Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Source of Joy

No one knows what makes the soul
wake up so happy!

Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil
from the face of God.

A thousand new moons appear.
Roses open laughing.

Hearts become perfect rubies
like those from Badakshan.

The body turns entirely spirit.
Leaves become branches in the wind!

Why is it now so easy to surrender,
even for those already surrendered?

There's no answer to any of this.
No one knows the source of joy.

A poet breathes into a reed flute,
and the tip of every hair makes music.

Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof,
and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him.

- Rumi
(Version by Coleman Barks)

Stranded Somewhere

If you are the body, that one is the soul
of the universe. If you're the soul, that

one is the soul within all souls. Wherever
you go, whatever you are, listen for the

voice that asks, "Who will be sacrificed
tonight? "Jump up and volunteer! Accept

this cup that is offered every second.
Love has written the thousand subtleties

of this call on my face. Read. If you're
bored and contemptuous, love is a walk in

a meadow. If you're stranded somewhere
and exhausted, love is an Arabian horse.

The ocean feeds itself to its fish. If
you're ocean fish, why bother with bread

the ground grows? These jars of grief and
trouble we call bodies, throw stones and

break them! My cage is this longing for
Shams. Be my worst enemy: shatter it!

- Jelalludin Rumi
Ghazal (Ode) 926
(Version by Coleman Barks)

The Swan


Across the wide waters
something comes
floating--a slim
and delicate

ship, filled
with white flowers--
and it moves
on its miraculous muscles

as though time didn’t exist,
as though bringing such gifts
to the dry shore
was a happiness

almost beyond bearing.
And now it turns its dark eyes,
it rearranges
the clouds of its wings,

it trails
and elaborate webbed foot,
the color of charcoal.
Soon it will be here.

Oh, what shall I do
when that poppy-colored beak
rests in my hand?
Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband’s company--
he is so often
in paradise.
Of course! the path to heaven

doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
It’s in the imagination
with which you perceive
this world,

and the gestures
with which you honor it.
Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those
white wings
touch the shore?


-Mary Oliver

Personal Helicon

for Michael Longley

As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.

A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.

Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

- Seamus Heaney

Hudson's Geese

'. . . I have, from time to time, related some incident of my

boyhood, and these are contained in various chapters in The

Naturalist in La Plata, Birds and Man, Adventures Among

Birds____'

W.H. Hudson, in Far Away and Long Ago.



Hudson tells us of them,

the two migrating geese,

she hurt in the wing

indomitably walking the length of a continent,

and he wheeling above,

calling his distress.

They could not have lived.

Already I see her wing

scraped past the bone

as she drags it through rubble.

A fox, maybe, took her

in his snap jaws. And what

would he do, the point

of his circling gone?

The wilderness of his cry

falling through an air

turned instantly to winter

would warn the guns of him.

If a fowler dropped him,

let it have been quick,

pellets hitting brain

and heart so his weight

came down senseless,

and nothing but his body

to enter the dog's mouth.

- Leslie Norris

Grace

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

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

A THANKSGIVING PRAYER FROM THE IROQUOIS NATION


We have gathered and come from many different places. We have arrived safely at this place to share with each other our gifts from the Creator. So we bring our minds together as one in Thanksgiving and Greetings to one another.

We now turn our thoughts to Earth Mother. She continues to care for us and has not forgotten her instructions from the beginning of time. Now we bring our minds together in Thanksgiving for the Earth.

Now as one mind we turn our thoughts to the Waters of the Earth for they too have not forgotten their instructions from the Creator of Life. The Waters continue to flow beneath the ground, in little streams and in rivers, in lakes and in wetlands, and in the great seas. They quench our thirst and help keep us clean so we can fulfill our duty to Creation. We now bring our minds together in Thanksgiving to all the Waters of the Earth.

We now address all the Beings both seen and unseen that dwell in the Water for they too have not forgotten their original instructions from the Creator of Life to provide for us in many ways. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving and Greetings to all the Nations who dwell in the Waters.

Now we direct our thoughts to the many kinds of plants that live upon the Earth- for they too have not forgotten their original instructions. Many members of this Nation sustain those who walk upon this Earth, and many others who continue to fulfill their duties to take away the sickness of the human family and elevate human consciousness. With one mind we send our thoughts and Thanksgiving to the Plant Nations.

With one mind we now think of our relations in the many Insect Nations. Like the other members of the natural world, they too have not forgotten their original instructions to fulfill their obligation to Continued Creation. With one mind we send our thoughts and Thanksgiving to all the members of the Insect Nations.

