - - to pursue justice on behalf of those who no longer breathe, and by standing on the shoulders of our most notorious ancestor, we say: Amen.
- David Salm
Larry Robinson
09-30-2020, 07:33 AM
She Holds These Truths
Throngs of mourners gather below the
forty-four steps that ascend to a portico encircled by
Corinthian columns, each of the sixteen a reminder
of the beauty and dignity of this place
where Justice lies in repose before the Great Hall.
Gazing upward they see “Equal Justice Under Law”
etched over the doors that open to the high court
and what once was her seat, now shrouded in black
her opinions in majority and dissent echoing
through the lives and livelihoods of we the people.
She battled the patriarchs of bias and bigotry
with the sword of reason and the power of words to
wage a quiet revolution and reform a nation
called to uphold freedom’s guarantee of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
They come to be near so bright a star
her light cast across the lives of
women, young and old, who know what
she has given to fight for the rights and
responsibilities that liberty, not time, guarantees.
Gratitude and grief resound throughout
a country dying for a more perfect union
the sanctity of the Constitution in peril,
perhaps lost without the notorious one
a servant of the law and her oath.
When the crowds return home and the
last candle is extinguished, the verses
of Amazing Grace withered by the wind
generations to come will hear the whisper
of a Justice’s voice that once set them free.
L.L. Stamps
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(1933-2020)
Throngs of mourners gather below the
forty-four steps that ascend to a portico encircled by
Corinthian columns, each of the sixteen a reminder
of the beauty and dignity of this place
where Justice lies in repose before the Great Hall.
Gazing upward they see “Equal Justice Under Law”
etched over the doors that open to the high court
and what once was her seat, now shrouded in black
her opinions in majority and dissent echoing
through the lives and livelihoods of we the people.
She battled the patriarchs of bias and bigotry
with the sword of reason and the power of words to
wage a quiet revolution and reform a nation
called to uphold freedom’s guarantee of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
They come to be near so bright a star
her light cast across the lives of
women, young and old, who know what
she has given to fight for the rights and
responsibilities that liberty, not time, guarantees.
Gratitude and grief resound throughout
a country dying for a more perfect union
the sanctity of the Constitution in peril,
perhaps lost without the notorious one
a servant of the law and her oath.
When the crowds return home and the
last candle is extinguished, the verses
of Amazing Grace withered by the wind
generations to come will hear the whisper
of a Justice’s voice that once set them free.
L.L. Stamps
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(1933-2020)
Larry Robinson
10-01-2020, 07:55 AM
Fall
Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
- Edward Hirsch
Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.
- Edward Hirsch
Larry Robinson
10-02-2020, 06:19 AM
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
- William Wordsworth
On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
- William Wordsworth
Larry Robinson
10-03-2020, 07:18 AM
Called By The Fire
Called by fire blazing in leaves,
wandering like Aengus into the beauty,
ambling a dappled circle,
tracing the cycle of my life.
Monkey mind names them:
Maidenhair, turkey, spicebush.
Sink into the beauty:
Awesome, fantastic, magnificent.
Words not enough.
Deeper to sounds, a protolanguage
of feeling.
No mediation: ooh! gasp! Aaahhhh!
Finally pure awe, basking in stillness.
40 years in this place,
once, all enthusiasm and ideas,
so much to do,
time seemingly unlimited.
Now, in my own autumn,
slowly trodding a leafy Persian carpet of gold,
red grace notes ascatter,
I see my whole life around me.
Past and future - together.
Saplings abound -
Maple, hickory, beech.
Land becomes its true self,
hidden so long under ax and plow.
Nut to tree,
surging through leaf mold,
life rising from death.
Fallen white oak,
leaves curled brown,
on its path of return
to the nurturing earth.
Surrendering wholly to source,
as I will do in time.
Compost and foxfire,
a fading glow,
lighting a path for those to come.
- Alan Cohen
Called by fire blazing in leaves,
wandering like Aengus into the beauty,
ambling a dappled circle,
tracing the cycle of my life.
Monkey mind names them:
Maidenhair, turkey, spicebush.
Sink into the beauty:
Awesome, fantastic, magnificent.
Words not enough.
Deeper to sounds, a protolanguage
of feeling.
No mediation: ooh! gasp! Aaahhhh!
Finally pure awe, basking in stillness.
40 years in this place,
once, all enthusiasm and ideas,
so much to do,
time seemingly unlimited.
Now, in my own autumn,
slowly trodding a leafy Persian carpet of gold,
red grace notes ascatter,
I see my whole life around me.
Past and future - together.
Saplings abound -
Maple, hickory, beech.
Land becomes its true self,
hidden so long under ax and plow.
Nut to tree,
surging through leaf mold,
life rising from death.
Fallen white oak,
leaves curled brown,
on its path of return
to the nurturing earth.
Surrendering wholly to source,
as I will do in time.
Compost and foxfire,
a fading glow,
lighting a path for those to come.
- Alan Cohen
Larry Robinson
10-04-2020, 07:41 AM
I keep thinking
of the madrone leaves
that crackle with a hush
when they are hit with first sunlight
on the hillside at the place
I call
Celebration Bend
and the way that our
community
center
called the Hub
looks so different
when the first damp
and overcast
autumn evening
appears--
like a nest
among the
calm and gathering
hills
but I don't walk much
towards Celebration Bend
these days
and we don't gather
at the Hub
because
you know
pandemic
and other things
I want things
back
even my
most intimate
observations
and memories
Instead
I keep thinking
- Amy Elizabeth Robinson
This poem was written shortly before Amy’s home and 12 of the 13 homes in her intentional community Monan’s Rill were lost to the Glass Fire. This community, founded in the 1970s, has been the hub of so much of Sonoma County’s peace, justice, watershed ecology, and forest stewardship work over many years. If any of you feel called to help these wonderful people out in this time please go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/SupportMonansRill.
of the madrone leaves
that crackle with a hush
when they are hit with first sunlight
on the hillside at the place
I call
Celebration Bend
and the way that our
community
center
called the Hub
looks so different
when the first damp
and overcast
autumn evening
appears--
like a nest
among the
calm and gathering
hills
but I don't walk much
towards Celebration Bend
these days
and we don't gather
at the Hub
because
you know
pandemic
and other things
I want things
back
even my
most intimate
observations
and memories
Instead
I keep thinking
- Amy Elizabeth Robinson
This poem was written shortly before Amy’s home and 12 of the 13 homes in her intentional community Monan’s Rill were lost to the Glass Fire. This community, founded in the 1970s, has been the hub of so much of Sonoma County’s peace, justice, watershed ecology, and forest stewardship work over many years. If any of you feel called to help these wonderful people out in this time please go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/SupportMonansRill.
Larry Robinson
10-05-2020, 08:14 AM
On Taking the Measure of Your Book
for Michael Franco
there must be a way
to enter your poetry
the way your words turn
into meaning after meaning
into the depths of memory
into the silence of the beach
which of course is never silent
but it seems so when I am there alone
and then the birds come
over the dunes
the tiny sandpipers,
silent in sand
creating the rhythm
of your poem
and far out beyond my eyes
the great white pelicans
and as I watch them I see
how I must enter your poetry
wings folded against the wind
as I slice again and again
into the measure of your ocean
there where silence is translated
into language
- Fran Claggett-Holland
Fran’s poem was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Magazine.
for Michael Franco
there must be a way
to enter your poetry
the way your words turn
into meaning after meaning
into the depths of memory
into the silence of the beach
which of course is never silent
but it seems so when I am there alone
and then the birds come
over the dunes
the tiny sandpipers,
silent in sand
creating the rhythm
of your poem
and far out beyond my eyes
the great white pelicans
and as I watch them I see
how I must enter your poetry
wings folded against the wind
as I slice again and again
into the measure of your ocean
there where silence is translated
into language
- Fran Claggett-Holland
Fran’s poem was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Magazine.
Larry Robinson
10-06-2020, 06:06 AM
The Big Picture
I try to look at the big picture.
The sun, ardent tongue
licking us like a mother besotted
with her new cub, will wear itself out.
Everything is transitory.
Think of the meteor
that annihilated the dinosaurs.
And before that, the volcanoes
of the Permian period — all those burnt ferns
and reptiles, sharks and bony fish —
that was extinction on a scale
that makes our losses look like a bad day at the slots.
And perhaps we’re slated to ascend
to some kind of intelligence
that doesn’t need bodies, or clean water, or even air.
But I can’t shake my longing
for the last six hundred
Iberian lynx with their tufted ears,
Brazilian guitarfish, the 4
percent of them still cruising
the seafloor, eyes staring straight up.
And all the newborn marsupials —
red kangaroos, joeys the size of honeybees — steelhead trout, river dolphins,
all we can save
so many species of frogs
breathing through their
damp permeable membranes.
Today on the bus, a woman
in a sweater the exact shade of cardinals,
and her cardinal-colored bra strap, exposed
on her pale shoulder, makes me ache
for those bright flashes in the snow.
And polar bears, the cream and amber
of their fur, the long, hollow
hairs through which sun slips,
swallowed into their dark skin. When I get home,
my son has a headache and, though he’s
almost grown, asks me to sing him a song.
We lie together on the lumpy couch
and I warble out the old show tunes, “Night and Day”…
“They Can’t Take That Away from Me”… A cheap
silver chain shimmers across his throat
rising and falling with his pulse. There never was
anything else. Only these excruciatingly
insignificant creatures we love.
- Ellen Bass
I try to look at the big picture.
The sun, ardent tongue
licking us like a mother besotted
with her new cub, will wear itself out.
Everything is transitory.
Think of the meteor
that annihilated the dinosaurs.
And before that, the volcanoes
of the Permian period — all those burnt ferns
and reptiles, sharks and bony fish —
that was extinction on a scale
that makes our losses look like a bad day at the slots.
And perhaps we’re slated to ascend
to some kind of intelligence
that doesn’t need bodies, or clean water, or even air.
But I can’t shake my longing
for the last six hundred
Iberian lynx with their tufted ears,
Brazilian guitarfish, the 4
percent of them still cruising
the seafloor, eyes staring straight up.
And all the newborn marsupials —
red kangaroos, joeys the size of honeybees — steelhead trout, river dolphins,
all we can save
so many species of frogs
breathing through their
damp permeable membranes.
Today on the bus, a woman
in a sweater the exact shade of cardinals,
and her cardinal-colored bra strap, exposed
on her pale shoulder, makes me ache
for those bright flashes in the snow.
And polar bears, the cream and amber
of their fur, the long, hollow
hairs through which sun slips,
swallowed into their dark skin. When I get home,
my son has a headache and, though he’s
almost grown, asks me to sing him a song.
We lie together on the lumpy couch
and I warble out the old show tunes, “Night and Day”…
“They Can’t Take That Away from Me”… A cheap
silver chain shimmers across his throat
rising and falling with his pulse. There never was
anything else. Only these excruciatingly
insignificant creatures we love.
- Ellen Bass
Larry Robinson
10-07-2020, 07:28 AM
Daily Acts For the Foreseeable Present
There still are some simple truths.
The sun does rise, so to speak,
Surrounded each day by a greater or lesser
Intensity of color! It does still set
Over all manner of geography,
Even the dimming stars are still here,
A witness of light across the heavens, the sun and moon
Moving with us, as we too change with the seasons.
The cosmos is vast and often incomprehensible.
There are still questions we are fortunate to ask,
With answers that are not large enough for us.
Our holy beginnings are shrouded in story. Yet
It is still a good rule of thumb to tell the truth
Rather than lie, to practice the golden rule,
To have a little humility, to use common sense,
To plant a garden, mindful of all that we love,
To exercise, to delight in daily acts,
To value the God-given differences which make us,
And life interesting. This is what we teach children.
Meanwhile, while so many species are vanishing,
And light pollution obscures the primordial,
the force that has long held existence in existence
Is still keeping the beavers busy weaving their dams
Keeping giraffes, with their many necklaces,
Elegant and awkward! Rhinos still lumber roly-poly
With pigs and countless kids, into the mud.
The foxes and anteaters are keeping their
Noses to the ground, for a while, they still
Can’t get enough off the smell of existence.
- Judith Stone
There still are some simple truths.
The sun does rise, so to speak,
Surrounded each day by a greater or lesser
Intensity of color! It does still set
Over all manner of geography,
Even the dimming stars are still here,
A witness of light across the heavens, the sun and moon
Moving with us, as we too change with the seasons.
The cosmos is vast and often incomprehensible.
There are still questions we are fortunate to ask,
With answers that are not large enough for us.
Our holy beginnings are shrouded in story. Yet
It is still a good rule of thumb to tell the truth
Rather than lie, to practice the golden rule,
To have a little humility, to use common sense,
To plant a garden, mindful of all that we love,
To exercise, to delight in daily acts,
To value the God-given differences which make us,
And life interesting. This is what we teach children.
Meanwhile, while so many species are vanishing,
And light pollution obscures the primordial,
the force that has long held existence in existence
Is still keeping the beavers busy weaving their dams
Keeping giraffes, with their many necklaces,
Elegant and awkward! Rhinos still lumber roly-poly
With pigs and countless kids, into the mud.
The foxes and anteaters are keeping their
Noses to the ground, for a while, they still
Can’t get enough off the smell of existence.
- Judith Stone
Larry Robinson
10-08-2020, 07:55 AM
Election
I voted.
I voted for the rainbow.
I voted for the cry of a loon.
I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.
I voted for a singing brook that sparkles
under a North Dakota bean field.
I voted for salty air through which the whimbrel flies
South along the shores of two continents.
I voted for melting snow that returns to the wellspring
of darkness, where the sky is born from the earth.
I voted for daemonic mushrooms in the loam,
and the old democracy of worms.
I voted for the wordless treaty that cannot be broken
by white men or brown, because it is made of star semen,
thistle sap, hieroglyphs of the weevil in prairie oak.
I voted for the local, the small, the brim
that does not spill over, the abolition of waste,
the luxury of enough.
I voted for the commonwealth of the ancient forest,
a larva for every beak, a wing-tinted flower
for every moth’s disguise, a well-fed mammal’s corpse
for every colony of maggots.
I voted for open borders between death and birth.
I voted on the ballot of a fallen leaf of sycamore
that cannot be erased, for it becomes the dust and rain,
and then a tree again.
I voted for more fallow time to cultivate wild flowers,
more recess in schools to cultivate play,
more leisure, tax free, more space between days.
I voted to increase the profit of evening silence
and the price of a thrush song.
I voted for ten million stars in your next inhalation.
- Alfred K. LaMotte
I voted.
I voted for the rainbow.
I voted for the cry of a loon.
I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.
I voted for a singing brook that sparkles
under a North Dakota bean field.
I voted for salty air through which the whimbrel flies
South along the shores of two continents.
I voted for melting snow that returns to the wellspring
of darkness, where the sky is born from the earth.
I voted for daemonic mushrooms in the loam,
and the old democracy of worms.
I voted for the wordless treaty that cannot be broken
by white men or brown, because it is made of star semen,
thistle sap, hieroglyphs of the weevil in prairie oak.
I voted for the local, the small, the brim
that does not spill over, the abolition of waste,
the luxury of enough.
I voted for the commonwealth of the ancient forest,
a larva for every beak, a wing-tinted flower
for every moth’s disguise, a well-fed mammal’s corpse
for every colony of maggots.
I voted for open borders between death and birth.
I voted on the ballot of a fallen leaf of sycamore
that cannot be erased, for it becomes the dust and rain,
and then a tree again.
I voted for more fallow time to cultivate wild flowers,
more recess in schools to cultivate play,
more leisure, tax free, more space between days.
I voted to increase the profit of evening silence
and the price of a thrush song.
I voted for ten million stars in your next inhalation.
- Alfred K. LaMotte
Larry Robinson
10-09-2020, 06:31 AM
Harvest
It’s autumn in the market—
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They’re beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth—
Inside, they’re gone. Black, moldy—
you can’t take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.
Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.
Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.
At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.
The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground’s so hard the farmers think
it isn’t worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?
And then the frost comes; there’s no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.
I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.
What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.
- Louise Gluck
It’s autumn in the market—
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They’re beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth—
Inside, they’re gone. Black, moldy—
you can’t take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.
Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.
Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.
At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.
The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground’s so hard the farmers think
it isn’t worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?
And then the frost comes; there’s no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.
I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.
What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.
- Louise Gluck
Larry Robinson
10-10-2020, 07:23 AM
October Salmon
He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety,
Maybe only two feet under the no-protection of an outleaning
small oak,
Half-under a tangle of brambles.
After his two thousand miles, he rests,
Breathing in that lap of easy current
In his graveyard pool.
About six pounds weight,
Four years old at most, and hardly a winter at sea –
But already a veteran,
Already a death-patched hero. So quickly it’s over!
So briefly he roamed the gallery of marvels!
Such sweet months, so richly embroidered into earth’s
beauty-dress,
Her life-robe –
Now worn out with her tirelessness, her insatiable quest,
Hangs in the flow, a frayed scarf –
An autumnal pod of his flower,
The mere hull of his prime, shrunk at shoulder and flank,
With the sea-going Aurora Borealis of his April power –
The primrose and violet of that first upfling in the estuary –
Ripened to muddy dregs,
The river reclaiming his sea-metals.
In the October light
He hangs there, patched with the leper-cloths.
Death has already dressed him
In her clownish regimentals, her badges and decorations,
Mapping the completion of his service,
His face a ghoul-mask, a dinosaur of senility, and his whole body
A fungoid anemone of canker –
Can the caress of water ease him?
