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...

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2020 Walk to Salt Water

When they go low, we go high. Michele Obama
How low can you go? Chubby Checker

I.
A spring-loaded clip
unchains the first gate.
Our path heads for
a grey...

Peter / podfish, Look: I rather like you, in spite of our differences. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about Steve Finell, Esq. You are, to borrow one of your phrases, ‘less pugnacious’ than he....

Emancipation

Fling out your banners, your honors be bringing,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2020-06-19_14-25-05.png
Raise to the ether your paeans of praise.
Strike every...

Cave Painting At Font du Gaume


Of course, even his bones
are now dust,
his flowing mane
taken by the wind,
those sturdy hooves
and solid flesh consumed
and reborn in endless forms.

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2020-04-11_16-56-03b.png

The Peace of Wild Things


When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the...

Funeral During A Pandemic


You will die.Everyone you know will die.
You know this.
But you don’t know when.


Until now it has been easy
to believe it will be some time off

Stardust




What’s in a star? We are.
All the elements of our body and of the planet
were once in the belly of a star.
We are stardust.
15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass

Buna


Wasted feet, cursed earth,
the interminable gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys.


A day like every other day awaits us.
The terrible whistle shrilly...

Forestvaros: that was a wonderful reply. Please know there are many of us who share your thoughts. There are also many of us who have given quite a bit of our time, money, open-heartedness and even...

Has anyone actually heard/listened to anyone who is or has been homeless?
This is one viewpoint.

"I'm good now, but i have a mental disorder, I've been a drug addict and I've been homeless. i...

Christmas Bells
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2019-12-25_10-45-35.png
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words...

Truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,

Little Thing

You know
I have big dreams
but right now it's the
little things
that shockingly matter
"it's the little things"
my mom and dad always say
just on any old

For Nellie Jo

I remember the landscape in your eyes
alone and petrified, we took you in
coaxing with a Christmas ham from a neighbor was good
and to seal the bet, our diplomatic Rottweiler...

Juneteenth


Know the enemy is in charge
and the exposer in chief is at large
and the presider of cruel justice
is orange haired Madame DJ DeFarge

So good to give up polarity
and see the...

Song of the Open Road


9
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2019-05-31_12-15-12.pngAllons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
...

Nothing Is Lost

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we love have spoken,
Sorrows and...

Family Syllabus

The butterfly is quickly seized and eaten just above their lifted heads
the children had trapped it in the house under glass and card
the father brought it to freedom in the...

To Earth the Mother of All


I will sing of the well-founded Earth,
mother of all, eldest of all beings.


She feeds all creatures that are in the world,
all that go upon the goodly land,...

Last Friday, on our way to a restaurant in Petaluma, my wife slipped and fell as she crossed the street. Bracing herself against the fall, she hurt her wrist badly. In the restaurant, we asked for a...

I'm the Sebastopol newbie, so I don't know what your history with CVS is. It sounds bad, but may I offer a little different perspective? please without getting pummeled.

My daughter and I moved...

The Way It Is

There is a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread....

Cabin Poem

I've decided to make up my mind
About nothing, to assume the water mask,
To finish my life disguised as a creek,
An eddy, joining at night the full,
Sweet flow, to absorb the sky,...

Ode to Gratitude

Thanks to the word
that gives thanks.
Thanks to the gratitude
for how excellently
the word melts snow or iron.

The planet seemed full of threats
until soft

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born...

This Is How I Voted Today


This is how I voted today.
I went to the woods and dug a hole
under fern in leaf rot and luminous fungi

into which I pressed my mouth and screamed
a long hot...

For a Coming Extinction


Gray Whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

Imagining

What if God isnʼt a noun
to be empowered and worshiped
but a verb of creation
powered by love?

What if every single tree
drawn in primary school
is a sacred work of art

In Context: Mekong Delta


Somewhere, in a place entirely unlike
this one, the crown of the Mekong fissures
Earth’s tallest granite, thrust skyward

by the collision of continents that might...

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and...

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea -“

But we...

I was made to feel uncomfortable sipping coffee with a friend outside Andy's Market on Saturday morning. with Two stocky police officers seated near us. Both appeared to be wearing bulletproof vests...

An Ode To Yeats



I suppose that’s one reason for death

To take the I out of its sentence,

To relinquish the body and the breath

Things About The Sun


Any time the sun
touches our part of the earth
we say the sun shines.

Sometimes dogs bark at the sun,
but I don’t mind it.

Verizon has withdrawn their application for “small cell” towers in Sebastopol!
They gave no specific reason. The hearing on June 12 is cancelled.

Thanks to many people, including Alan, Paul,...

Populist Manifesto #1

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Come down, come down
from your Russian...

I get up

(I don’t always want to)
I’m tired
I am run down
My thoughts run me down
The news runs me down
My country runs me down
Our history runs me down
But

I saw John on last Friday

I saw him on last Friday. Trish told me it was his birthday--she learned from Facebook. I went to the square where he likes to drink coffee in the morning. He went...

Occupy Wall Street


We need global
citizens for some sit-ins
again.
I say we all meet
on Wall Street
and lock down--
lock the whole block down!

The Spiral Stairway


The spiral stairway
went nowhere,
though it once went
from ground floor to
second floor before
the wild fires that
taught them what