We now gather our minds together and send Greetings and Thanksgiving to all the Animal Life in the world, for they continue to instruct and teach us even today. It is said that the Creator knew that Humans would take too much for granted if they were given all the wisdom, so instead the Creator gave a little piece of wisdom of how to live on the Earth to the different animals. We are happy that many still walk with us on our continuing journey. With one mind we send Thanksgiving to all the Animal Life in the world.

With one mind we now think of the Trees. According to their original instructions the Trees still give us shelter, warmth, food, and make the environment a suitable place to dwell. The trees remind us of the beauty and power in the natural world. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving to all the members of the Tree Nation.

We now bring our minds together and send our Greetings of Thanksgiving to the Birds. At the beginning of time the Birds were given a special duty to perform. The Creator gave the Birds instructions to each find a special place to live in the world and they should learn the song of that place. During the day, our minds are lifted by the songs of the Bird Nations. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving to the Birds of the world.

We are thankful to the Four Winds who continue to blow and cleanse the air according to their original instructions. As we listen to the Winds it is as if we are hearing the Creator's breath, clearing our minds as it blows through the trees. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving to the Four Winds.

We now turn our attention to the Thunderbeings. For they too have not forgotten their original instructions and welcome the Spring with their loud voice. Along with the lightning, they carry the waters of the spring on their backs. It is also said that the Thunderbeings were given the job to hold down the beings beneath the Earth which would prevent life from continuing. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving and Greetings to the Thunderbeings.

Our minds are as one as we send our thoughts to our oldest brother the Sun. Each day the Sun continues his instructions from the Creator of Life, bringing the light of day, the energy source of all life on Earth. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving to our oldest brother the Sun.

We now gather our minds together and give thanks to our oldest Grandmother the Moon. She holds hands with all the women of the world and binds all of the female cycles and rhythms of the Waters so we may continue to carry out our obligation to Creation. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving and Greetings to Grandmother Moon.

With one mind we send our thoughts to the Star Nation who continue to light our way during times of darkness to guide us home, and hold the secrets of many forgotten stories. Even though many of the stories are no longer in our minds, it is said it is enough to be thankful to the Stars and perhaps one day we would learn these stories again.
With one mind we send our Thanksgiving and Greetings to the Star Nation.

With our minds as one we think of the Four Spirit Beings who live in the Four Directions. At the beginning of time when the Creator first made the Human Family, it was seen that they very quickly got themselves into trouble. The Creator knew that they needed extra help and so created the Four Spirit Beings to remove the obstacles from our paths and guide us with our feelings. And now we gather our minds together as one and send our special Thanksgiving to the Four Spirit Beings.

Now we have arrived in a very special place where dwells the Great Spirit, the Creator of the Universe. As one mind we turn our thoughts to the Creator, for without the Creator we would not be able to walk on the Earth fulfilling our original instructions.

Everything we need is provided for us and all we have to remember is to give thanks. With one mind we send our Thanksgiving and Greetings to the Creator.

We have now become like one being. We send our Prayers and special Thanksgiving Greetings to all the unborn children of the future generations. We send our thoughts to the Elders and the Children for they give us guidance and purpose to live in a good way. We are thankful to all the Enlightened Teachers who have come to help us throughout the ages. We send our thoughts to the many different beings we may have missed during our Thanksgiving. With one mind we send Thanksgiving and Greetings to all of the Nations of the World.
Now Our Minds Are One.

Just Now

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

- W. S. Merwin

Untitled

After seventeen years of circling,
waiting for the other shoe to drop,
we decided to give up and marry–
and on a cold, sunny Sunday
in an empty rural courthouse, we did.
The guests were all throwing up from flu,
so we ate the nuptial rhubarb pie alone,
wondering if this was the other shoe.
Now three years after, still under icy sun,
we’re keeping our ears alert
for any sudden thumps in undusted corners.
So far, so good. We have now
both loved and endured each other
a long time. Let’s raise a glass to ourselves:
while the world was careening madly forward,
we parked our souls in the shade of the chaos,
and here we are, still alive, and pie
or no pie, still capable of joy.