The flow will not let up for a minute.
What change! from that covenant of Polar Light
To this shroud in a gutter!
What a death-in-life – to be his own spectre!
His living body become death’s puppet,
Dolled by death in her crude paints and drapes
He haunts his own staring vigil
And suffers the subjection, and the dumbness,
And the humiliation of the role!
And that is how it is,
That is what is going on there, under the scrubby oak tree,
hour after hour,
That is what the splendour of the sea has come down to,
And the eye of ravenous joy – king of infinite liberty
In the flashing expanse, the bloom of sea-life,
On the surge-ride of energy, weightless,
Body simply the armature of energy
In that earliest sea-freedom, the savage amazement of life,
The salt mouthful of actual existence
With strength like light –
Yet this was always with him. This was inscribed in his egg.
This chamber of horrors is also home.
He was probably hatched in this very pool.
And this was the only mother he ever had, this uneasy
channel of minnows
Under the mill-wall, with bicycle wheels, car-tyres, bottles
And sunk sheets of corrugated iron.
People walking their dogs trail their evening shadows across him.
If boys see him they will try to kill him.
All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,
The epic poise
That holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his doom,
so patient
In the machinery of heaven.
- Ted Hughes
He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety,
Maybe only two feet under the no-protection of an outleaning
small oak,
Half-under a tangle of brambles.
After his two thousand miles, he rests,
Breathing in that lap of easy current
In his graveyard pool.
About six pounds weight,
Four years old at most, and hardly a winter at sea –
But already a veteran,
Already a death-patched hero. So quickly it’s over!
So briefly he roamed the gallery of marvels!
Such sweet months, so richly embroidered into earth’s
beauty-dress,
Her life-robe –
Now worn out with her tirelessness, her insatiable quest,
Hangs in the flow, a frayed scarf –
An autumnal pod of his flower,
The mere hull of his prime, shrunk at shoulder and flank,
With the sea-going Aurora Borealis of his April power –
The primrose and violet of that first upfling in the estuary –
Ripened to muddy dregs,
The river reclaiming his sea-metals.
In the October light
He hangs there, patched with the leper-cloths.
Death has already dressed him
In her clownish regimentals, her badges and decorations,
Mapping the completion of his service,
His face a ghoul-mask, a dinosaur of senility, and his whole body
A fungoid anemone of canker –
Can the caress of water ease him?
The flow will not let up for a minute.
What change! from that covenant of Polar Light
To this shroud in a gutter!
What a death-in-life – to be his own spectre!
His living body become death’s puppet,
Dolled by death in her crude paints and drapes
He haunts his own staring vigil
And suffers the subjection, and the dumbness,
And the humiliation of the role!
And that is how it is,
That is what is going on there, under the scrubby oak tree,
hour after hour,
That is what the splendour of the sea has come down to,
And the eye of ravenous joy – king of infinite liberty
In the flashing expanse, the bloom of sea-life,
On the surge-ride of energy, weightless,
Body simply the armature of energy
In that earliest sea-freedom, the savage amazement of life,
The salt mouthful of actual existence
With strength like light –
Yet this was always with him. This was inscribed in his egg.
This chamber of horrors is also home.
He was probably hatched in this very pool.
And this was the only mother he ever had, this uneasy
channel of minnows
Under the mill-wall, with bicycle wheels, car-tyres, bottles
And sunk sheets of corrugated iron.
People walking their dogs trail their evening shadows across him.
If boys see him they will try to kill him.
All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,
The epic poise
That holds him so steady in his wounds, so loyal to his doom,
so patient
In the machinery of heaven.
- Ted Hughes
Larry Robinson
10-12-2020, 06:51 AM
And Will They Ever Com
And will they ever come, days of forgiveness and grace,
when you’ll walk in the fields, simple wanderer,
and your bare soles will be caressed by the clover,
or the wheat-stubble will sting your feet, and its sting will be sweet?
Or the rainfall will catch you, its downpour pounding
on your shoulders, your breast, your neck, your head.
And you’ll walk in the wet fields, quiet widening within
like light on the cloud’s rim.
And you’ll breathe in the scent of the furrow, full and calm,
and you’ll see the sun in the rain-pool’s golden mirror,
and all things are simple and alive, you may touch them,
and you are allowed, you are allowed to love.
You’ll walk in the field. Alone, unscorched by the blaze
of the fires, along roads stiffened with blood and terror.
And true to your heart you’ll be again humble and softened,
as one of the grass, as one of humankind.
- Lea Goldberg
(translated from the Hebrew
by Rachel Tzvia Back)
And will they ever come, days of forgiveness and grace,
when you’ll walk in the fields, simple wanderer,
and your bare soles will be caressed by the clover,
or the wheat-stubble will sting your feet, and its sting will be sweet?
Or the rainfall will catch you, its downpour pounding
on your shoulders, your breast, your neck, your head.
And you’ll walk in the wet fields, quiet widening within
like light on the cloud’s rim.
And you’ll breathe in the scent of the furrow, full and calm,
and you’ll see the sun in the rain-pool’s golden mirror,
and all things are simple and alive, you may touch them,
and you are allowed, you are allowed to love.
You’ll walk in the field. Alone, unscorched by the blaze
of the fires, along roads stiffened with blood and terror.
And true to your heart you’ll be again humble and softened,
as one of the grass, as one of humankind.
- Lea Goldberg
(translated from the Hebrew
by Rachel Tzvia Back)
Larry Robinson
10-13-2020, 05:12 AM
Autumnal
after a line from William Stafford
When the leaves are about to yellow and fall
ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,
how I thought perhaps I was different,
how everything I thought I knew about gold
turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like
to fall then. Sometimes the world’s workings feel transparent
and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes
the only words that can find our lips are thank you,
though the gifts look nothing like anything
we ever thought we wanted. Sometimes, gratitude
arrives in us, not because we are willing,
but because it insists on itself, like a weed,
like a wind, like change.
- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
after a line from William Stafford
When the leaves are about to yellow and fall
ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,
how I thought perhaps I was different,
how everything I thought I knew about gold
turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like
to fall then. Sometimes the world’s workings feel transparent
and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes
the only words that can find our lips are thank you,
though the gifts look nothing like anything
we ever thought we wanted. Sometimes, gratitude
arrives in us, not because we are willing,
but because it insists on itself, like a weed,
like a wind, like change.
- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Larry Robinson
10-14-2020, 06:14 AM
Late Night Prayer
Within this silence may a true voice dawn
as smoothly as the heron flies,
the wings unfold from that slender silhouette
and a great power is unfurled.
This still form can transform itself into flight -
So can we all.
May out of this quiet time come wisdom.
May in this silence emerge sound.
May this sound hold the secret of many things,
the balm to soothe our torment,
the elixir to lift us out of the slime.
We are stuck in the muck,
our shoes too heavy to lift us out
we need a miracle.
We need a spirit like a
Great Blue Heron
picking us out of this quagmire
like the stork delivers the baby
to its eagerly awaiting parents--
parents ready to spill out love to their
long awaited child, as if that child
were all the children of this earth.
Deliver us oh great spirit,
heal this wound that bleeds into the sky
turning it yellow, turning it red,.
We are inside the earth’s blister –
a yellow orange oozing from our pain,
slipping out of our hands
out of our control.
We have nothing left.
Please heal us, make us whole
allow our sincere wish
to push away the clouds and smoke
allow our words to spread wings
to billow out like giant cumulus white
clouds with edges definition clarity
against a blue sky
Allow our words our wishes our hopes
to stretch out their arms
like the wings of the heron as she lifts her great long body off the earth
as if it were nothing.
nothing but a thought
a wish
a hope
for blue skies.
- Basha
Within this silence may a true voice dawn
as smoothly as the heron flies,
the wings unfold from that slender silhouette
and a great power is unfurled.
This still form can transform itself into flight -
So can we all.
May out of this quiet time come wisdom.
May in this silence emerge sound.
May this sound hold the secret of many things,
the balm to soothe our torment,
the elixir to lift us out of the slime.
We are stuck in the muck,
our shoes too heavy to lift us out
we need a miracle.
We need a spirit like a
Great Blue Heron
picking us out of this quagmire
like the stork delivers the baby
to its eagerly awaiting parents--
parents ready to spill out love to their
long awaited child, as if that child
were all the children of this earth.
Deliver us oh great spirit,
heal this wound that bleeds into the sky
turning it yellow, turning it red,.
We are inside the earth’s blister –
a yellow orange oozing from our pain,
slipping out of our hands
out of our control.
We have nothing left.
Please heal us, make us whole
allow our sincere wish
to push away the clouds and smoke
allow our words to spread wings
to billow out like giant cumulus white
clouds with edges definition clarity
against a blue sky
Allow our words our wishes our hopes
to stretch out their arms
like the wings of the heron as she lifts her great long body off the earth
as if it were nothing.
nothing but a thought
a wish
a hope
for blue skies.
- Basha
Larry Robinson
10-15-2020, 05:16 AM
The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves
- Lucille Clifton
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves
- Lucille Clifton
Larry Robinson
10-16-2020, 06:03 AM
Sad
Trust.
Winter will be lovely this year,
Glorious, even.
Rain will soothe,
Winds excite,
And the dark ends of days will lead to unexplored,
Interior caverns, still and vast.
Some of the birds will stay
And I will befriend them,
Appreciate our mutual magic.
Other people and I will know
When we see each other on the street
That our bodies beneath the coats and scarves all have a bit of longing,
Only partially satisfied with the hot soup
And dense, warm bread.
This longing leads us to find joy everywhere:
On the pavement,
Within the storm,
New green showing off these smooth hills,
Each other.
One glowing candle will be enough
To light the way
To dancing,
Songs of worlds,
Real love,
Unity,
A kind of Justice we knew all along.
- Sue Stephenson
Trust.
Winter will be lovely this year,
Glorious, even.
Rain will soothe,
Winds excite,
And the dark ends of days will lead to unexplored,
Interior caverns, still and vast.
Some of the birds will stay
And I will befriend them,
Appreciate our mutual magic.
Other people and I will know
When we see each other on the street
That our bodies beneath the coats and scarves all have a bit of longing,
Only partially satisfied with the hot soup
And dense, warm bread.
This longing leads us to find joy everywhere:
On the pavement,
Within the storm,
New green showing off these smooth hills,
Each other.
One glowing candle will be enough
To light the way
To dancing,
Songs of worlds,
Real love,
Unity,
A kind of Justice we knew all along.
- Sue Stephenson
Larry Robinson
10-17-2020, 06:30 AM
Blessing the Bones
Mist curls through bushes and trees,
veils a woman on her knees to a river
that carries her words to the sea.
Eyes flashing like a wild dark night,
she speaks with the majesty of a Goddess,
the ardor of a Priestess, the urgency of a Mother.
The words float downstream and enter the Pacific
where they seep into white caps and shimmering cobalt.
Sunlight quickens every syllable sent to bless
the bones of Earth made bare by human malice,
the bones of Being born to skin and fur
to leaf and feather, root and scale, hoof and claw.
As the blessing weaves through equatorial islands,
bones beckon like shadows in bright cascades of foliage.
Driftwood beckons from gleaming shores -- tree bones
soothed by rhythms of the tides
From Hiroshima and Nagasaki come whispers like flames,
as if vaporized bones are a ghost fire,
a haunting that will ever abide as the ultimate abuse
of humanity’s power to create.
Across the Eurasian landmass they beckon --
the bones of homicide, genocide, ecocide
the bones of scattered mountain tops
of butterflies ground into grasslands
of wetlands dried and commodified.
From the Atlantic, bones beckon in beats of relief
at being tossed from slave ships.
In the Americas, they beckon from vanished villages,
from dusty drawers sequestered in museums,
from plantations, prairies, mines, and oil fields,
from once primal forests and ancient ceremonial grounds.
On days of the full moon, the woman returns
to the river that carried her blessing.
Black hair drapes her shoulders like a mantle of Creation
Her eyes shine with the tears of a planet
and the light of a star.
Some days she hears bells and a soft drum
It’s then the birds come.
- Cynthia Poten
Mist curls through bushes and trees,
veils a woman on her knees to a river
that carries her words to the sea.
Eyes flashing like a wild dark night,
she speaks with the majesty of a Goddess,
the ardor of a Priestess, the urgency of a Mother.
The words float downstream and enter the Pacific
where they seep into white caps and shimmering cobalt.
Sunlight quickens every syllable sent to bless
the bones of Earth made bare by human malice,
the bones of Being born to skin and fur
to leaf and feather, root and scale, hoof and claw.
As the blessing weaves through equatorial islands,
bones beckon like shadows in bright cascades of foliage.
Driftwood beckons from gleaming shores -- tree bones
soothed by rhythms of the tides
From Hiroshima and Nagasaki come whispers like flames,
as if vaporized bones are a ghost fire,
a haunting that will ever abide as the ultimate abuse
of humanity’s power to create.
Across the Eurasian landmass they beckon --
the bones of homicide, genocide, ecocide
the bones of scattered mountain tops
of butterflies ground into grasslands
of wetlands dried and commodified.
From the Atlantic, bones beckon in beats of relief
at being tossed from slave ships.
In the Americas, they beckon from vanished villages,
from dusty drawers sequestered in museums,
from plantations, prairies, mines, and oil fields,
from once primal forests and ancient ceremonial grounds.
On days of the full moon, the woman returns
to the river that carried her blessing.
Black hair drapes her shoulders like a mantle of Creation
Her eyes shine with the tears of a planet
and the light of a star.
Some days she hears bells and a soft drum
It’s then the birds come.
- Cynthia Poten
Larry Robinson
10-18-2020, 06:37 AM
At the Window
I was at the window
when a fly near the latch
was on its back spinning—
legs furious, going nowhere.
I thought to swat it
but something in its struggle
was too much my own.
It kept spinning and began to tire.
Without moving closer, I exhaled
steadily, my breath a sudden wind,
and the fly found its legs,
rubbed its face
and flew away.
I continued to stare at the latch
hoping that someday, the breath
of something incomprehensible
would right me and
enable me to fly.
- Mark Nepo
I was at the window
when a fly near the latch
was on its back spinning—
legs furious, going nowhere.
I thought to swat it
but something in its struggle
was too much my own.
It kept spinning and began to tire.
Without moving closer, I exhaled
steadily, my breath a sudden wind,
and the fly found its legs,
rubbed its face
and flew away.
I continued to stare at the latch
hoping that someday, the breath
of something incomprehensible
would right me and
enable me to fly.
- Mark Nepo
Larry Robinson
10-19-2020, 05:55 AM
Autumn Passage
On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.
On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.
On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”
“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,
September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,
glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates
even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns
florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.
- Elizabeth Alexander
On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.
On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.
On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”
“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,
September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,
glory of grown children’s vigil,
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates
even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns
florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.
- Elizabeth Alexander
Larry Robinson
10-20-2020, 06:57 AM
October 2020
I don’t wish to dwell
on the oppressive heat, incessant smoke, and
uncertainty about whether to hang clothes in the closet, or
stuff them into a suitcase
Words can’t begin
to salve the pain of isolation
from family
dear companions
communities
I can’t complain for myself
when others lose their jobs and homes
endure the collapse of social services
suffer the pain and humiliation of poverty
I do however notice who benefits
when the infernal machine
of insatiable economics
buoys the stock market
ignores unemployment, foreclosures, hunger, and health
Priorities become obvious when
the disarrayed government
no longer a lifeline against disaster
fails to halt the agonizing slide
into debt and despair
<o:p></o:p>
Political charade carries the farce forward<o:p></o:p>
Beyond the coffins of our hopes and dreams<o:p></o:p>
we see dimly, by the flickering bonfire of old promises
our tattered reputation and flag
lying at the feet of the powerful
- Karl Frederick
I don’t wish to dwell
on the oppressive heat, incessant smoke, and
uncertainty about whether to hang clothes in the closet, or
stuff them into a suitcase
Words can’t begin
to salve the pain of isolation
from family
dear companions
communities
I can’t complain for myself
when others lose their jobs and homes
endure the collapse of social services
suffer the pain and humiliation of poverty
I do however notice who benefits
when the infernal machine
of insatiable economics
buoys the stock market
ignores unemployment, foreclosures, hunger, and health
Priorities become obvious when
the disarrayed government
no longer a lifeline against disaster
fails to halt the agonizing slide
into debt and despair
<o:p></o:p>
Political charade carries the farce forward<o:p></o:p>
Beyond the coffins of our hopes and dreams<o:p></o:p>
we see dimly, by the flickering bonfire of old promises
our tattered reputation and flag
lying at the feet of the powerful
- Karl Frederick
Larry Robinson
10-21-2020, 06:28 AM
The swan does not care
if I think
it is beautiful.
The platypus is indifferent
to my laugh or scorn.
My great granddaughter--
"great" "grand" "daughter"--
what an odd and awe
inspiring succession
of words--
makes her 10 month old
will be known
over the tiniest
of indignations:
that piece of cheese
this book
pick me up
put me down.
I do not want
to break her spirit.
I can only show her
the swan and
the platypus,
the blue dragonflies mating over the pond,
the soft forest floor beneath the redwoods,
the crash of the ocean's waves,
the pelicans that glide above them.
I can only hope
that she will use
that fierce will
to protect
the natural world
and her place
in it.
- Richard Bloom
if I think
it is beautiful.