- Bill Holm

Song of the Universal

1
Come said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the universal.
In this broad earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed perfection.
By every life a share or more or less,
None born but it is born, conceal`d or unconceal`d the seed is waiting.
2
Lo! keen-eyed towering science,
As from tall peaks the modern overlooking,
Successive absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the soul, above all science,
For it has history gather`d like husks around the globe,
For it the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
In spiral routes by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it the real to the ideal tends.
For it the mystic evolution,
Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge festering trunk, from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge and joy, joy universal.
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority, the varied countless frauds of men and states,
Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.
3
Over the mountain-growths disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.
From imperfection`s murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of heaven`s glory.
To fashion`s, custom`s discord,
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull a strain is heard, just heard,
From some far shore the final chorus sounding.
O the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth.
4
And thou America,
For the scheme`s culmination, its thought and its reality,
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.
Thou too surroundest all,
Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new,
To the ideal tendest.
The measure`d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past,
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.
All, all for immortality,
Love like the light silently wrapping all,
Nature`s amelioration blessing all,
The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and certain,
Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.
Give me O God to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love this quenchless faith,
In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld withhold not from us,
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space,
Health, peace, salvation universal.
Is it a dream?
Nay but the lack of it the dream,
And failing it life`s lore and wealth a dream,
And all the world a dream.

- Walt Whitman

Song of Zazen

All beings are primarily Buddhas.
It is like water and ice:
There is no ice apart from water;
There are no Buddhas apart from beings.

Not knowing how close the truth is to them,
Beings seek for it afar -- what a pity!
They are like those who, being in the midst of water,
Cry out for water, feeling thirst.

They are like the son of the rich man,
Who, wandering away from his father,
Goes astray amongst the poor.
It is all due to their ignorance
That beings transmigrate in the darkness
Of the Six Paths of existence.

When they wander from darkness to darkness,
How can they ever be free from birth-and-death?

As for the Dhyana practice as taught in the Mahayana,
No amount of praise can exhaust its merits.
The Six Paramitas--beginning with the Giving, Observing the Precepts,
And other good deeds, variously enumerated,
Such as Nembutsu, Repentance, Moral Training, and so on -
All are finally reducible to the practice of Dhyana.

The merit of Dhyana practice, even during a single sitting,
Erases the countless sins accumulated in the past.
Where then are the Evil Paths to misguide us?
The Pure Land cannot be far away.

Those who, for once, listening to the Dharma
In all humility,
Praise it and faithfully follow it,
Will be endowed with innumerable merits.

But how much more so when you turn your eyes within yourselves
And have a glimpse into your self-nature!
You find that the self-nature is no-nature -
The truth permitting no idle sophistry.
For you, then, open the gate leading to the oneness of cause and effect;
Before you, then, lies a straight road of non-duality and non-trinity.

When you understand that form is the form of the formless,
Your coming-and-going takes place nowhere else but where you are
When you understand that thought is the thought of the thought-less
Your singing-and-dancing is no other than the voice of the Dharma
How boundless is the sky of Samadhi
How refreshingly bright is the moon of the Fourfold Wisdom
Being so is there anything you lack?
As the Absolute presents itself before you
The place where you stand is the Land of the Lotus,
And your person - the body of the Buddha.


- Hakuin

Red

Toyon berries,
kindling the mind’s eye, the spirit body
on a shriveling December morning.
Ideas enough to span the Serengeti
spawn inside me, all from a dither of red
in a ransacked plantation of green.
Red so deep it ferrets behind my eyes,
rounding up neurons, branding synapses
yelling Wake up! I am the soul of being alive.

I am the fluid rhapsody in your veins
I am the bass note in a sunshine symphony
I attract hummingbirds to your lips
I am the satin lining of your joy pocket
I gloss your infant body at birth

I am red, ruby red, garnet red, crimson red,
pomegranate, scarlet and betelnut.

My eyes can discern red just coming on,
red at its zenith, red passing its time, fading,
finally red making landfall, becoming un-visible.
After, my eyes rest, zinging with the memory.

I know the rev of red cannot by sustained,
I ask for only a scatter of berries
throughout my days.

- Penelope La Montagne

Night Turn

In late summer after the day's heat is over
I walk out after dark into the still garden
wet leaves fragrance of ginger and kamani
the feel of the path underfoot still recalling
a flow of water that found its way long ago
toads are rustling under the lemon trees
looking back I can see through the branches
the light in the kitchen where we were standing
a moment ago in our life together

- W.S. Merwin

Journey Into The Interior

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

- Theodore Roethke

The Thread
*
Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven't tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.

- Denise Levertov

To a Leaf Falling in Winter

At sundown when a day's words
have gathered at the feet of the trees
lining up in silence
to enter the long corridors
of the roots into which they
pass one by one thinking
that they remember the place
as they feel themselves climbing
away from their only sound
while they are being forgotten
by their bright circumstances
they rise through all of the rings
listening again
afterward as they
listened once and they come
to where the leaves used to live
during their lives but have gone now
and they too take the next step
beyond the reach of meaning

- W. S. Merwin

Forgetfulness

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

-*Billy Collins

Ice Bound

Sky’s gray sheet spreads icy rain.
Through the night we heard the branches cracking.
Now they bend with the bowed ache of apostrophes.
Backs to the window, sitting on the couch, we listen
as the radio announces the list of schools closed.

An hour earlier I inched my way along
the road, tires spinning toward the ditch.
Now I read aloud to a teenage daughter,
who tolerates my foolishness, my claim
that Lao Tzu traversed a more slippery world.

With two books open on my lap, one in my hand,
two on the floor, I’m surrounded by imperfect
translations: a gathering chaos; something
mysteriously formed; without beginning,
without end; formless and perfect.

She responds, Sure,
I knew that, so what? I persist:
that existed before the heavens and the earth;
before the universe was born. She’s ready to go
upstairs and listen to the radio. I ask,

What was her face before her parents were born?
she answers, Nothing. I ask again.
She says it again. Where are the angels,
nights on humble knees, the psalms of faith,
the saints of daylight? She walks out of the room.

I’m surrounded by thin books.
How pointless to go anywhere on this day,
or maybe any other, but then
the time comes when there is
no other way but to stand firm on ice.

- Walter L. Bargen

A Physics of Sudden Light

This is just about light, how suddenly
One comes upon it sometimes and is surprised.

In light, something is lifted.
That is the property of light,

And in it one weighs less.
A broad and wide leap of light

Encountered suddenly for a moment —
You are not where you were

But you have not moved. It’s the moment
That startles you up out of dream.

But the other way around: It’s the moment, instead,
That startles you into dream, makes you

Close your eyes — that kind of light, the moment
For which — in our language — we have only

The word surprise, maybe a few others,
But not enough. The moment is regular

As with all the things regular
At the closing of the twentieth century:

A knowledge that electricity exists
Somewhere inside the walls;

That tonight the moon in some fashion will come out;
That cold water is good to drink.

The way taste slows a thing
On its way into the body.

Light, widened and slowed, so much of it: It
Cannot be swallowed into the mouth of the eye,

Into the throat of the pupil, there is
So much of it. But we let it in anyway,

Something in us knowing
The appropriate mechanism, the moment’s lever.

Light, the slow moment of everything fast.
Like hills, those slowest waves, light,

That slowest fire, all
Confusion, confusion here

One more part of clarity: In this light
You are not where you were but you have not moved.

- Alberto Rios

Long Course

The days crawled by on their hands and knees
As we sat meditating.
Forty-five beads
on the thread of time-
a Buddhist rosary.
But no prayers to Buddha-
only respect
and gratitude.

- Tina Rosa

Deepening The Wonder

Death is a favor to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.

The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity,
Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

Of this mysterious existence we share
And are surely just traveling through.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks

And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that

We are just a midair flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

If I were in the Tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world

Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.

Death is a favor to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.

The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.

- Hafiz

The tragic gap . . .



Tonight I heard the voice of hope,

speaking to a small gathering of souls

in a poorly heated room

that once was warm,

once was home and hearth for family,

for an American family, released from internment—

the family of Fred and Mary Okamoto.



In the way of things—

zoning laws get passed,

neighborhoods get changed forever,

commerce insinuates itself here and there

and homes, some homes, cease to be homes—

Oh, Felix culpa! Oh, happy accident!



Following Hiroshima, following Nagasaki,

following the Enola Gay and Mr. Tibbets,

following Little Boy and Fat Man,

following J. Robert Oppenheimer,

following all of this and following, also, their internment,

Fred and Mary allowed their home to house

for more than half a century, the council—

the World without War Council.



And in the way of things—

people grow old

and old warriors for peace fade

along with their military brethren

and make way, then, for what is to follow—

a different paradigm, this time, for peace.



The home of Fred and Mary,

in happy serendipity,

houses now the Metta Center

for Nonviolence Education.

And into this center came,

on that chilly December evening

at the very close of our first decade

of the twenty first century—in the way we mark our time—

into to this center came that voice of hope I heard.1

It came from an unassuming presence and was softly spoken.

It told a tale more powerful than hate, more powerful than ignorance

more powerful even than Little Boy or Fat Man—

a tale of the human spirit, a tale of what can be, a tale of what actually is—

unarmed, nonviolent peace makers entering war zones

and without judgment or ideology bringing hostilities to a halt.



And so, dear listener, I share this tale with you

that you may know and have hope too,

that you may know hope is not a solitary thing.

It must be sought and fought for.

It must be labored for.

It must be shared to live.

But as my voice of hope reminded me,

in closing, hope does not live in isolation,

separate from the slaughter and the suffering

we see and feel in our gut—if we allow ourselves to.

We cannot live, he said, in pain alone nor in hope alone.