The platypus is indifferent
to my laugh or scorn.
My great granddaughter--
"great" "grand" "daughter"--
what an odd and awe
inspiring succession
of words--
makes her 10 month old
will be known
over the tiniest
of indignations:
that piece of cheese
this book
pick me up
put me down.
I do not want
to break her spirit.
I can only show her
the swan and
the platypus,
the blue dragonflies mating over the pond,
the soft forest floor beneath the redwoods,
the crash of the ocean's waves,
the pelicans that glide above them.
I can only hope
that she will use
that fierce will
to protect
the natural world
and her place
in it.
- Richard Bloom
Larry Robinson
10-22-2020, 06:20 AM
Savages
They buy poetry like gang members
buy guns — for aperture, caliber,
heft and defense. They sit on the floor
in the stacks, thumbing through Keats
and Plath, Levine and Olds, four boys
in a bookstore, black glasses, brackish hair,
rumpled shirts from the bin at St. Vincent de Paul.
One slides a warped hardback
from the bottom shelf, the others
scoot over to check the dates,
the yellowed sheaves ride smooth
under their fingers.
One reads a stanza in a whisper,
another turns the page, and their heads
almost touch, temple to temple — toughs
in a huddle, barbarians before a hunt, kids
hiding in an alley while sirens spiral by.
When they finish reading one closes
the musty cover like the door
on Tutankhamen’s tomb. They are savage
for knowledge, for beauty and truth.
They crawl on their knees to find it.
- Dorianne Laux
They buy poetry like gang members
buy guns — for aperture, caliber,
heft and defense. They sit on the floor
in the stacks, thumbing through Keats
and Plath, Levine and Olds, four boys
in a bookstore, black glasses, brackish hair,
rumpled shirts from the bin at St. Vincent de Paul.
One slides a warped hardback
from the bottom shelf, the others
scoot over to check the dates,
the yellowed sheaves ride smooth
under their fingers.
One reads a stanza in a whisper,
another turns the page, and their heads
almost touch, temple to temple — toughs
in a huddle, barbarians before a hunt, kids
hiding in an alley while sirens spiral by.
When they finish reading one closes
the musty cover like the door
on Tutankhamen’s tomb. They are savage
for knowledge, for beauty and truth.
They crawl on their knees to find it.
- Dorianne Laux
Larry Robinson
10-23-2020, 06:03 AM
A Portable Paradise
And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.
And if life puts you under pressure,
trace its ridges in your pocket,
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
hum its anthem under your breath.
And if your stresses are sustained and daily,
get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,
hostel or hovel – find a lamp
and empty your paradise onto a desk:
your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.
Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope
of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.
- Roger Robinson
And if I speak of Paradise,
then I’m speaking of my grandmother
who told me to carry it always
on my person, concealed, so
no one else would know but me.
That way they can’t steal it, she’d say.
And if life puts you under pressure,
trace its ridges in your pocket,
smell its piney scent on your handkerchief,
hum its anthem under your breath.
And if your stresses are sustained and daily,
get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel,
hostel or hovel – find a lamp
and empty your paradise onto a desk:
your white sands, green hills and fresh fish.
Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope
of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.
- Roger Robinson
Larry Robinson
10-24-2020, 06:10 AM
Good News
Would you rather have the good news
at a bad time, or bad news at a good?
Give me the good news, please.
Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.
Man, I needed that. And the bad news?
Good times don’t last forever, either.
So news is, basically, Things change?
When it’s bad, we need the good.
That’s new, old, and always.
- Kim Stafford
Would you rather have the good news
at a bad time, or bad news at a good?
Give me the good news, please.
Okay: Bad times don’t last forever.
Man, I needed that. And the bad news?
Good times don’t last forever, either.
So news is, basically, Things change?
When it’s bad, we need the good.
That’s new, old, and always.
- Kim Stafford
Larry Robinson
10-25-2020, 06:08 AM
Oil
soft rainsqualls on the swells
south of the Bonins, late at night. Light
from the empty mess-hall
throws back bulky shadows
of winch and fairlead
over the slanting fantail where I stand.
but for men on watch in the engine room,
the man at the wheel, the lookout in the bow,
the crew sleeps. in cots on deck
or narrow iron bunks down drumming
passageways below.
the ship burns with a furnace heart
steam veins and copper nerves
quivers and slightly twists and always goes—
easy roll of the hull and deep
vibration of the turbine underfoot.
bearing what all these
crazed, hooked nations need:
steel plates and
long injections of pure oil.
- Gary Snyder
soft rainsqualls on the swells
south of the Bonins, late at night. Light
from the empty mess-hall
throws back bulky shadows
of winch and fairlead
over the slanting fantail where I stand.
but for men on watch in the engine room,
the man at the wheel, the lookout in the bow,
the crew sleeps. in cots on deck
or narrow iron bunks down drumming
passageways below.
the ship burns with a furnace heart
steam veins and copper nerves
quivers and slightly twists and always goes—
easy roll of the hull and deep
vibration of the turbine underfoot.
bearing what all these
crazed, hooked nations need:
steel plates and
long injections of pure oil.
- Gary Snyder
Larry Robinson
10-26-2020, 06:46 AM
Buddhist New Year Song
I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I
brought down with me
to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden
make precious and mythical somehow, it is our nature,
and it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
the golden mask I had seen before, that fitted
so beautifully over your face, did not return
nor did that face of a bull you had acquired
amid northern peoples, nomads, the Gobi desert
I did not see those tents again, nor the wagons
infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains,
so cold, every star in the sky was a different color
the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing
but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come
I could not remember (then) what our purpose was
but remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawn
in the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold light
revealed the “mindborn” worlds, as simply that,
I watched them propagated, flowing out,
or, more simply, one mirror reflecting another.
then broke the mirrors, you were no longer in sight
nor any purpose, stared at this new blackness
the mindborn worlds fled, and the mind turned off:
a madness, or a beginning?
- Diane di Prima
(August 6, 1934 - October 25, 2020)
I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I
brought down with me
to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden
make precious and mythical somehow, it is our nature,
and it is truth, that we came here, I told you,
from other planets
where we were lords, we were sent here,
for some purpose
the golden mask I had seen before, that fitted
so beautifully over your face, did not return
nor did that face of a bull you had acquired
amid northern peoples, nomads, the Gobi desert
I did not see those tents again, nor the wagons
infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains,
so cold, every star in the sky was a different color
the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing
but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come
I could not remember (then) what our purpose was
but remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawn
in the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold light
revealed the “mindborn” worlds, as simply that,
I watched them propagated, flowing out,
or, more simply, one mirror reflecting another.
then broke the mirrors, you were no longer in sight
nor any purpose, stared at this new blackness
the mindborn worlds fled, and the mind turned off:
a madness, or a beginning?
- Diane di Prima
(August 6, 1934 - October 25, 2020)
Larry Robinson
10-27-2020, 07:02 AM
singularity
(after Marie Howe)
in the wordless beginning
iguana & myrrh
magma & reef ghost moth
& the cordyceps tickling its nerves
& cedar & archipelago & anemone
dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red
ocean salt & crude oil now black
muck now most naïve fumbling plankton
every egg clutched in the copycat soft
of me unwomaned unraced
unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote
that would rage my uncle’s blood
or the bacterium that will widow
your eldest daughter’s eldest son
my uncle, her son our mammoth sun
& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat
apatosaurus & nile river
& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &
yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you
spleen & femur seven-year refreshed
seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust
& my children & your children
& their children & the children
of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit
here not allied but the same perpetual breath
held fast to each other as each other’s own skin
cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born
in the olympus of the smallest
possible once before once
- Marissa Davis
(after Marie Howe)
in the wordless beginning
iguana & myrrh
magma & reef ghost moth
& the cordyceps tickling its nerves
& cedar & archipelago & anemone
dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red
ocean salt & crude oil now black
muck now most naïve fumbling plankton
every egg clutched in the copycat soft
of me unwomaned unraced
unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote
that would rage my uncle’s blood
or the bacterium that will widow
your eldest daughter’s eldest son
my uncle, her son our mammoth sun
& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat
apatosaurus & nile river
& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &
yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you
spleen & femur seven-year refreshed
seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust
& my children & your children
& their children & the children
of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit
here not allied but the same perpetual breath
held fast to each other as each other’s own skin
cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born
in the olympus of the smallest
possible once before once
- Marissa Davis
Larry Robinson
10-28-2020, 06:29 AM
Read Three Times & Call Me in the Morning
Command yourself
to read a poem
three times
at each single session
to understand how much
it can offer you and
other readers over time
Notice that this is how
one rare poem
will call to attention
the restless soul from
marking time at ease
- Ed Coletti
Command yourself
to read a poem
three times
at each single session
to understand how much
it can offer you and
other readers over time
Notice that this is how
one rare poem
will call to attention
the restless soul from
marking time at ease
- Ed Coletti
Larry Robinson
10-29-2020, 06:48 AM
God Letter
Do I have to dress up or can I wear jeans? Dear Joaquin,
casual Sunday is a plus! Can a woman be fully present in heels?
Remember the other day at the shops, we saw the T-shirt that
read “Blessed” across the front? I know
you picked it up for me as a joke, but it made me pause. I think
I am blessed in the way I understand people to mean it: having
good fortune. But this is where faith messes with my clean concept,
because practicing Christians don’t believe blessings come
out the clear blue sky. So here’s God again, all up in the Kool-Aid.
I’m dating myself, but I mean that He gets in the way of
spiritual minimalism. He is at once contained and uncontainable,
which, intellectually, is hard to understand. So being blessed
must require that one acts in such a way that presses God to bestow
blessings, which isn’t the same thing as good fortune, but I want
to believe that people are saying, “You have such good fortune,
I hope for good fortune, too,” because it means that no one is
preaching at me like, “You have good God-God,” “Father
God I hope He Gods for us, too,” “You got God?” Et cetera.
- CM Burroughs
Do I have to dress up or can I wear jeans? Dear Joaquin,
casual Sunday is a plus! Can a woman be fully present in heels?
Remember the other day at the shops, we saw the T-shirt that
read “Blessed” across the front? I know
you picked it up for me as a joke, but it made me pause. I think
I am blessed in the way I understand people to mean it: having
good fortune. But this is where faith messes with my clean concept,
because practicing Christians don’t believe blessings come
out the clear blue sky. So here’s God again, all up in the Kool-Aid.
I’m dating myself, but I mean that He gets in the way of
spiritual minimalism. He is at once contained and uncontainable,
which, intellectually, is hard to understand. So being blessed
must require that one acts in such a way that presses God to bestow
blessings, which isn’t the same thing as good fortune, but I want
to believe that people are saying, “You have such good fortune,
I hope for good fortune, too,” because it means that no one is
preaching at me like, “You have good God-God,” “Father
God I hope He Gods for us, too,” “You got God?” Et cetera.
- CM Burroughs
Larry Robinson
10-30-2020, 06:54 AM
Don’t Speak in the Abstract
Say rather:
It’s a nice day.
Pass the mashed potatoes, please.
Look, there’s a chickadee.
Your voice made me swoon.
Let’s plant the beans.
I miss my dead mother so much today.
I want to touch your face.
Clean up this mess!
What’s better than a cool glass of water?
I feel so sad; all I want to do is cry.
What time is it?
I want to touch you everywhere.
Let’s go for a walk.
Will you have tea with me?
Let’s play some music.
I don’t want to die.
Come visit again soon.
- David Budbill
Say rather:
It’s a nice day.
Pass the mashed potatoes, please.
Look, there’s a chickadee.
Your voice made me swoon.
Let’s plant the beans.
I miss my dead mother so much today.
I want to touch your face.
Clean up this mess!
What’s better than a cool glass of water?
I feel so sad; all I want to do is cry.
What time is it?
I want to touch you everywhere.
Let’s go for a walk.
Will you have tea with me?
Let’s play some music.
I don’t want to die.
Come visit again soon.
- David Budbill
Larry Robinson
10-31-2020, 06:57 AM
Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild
after Matthew Olzmann
Oh button, don’t go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.
We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.
Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?
The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.
You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
because they conjured thirst. We didn’t. We thanked
them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,
most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
like you to water them, whenever they went away.
And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up
our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.
He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced
too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars
we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.
- J.P. Grasser
after Matthew Olzmann
Oh button, don’t go thinking we loved pianos
more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.
We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.
Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?
The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.
You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
because they conjured thirst. We didn’t. We thanked
them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,
most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
like you to water them, whenever they went away.
And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up
our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.
He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced
too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars
we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.
- J.P. Grasser
Larry Robinson
11-01-2020, 06:11 AM
Dead Letter Office
They say a scrivener
went mad from years of working
in the dead letter office,
that undelivered love letter,
broken hearts; the bank note,
a starving child; those words
of hope, of condolence, of solace
forever sealed, unread, cut short
weighed on his heart, his mind
What lives did they cost,
those letters dead, undelivered?
May not a destination be a destiny?
When ballots are not delivered
could not a democracy be destroyed,
a tyranny assured?
In a dead letter office
a scrivener lost his mind;
in a dead letter office
a country can lose its liberty.
- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez
They say a scrivener
went mad from years of working
in the dead letter office,
that undelivered love letter,
broken hearts; the bank note,
a starving child; those words
of hope, of condolence, of solace
forever sealed, unread, cut short
weighed on his heart, his mind
What lives did they cost,
those letters dead, undelivered?
May not a destination be a destiny?
When ballots are not delivered
could not a democracy be destroyed,
a tyranny assured?
In a dead letter office
a scrivener lost his mind;
in a dead letter office
a country can lose its liberty.
- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez
Larry Robinson
11-02-2020, 05:33 AM
How Does It Happen? <o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens at the borders <o:p></o:p>
when grim men answer <o:p></o:p>
all questions with a flag <o:p></o:p>
and dismiss talk of civil rights<o:p></o:p>
with scribble of a pen.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when freedom slams<o:p></o:p>
its door on desperate, broken <o:p></o:p>
hands, and punishes the children <o:p></o:p>
who come from different lands.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when the knees of <o:p></o:p>
democracy buckle and money <o:p></o:p>
decides, who walks the long <o:p></o:p>
way home and who gets a <o:p></o:p>
chauffeured ride.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when we’re busy and <o:p></o:p>
ignore the signs that tell, not how<o:p></o:p>
or when, but enough to know, we <o:p></o:p>
lose the country when we, the people<o:p></o:p>
lose control. <o:p></o:p>
How do we change it?<o:p></o:p>
Vote because you can<o:p></o:p>
- Patrice Warrender<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens at the borders <o:p></o:p>
when grim men answer <o:p></o:p>
all questions with a flag <o:p></o:p>
and dismiss talk of civil rights<o:p></o:p>
with scribble of a pen.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when freedom slams<o:p></o:p>
its door on desperate, broken <o:p></o:p>
hands, and punishes the children <o:p></o:p>
who come from different lands.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when the knees of <o:p></o:p>
democracy buckle and money <o:p></o:p>
decides, who walks the long <o:p></o:p>
way home and who gets a <o:p></o:p>
chauffeured ride.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p> </o:p>
It happens when we’re busy and <o:p></o:p>
ignore the signs that tell, not how<o:p></o:p>
or when, but enough to know, we <o:p></o:p>
lose the country when we, the people<o:p></o:p>
lose control. <o:p></o:p>
How do we change it?<o:p></o:p>
Vote because you can<o:p></o:p>
- Patrice Warrender<o:p></o:p>
Larry Robinson
11-03-2020, 06:38 AM
I Voted
I voted today.
I dropped my heart into the ballot box
And cast my vote for the world I want to see.
I voted for country over party,
And planet over country.
I voted for everyone, and their dog.
I voted for the ancestors,
And the dreams they prayed we would fulfill.
I voted for the children,
Carnivals and innocence and joy.
I voted for the elders,
Soft wisdom, busy hands weaving webs of time.
I voted for the Divine Feminine
To rise again and take her throne.
I voted for the moon.
I voted for owls and crows and croaking toads
And ancient forests teeming with life.
I voted for the Great Spirit
To guide us toward our rightful place
At the feet of the sacred,
Through the gates of conscience,
That we may find our way back home.
And of course, I voted for love.
Now what to do
But wait for the ballots to be counted?
Meanwhile, rivers roar, bones rattle,
Past and future ages hold their breath.
They are waiting to see
If our hearts will reawaken...
Eyes open and ears pricked forward,
Songs on the tips of their tongues,
Ready to welcome us back to the chorus of life.
I voted today.
I voted for you and me, free.
I voted that we'll make it
Back home together, alive.
- Shannon Wills
I voted today.
I dropped my heart into the ballot box
And cast my vote for the world I want to see.
I voted for country over party,
And planet over country.
I voted for everyone, and their dog.
I voted for the ancestors,
And the dreams they prayed we would fulfill.
I voted for the children,
Carnivals and innocence and joy.
I voted for the elders,
Soft wisdom, busy hands weaving webs of time.
I voted for the Divine Feminine
To rise again and take her throne.
I voted for the moon.
I voted for owls and crows and croaking toads
And ancient forests teeming with life.
I voted for the Great Spirit
To guide us toward our rightful place
At the feet of the sacred,
Through the gates of conscience,
That we may find our way back home.
And of course, I voted for love.
Now what to do
But wait for the ballots to be counted?
Meanwhile, rivers roar, bones rattle,
Past and future ages hold their breath.
They are waiting to see
If our hearts will reawaken...
Eyes open and ears pricked forward,
Songs on the tips of their tongues,
Ready to welcome us back to the chorus of life.
I voted today.
I voted for you and me, free.
I voted that we'll make it
Back home together, alive.
- Shannon Wills
Larry Robinson
11-04-2020, 05:56 AM
One Vote
After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution
My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made
it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
on its own accord by first testing the air-slide
over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
its own. Must make the choice on its own
no matter what its been taught. Some forget
that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil
After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution
My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made
it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
on its own accord by first testing the air-slide
over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
its own. Must make the choice on its own
no matter what its been taught. Some forget
that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.
- Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Larry Robinson
11-05-2020, 07:03 AM
When Fannie Lou Hamer Said
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired
She meant
No more turned cheek
No more patience for the obstruction
of black woman’s right to vote
& plant & feed her family
She meant
Equality will cost you your luxurious life
If a Black woman can’t vote
If a brown baby can’t be fed
If we all don’t have the same opportunity America promised
She meant
Ain’t no mountain boulder enough
to wan off a determined woman
She meant
Here
Look at my hands
Each palm holds a history
of the 16 shots that chased me
harm free from a plantation shack
Look at my eyes
Both these are windows
these little lights of mine
She meant
Nothing but death can stop me
from marching out a jail cell still a free woman
She meant
Nothing but death can stop me from running for Congress
She meant
No black jack beating will stop my feet from working
& my heart from swelling
& my mouth from praying
She meant
America! you will learn freedom feels like
butter beans, potatoes & cotton seeds
picked by my sturdy hands
She meant
Look
Victoria Gray, Anna Divine & Me
In our rightful seats on the house floor
She meant
Until my children
& my children’s children
& they babies too
can March & vote
& get back in interest
what was planted
in this blessed land
She meant
I ain’t stopping America
I ain’t stopping America
Not even death can take away from my woman’s hands
what I’ve rightfully earned
- Mahogany L. Browne
I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired
She meant
No more turned cheek
No more patience for the obstruction
of black woman’s right to vote
& plant & feed her family
She meant
Equality will cost you your luxurious life
If a Black woman can’t vote
If a brown baby can’t be fed
If we all don’t have the same opportunity America promised
She meant
Ain’t no mountain boulder enough
to wan off a determined woman
She meant
Here
Look at my hands
Each palm holds a history
of the 16 shots that chased me
harm free from a plantation shack
Look at my eyes
Both these are windows
these little lights of mine
She meant
Nothing but death can stop me
from marching out a jail cell still a free woman
She meant
Nothing but death can stop me from running for Congress
She meant
No black jack beating will stop my feet from working
& my heart from swelling
& my mouth from praying
She meant
America! you will learn freedom feels like
butter beans, potatoes & cotton seeds
picked by my sturdy hands
She meant
Look
Victoria Gray, Anna Divine & Me
In our rightful seats on the house floor
She meant
Until my children
& my children’s children
& they babies too
can March & vote
& get back in interest
what was planted
in this blessed land
She meant
I ain’t stopping America
I ain’t stopping America
Not even death can take away from my woman’s hands
what I’ve rightfully earned
- Mahogany L. Browne
Larry Robinson
11-06-2020, 06:29 AM
Crossroads
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young —
love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —
My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss
- Louise Glück
My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
like what I remember of love when I was young —
love that was so often foolish in its objectives
but never in its choices, its intensities
Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —
My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
forgive its brutality.
As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,
not wishing to give offense
but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:
it is not the earth I will miss,
it is you I will miss
- Louise Glück
Larry Robinson
11-07-2020, 06:16 AM
For Nothing Is Fixed
For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
- James Baldwin
For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
- James Baldwin
Larry Robinson
11-08-2020, 06:40 AM
The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone --
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance --
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love --
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed --
or have you too
turned from this world --
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
- Mary Oliver
50595
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone --
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance --
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love --
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed --
or have you too
turned from this world --
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
- Mary Oliver
50595
Larry Robinson
11-09-2020, 05:48 AM
Passing Through
I borrow this dust
from a lonely planet—
the earth rotting and dry,
scaffolding sent to the heavens,
wanting more.
I borrow this heart
from a warn out soldier
sharing a victory or defeat,
lost in the questions,
lost in himself.
I borrow these eyes
from the one who sees
beyond the surface
into the lagoon of many faces,
into the water of life.
I hold it all, heart in hand,
visions of better days—
freer, more alive.
My longings cast on the mountain,
scattered.
Some held back to ignite me now
as I rise through the blanket of ash
wafting through snippets of dreams—
trying to make sense
of the path I’m on.
Consoling the losses,
encouraging the remains.
- Sherrie Lovler
I borrow this dust
from a lonely planet—
the earth rotting and dry,
scaffolding sent to the heavens,
wanting more.
I borrow this heart
from a warn out soldier
sharing a victory or defeat,
lost in the questions,
lost in himself.
I borrow these eyes
from the one who sees
beyond the surface
into the lagoon of many faces,
into the water of life.
I hold it all, heart in hand,
visions of better days—
freer, more alive.
My longings cast on the mountain,
scattered.
Some held back to ignite me now
as I rise through the blanket of ash
wafting through snippets of dreams—
trying to make sense
of the path I’m on.
Consoling the losses,
encouraging the remains.
- Sherrie Lovler
Larry Robinson
11-10-2020, 06:03 AM
Time to take a breath
Now is a time of deep relief,
of grief for the brokenness of things—
certainly, no time for gloating
nor for complacency.
We have work to do,
each of us.
We must ask the question—
always, ask the question—
"What is mine to do?"
And the answer, surely,
is to reach out,
beyond our comfort zone,
to find some way,
however small or insignificant seeming,
to connect with someone who seems,
on the face of things,
to be different from ourselves
and to learn, then,
how we are the same.
And that involves listening to their story.
This is nothing new.
We always have
this job to do.
- Bill Denham
Now is a time of deep relief,
of grief for the brokenness of things—
certainly, no time for gloating
nor for complacency.
We have work to do,
each of us.
We must ask the question—
always, ask the question—
"What is mine to do?"
And the answer, surely,
is to reach out,
beyond our comfort zone,
to find some way,
however small or insignificant seeming,
to connect with someone who seems,
on the face of things,
to be different from ourselves
and to learn, then,
how we are the same.
And that involves listening to their story.
This is nothing new.
We always have
this job to do.
- Bill Denham
Larry Robinson
11-11-2020, 06:11 AM
Yielding
When I inquire
about prayer and opening
to the Great Mystery,
the I Ching responds with
“Field/Yielding” and
the Mother Goddess,
the Dark Animal Mother.
Six young yin lines,
no relating hexagram.
It is pure and clear
in its message.
She gives blessings.
She receives the dead.
The field is open
and enfolds all things.
It is my task to yield
to each arising moment.
There is no way to doubt or to
brush away the guidance
with the customary wave
of my cynical had.
I am in a great field.
I yield.
- Maya Spector
When I inquire
about prayer and opening
to the Great Mystery,
the I Ching responds with
“Field/Yielding” and
the Mother Goddess,
the Dark Animal Mother.
Six young yin lines,
no relating hexagram.
It is pure and clear
in its message.
She gives blessings.
She receives the dead.
The field is open
and enfolds all things.
It is my task to yield
to each arising moment.
There is no way to doubt or to
brush away the guidance
with the customary wave
of my cynical had.
I am in a great field.
I yield.
- Maya Spector
Larry Robinson
11-12-2020, 05:55 AM
Sneaking This Poem In On You
the way the river bends
or her spooning body
lost and found
you misplaced distance
that afternoon of shadows
sold your busted canoe
to the true hippie there
waiting near the avenue
she couldn't say the words
so I'm sneaking this poem
in on you even though
you say trust the moon
I just heard your slant rhymes
your chants against
the government and yet
as it was said in that old blues
no one spoke up they had
money to lose even Republican
politicians may bemoan
their fate soon
and make excuses
for the last four years
all power corrupts
except individual truth
highway towns
and woods of faith
lead the way
this grave of mine
dug years ago
no fortune not a way
forward in the dark
except in the book
a few stars
if I add in dreams
you'll see
a regular glory
hawks and buzzards
a plan again for leaving
just after I sneak this
poem in and say
hello America
goodbye forgotten songs
Republicans with heart
are voting blue and
here's your remedy
downhearted
lift your eyes
to the light the sky
- Jack Crimmins
the way the river bends
or her spooning body
lost and found
you misplaced distance
that afternoon of shadows
sold your busted canoe
to the true hippie there
waiting near the avenue
she couldn't say the words
so I'm sneaking this poem
in on you even though
you say trust the moon
I just heard your slant rhymes
your chants against
the government and yet
as it was said in that old blues
no one spoke up they had
money to lose even Republican
politicians may bemoan
their fate soon
and make excuses
for the last four years
all power corrupts
except individual truth
highway towns
and woods of faith
lead the way
this grave of mine
dug years ago
no fortune not a way
forward in the dark
except in the book
a few stars
if I add in dreams
you'll see
a regular glory
hawks and buzzards
a plan again for leaving
just after I sneak this
poem in and say
hello America
goodbye forgotten songs
Republicans with heart
are voting blue and
here's your remedy
downhearted
lift your eyes
to the light the sky
- Jack Crimmins
Larry Robinson
11-13-2020, 06:36 AM
Rain In The Time Of Plague
I
Its curtain falls gentle as a quarantine from God
that keeps souls tidied from rain and one another’s faces.
Rain baffles down.
Its oratorio
complains of nothing,
fears nothing,
and nothing can resist.
And I?
I praise and thank grace
to keep me and you well indoors and warm
as others of us cower in holey tarps and tents
in helter-skelter shelter from the domination
of the reign of the plague and the rain.
It rains convincingly as I on dry paper write —
what thanks can match such fortune and such favor?
Anything that falls from a thousand feet falls to death.
Save rain that damages in striped tumble
no one and nothing.
II
Plague
scorches
Earth.
And with its reins The Old Cloaked Coachman drives us into stalls
and stalls everything, each and everyone
for once everywhere the same.
Listen, O listen, you blessèd who read this ink
that on this page
falls clear as rain
and
black
as plague.
Take courage.
Take shelter in the shelter of our common cause for once.
III
For in this inundation, O World, we hold handless hands.
We join the drenched in ample consideration for each other now.
Peace, sweet ones.
I cannot stop speaking.
I cannot bear to let you go.
Our shelter is we are the leaves of every tree in one tree.
Thus do we bless the blessing of the plague —
its safety our sequester.
For that which curtains us choirs us.
Plague’s separation joins us.
This pestilential deluge for a time
your heart with all hearts unites —
hidden —
hidden away in song,
in a chant
we all chant
protected.
Then
rest.
- Bruce Moody
I
Its curtain falls gentle as a quarantine from God
that keeps souls tidied from rain and one another’s faces.
Rain baffles down.
Its oratorio
complains of nothing,
fears nothing,
and nothing can resist.
And I?
I praise and thank grace
to keep me and you well indoors and warm
as others of us cower in holey tarps and tents
in helter-skelter shelter from the domination
of the reign of the plague and the rain.
It rains convincingly as I on dry paper write —
what thanks can match such fortune and such favor?
Anything that falls from a thousand feet falls to death.
Save rain that damages in striped tumble
no one and nothing.
II
Plague
scorches
Earth.
And with its reins The Old Cloaked Coachman drives us into stalls
and stalls everything, each and everyone
for once everywhere the same.
Listen, O listen, you blessèd who read this ink
that on this page
falls clear as rain
and
black
as plague.
Take courage.
Take shelter in the shelter of our common cause for once.
III
For in this inundation, O World, we hold handless hands.
We join the drenched in ample consideration for each other now.
Peace, sweet ones.
I cannot stop speaking.
I cannot bear to let you go.
Our shelter is we are the leaves of every tree in one tree.
Thus do we bless the blessing of the plague —
its safety our sequester.
For that which curtains us choirs us.
Plague’s separation joins us.
This pestilential deluge for a time
your heart with all hearts unites —
hidden —
hidden away in song,
in a chant
we all chant
protected.
Then
rest.
- Bruce Moody
Larry Robinson
11-14-2020, 05:57 AM
All for You, Honored Ones
The teacher Dongshan was washing his bowl by the river and saw two crows fighting over a frog and tearing it apart. The student asked, “Why does it always have to be like this?” Dongshan answered, “It’s all for you, Honored One.”
First the monk asks
“Why does it always come to this?”
Then the teacher
“It’s all for you.”
The steps of the medieval church
Malachite of the Mediterranean
Below, the bridal party
Gathered. It’s all
For you.
The child limp and lifeless
Another beach, the Mediterranean
Cobalt. The sky cloudless
Pitiless. It’s all
For you.
Locked in our homes
Fearing the faces
Of friends, others. Fear
On our faces, hidden
Behind our plague masks.
It’s all for us, Honored Ones.
One day, we are the Frog
Feeling our joints torn
The body opening to
A heartless world
The place of no belonging
An alien inside our own
Skin, a refugee,
Ripped from home.
Or today, we are the Crow
Ravaging, tearing to pieces
Others, remaking them into food
For infinite need, boundless greed.
An invader, the conquerer carrying
Chaos and terror like a torch.
It’s all for us, the Honored Ones.
Hungry or hunted
Observer or observed,
Crow, frog, sapien, or oak,
We are the Honored Ones
For whom Life presents.
Life in its many guises
Including Death, fire
Joy and change. All for you,
Honored ones.
All.
- Rebecca del Rio
The teacher Dongshan was washing his bowl by the river and saw two crows fighting over a frog and tearing it apart. The student asked, “Why does it always have to be like this?” Dongshan answered, “It’s all for you, Honored One.”
First the monk asks
“Why does it always come to this?”
Then the teacher
“It’s all for you.”
The steps of the medieval church
Malachite of the Mediterranean
Below, the bridal party
Gathered. It’s all
For you.
The child limp and lifeless
Another beach, the Mediterranean
Cobalt. The sky cloudless
Pitiless. It’s all
For you.
Locked in our homes
Fearing the faces
Of friends, others. Fear
On our faces, hidden
Behind our plague masks.
It’s all for us, Honored Ones.
One day, we are the Frog
Feeling our joints torn
The body opening to
A heartless world
The place of no belonging
An alien inside our own
Skin, a refugee,
Ripped from home.
Or today, we are the Crow
Ravaging, tearing to pieces
Others, remaking them into food
For infinite need, boundless greed.
An invader, the conquerer carrying
Chaos and terror like a torch.
It’s all for us, the Honored Ones.
Hungry or hunted
Observer or observed,
Crow, frog, sapien, or oak,
We are the Honored Ones
For whom Life presents.
Life in its many guises
Including Death, fire
Joy and change. All for you,
Honored ones.
All.
- Rebecca del Rio
Larry Robinson
11-15-2020, 06:17 AM
Because Even The Word Obstacle Is An Obstacle
Try to love everything that gets in your way;
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she'll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren't supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he'll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.
- Allison Luterman
Try to love everything that gets in your way;
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she'll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren't supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he'll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.
- Allison Luterman
Larry Robinson
11-16-2020, 06:29 AM
In The Book
A hand appears.
It writes on the wall.
Just a hand moving in the air,
and writing on the wall.
A voice comes and says the words,
"You have been weighed,
you have been judged,
and have failed."
The hand disappears, the voice
fades away into silence.
And a spirit stirs and fills
the room, all space, all things.
All this in The Book
asks, "What have you done wrong?"
But The Spirit says,
"Come to me, who need comfort."
And the hand, the wall, the voice
are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.
The story ends inside the book,
but outside, wherever you are --
It goes on.
- William Stafford
A hand appears.
It writes on the wall.
Just a hand moving in the air,
and writing on the wall.
A voice comes and says the words,
"You have been weighed,
you have been judged,
and have failed."
The hand disappears, the voice
fades away into silence.
And a spirit stirs and fills
the room, all space, all things.
All this in The Book
asks, "What have you done wrong?"
But The Spirit says,
"Come to me, who need comfort."
And the hand, the wall, the voice
are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.
The story ends inside the book,
but outside, wherever you are --
It goes on.
- William Stafford
Larry Robinson
11-17-2020, 06:16 AM
The Cave
Someone standing at the mouth had
the idea to enter. To go further
than light or language could
go. As they followed
the idea, light and language followed
like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
panting. A shapeless scent
in the damp air …
Keep going, the idea said.
Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
others had been there. Others had left
objects that couldn’t have found their way
there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Ground
hematite. On the walls,
as if stepping into history, someone saw
their purpose: cows. Bulls. Bison. Deer. Horses—
some pregnant, some slaughtered.
The wild-
life seemed wild and alive, moving
when someone moved, casting their shadows
on the shadows stretching
in every direction. Keep going,
the idea said again. Go …
Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
outside was another idea.
- Paul Tran
Someone standing at the mouth had
the idea to enter. To go further
than light or language could
go. As they followed
the idea, light and language followed
like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
panting. A shapeless scent
in the damp air …
Keep going, the idea said.
Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
others had been there. Others had left
objects that couldn’t have found their way
there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Ground
hematite. On the walls,
as if stepping into history, someone saw
their purpose: cows. Bulls. Bison. Deer. Horses—
some pregnant, some slaughtered.
The wild-
life seemed wild and alive, moving
when someone moved, casting their shadows
on the shadows stretching
in every direction. Keep going,
the idea said again. Go …
Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
outside was another idea.