We must live in the tragic gap,

holding at once the pain

and the knowing

of what can be—

alive to our own being—

as excruciating

and as joyful

as that is.

- Bill Denham

Intruder

I step out before breakfast
to a chorus
of retreating white-tailed haunches,
twisting asunder, gouging grass,
in random scatter of evasive maneuvers, until

one tawny body lifts high and
weightless,
over a berm of chopped branches,
and all stop -
mid-retreat
as if by some silent signal.

We stare,
stretching our spirits
across the chasm of the wild,
their deep brown eyes
serious, stern, searching,
at last, relieved:
only me, after all -

the rain falls softly,
pearls in silence
on their ancient backs, nascent antlers.

- Scott O'Brien

Already



When I get off the coach with the rest of the travelers

Who have already departed one by one before the terminal,

Then all will be empty. The old horses

Dragging it down the ruts

Wheeze and wrangle with the hitches,

Two nags, hair always changing color,

Choleric, persistent, and remorseless.



When I leave that coach, be sure of this:

It will be empty, a terminus attained

By a vacancy.



If nothing come of this,

If not even one hiker perches his thumb on the passing air,

(For a vessel gone before),



Then pick up your little luggage of life

And trudge back

The way you came, into

That disappearance. They will welcome you

With open arms. You will be lost

In their affection. That will be the price.



But this price, the daily hay,

Great as it is, is still less

Than the fortune you would spend

Distributing candy and infantilization.



There is a rumor I heard

About thieves like me. Some steal

And are imprisoned. Others,

And the whole world goes free.



- Bruce Moody

A Christmas Carol

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

Even as you read this
a child is being born.

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

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

- Larry Robinson

How She Works
for Donna

She is Persephone with no
Demeter to rescue her. Above
is always winter. Inside the cave
she calls her office,
she is a schizophrenic talking
to the voices that enter her head.
Disembodied voices chatter in her ears,
she chats to the bodiless. Her disembodied
voice climbs into their ears wherever
they might be in their caves
they call offices.

She is hungry for more
than pomegrantes, craves poetry,
oysters and ripe stuffed olives.

At night she dreams
if she sleeps.
She dreams of something she cannot
imagine and so it has no name.
Tight ripe buds push like crowning
babies birthing into bright, electric air.
Thin shoots of palest green
wiggle and thrust through dark, amazed
earth. Because she is blind
she cannot name the colors. There are
so many, no one could name them.

She dreams of Spring.
She dreams of breathing.
She dreams her mother is searching for her.

- Rebecca del Rio

God's Wounds

Through the great pain of stretching
beyond all that pain has taught me
the soft well at the base
has opened, and life
touching me there
has turned me into a flower
that prays for rain. Now
I understand: to blossom
is to pray, to wilt and shed
is to pray, to turn to mulch
is to pray, to stretch in the dark
is to pray, to break surface
after great months of ice
is to pray, and to squeeze love
up the stalky center toward the sky
with only dreams of color
is to pray, and finally to unfold
again as if never before
is to be the prayer.

- Mark Nepo

Could Hope inspect her Basis

Could Hope inspect her Basis
Her Craft were done --
Has a fictitious Charter
Or it has none --

Balked in the vastest instance
But to renew --
Felled by but one assassin --
Prosperity --

- Emily Dickinson

Written on Christmas Eve, 1513

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much,

very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can

come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within

our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!



Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering,

cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you

will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there.

The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too,

be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.


Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering,

that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all!

But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,

wending through unknown country home.


And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,

but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and

forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

- Fra Giovanni

And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day



Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes

itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited

or dreamed. Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a



mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us

heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our

spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,



come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing

I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man

as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets



and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know

is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape

of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed



so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable

axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not

prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto



but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the

shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.

No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,



waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,

and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you

prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,



and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,

and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,

and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.



- Michael Blumenthal

I Thought Again of Jacob Kahn

Then I thought again of Jacob Kahn and again I wondered:
Do we all get old and sick so quickly? Then there is almost
no time left at all...Do you hear the pain carried on the wind? It is the cry of wasted lives...Who dares add to that cry? Who dares drain the world of its light?”


Chaim Potok - My Name Is Asher Lev



Being wheeled when wheeling

long ago had such a free turning

sound to it, the breeze

the wheels that wings lift over wind.



But here today I am cargo

transported to still another clinic,

a depot which may send me further on,

the difference being, I don’t know where I’m going.



Just months ago, not long before

his death, my father’s face topped this

image, I doing the pushing,

he offering his dependence.



But from my transported perspective

such trust implies surrender,

which, according to eastern philosophy,

sort of is the goal.



Here today though being

transported, I do not find yielding

to be at all agreeable.

My mind has so ever much more



to consider, paintings to be

painted, poems to be written

about so many things in illusory time,

and all about finches.



Red-headed paradise finches

observed darting suspended by

me? But I do not affect little birds

except, perhaps, when I frighten them.



Finches are not suspended

by me.

Birds do not dart by such cause.

I ain’t their puppeteer.



Yet I mustn’t waste an instant

even when I begin (or terminate) feeling

so numbingly tired,

I need to remember to write, to edit.



While, much of this I’ll cut to shard,

The red-headed paradise finches

must remain intact,

in touch with all that nests herein.



One finch burned

red into both my retinas,

flitted about such corneas as

laid like ice in wait.



When a paradise finch clicks

into material lenses,

pollinating sight with cochineal

dust such stuff of vivid fairies,



I, along with Jacob Kahn, hold

little tolerance for wasting any detritus

that once discovered turns glorious

when we ourselves take wing.



- Ed Coletti

The Cellist of Sarajevo


Tomazo Albinoni could never have imagined Sarajevo

as he crafted the notes of his Adagio.

The son of a wealthy man, he had no cares,

and devoted himself to music.

A self proclaimed dilettante,

indulging himself in beauty.


The Adagio enfolds the listener,

seven minutes of deliberate playing,

slowing the breath as the bow strokes the strings,

the cello’s voice, so human,

words murmured behind a secret door.


In the Hell of Sarajevo rumors of fresh bread,

a connection to a normal world, now so far away.

They stood in anticipation, the smell so tantalizing,

as the bakery disappeared in the blast of mortar shell.


For twenty two days, one for each of these neighbors,

he carried his cello to the crater,

clad in black and white, music on the stand.

Amidst the snipers and the rubble,

playing Albinoni’s Adagio for them, and for himself.

Like Orpheus, ascending on the music

from the underworld of despair.


Tomazo wrote music for the pure simple joy of it,

but Vedran descending the Adagio’s minor chords,

to find the steady pulse -

a precise and stately dance on

the path leading out of Hell.

Dipping into the wells of practice,

the waters of beauty seeping into his, and our, being.

Every stroke a conscious vote to return.

Each note a step on the shattered path to life.

- Alan Cohen

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says Look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
as long as it's interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,

every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive -
shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.

- Roger Keyes

Buckeye

Heading up the Tuolomne
one early July evening
the steep slopes slant back and away
from the movement of water

a pale tawny boneyard of trees
stretches river bank to ridgeline.
The skeletal clatter of limbs
sours the day, this encounter
with so much death. In the narrows,
those dry sculpted shapes become clear.
Like a dream the trouble melting
in a comedy of error.
It is the buckeye, thousands strong
summer deciduous, proud, bare.
Other trees beginning to bloom and fruit,
watch the buckeye leaves curl in the heat,
wonder what’s wrong, as the miscreant tree
papers the ground with fandangos of
spiraled, sunburned currency.

The buckeye, clearly out of step,
its towering white panicles
coming too late in the season
and rivaling each bride’s bouquet.
November buckeye is still bare
and bent with fruit, leathery pears
that drape then crack then let go
the smooth amber seed the Pomo
made a mash of these and poured it
into the river to stun the fish
and carried the nub of the nut
around like a lucky rabbit’s foot.
January finds other trees napping,
while buckeye opens her monkey’s fist
of leaves, each little open hand gestures

hang on, I am here to tell you
the others are coming, in time,
all will be coming in good time.

- Penelope La Montagne

Advice


Someone dancing inside us
has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp.
the one with black eyes
who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
will be a lot like this one.

- Bill Holm

After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa

New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average.

A huge frog and I
staring at each other,
neither of us moves.

This moth saw brightness
in a woman’s chamber—
burned to a crisp.

Asked how old he was
the boy in the new kimono
stretched out all five fingers.

Blossoms at night,
like people
moved by music

Napped half the day;
no one
punished me!

Fiftieth birthday:

From now on,
It’s all clear profit,
every sky.

Don’t worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually.

These sea slugs,
they just don’t seem
Japanese.

Hell:

Bright autumn moon;
pond snails crying
in the saucepan.

- Robert Hass

Biscuits Beyond Compare

When I first started cooking at Tassajara, I had a problem. I couldn't get my biscuits to come out the way they were supposed to. I'd follow the recipe and try variations, but nothing worked These biscuits just didn’t measure up.