- Paul Tran
Ronaldo
11-17-2020, 07:15 PM
50617
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Larry Robinson
11-18-2020, 06:05 AM
November for Beginners
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!
- Rita Dove
Snow would be the easy
way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.
We stack twigs for burning
in glistening patches
but the rain won’t give.
So we wait, breeding
mood, making music
of decline. We sit down
in the smell of the past
and rise in a light
that is already leaving.
We ache in secret,
memorizing
a gloomy line
or two of German.
When spring comes
we promise to act
the fool. Pour,
rain! Sail, wind,
with your cargo of zithers!
- Rita Dove
Larry Robinson
11-19-2020, 06:25 AM
Legends of Ordinary Wisdom
When he is eighty-eight
The poet
bent like the trunk of
a weathered oak
shuffles to the lip of the pond
and drinks the vision
there at his feet.
"Hello, Old Mirror Friend,"
he tells the water.
"How well you hold
my withered countenance today
with its wrinkles and crows' feet
surrounded by turquoise sky.
Hello."
And the water ripples back.
And when he's done
Off he trudges
the turtle he has become
to sit on an ancient rock.
He pats it
with a hand
dry as a long fallen leaf
and rests a while.
"Thanks for warming my backside,"
he sighs to the stone
as he stands to leave
And when he is gone up the path
the loam where he padded so slowly
remembers the gentle steps of his feet.
When she is ninety-three
confined to her chair
She sits
bones melting
to painful memory
her life miniaturized
like she'd never have believed
While the essence of her
scribbles the poem that says,
"I ache to ground myself here
planting as symbol
a cutting from a jade plant
rootless
into the dry soil of a neglected flowerpot
I want to plant my feet
ankle deep into my garden
I want them to grow roots…”*
A busy young mother
reads the words
that dance the page
And snatches up her youngest
her peanut buttered daughter
Whisking to the yard
to root their feet deep
in fragrant bread warm earth.
"Now stand up!" she cries
And they are trees
waving arm branches
at a turquoise sky.
"This is what it feels like,"
she says to her little one
the one with eyes that eat the world.
"See? We have our feet in the earth
just like trees
and we are growing and becoming
and greening and breathing."
And her little girl thinks
she is crazy
and so so beautiful
delicious as a peanut butter sandwich.
When that wee one
is twenty-two
and completely unmoored
by heartbreak
She remembers the earth
up to her knees
tethering her
steadying her
Holding her
like a mother
And the peanut butter fragrance
the treeness of it all.
When he is forty-five
and missing his grandfather
and worrying about his sons and his students
living in the hell of their world
The physics teacher holds the sight
he saw from his boyhood bird blind
of the old poet
bent like an ancient oak
as he shuffled down the path
And now he greets the pond
and sits on his grandfather's friend
Whispering
"Thanks for warming my backside."
- Sashana Kane Proctor
*from the poem, “Returning Home After the Fire Evacuation” by Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg
When he is eighty-eight
The poet
bent like the trunk of
a weathered oak
shuffles to the lip of the pond
and drinks the vision
there at his feet.
"Hello, Old Mirror Friend,"
he tells the water.
"How well you hold
my withered countenance today
with its wrinkles and crows' feet
surrounded by turquoise sky.
Hello."
And the water ripples back.
And when he's done
Off he trudges
the turtle he has become
to sit on an ancient rock.
He pats it
with a hand
dry as a long fallen leaf
and rests a while.
"Thanks for warming my backside,"
he sighs to the stone
as he stands to leave
And when he is gone up the path
the loam where he padded so slowly
remembers the gentle steps of his feet.
When she is ninety-three
confined to her chair
She sits
bones melting
to painful memory
her life miniaturized
like she'd never have believed
While the essence of her
scribbles the poem that says,
"I ache to ground myself here
planting as symbol
a cutting from a jade plant
rootless
into the dry soil of a neglected flowerpot
I want to plant my feet
ankle deep into my garden
I want them to grow roots…”*
A busy young mother
reads the words
that dance the page
And snatches up her youngest
her peanut buttered daughter
Whisking to the yard
to root their feet deep
in fragrant bread warm earth.
"Now stand up!" she cries
And they are trees
waving arm branches
at a turquoise sky.
"This is what it feels like,"
she says to her little one
the one with eyes that eat the world.
"See? We have our feet in the earth
just like trees
and we are growing and becoming
and greening and breathing."
And her little girl thinks
she is crazy
and so so beautiful
delicious as a peanut butter sandwich.
When that wee one
is twenty-two
and completely unmoored
by heartbreak
She remembers the earth
up to her knees
tethering her
steadying her
Holding her
like a mother
And the peanut butter fragrance
the treeness of it all.
When he is forty-five
and missing his grandfather
and worrying about his sons and his students
living in the hell of their world
The physics teacher holds the sight
he saw from his boyhood bird blind
of the old poet
bent like an ancient oak
as he shuffled down the path
And now he greets the pond
and sits on his grandfather's friend
Whispering
"Thanks for warming my backside."
- Sashana Kane Proctor
*from the poem, “Returning Home After the Fire Evacuation” by Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg
Larry Robinson
11-20-2020, 06:19 AM
In A True Democracy
If forests of trees
smelling smoke from distant fires,
could cast their vote for rain,
We’d have a downpour.
If flocks of birds,
Dropping from the skies
Could cast their vote for clean air
Their left and right wings
Would flap together in formation.
If the teeming oceans
With their colorful schools of fish
could vote for their coral reefs
We’d have a blue wave tsunami.
If the thousands of children
Lost from their parents
could cast their vote for
re-united states,
they would weep for joy.
If those breathing in ventilators
Or already dead from Covid,
Could cast their vote for science,
Their sigh of relief would
Cleanse the filth of lies.
If those in distant countries
Forced to bear the burden
Of our consumption and climate denial
Could cast a vote for sanity,
They could stay with their loved ones
in their homeland.
If the future could vote
for a celebration of diversity and wonder
It would deliver evolution’s promise.
But it’s up to us to carry these voices
And vote for the ongoing symphony
Of all creation.
- Anodea Judith
If forests of trees
smelling smoke from distant fires,
could cast their vote for rain,
We’d have a downpour.
If flocks of birds,
Dropping from the skies
Could cast their vote for clean air
Their left and right wings
Would flap together in formation.
If the teeming oceans
With their colorful schools of fish
could vote for their coral reefs
We’d have a blue wave tsunami.
If the thousands of children
Lost from their parents
could cast their vote for
re-united states,
they would weep for joy.
If those breathing in ventilators
Or already dead from Covid,
Could cast their vote for science,
Their sigh of relief would
Cleanse the filth of lies.
If those in distant countries
Forced to bear the burden
Of our consumption and climate denial
Could cast a vote for sanity,
They could stay with their loved ones
in their homeland.
If the future could vote
for a celebration of diversity and wonder
It would deliver evolution’s promise.
But it’s up to us to carry these voices
And vote for the ongoing symphony
Of all creation.
- Anodea Judith
Larry Robinson
11-21-2020, 06:42 AM
We All Want Something Different
In the space between
civilization and chaos
what form is your fear
going to take?
Pay attention my friend
for the unruly imagination
will undoubtedly fill the gap
Who will carry the guns?
The army or the people?
Those are NOT MY questions
Could they be yours?
I cannot afford
to listen to the news
I have dreamt, as others have
a multitude of profound
and disturbing
apocalyptic dreams
And they have been given
their proper due
I can tell you this;
my dreams have more validity
than the NY Times does
Do not read another news article
(or listen to another debate)
without remembering your dreams
It may not be safe
I repeat
I can no longer afford
to listen to the news
unless I take care to balance it
By reading Langston Hughes
or imagining that I am Mary Oliver
taking daily prescriptions of nature
and wonderment
or singing gospel music
every once in a while
or perhaps daily amen
When you have developed
enough lucidity to determine
the outcome of your dreams
please come running
and let me know
Only then you can go about
your business of trying
to save the rest of us.
- Kristy Hellum
In the space between
civilization and chaos
what form is your fear
going to take?
Pay attention my friend
for the unruly imagination
will undoubtedly fill the gap
Who will carry the guns?
The army or the people?
Those are NOT MY questions
Could they be yours?
I cannot afford
to listen to the news
I have dreamt, as others have
a multitude of profound
and disturbing
apocalyptic dreams
And they have been given
their proper due
I can tell you this;
my dreams have more validity
than the NY Times does
Do not read another news article
(or listen to another debate)
without remembering your dreams
It may not be safe
I repeat
I can no longer afford
to listen to the news
unless I take care to balance it
By reading Langston Hughes
or imagining that I am Mary Oliver
taking daily prescriptions of nature
and wonderment
or singing gospel music
every once in a while
or perhaps daily amen
When you have developed
enough lucidity to determine
the outcome of your dreams
please come running
and let me know
Only then you can go about
your business of trying
to save the rest of us.
- Kristy Hellum
Larry Robinson
11-22-2020, 06:34 AM
You God
You God, who plows my face in furrowed lines
Who lets me tap my foot in time
Who skipped the world in wild delight
Before first blackbird throated his height
Come play again and take delight
in a field so plowed and furrowed and harrowed
Might?
Come race across my forehead
slide down my nose
ring around my sockets
dance on my pose
Pat-a-cake my waiting cheeks
Peek-a-boo my ears
Gather what you will for ball
Splash among my tears
And when you’ve played your fill
and say you’ve had enough
Gather up all your toys
including Blind Mans Bluff
- Patricia Mack
You God, who plows my face in furrowed lines
Who lets me tap my foot in time
Who skipped the world in wild delight
Before first blackbird throated his height
Come play again and take delight
in a field so plowed and furrowed and harrowed
Might?
Come race across my forehead
slide down my nose
ring around my sockets
dance on my pose
Pat-a-cake my waiting cheeks
Peek-a-boo my ears
Gather what you will for ball
Splash among my tears
And when you’ve played your fill
and say you’ve had enough
Gather up all your toys
including Blind Mans Bluff
- Patricia Mack
Larry Robinson
11-23-2020, 08:15 AM
Journey Poem III
Our whole life is a search party for home,
even if someone still greets us with open arms,
even if someone broke our spirit there,
even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking lot.
Home is the place where the curtains billow,
where the cat needs more milk
but she keeps crying for something else,
and the dog you never had licks you awake.
After years of leaving home,
your heart becomes brick and mortar.
Your fingers are keys,
your feet concrete, hard to lift.
Your body becomes the whole foundation
as you settle deeply into the only home
you knew, the one where the hump back whale
sings its way across the miles.
It’s a place that lives at the water’s edge,
In the middle of the prairie,
hugged in between other homes
on a busy city street.
In the end home is the lullaby and the prayer,
the blackberry bush that scraped your arms,
the broken porch light,
the bent screen door, the soft summer breeze.
Home hands you coffee and kisses your neck
calls you crying as you say - I am afraid of leaving.
You leave anyway, then run like lightning
toward your own search party for home.
- Laura Lentz
Our whole life is a search party for home,
even if someone still greets us with open arms,
even if someone broke our spirit there,
even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking lot.
Home is the place where the curtains billow,
where the cat needs more milk
but she keeps crying for something else,
and the dog you never had licks you awake.
After years of leaving home,
your heart becomes brick and mortar.
Your fingers are keys,
your feet concrete, hard to lift.
Your body becomes the whole foundation
as you settle deeply into the only home
you knew, the one where the hump back whale
sings its way across the miles.
It’s a place that lives at the water’s edge,
In the middle of the prairie,
hugged in between other homes
on a busy city street.
In the end home is the lullaby and the prayer,
the blackberry bush that scraped your arms,
the broken porch light,
the bent screen door, the soft summer breeze.
Home hands you coffee and kisses your neck
calls you crying as you say - I am afraid of leaving.
You leave anyway, then run like lightning
toward your own search party for home.
- Laura Lentz
MonicaV
11-23-2020, 09:26 AM
Thank you for this timely poem. As so many of us are craving, re creating, re imagining home with our loved ones either close by or far, we touch that tender spot within where home lives. My adult daughter thirsts for the time when she was a child when her grandmother created our large family gatherings, full of laughter, connection, and love. For her, this is home. As her search party continues its journey, she wishes for me to fill the roll of the matriarch so that she can feel that comfort. I hope this poem will shine light on a boundless sense of "home" for my daughter.
Larry Robinson
11-24-2020, 06:30 AM
Contemplating the Sioux Treaty of 1868 at Thanksgiving 2016
for the Standing Rock Sioux and allies protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline set to run through their tribal lands
Countrymen, we have reneged on agreements,
retreated from treaties.
Now we try cheating on physics
which insists: seawaters will rise, coastlines
dissolve, ice caps melt.
At my safe distance, I conjure
the young, the native, the brave
whose faith the path of the pipeline dishonors.
Whose lakes and rivers we may foul.
The protesters brace for water cannons in 20 degrees.
Still, on behalf of us all, they stare down monster storms,
tear gas in their eyes.
Safe at my supper,
I send them this message of thanks.
- Phyllis Meshulam
for the Standing Rock Sioux and allies protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline set to run through their tribal lands
Countrymen, we have reneged on agreements,
retreated from treaties.
Now we try cheating on physics
which insists: seawaters will rise, coastlines
dissolve, ice caps melt.
At my safe distance, I conjure
the young, the native, the brave
whose faith the path of the pipeline dishonors.
Whose lakes and rivers we may foul.
The protesters brace for water cannons in 20 degrees.
Still, on behalf of us all, they stare down monster storms,
tear gas in their eyes.
Safe at my supper,
I send them this message of thanks.
- Phyllis Meshulam
Larry Robinson
11-25-2020, 07:14 AM
Gratitude Goulash
Take down your biggest pot,
bigger than you think you need
Slice, dice or cut into manageable pieces
memories of unbounded joy
and the desiccated remains
of life's calamitous events
Now throw them in the pot
Look around for missed ingredients
there are bound to be some
Add spring water, local honey, vinegar,
a pinch of heaven
a smidgen of hell
Bring this mess to a rolling boil, cover, reduce heat
simmer on a back burner for
as long as it takes
stirring occasionally
When your kitchen has a mysterious scent
ask a close friend to dinner
Get out a couple bowls
they need not match
Just before serving fold in
a cup of success
and a quarter pound of failure
Then be very liberal with paprika
this is goulash after all
Welcome your friend to the table
solemnly bless what’s there
taste the bitter and the sweet
One bite is all you’ll need
enough to taste
the complex flavors of gratitude
Now forget the goulash
take your friend out to dinner
Order something you’ve never tried
- Doug von Koss
Take down your biggest pot,
bigger than you think you need
Slice, dice or cut into manageable pieces
memories of unbounded joy
and the desiccated remains
of life's calamitous events
Now throw them in the pot
Look around for missed ingredients
there are bound to be some
Add spring water, local honey, vinegar,
a pinch of heaven
a smidgen of hell
Bring this mess to a rolling boil, cover, reduce heat
simmer on a back burner for
as long as it takes
stirring occasionally
When your kitchen has a mysterious scent
ask a close friend to dinner
Get out a couple bowls
they need not match
Just before serving fold in
a cup of success
and a quarter pound of failure
Then be very liberal with paprika
this is goulash after all
Welcome your friend to the table
solemnly bless what’s there
taste the bitter and the sweet
One bite is all you’ll need
enough to taste
the complex flavors of gratitude
Now forget the goulash
take your friend out to dinner
Order something you’ve never tried
- Doug von Koss
Larry Robinson
11-26-2020, 06:15 AM
Grace
Thanks and blessing be
to the Sun and the Earth
for this bread and this wine,----
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be and blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks and blessing to them
who share it
-----(and also the absent and the dead.)
Thanks and blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant and tend it,
harvest and gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks and blessing to them who work
--------and blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------and robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance and strength
for our dance and the work of justice, of peace.
- Rafael Jesús González
Gracias
(https://www.blogger.com/#)
Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.
- Rafael Jesús González
Thanks and blessing be
to the Sun and the Earth
for this bread and this wine,----
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be and blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks and blessing to them
who share it
-----(and also the absent and the dead.)
Thanks and blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant and tend it,
harvest and gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks and blessing to them who work
--------and blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------and robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance and strength
for our dance and the work of justice, of peace.
- Rafael Jesús González
Gracias
(https://www.blogger.com/#)
Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.
- Rafael Jesús González
Larry Robinson
11-27-2020, 05:04 AM
To a Passer-By on Thanksgiving Day
Gentle Reader,
it is good that you have paused
along your way, accepting
the silent invitation of these lines
For it was you I had in mind
when I sat to write these words,
you, holding a paper cup
of lukewarm dark roast coffee
and a satchel filled with groceries,
or you, clutching the dog’s leash
in one hand, with the other
pushing a stroller around the corner,
and even you, whom I had not
imagined in such precise terms
For you I drew my pen across the empty page
as earlier I drew my garden rake
again and again through withered grass
and over the buried front walk,
metal tines clawing wet concrete
gathering sodden maple leaves,
potent gift of high summer sun
turning then returning now to earth
For you I cleared a solitary path
prepared the way for your lonely passage
so that a mere moment of your journey
through the detritus of this world
might be blessed by an open space
awaiting your arrival,
conspicuous in its care,
this page inscribed in answer
to the ground now scraped bare.
- Seth H. Truby
Gentle Reader,
it is good that you have paused
along your way, accepting
the silent invitation of these lines
For it was you I had in mind
when I sat to write these words,
you, holding a paper cup
of lukewarm dark roast coffee
and a satchel filled with groceries,
or you, clutching the dog’s leash
in one hand, with the other
pushing a stroller around the corner,
and even you, whom I had not
imagined in such precise terms
For you I drew my pen across the empty page
as earlier I drew my garden rake
again and again through withered grass
and over the buried front walk,
metal tines clawing wet concrete
gathering sodden maple leaves,
potent gift of high summer sun
turning then returning now to earth
For you I cleared a solitary path
prepared the way for your lonely passage
so that a mere moment of your journey
through the detritus of this world
might be blessed by an open space
awaiting your arrival,
conspicuous in its care,
this page inscribed in answer
to the ground now scraped bare.
- Seth H. Truby
Larry Robinson
11-28-2020, 05:37 AM
Arms Full
Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,
love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.
To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic’s world.
Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.
Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.
Even more, gratitude bares her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.
What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet
is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- Rebecca del Rio
Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,
love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.
To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic’s world.
Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.
Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.
Even more, gratitude bares her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.
What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet
is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- Rebecca del Rio
Larry Robinson
11-29-2020, 05:51 AM
Fire Recovery Heart Sutra
My house is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than my house.
Home is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly home.
My house is empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
My house is ash.
No things.
No end to things.
No more Target purchases! No end to Target purchases.
No reading material. No end to reading material.
No memory. No end to memories.
They are hard to find but never cease.
There is no attainment of joy.
There is no joy to attain.
There is nothing but joy to attain.
Yes.
Gone.
Gone,
gone over,
so totally gone.
My home is ash.
Awakened!
So be it!
- Amy Elizabeth Robinson
My house is nothing more than emptiness,
emptiness is nothing more than my house.
Home is exactly empty,
and emptiness is exactly home.
My house is empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
My house is ash.
No things.
No end to things.
No more Target purchases! No end to Target purchases.
No reading material. No end to reading material.
No memory. No end to memories.
They are hard to find but never cease.
There is no attainment of joy.
There is no joy to attain.
There is nothing but joy to attain.
Yes.
Gone.
Gone,
gone over,
so totally gone.
My home is ash.
Awakened!
So be it!
- Amy Elizabeth Robinson
Larry Robinson
11-30-2020, 06:51 AM
Gratitude
Gratitude, I am your listening post,
perched on the shoulders of mountains,
in the grasses, in your granite face,
reclining in the long valleys of your body.
Send me your chariots, your champion angels,
warriors of the spirit, whose love rises in speech,
in gesture, in wordless looks, bathed in the most
sublime rose waters; even in anguish for the suffering
of others. Send me your thoroughbreds,
heavy with bridle; I will race alongside you,
breathing my thanksgiving for the idealism of youth,
for the wild and holy power of the earnest
novitiate; for conversations between fathers,
mothers, sons and daughters, blooming in the
rising cumulus of purity and courage, in the altitudes
of high regard, the vitality of innocence, the awakening
of inquiry. Let me travel beside you, raining down with
the pounding hooves of your galloping love.
- Gary Horvitz
Gratitude, I am your listening post,
perched on the shoulders of mountains,
in the grasses, in your granite face,
reclining in the long valleys of your body.
Send me your chariots, your champion angels,
warriors of the spirit, whose love rises in speech,
in gesture, in wordless looks, bathed in the most
sublime rose waters; even in anguish for the suffering
of others. Send me your thoroughbreds,
heavy with bridle; I will race alongside you,
breathing my thanksgiving for the idealism of youth,
for the wild and holy power of the earnest
novitiate; for conversations between fathers,
mothers, sons and daughters, blooming in the
rising cumulus of purity and courage, in the altitudes
of high regard, the vitality of innocence, the awakening
of inquiry. Let me travel beside you, raining down with
the pounding hooves of your galloping love.
- Gary Horvitz
Larry Robinson
12-01-2020, 05:57 AM
Miracles
Here I sit at my computer on 11-11-11, reading hours of emails and petitions and forwards about Delaware River fracking, and Mississippi’s rejection of personhood for women’s eggs, and move-your-money-day, and tar sands pipelines, and constitutional amendments to limit campaign funds, and Occupy Oakland’s massive challenge to stay non-violent in this most violence-racked city, and polar bears without ice floes, and torture of lesbians in Ecuador, and, and,............ and I am overcome with gratitude:
.... to Hippocrates and Hahnemann and Curie and Pasteur and Salk and my Dr. Michael and Debbie and herb gardens and bees and sunshine and rain and the loyalty of seed, for helping me be here still, octogenarian on fire
.... to my parents and grandparents and their ancestors for their good genes and their good sense to cross the daunting Atlantic to labor in coal mines and cigar factories to make me, to make me better, to make me a better life
.... to Ben Franklin and Tom Edison and Singer and to my furnace for keeping me warm, and to all the other comforting and safety-making inventions in this shelter where I can close my eyes in sleep unafraid
.... to those who created language out of grunts, and Gutenberg, and my Dad who taught me to read while tending to my sixth-year chickenpox, and to Miss Hanson who liked my third-grade poems, and to those colonials who created Rutgers University without ever having me in mind
.... to a lifetime of listening wonderment for the Mozart melodies that reside in my head, my brain’s personal MP3 downloads
.... to Susan and the other suffragettes who marched and suffered nights in jail for my right to be a woman voting, though they never knew me personally
.... to Ghandi and MLK and Mother Theresa and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Friends and COs and Occupy-all, all those who hold the light
.... to the power of those who loved me and love me still, and by so doing keep me whole still, whether they walk the earth or no longer grace it
.... to whatever mysteries keep my mind alert and capable of outrage, keep my soul alive and capable of gratitude
.... to my diaphragm that keeps me breathing, I know not why
- Vilma Ginzberg
Here I sit at my computer on 11-11-11, reading hours of emails and petitions and forwards about Delaware River fracking, and Mississippi’s rejection of personhood for women’s eggs, and move-your-money-day, and tar sands pipelines, and constitutional amendments to limit campaign funds, and Occupy Oakland’s massive challenge to stay non-violent in this most violence-racked city, and polar bears without ice floes, and torture of lesbians in Ecuador, and, and,............ and I am overcome with gratitude:
.... to Hippocrates and Hahnemann and Curie and Pasteur and Salk and my Dr. Michael and Debbie and herb gardens and bees and sunshine and rain and the loyalty of seed, for helping me be here still, octogenarian on fire
.... to my parents and grandparents and their ancestors for their good genes and their good sense to cross the daunting Atlantic to labor in coal mines and cigar factories to make me, to make me better, to make me a better life
.... to Ben Franklin and Tom Edison and Singer and to my furnace for keeping me warm, and to all the other comforting and safety-making inventions in this shelter where I can close my eyes in sleep unafraid
.... to those who created language out of grunts, and Gutenberg, and my Dad who taught me to read while tending to my sixth-year chickenpox, and to Miss Hanson who liked my third-grade poems, and to those colonials who created Rutgers University without ever having me in mind
.... to a lifetime of listening wonderment for the Mozart melodies that reside in my head, my brain’s personal MP3 downloads
.... to Susan and the other suffragettes who marched and suffered nights in jail for my right to be a woman voting, though they never knew me personally
.... to Ghandi and MLK and Mother Theresa and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Friends and COs and Occupy-all, all those who hold the light
.... to the power of those who loved me and love me still, and by so doing keep me whole still, whether they walk the earth or no longer grace it
.... to whatever mysteries keep my mind alert and capable of outrage, keep my soul alive and capable of gratitude
.... to my diaphragm that keeps me breathing, I know not why
- Vilma Ginzberg
Larry Robinson
12-02-2020, 05:26 AM
Another Shovel
On this Covid-of-Thanksgivings
As the year draws down
Bleakness penetrates our masked faces
A shroud of our former selves
Our village weave has unraveled and
Our darkness finds our discontentment
In limited breath
Trying to soothe
Holding brokenness
Here I found a small and jeweled freedom-fighter
A winged-one on the ground
Cold, expired
On some Pacific Flyway November patio, mine
As all the losses came home to roost
As ghosts still wrapped on their gurneys,
In every state, in every country
Lie hampered and uncertain
Of their transition onward
Yet here was one more -
A small bird, dead on the ground
Bearing all the cruelty of not being able
To draw near today to the
Heft of reparation so needed
To the salve that family and flock bring
To the depth of sadness
Of those who died in
Foreign arms on sterile wards
No union actualized
No familiar hands of belonging
We have to reimagine such warmth of life,
All for another time
- P Gregory Guss
On this Covid-of-Thanksgivings
As the year draws down
Bleakness penetrates our masked faces
A shroud of our former selves
Our village weave has unraveled and
Our darkness finds our discontentment
In limited breath
Trying to soothe
Holding brokenness
Here I found a small and jeweled freedom-fighter
A winged-one on the ground
Cold, expired
On some Pacific Flyway November patio, mine
As all the losses came home to roost
As ghosts still wrapped on their gurneys,
In every state, in every country
Lie hampered and uncertain
Of their transition onward
Yet here was one more -
A small bird, dead on the ground
Bearing all the cruelty of not being able
To draw near today to the
Heft of reparation so needed
To the salve that family and flock bring
To the depth of sadness
Of those who died in
Foreign arms on sterile wards
No union actualized
No familiar hands of belonging
We have to reimagine such warmth of life,
All for another time
- P Gregory Guss
Larry Robinson
12-03-2020, 06:10 AM
Turkeys
<tbody>
Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.
</tbody>
- Galway Kinnell
<tbody>
Sometimes we saw shadows of gods
in the trees; silenced, we went on.
Sometimes the dog would bound off
over the snow, into the forest.
Sometimes a tree had twenty
or more black turkeys in it, each
seeming the size of a small black bear.
We remember them for their care
for their kind ever since we watched the big hen
in the very top of the tree shaking
load after load of apples down to the flock.
Sometimes I felt I would never
come out of the woods, I thought
its deeper darkness might absorb me
or feed me to the black turkeys
and I would cry out for the dog
and the dog would not answer.
</tbody>
- Galway Kinnell
Larry Robinson
12-04-2020, 06:15 AM
Still
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:
I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!
- A. R. Ammons
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is
magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:
I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:
I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:
at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!
- A. R. Ammons
Larry Robinson
12-05-2020, 07:03 AM
More Than Something Else
Something Else.
Some one else
Some where else
That place is here,
In my home,
We are here.
I am brown,
Brown hair,
Brown eyes,
Like cookies Feather tells me, and I like to think it’s perfectly
cooked Pueblo cookies.
My kids are something else,
9 different shades of brown,
All beautiful.
My grandkids are something else,
4 brown eyes, 2 blue eyes,
All Native,
Definitely something else, as I watch them be rowdy, be loving,
be here in this world.
We are here
On this earth
In this time and place
In our homes,
On our lands,
In the cities,
With our families, laughing loudly, cooking together, protecting
each other.
We are something else
With our songs
Our dances.
We pray with corn meal,
Eagle feathers,
Medicine bundles,
Burn some sage, make sure to acknowledge the four directions,
as the sun comes up.
We are the something else,
Who were here,
To greet Christopher Columbus
We were born from
This earth,
Crawled out of the center,
Of our mother’s womb, we are important, we are strong.
We are something else,
We are Pueblo people, Plains people, Forest People, Desert
people, Nomadic people, Cliff dwellers, Ocean fishers, Lake and
river fishers, hunters, medicine collectors, horse riders, artists,
speakers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we are human beings.
We are something else,
We are Native People,
Indigenous to this land.
We are a proud,
Something else.
- Rainy Dawn Ortiz
Something Else.
Some one else
Some where else
That place is here,
In my home,
We are here.
I am brown,
Brown hair,
Brown eyes,
Like cookies Feather tells me, and I like to think it’s perfectly
cooked Pueblo cookies.
My kids are something else,
9 different shades of brown,
All beautiful.
My grandkids are something else,
4 brown eyes, 2 blue eyes,
All Native,
Definitely something else, as I watch them be rowdy, be loving,
be here in this world.
We are here
On this earth
In this time and place
In our homes,
On our lands,
In the cities,
With our families, laughing loudly, cooking together, protecting
each other.
We are something else
With our songs
Our dances.
We pray with corn meal,
Eagle feathers,
Medicine bundles,
Burn some sage, make sure to acknowledge the four directions,
as the sun comes up.
We are the something else,
Who were here,
To greet Christopher Columbus
We were born from
This earth,
Crawled out of the center,
Of our mother’s womb, we are important, we are strong.
We are something else,
We are Pueblo people, Plains people, Forest People, Desert
people, Nomadic people, Cliff dwellers, Ocean fishers, Lake and
river fishers, hunters, medicine collectors, horse riders, artists,
speakers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, we are human beings.
We are something else,
We are Native People,
Indigenous to this land.
We are a proud,
Something else.
- Rainy Dawn Ortiz
Larry Robinson
12-06-2020, 07:03 AM
Psalm
Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand sifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren’t enough, it won't stop bobbing!
Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
between the border guard's left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and “Where to?"
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn't that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall?
when the very placement of the stars
leaves out doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
- Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)
Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
how much desert sand sifts from one land to another;
how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
in provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
or alights on the roadblock at the border?
A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
while its beak stays home. If that weren’t enough, it won't stop bobbing!
Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
between the border guard's left and right boots
blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and “Where to?"
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn't that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall?
when the very placement of the stars
leaves out doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
- Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh)
Larry Robinson
12-07-2020, 05:42 AM
We Have Lost So Much
We have lost so much
says my friend, Patty
as she carefully holds
a little bird stunned, fallen to
the base of the sky scraper
it’s just collided.
We have lost so much
stunned, shaking our heads
our aching necks.
In the empty streets
even when we meet
Someone
our masks avoid speech
our eyes,
hard to say, collide
but that’s what it feels like
holding my head
Thinking of my friend
Carefully
letting the bird rest
under a nearby bit of bush.
A little quiet, maybe
it will find its way.
There’s a river nearby
all the empty buildings.
- Mary Swanson
We have lost so much
says my friend, Patty
as she carefully holds
a little bird stunned, fallen to
the base of the sky scraper
it’s just collided.
We have lost so much
stunned, shaking our heads
our aching necks.
In the empty streets
even when we meet
Someone
our masks avoid speech
our eyes,
hard to say, collide
but that’s what it feels like
holding my head
Thinking of my friend
Carefully
letting the bird rest
under a nearby bit of bush.
A little quiet, maybe
it will find its way.
There’s a river nearby
all the empty buildings.
- Mary Swanson
REALnothings
12-07-2020, 06:45 AM
This poem makes its point.
Here's the lyric to a song by a friend of mine, about how masks reveal the SOUL, the Universal, more than faces do without masks! I find it very interesting! There's a video that I can't post because of copyright issues, but I hope to add a link to an mp3 audio file. The lyrics and the music too are by Mischa Rutenberg.
“Eye to Eye to I”
Why do you worry about a little thing
Like a fabric mask that will save your skin
Look again you might find a hidden grace
What you lose when you choose to cover your face
Then you’ll see Eye to eye to I …….eye to eye to I
We wear our face to mask ourselves
This is the act at which we all excel
So many smiles that tell bold lies
Rarely deliver as advertised
Our mouths are sealed our eyes revealed
Maybe now we will share what is real
We no longer need this mask of lies
You lose your face when the ego dies
Take a moment and you’ll realize
All we need to see is eye to eye
Eye to eye to I
All my life I have hidden the truth
Behind the smiles and the games of youth
Now I find all the glamour gone
Let go the nonsense and move along
Our mouths are sealed our eyes revealed
Maybe now we will share what is real
We no longer need this mask of lies
You lose your face when the ego dies
Take a moment and you’ll realize
All we need to see is eye to eye
Eye to eye to I
Why do you worry about a little thing like
A small piece of fabric that will save your skin
Look again you will find a hidden grace
What you lose when you choose to cover your face
Then you’ll see Eye to eye to I
Here's the lyric to a song by a friend of mine, about how masks reveal the SOUL, the Universal, more than faces do without masks! I find it very interesting! There's a video that I can't post because of copyright issues, but I hope to add a link to an mp3 audio file. The lyrics and the music too are by Mischa Rutenberg.
“Eye to Eye to I”
Why do you worry about a little thing
Like a fabric mask that will save your skin
Look again you might find a hidden grace
What you lose when you choose to cover your face
Then you’ll see Eye to eye to I …….eye to eye to I
We wear our face to mask ourselves
This is the act at which we all excel
So many smiles that tell bold lies
Rarely deliver as advertised
Our mouths are sealed our eyes revealed
Maybe now we will share what is real
We no longer need this mask of lies
You lose your face when the ego dies
Take a moment and you’ll realize
All we need to see is eye to eye
Eye to eye to I
All my life I have hidden the truth
Behind the smiles and the games of youth
Now I find all the glamour gone
Let go the nonsense and move along
Our mouths are sealed our eyes revealed
Maybe now we will share what is real
We no longer need this mask of lies
You lose your face when the ego dies
Take a moment and you’ll realize
All we need to see is eye to eye
Eye to eye to I
Why do you worry about a little thing like
A small piece of fabric that will save your skin
Look again you will find a hidden grace
What you lose when you choose to cover your face
Then you’ll see Eye to eye to I
Larry Robinson
12-08-2020, 05:32 AM
Four Quartets: The East Coker
III
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away-
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
- T.S. Eliot
III
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away-
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing-
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
- T.S. Eliot
Larry Robinson
12-09-2020, 05:57 AM
Vanishing
The grief and sense of loss we often interpret as a failure in our personality is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered. - Paul Shepard
Heart, lungs and gut gone to the gnaw
of insects, the intact hull of her
beached on duff, prickly
oak and pine needles, coyote scat
in the crook of her knee --
the dog sniffs a small sharp hoof
ignoring the heap of dung
red with madrone berries,
pale pits pearling through.