Growing up I had "made" two kinds of biscuits. one was from Bisquik and the other from Pillsbury. For the Bisquik biscuits you added milk to the mix and then blobbed the dough in spoonfuls onto the pan—you didn't even need to roll them out. The biscuits from Pillsbury came in a kind of cardboard can. You rapped the can on a corner of the counter and it popped open. Then you twisted the can open more, put the premade biscuits on a pan and baked them. I really liked those Pillsbury biscuits. Isn't that what biscuits should taste like? Mine just weren't coming out right.

It's wonderful and amazing the ideas we get about what biscuits should taste like, or what a life should look like. Compared to what? Canned biscuits from Pillsbury? Leave It to Beaver? People who ate my biscuits could extol their virtues, eating one after another, but to me these (perfectly good) biscuits just weren't "right. "

Finally one day came a shifting-into-place, an awakening: not "right" compared to what? Oh, my word, I'd been trying to make canned Pillsbury biscuits! Then came an exquisite moment of actually tasting my biscuits without comparing them to some (previously hidden) standard. They were wheaty, flakey, buttery, "sunny, earthy, real" (as Rilke's sonnet proclaims). They were incomparably alive, present, vibrant—in fact much more satisfying than any memory.

These occasions can be so stunning, so liberating, these moments when you realize your life is just fine as it is, thank you. Only the insidious comparison to a beautifully prepared, beautifully packaged product made it seem insufficient. Trying to produce a biscuit—a life—with no dirty bowls, no messy feelings, no depression, no anger was so frustrating. Then savoring, actually tasting the present moment of expedience—how much more complex and multi-faceted. How unfathomable. A thought. . . a feeling. . . ants crawling on the ground in the sunlight.

As zen students we spent years trying to make it look right, trying to cover the faults, conceal the messes. We knew what the Bisquik Zen Student looked like: calm, buoyant, cheerful, energetic, deep, profound. Our motto, as one of my friends said, was, "Looking good. " We’ve all done It: trying to look good as a husband, wife or parent. Trying to attain perfection. Trying to make Pillsbury biscuits.

Well, to heck with it I say, wake up and smell the coffee. How about some good old home cooking, the biscuits of today. Handle each ingredient with sincerity arid whole-heartedness. The results will take care of themselves. Savor them.

- Ed Brown

Thank you- loved it- great way to start the New Year
wonderful reminder of acceptance of what is
reminder to be grateful for what we have and love it
either love it or do it another way

To A Friend whose Work Has Come To Nothing

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

- William Butler Yeats

Straight Talk from the Fox

Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.

- Mary Oliver

*Phenomenal Woman
*
*Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

- Maya Angelou

Snow



Once with my scarf knotted over my mouth
I lumbered into a storm of snow up the long hill
and did not know where I was going except to the top of it.
In those days we went out like that.
Even children went out like that.

Someone was crying hard at home again,
raging blizzard of sobs.

I dragged the sled by its rope,
which we normally did not do
when snow was coming down so hard,
pulling my brother whom I called by our secret name

as if we could be other people under the skin.
The snow bit into my face, prickling the rim
of the head where the hair starts coming out.
And it was a big one. It would come down and down
for days. People would dig their cars out like potatoes.


How are you doing back there? I shouted,
and he said Fine, I’m doing fine,
in the sunniest voice he could muster
and I think I should love him more today
for having used it.

At the top we turned and he slid down,

steering himself with the rope gripped in
his mittened hands. I stumbled behind
sinking deeply, shouting Ho! Look at him go!
as if we were having a good time.
Alone on the hill. That was the deepest

I ever went into the snow. Now I think of it
when I stare at paper or into silences
between human beings. The drifting
accumulation. A father goes months
without speaking to his son.

How there can be a place

so cold any movement saves you.

Ho! You bang your hands together,
stomp your feet. The father could die!
The son! Before the weather changes.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

The Lost Empire
I
And then there was no more Empire all of a sudden.
Its victories were air, its dominions dirt:
Burma, Canada, Egypt, Africa, India, the Sudan.
The map that had seeped its stain on a schoolboy’s shirt
like red ink on a blotter, battles, long sieges.
Dhows and feluccas, hill stations, outposts, flags
fluttering down in the dusk, their golden aegis
went out with the sun, the last gleam on a great crag,
with tiger-eyed turbaned Sikhs, pennons of the Raj
to a sobbing bugle. I see it all come about
again, the tasselled cortege, the clop of the tossing team
with funeral pom-poms, the sergeant major’s shout,
the stamp of boots, then the volley; there is no greater theme
than this chasm-deep surrendering of power
the whited eyes and robes of surrendering hordes,
red tunics, and the great names Sind, Turkistan, Cawnpore,
dust-dervishes and the Saharan silence afterwards.