She noses the foreleg
where scraps of hide cling to bone.
Imagine the first flick of tail,
ripple of skin under summer flies,
and how this fawn died.
The woods are full of stories
in rotting trunks, cool shadows
and bones like these, whitened
by winters she hadn’t seen.
But what of her stays with me?
Days later in my lumpy green chair
by the window, cat curved
around my feet on the ottoman,
the dog denned under the table,
teacup on the sill, and I think
of the fox -- its narrow bloated body
on the road, a plastic bag
snagged on its foot, ballooning
beside blood slicked fur.
Will the silence of their absence rise
above the din of cities? Will their ghosts
stumble through strip malls and suburbs
looking for lost meadows, jostle
at the on-ramps distracting drivers
with a sudden vague unease?
Will our grief surprise us?
Will we wonder at our loneliness?
- Elizabeth Herron
The grief and sense of loss we often interpret as a failure in our personality is actually a feeling of emptiness where a beautiful and strange otherness should have been encountered. - Paul Shepard
Heart, lungs and gut gone to the gnaw
of insects, the intact hull of her
beached on duff, prickly
oak and pine needles, coyote scat
in the crook of her knee --
the dog sniffs a small sharp hoof
ignoring the heap of dung
red with madrone berries,
pale pits pearling through.
She noses the foreleg
where scraps of hide cling to bone.
Imagine the first flick of tail,
ripple of skin under summer flies,
and how this fawn died.
The woods are full of stories
in rotting trunks, cool shadows
and bones like these, whitened
by winters she hadn’t seen.
But what of her stays with me?
Days later in my lumpy green chair
by the window, cat curved
around my feet on the ottoman,
the dog denned under the table,
teacup on the sill, and I think
of the fox -- its narrow bloated body
on the road, a plastic bag
snagged on its foot, ballooning
beside blood slicked fur.
Will the silence of their absence rise
above the din of cities? Will their ghosts
stumble through strip malls and suburbs
looking for lost meadows, jostle
at the on-ramps distracting drivers
with a sudden vague unease?
Will our grief surprise us?
Will we wonder at our loneliness?
- Elizabeth Herron
Larry Robinson
12-10-2020, 05:35 AM
The Place Where We Are Right
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow
and a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
- Yehuda Amichai
(translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)
From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow
and a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.
- Yehuda Amichai
(translated by Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)
Larry Robinson
12-11-2020, 06:17 AM
In Fire Season, Rain
The soft smoke of hard rain
drilling down through tree bones.
The hiss and steam of quenched fire —
rain nipping flame’s root, gray mud of ash.
Rain tap slapping your hat. Rain gloves.
Rain making your coat heavy, your neck cold.
Rain washing what was seared, culled, fallen, lost.
Where fire fed, rain offering rest, restoration.
Rain turning eye-salt to rivulets, rivulets
to rivers wheresoever many weep as one.
Rain thrust deep in earth, seeking seeds.
Rain taking its own sweet time.
Earth’s thirst for first rain —
never to be cursed again.
- Kim Stafford
The soft smoke of hard rain
drilling down through tree bones.
The hiss and steam of quenched fire —
rain nipping flame’s root, gray mud of ash.
Rain tap slapping your hat. Rain gloves.
Rain making your coat heavy, your neck cold.
Rain washing what was seared, culled, fallen, lost.
Where fire fed, rain offering rest, restoration.
Rain turning eye-salt to rivulets, rivulets
to rivers wheresoever many weep as one.
Rain thrust deep in earth, seeking seeds.
Rain taking its own sweet time.
Earth’s thirst for first rain —
never to be cursed again.
- Kim Stafford
Larry Robinson
12-12-2020, 06:39 AM
Twilight in Hendy Woods
This is the hour of magic
When this world and the other world
Touch in a lingering kiss
And a deep stillness settles over all things.
This is the hour of magic
When the Earth,
For one eternal moment, holds its breath
Before turning from the sun.
This is the hour of magic
When, if you listen
With an open heart and a quiet mind,
You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest
Telling the old stories:
Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
Of the great ice ages and the birth of continents;
Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.
They are leaving us now.
When they are gone,
Who will tell these stories?
- Larry Robinson
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo152x23.gif
Climate Change and California’s Favorite Trees
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/climate-change-and-californias-favorite-trees.html)(click for article)
50658
This is the hour of magic
When this world and the other world
Touch in a lingering kiss
And a deep stillness settles over all things.
This is the hour of magic
When the Earth,
For one eternal moment, holds its breath
Before turning from the sun.
This is the hour of magic
When, if you listen
With an open heart and a quiet mind,
You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest
Telling the old stories:
Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
Of the great ice ages and the birth of continents;
Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.
They are leaving us now.
When they are gone,
Who will tell these stories?
- Larry Robinson
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo152x23.gif
Climate Change and California’s Favorite Trees
(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/climate-change-and-californias-favorite-trees.html)(click for article)
50658
Larry Robinson
12-14-2020, 07:00 AM
The Vote
My eyes wing out over misted fields
Dappled with islands of snow geese and sandhill cranes
I’m in my car making calls
To Hispanics in Arizona: “Your vote counts!”
This is our chance to save our country! Think of your children,
All the dreamers, young and old!
Our land. The air! The water! Stand for women, welcome and equality
Imagine a future worth living
Ten white show geese leap up from the water
Pure soft wings like angels against the blue
Trumpeting, boisterous, shouting Freedom!
Announcing themselves here! - here, on this land
“See this place?” they trumpet. “See this water, these grasses and
reeds? They are ours and we are theirs!
They have been ours since the wind was here, that
Wind we sailed down on from the north you call
Canada, Artic, Alaska, Yukon
We are immigrants, perpetually. See our strong
Feather shafts? Our tough sinewed chests?”
So go vote! Drive or walk – crawl if you have to –
Get to the polling place and check
That box marked inclusion!
Let your ballot shout for all the people and the creatures
Sing embrace and welcome.
Seat leaders who celebrate our American brother/sisterhood
Elect an America that reveres the land and safeguards its future
Now there! Look! An approaching V of Canada geese
Whose visas are not required.
Are you voting for Biden and Harris?
Yes! Bless you! Dios te bendiga!
Tendremos un futuro! Going today, yes?
Get there early. Be sure your voice is heard!
Every one counts – especially in Arizona!
The air explodes with the cackle cries of cranes
Sandhills sailing just overhead, shouting, swooping down from
The northern Rockies, mountains marching
Right across borders, free as crane flight. A ranger
Says smaller, stronger Sandhills come from Siberia.
Siberia! If I ask their nationality, what
Will they answer? Daughters and sons of the wind?
Of the river courses, of marshy fields north and south
You’re taking your mamá – y su cuñado?
Your mom and brother-in-law are going, too?
That’s great! And call some friends! Todos los amigos que pueden votar.
All that are able to vote must vote, must go to the polls – when they get done
With their work, their service, their gift to this country
The flooded fields are a cacophony of ducks – a dozen kinds, all
Colors and sizes – and voices! Like America
Cottonwoods ring the fields, cottonwoods burnished now, but
Greening in the spring to welcome throngs of songbirds just
Up from Central America – the long jungle isthmus, sending north its
Winged jewels of scarlet and vermillion, lapis and bright yellow.
Where is their home? Which is their patria?
And here we are – squawking together. Dancing in these fields
In this place. And Coyote! See him, loping past?
The shaman who miraculously survived the scourge, that centuries-long
Determined purge of the wild, exterminating native peoples
And wolves, and whatever wild things might threaten the
Fierce taming of the continent. A boundless continent of ancient forests
Felled for their wood.
The same Scourge some still desperately want to continue,
Which would – if given the chance – drain, plow and replant these wet misty
Wild waving fields into straight civilized rows of
Profitable, decent crops.
That Old Greedy Power, unseeing, unheeding of
The boundless riches of wildness. Of diversity, of many colors.
Their Scourge would hack down or spray down or curse down
The hundred kinds of forbs and flowers, sweet sedge, red reeds, tall grass
– and small I see all about me here in this Refuge set aside by the seeing Heartful
To give us a glimpse of how it was, this stretching, singing land
This billowing tapestry of textures and tones,
Wondrous seeds, whispering reeds
Refuge. Might America be a refuge again? For its dreaming, flowing immigrants?
Can it rejoice in a rainbow of faces? Can it be a refuge of sanity and new understanding?
A sacred place to its creatures , waters, health and life? Can it honor its native peoples at last?
Will it hold all its families and their futures in trust? Can it be a place to thrive and belong?
This might be much to ask, but we must ask and then we must try. Because we dream, we must act!
Fernando, Ofelia, Rodrigo, Jose!
I call you because I can’t call everyone.
Will you vote then for inclusion and goodness?
You will? For health and sanidad? For brotherly respect and kindness to the land?
For fresh water and for these geese and cranes and coyote?
For all our place and our many peoples?
- Garth Gilchrist
My eyes wing out over misted fields
Dappled with islands of snow geese and sandhill cranes
I’m in my car making calls
To Hispanics in Arizona: “Your vote counts!”
This is our chance to save our country! Think of your children,
All the dreamers, young and old!
Our land. The air! The water! Stand for women, welcome and equality
Imagine a future worth living
Ten white show geese leap up from the water
Pure soft wings like angels against the blue
Trumpeting, boisterous, shouting Freedom!
Announcing themselves here! - here, on this land
“See this place?” they trumpet. “See this water, these grasses and
reeds? They are ours and we are theirs!
They have been ours since the wind was here, that
Wind we sailed down on from the north you call
Canada, Artic, Alaska, Yukon
We are immigrants, perpetually. See our strong
Feather shafts? Our tough sinewed chests?”
So go vote! Drive or walk – crawl if you have to –
Get to the polling place and check
That box marked inclusion!
Let your ballot shout for all the people and the creatures
Sing embrace and welcome.
Seat leaders who celebrate our American brother/sisterhood
Elect an America that reveres the land and safeguards its future
Now there! Look! An approaching V of Canada geese
Whose visas are not required.
Are you voting for Biden and Harris?
Yes! Bless you! Dios te bendiga!
Tendremos un futuro! Going today, yes?
Get there early. Be sure your voice is heard!
Every one counts – especially in Arizona!
The air explodes with the cackle cries of cranes
Sandhills sailing just overhead, shouting, swooping down from
The northern Rockies, mountains marching
Right across borders, free as crane flight. A ranger
Says smaller, stronger Sandhills come from Siberia.
Siberia! If I ask their nationality, what
Will they answer? Daughters and sons of the wind?
Of the river courses, of marshy fields north and south
You’re taking your mamá – y su cuñado?
Your mom and brother-in-law are going, too?
That’s great! And call some friends! Todos los amigos que pueden votar.
All that are able to vote must vote, must go to the polls – when they get done
With their work, their service, their gift to this country
The flooded fields are a cacophony of ducks – a dozen kinds, all
Colors and sizes – and voices! Like America
Cottonwoods ring the fields, cottonwoods burnished now, but
Greening in the spring to welcome throngs of songbirds just
Up from Central America – the long jungle isthmus, sending north its
Winged jewels of scarlet and vermillion, lapis and bright yellow.
Where is their home? Which is their patria?
And here we are – squawking together. Dancing in these fields
In this place. And Coyote! See him, loping past?
The shaman who miraculously survived the scourge, that centuries-long
Determined purge of the wild, exterminating native peoples
And wolves, and whatever wild things might threaten the
Fierce taming of the continent. A boundless continent of ancient forests
Felled for their wood.
The same Scourge some still desperately want to continue,
Which would – if given the chance – drain, plow and replant these wet misty
Wild waving fields into straight civilized rows of
Profitable, decent crops.
That Old Greedy Power, unseeing, unheeding of
The boundless riches of wildness. Of diversity, of many colors.
Their Scourge would hack down or spray down or curse down
The hundred kinds of forbs and flowers, sweet sedge, red reeds, tall grass
– and small I see all about me here in this Refuge set aside by the seeing Heartful
To give us a glimpse of how it was, this stretching, singing land
This billowing tapestry of textures and tones,
Wondrous seeds, whispering reeds
Refuge. Might America be a refuge again? For its dreaming, flowing immigrants?
Can it rejoice in a rainbow of faces? Can it be a refuge of sanity and new understanding?
A sacred place to its creatures , waters, health and life? Can it honor its native peoples at last?
Will it hold all its families and their futures in trust? Can it be a place to thrive and belong?
This might be much to ask, but we must ask and then we must try. Because we dream, we must act!
Fernando, Ofelia, Rodrigo, Jose!
I call you because I can’t call everyone.
Will you vote then for inclusion and goodness?
You will? For health and sanidad? For brotherly respect and kindness to the land?
For fresh water and for these geese and cranes and coyote?
For all our place and our many peoples?
- Garth Gilchrist
Larry Robinson
12-15-2020, 06:11 AM
Declaration of Interdependence
Such has been the patient sufferance…
We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line. We’re her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page through a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and as bruised. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…
We’re her second job serving an executive absorbed in his Wall Street Journal at a sidewalk café shadowed by skyscrapers. We’re the shadows of the fortune he won and the family he lost. We’re his loss and the lost. We’re a father in a coal town who can’t mine a life anymore because too much and too little has happened, for too long.
A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…
We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and graffitied truths. We’re a street in another town lined with royal palms, at home with a Peace Corps couple who collect African art. We’re their dinner-party talk of wines, wielded picket signs, and burned draft cards. We’re what they know: it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and organic corn.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress…
We’re the farmer who grew the corn, who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re his TV set blaring news having everything and nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. We’re a black teenager who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough. We’re the blast of the bullet leaving the gun. We’re the guilt and the grief of the cop who wished he hadn’t shot.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…
We’re the dead, we’re the living amid the flicker of vigil candlelight. We’re in a dim cell with an inmate reading Dostoevsky. We’re his crime, his sentence, his amends, we’re the mending of ourselves and others. We’re a Buddhist serving soup at a shelter alongside a stockbroker. We’re each other’s shelter and hope: a widow’s fifty cents in a collection plate and a golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for the cure.
We hold these truths to be self-evident …
We’re the cure for hatred caused by despair. We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. We’re every door held open with a smile when we look into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon. We’re the moon. We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.
- Richard Blanco
Such has been the patient sufferance…
We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line. We’re her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page through a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and as bruised. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury…
We’re her second job serving an executive absorbed in his Wall Street Journal at a sidewalk café shadowed by skyscrapers. We’re the shadows of the fortune he won and the family he lost. We’re his loss and the lost. We’re a father in a coal town who can’t mine a life anymore because too much and too little has happened, for too long.
A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…
We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and graffitied truths. We’re a street in another town lined with royal palms, at home with a Peace Corps couple who collect African art. We’re their dinner-party talk of wines, wielded picket signs, and burned draft cards. We’re what they know: it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and organic corn.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress…
We’re the farmer who grew the corn, who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re his TV set blaring news having everything and nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. We’re a black teenager who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough. We’re the blast of the bullet leaving the gun. We’re the guilt and the grief of the cop who wished he hadn’t shot.
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…
We’re the dead, we’re the living amid the flicker of vigil candlelight. We’re in a dim cell with an inmate reading Dostoevsky. We’re his crime, his sentence, his amends, we’re the mending of ourselves and others. We’re a Buddhist serving soup at a shelter alongside a stockbroker. We’re each other’s shelter and hope: a widow’s fifty cents in a collection plate and a golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for the cure.
We hold these truths to be self-evident …
We’re the cure for hatred caused by despair. We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. We’re every door held open with a smile when we look into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon. We’re the moon. We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.
- Richard Blanco
Larry Robinson
12-16-2020, 06:43 AM
Excerpt from Little Gidding
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
- T.S. Eliot
(The Four Quartets)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
- T.S. Eliot
(The Four Quartets)
Larry Robinson
12-17-2020, 06:08 AM
Rosa, Born During a Pandemic
On Zoom an infant smiles:
It was months before we visited you live and three weeks
more before we could hold you. My granddaughter limitless,
without aspiration, until (wearing your owl face pajamas) you set
your mind to crawl, wandering off to explore
the contours of an abstract dome shaped toy, popup board book
and rubber giraffe that squeaks. Often you taste
your toys before your fingers groom their surface.
Traveling from room to room dangers abound and attract—
as if you were a 5-foot, 10-inch point guard challenging
a big man or a second lieutenant contemplating an action
rather than a cause—wires adhered to walls, water boiling
on the stove, pointy knobs on draws. Is anything ever known
before encountered?
In a photo album an infant smiles:
My parents proclaimed they’d wake me any time,
day or night and I’d smile. This was World War Two
when American Jews sought relief any way they could.
Dad, are sociological explanations any use coming to terms
with how fearful and constrained a kid I was? Of course, it’s imagination reconstructing what I know in my guts. Memory unreliable
before language. If I were permitted to crawl about, allowed
to explore and run my fingers around the contours of objects
that might break, we may never have been mutually humiliated
when I was unable to bait a hook on a fishing line or was late learning
to tie my shoes. What is the ratio between fear and contentment, numerator inborn— denominator inculcated by those who love you? Yes, it was when I first discovered (in the third grade) that I was
the fastest runner for my age that I smiled—knowingly.
How fortunate to grow up human!
Iphone in hand, I snap a photo of a cormorant,
wings spread wide, aloft a pole
left from an abandoned pier:
Rosa, this is dawn during the pandemic.
I’d have thought a cormorant
would dry its wings exclusively
when a day’s heat approached.
5:30 AM and already
I am granted a vision.
A creature, heart shining in the dark,
presenting its essence, before diving
beneath the surface
of the water in search of fish.
This morning before the sun has risen,
the park along the East River is empty,
the sky orange, cradling a cloud above red as a lobster.
I (who hardly ever took a photo pre-Covid) capture
water taxies and barges on the river.
This is what I do during the pandemic:
Walk the city, snapping images of everything
that drifts my way carrying thoughts that ripple
from scenes into poems.
- Barry Denny
On Zoom an infant smiles:
It was months before we visited you live and three weeks
more before we could hold you. My granddaughter limitless,
without aspiration, until (wearing your owl face pajamas) you set
your mind to crawl, wandering off to explore
the contours of an abstract dome shaped toy, popup board book
and rubber giraffe that squeaks. Often you taste
your toys before your fingers groom their surface.
Traveling from room to room dangers abound and attract—
as if you were a 5-foot, 10-inch point guard challenging
a big man or a second lieutenant contemplating an action
rather than a cause—wires adhered to walls, water boiling
on the stove, pointy knobs on draws. Is anything ever known
before encountered?
In a photo album an infant smiles:
My parents proclaimed they’d wake me any time,
day or night and I’d smile. This was World War Two
when American Jews sought relief any way they could.
Dad, are sociological explanations any use coming to terms
with how fearful and constrained a kid I was? Of course, it’s imagination reconstructing what I know in my guts. Memory unreliable
before language. If I were permitted to crawl about, allowed
to explore and run my fingers around the contours of objects
that might break, we may never have been mutually humiliated
when I was unable to bait a hook on a fishing line or was late learning
to tie my shoes. What is the ratio between fear and contentment, numerator inborn— denominator inculcated by those who love you? Yes, it was when I first discovered (in the third grade) that I was
the fastest runner for my age that I smiled—knowingly.
How fortunate to grow up human!
Iphone in hand, I snap a photo of a cormorant,
wings spread wide, aloft a pole
left from an abandoned pier:
Rosa, this is dawn during the pandemic.
I’d have thought a cormorant
would dry its wings exclusively
when a day’s heat approached.
5:30 AM and already
I am granted a vision.
A creature, heart shining in the dark,
presenting its essence, before diving
beneath the surface
of the water in search of fish.
This morning before the sun has risen,
the park along the East River is empty,
the sky orange, cradling a cloud above red as a lobster.
I (who hardly ever took a photo pre-Covid) capture
water taxies and barges on the river.
This is what I do during the pandemic:
Walk the city, snapping images of everything
that drifts my way carrying thoughts that ripple
from scenes into poems.
- Barry Denny
Larry Robinson
12-18-2020, 07:01 AM
Orion says rest
oh mystery of the larynx
align forces that
speech ring true from heart to heart
transforming relationships
gather birch bark ash
mix with dried red rose petals
sprinkle over earth
making a dedication
to wisdom among peoples
surprise yourself with
boundless humor a base for
sweet humility
weaving fragments of battle
into Good initiatives
- Lorene Allen
oh mystery of the larynx
align forces that
speech ring true from heart to heart
transforming relationships
gather birch bark ash
mix with dried red rose petals
sprinkle over earth
making a dedication
to wisdom among peoples
surprise yourself with
boundless humor a base for
sweet humility
weaving fragments of battle
into Good initiatives
- Lorene Allen
Larry Robinson
12-19-2020, 04:49 AM
Eleven Unthinking Seconds
(Inspired by the Social Dilemma documentary)
Casually scrolling through my social media feed,
an ad catches my interest; Magnetic eyelashes.
For the eleven unthinking seconds that I’m captivated,
I watch someone use a pencil-like applicator to apply a gray
smudge of tiny metallic bits to the outer edge of an eyelid.
A thin arch of long lustrous lashes is carefully positioned,
and then, like magic, seemingly snaps perfectly into place.
Truly fascinating. Who knew?
I stopped watching as soon as I realized what I was doing,
and I didn’t click on the ad for more information, but no
matter, I was caught unawares and my fate was sealed.
While I had only watched for eleven seconds, the algorithm
probably only needed seven, or maybe even just five.
Now, the all too familiar and vexing gotcha-targeting
has begun and the same ad follows me wherever I scroll.
I’m certain that ads for bio-luminescent lipstick
and nano particle hairspray are already queued up
and headed my way.
As a rule, I try my best not to allow my gaze to linger
on attractive nuisances such as this one, but I’m afraid
it happens more often than I’d like.
Once again, I’ve been cleverly manipulated by those
potent and unrelenting forces that can expertly hold
my attention for those few dreaded seconds.
It seems that my poor defenseless brain stem is just no
match for the greedy purveyors of these insidious morsels
of commercial enticement.
As a consequence, a newly taped note on the edge of my
computer screen reads; “Magnetic eyelashes? Really?”
It joins an existing note of admonishment that says;
“Electronic dog leash? Seriously?”
- Mark Telles
(Inspired by the Social Dilemma documentary)
Casually scrolling through my social media feed,
an ad catches my interest; Magnetic eyelashes.
For the eleven unthinking seconds that I’m captivated,
I watch someone use a pencil-like applicator to apply a gray
smudge of tiny metallic bits to the outer edge of an eyelid.
A thin arch of long lustrous lashes is carefully positioned,
and then, like magic, seemingly snaps perfectly into place.
Truly fascinating. Who knew?
I stopped watching as soon as I realized what I was doing,
and I didn’t click on the ad for more information, but no
matter, I was caught unawares and my fate was sealed.
While I had only watched for eleven seconds, the algorithm
probably only needed seven, or maybe even just five.
Now, the all too familiar and vexing gotcha-targeting
has begun and the same ad follows me wherever I scroll.
I’m certain that ads for bio-luminescent lipstick
and nano particle hairspray are already queued up
and headed my way.
As a rule, I try my best not to allow my gaze to linger
on attractive nuisances such as this one, but I’m afraid
it happens more often than I’d like.
Once again, I’ve been cleverly manipulated by those
potent and unrelenting forces that can expertly hold
my attention for those few dreaded seconds.
It seems that my poor defenseless brain stem is just no
match for the greedy purveyors of these insidious morsels
of commercial enticement.
As a consequence, a newly taped note on the edge of my
computer screen reads; “Magnetic eyelashes? Really?”
It joins an existing note of admonishment that says;
“Electronic dog leash? Seriously?”
- Mark Telles
Larry Robinson
12-20-2020, 07:13 AM
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
- Ranier Maria Rilke
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
- Ranier Maria Rilke
Larry Robinson
12-21-2020, 05:03 AM
Solstice 2020
Two days before Solstice 2020
But the light is already lengthening.
We humans cannot measure the complexity of the
trigonometry, mystery, poetry of
axis angles, rotation sequence and power of Sun’s rays
as we hurtle through space over centuries.
Our miniscule errors in time have exponentially
turned into days,
to say the least.
Solstice is already here,
warming quarantined souls
and outside escapees,
reassuring us of the coming spring .
pulling dark bulbed life up through
live, moist earth.
It is already here.
Did you not feel the lingering light last night
under rising Jupiter and her sisters?
How could we dark little beings pinpoint such galactic chemistry?
- Jan Corbett
Two days before Solstice 2020
But the light is already lengthening.
We humans cannot measure the complexity of the
trigonometry, mystery, poetry of
axis angles, rotation sequence and power of Sun’s rays
as we hurtle through space over centuries.
Our miniscule errors in time have exponentially
turned into days,
to say the least.
Solstice is already here,
warming quarantined souls
and outside escapees,
reassuring us of the coming spring .
pulling dark bulbed life up through
live, moist earth.
It is already here.
Did you not feel the lingering light last night
under rising Jupiter and her sisters?
How could we dark little beings pinpoint such galactic chemistry?
- Jan Corbett
Larry Robinson
12-21-2020, 06:16 AM
A special birthday blessing for Barry Chertov:
A Beauty Blessing
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell.
As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time in presence.
As the moon absolves the dark of resistance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness.
As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.
As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.
As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within.
As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May beauty await you at home beyond.
- John O'Donohue
A Beauty Blessing
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell.
As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time in presence.
As the moon absolves the dark of resistance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness.
As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.
As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.
As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
May your outer life grow from peace within.
As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May beauty await you at home beyond.
- John O'Donohue
Larry Robinson
12-22-2020, 05:07 AM
Oceans
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens!
Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
- Nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
- Juan Ramon Jimenez
I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
And nothing
happens!
Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
- Nothing happens?
Or has everything happened,
and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
- Juan Ramon Jimenez
Larry Robinson
12-23-2020, 05:45 AM
The Winter Of Listenings
No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
All this trying
to know
who we are
and all this
wanting to know
exactly
what we must do.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
to the lit angel
we desire.
What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true
to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…
- David Whyte
No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
All this trying
to know
who we are
and all this
wanting to know
exactly
what we must do.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
to the lit angel
we desire.
What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true
to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born…
- David Whyte
Larry Robinson
12-24-2020, 05:35 AM
Elegy In Joy
We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.
The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children:
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.
This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.
- Muriel Rukeyser
We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.
The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children:
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.
This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.
- Muriel Rukeyser
Larry Robinson
12-25-2020, 06:32 AM
1914 Truce
Christmas Eve in the trenches of France, the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man’s Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.
Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel, sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother’s eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.
In a copse of trees behind the lines, a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.
Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.
But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.
On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers, nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.
Then flickering flames from the other side danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone, candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.
Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot, or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell, heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht …
Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared …
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.
A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died.
All night, along the Western Front, they sang, the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems, in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.
So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist, to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz …
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.
Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner, brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.
Then it was up and over, every man, to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie’s stew,
Tickler’s jam … for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.
I showed him a picture of my wife. Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.
They buried the dead then, hacked spades into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt … my shepherd, I shall not want.
And all that marvellous, festive day and night, they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file, their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves …
… beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.
- Carol Ann Duffy
UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote this poem in remembrance of the soldiers in the German and British trenches in World War 1, who declared a momentary unilateral truce in the slaughter at Christmas 1914, in recognition of what united them as human beings, rather than the war that divided them as killing machines.
A short film about the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSa2PGpwhYY&feature=youtu.be
Christmas Eve in the trenches of France, the guns were quiet.
The dead lay still in No Man’s Land –
Freddie, Franz, Friedrich, Frank . . .
The moon, like a medal, hung in the clear, cold sky.
Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel, sparkled and winked.
A boy from Stroud stared at a star
to meet his mother’s eyesight there.
An owl swooped on a rat on the glove of a corpse.
In a copse of trees behind the lines, a lone bird sang.
A soldier-poet noted it down – a robin holding his winter ground –
then silence spread and touched each man like a hand.
Somebody kissed the gold of his ring;
a few lit pipes;
most, in their greatcoats, huddled,
waiting for sleep.
The liquid mud had hardened at last in the freeze.
But it was Christmas Eve; believe; belief thrilled the night air,
where glittering rime on unburied sons
treasured their stiff hair.
The sharp, clean, midwinter smell held memory.
On watch, a rifleman scoured the terrain –
no sign of life,
no shadows, shots from snipers, nowt to note or report.
The frozen, foreign fields were acres of pain.
Then flickering flames from the other side danced in his eyes,
as Christmas Trees in their dozens shone, candlelit on the parapets,
and they started to sing, all down the German lines.
Men who would drown in mud, be gassed, or shot, or vaporised
by falling shells, or live to tell, heard for the first time then –
Stille Nacht. Heilige Nacht. Alles schläft, einsam wacht …
Cariad, the song was a sudden bridge from man to man;
a gift to the heart from home,
or childhood, some place shared …
When it was done, the British soldiers cheered.
A Scotsman started to bawl The First Noel
and all joined in,
till the Germans stood, seeing
across the divide,
the sprawled, mute shapes of those who had died.
All night, along the Western Front, they sang, the enemies –
carols, hymns, folk songs, anthems, in German, English, French;
each battalion choired in its grim trench.
So Christmas dawned, wrapped in mist, to open itself
and offer the day like a gift
for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry, Heinz …
with whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs.
Frohe Weinachten, Tommy! Merry Christmas, Fritz!
A young Berliner, brandishing schnapps,
was the first from his ditch to climb.
A Shropshire lad ran at him like a rhyme.
Then it was up and over, every man, to shake the hand
of a foe as a friend,
or slap his back like a brother would;
exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, Maconochie’s stew,
Tickler’s jam … for cognac, sausages, cigars,
beer, sauerkraut;
or chase six hares, who jumped
from a cabbage-patch, or find a ball
and make of a battleground a football pitch.
I showed him a picture of my wife. Ich zeigte ihm
ein Foto meiner Frau.
Sie sei schön, sagte er.
He thought her beautiful, he said.
They buried the dead then, hacked spades into hard earth
again and again, till a score of men
were at rest, identified, blessed.
Der Herr ist mein Hirt … my shepherd, I shall not want.
And all that marvellous, festive day and night, they came and went,
the officers, the rank and file, their fallen comrades side by side
beneath the makeshift crosses of midwinter graves …
… beneath the shivering, shy stars
and the pinned moon
and the yawn of History;
the high, bright bullets
which each man later only aimed at the sky.
- Carol Ann Duffy
UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy wrote this poem in remembrance of the soldiers in the German and British trenches in World War 1, who declared a momentary unilateral truce in the slaughter at Christmas 1914, in recognition of what united them as human beings, rather than the war that divided them as killing machines.
A short film about the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSa2PGpwhYY&feature=youtu.be
M/M
12-25-2020, 08:43 AM
Others who noted that very special day and other times preceding it as well: World War I: The 1914 Christmas Truce
https://www.globalresearch.ca/world-war-i-the-1914-christmas-truce/5421076
In some sectors such fraternizations developed into an almost daily routine. In the area of the town of Pont-à-Mousson French as well as German soldiers started in November 1914 to fetch water daily at the Fountain of Father Hilarion (Fontaine du Père Hilarion), a spring situated in a ravine in the middle of no man’s land. Normally, they took turns to go there, and no shots were fired while water was being collected. But it frequently came to meetings and conversations. That sociability abruptly ended ... on December 7...
·
https://www.globalresearch.ca/world-war-i-the-1914-christmas-truce/5421076
In some sectors such fraternizations developed into an almost daily routine. In the area of the town of Pont-à-Mousson French as well as German soldiers started in November 1914 to fetch water daily at the Fountain of Father Hilarion (Fontaine du Père Hilarion), a spring situated in a ravine in the middle of no man’s land. Normally, they took turns to go there, and no shots were fired while water was being collected. But it frequently came to meetings and conversations. That sociability abruptly ended ... on December 7...
·
wisewomn
12-25-2020, 09:56 AM
John McCutcheon wrote a song about it:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=christmas+in+the+trenches+by+john+mccutcheon&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dchristmas%2bin%2bthe%2btrenches%2bby%2bjohn%2bmccutcheon%26cvid%3d06147af8539043168a7363ef1d13ada9%26pglt%3d547%26FORM%3dANSPA1%26P C%3dDCTE&view=detail&mid=3BE2A3CFD3B1A9C0DD523BE2A3CFD3B1A9C0DD52&rvsmid=2E284897E6744A13B6DE2E284897E6744A13B6DE&FORM=VDQVAP
·
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Larry Robinson
12-26-2020, 04:52 AM
A Winter’s Alcove
There are sorrowful, chilled fogs these days that remind one of his mortality. We are in that season when the sun loses the eternal tug-of-war with the icy moon, as exhausted leaves fall like wounded soldiers from desperate trees.
It is the time when the earth falls into her hibernation to conceive the unhappy dreams of lost loves, a time when we are reminded of whom we have offended and forgotten and left behind. It is the time of cold rains and hungry animals.
Let me kiss you, turn your collar up to the gray cold, take your hand, and strut the joyous walk of love defying the face of the storm. I will make fire and create a dry alcove for you in this river of iced waters, put my arms around your sadness and for one brief and exotic moment take you to where we will lay naked on warm blessed sands, bask in the sun, and laugh at our melancholy.
Let us heap our fears in the cold night where they will feel at home, polish our joys, and wear them around our necks.
- Armando Garcia-Dávila
There are sorrowful, chilled fogs these days that remind one of his mortality. We are in that season when the sun loses the eternal tug-of-war with the icy moon, as exhausted leaves fall like wounded soldiers from desperate trees.
It is the time when the earth falls into her hibernation to conceive the unhappy dreams of lost loves, a time when we are reminded of whom we have offended and forgotten and left behind. It is the time of cold rains and hungry animals.
Let me kiss you, turn your collar up to the gray cold, take your hand, and strut the joyous walk of love defying the face of the storm. I will make fire and create a dry alcove for you in this river of iced waters, put my arms around your sadness and for one brief and exotic moment take you to where we will lay naked on warm blessed sands, bask in the sun, and laugh at our melancholy.
Let us heap our fears in the cold night where they will feel at home, polish our joys, and wear them around our necks.
- Armando Garcia-Dávila