II
A dragonfly’s biplane settles and there, on the map,
the archipelago looks as if a continent fell
and scattered into fragments; from Pointe du Cap
to Moule à Chique, bois-canot, laurier cannelles,
canoe-wood, spicy laurel, the wind-churned trees
echo the African crests; at night, the stars
are far fishermen’s fires, not glittering cities,
Genoa, Milan, London, Madrid, Paris,
but crab-hunters’ torches. This small place produces
nothing but beauty, the wind-warped trees, the breakers
on the Dennery cliffs, and the wild light that loosens
a galloping mare on the plain of Vieuxfort make us
merely receiving vessels of each day’s grace,
light simplifies us whatever our race or gifts.
I’m content as Kavanagh with his few acres;
for my heart to be torn to shreds like the sea’s lace,
to see how its wings catch colour when a gull lifts.

- Derek Walcott

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco.../Rumi-2010.jpg

For the ninth year, Rumi's Caravan is returning to Sebastopol on February 6.

Critics have called Rumi's Caravan "The number one poetry and cultural event of the year for the North Bay."
This is truly a magical evening of poetry, music and amazing food!

Ecstatic poetry will be recited by Doug Von Koss, Kim Rosen, Shepherd Bliss, Maya Spector, Barry Spector, Richard Naegle, Kay Crista, Carol Fitzgerald and Larry Robinson.

Musical accompaniment will be by Kim Atkinson, Chris Caswell and Cindy Albers.

The event begins at 7:00 PM
and will be held at the Sebastopol Masonic Center
373 Main Street (across from Safeway)
Doors open at 6:30 PM

Tickets are $20 and all proceeds go the benefit local non-profits.

This event has sold out for the past four years, so you may want to get your tickets early by calling Many Rivers Books at 707-829-8871.



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

- Jelalludin Rumi

Lose your way

Lose your way
and you are where you are.
Lose sleep
and you see the stars.
Lose hope
and you cannot be frustrated.
Lose your dreams
and you befriend reality.

Don’t hold your breath,
notice it.

Follow it.
Let it go,
Let it come,
And return with it,
come back again
to your essential
sufficient
self.

Where you are,
how you are,
who you are,
be.
Alive.


- Scott O'Brien

Love Comes Quietly

Love comes quietly,
Finally drops around me,
On me, in the old way.
*
What did I know,
Thinking myself able to go alone
All the way?
*
-*Robert Creely

The Great Mother

The Great Mother does not care about us.
Our personal lives do not move her.
Her concerns are
the raising up of mountains,
the wheeling of stars in the heavens,
the nightly rising of the moon,
the turning of the seasons.
We are so small, so ephemeral,
Our plight is less than a bother,
Not even a pesky mosquito to swat aside.
She is not kind,
but neither is she cruel.
She is busy.

- Maya Spector

Earthquake

I am not really surprised, after what happened in my country, Haiti
Not only Haiti, but in the entire world.
Because life is an earthquake,
It happens daily.
It is perpetual, constant without end.
There are earthquakes within families,
Earthquakes between friends,
Between great philosophers,
Among countries, nations, religions,
And even earthquakes of humans against God

Today, I love, cherish, and even give my life for my partner.
Tomorrow will bring an earthquake to our bond,
The one who I would die for today, I might kill her myself tomorrow.
Divorce or worse could happen.

The earthquake is so strong,
I am forced to stop writing.
Open your hearts and give to those who need.
“Smile… Don’t be angry, only God knows.”

- Anold Etienne

(Anold Etienne is a Haitian artist painter. He currently resides in Chestnut Ridge, NY.)

Judean Date Palm

The dandelion seed needs
only the rumor of rain
to open its doors
and begin to unfold.

Some seeds, like the chaparral,
are only released
by the merciless grace
of fire and smoke.

Some must travel
the labyrinth
of an animal gut
for their casings to soften.

Still others, like the olive or date,
can sleep safely for centuries
until some crushing blow
awakens the mystery within.

I like to think that,
just before those zealots,
sure of their righteousness
and unbent before the legions
gathering on the plains below,
stepped into eternity,
one among them -
a child perhaps -
savored one final taste
of the sweetness of this life.

Two thousand years later
in Kibbutz Ketura
a young palm tree is growing
from the pit of that date
dropped on the heights of Masada
to await its own rebirth.

- Larry Robinson

Enough

I think it is enough,
at times,
to go without knowing
where the end is,
what the beginning--
so long ago.

Perhaps you have friends
who can whisper
such things
in your ear,
hear little bits of
messages
in the laughter of children.

But mostly we just proceed ahead,
not remembering
how it all started,
where it is leading,
not sure
if we are the waiting animal
or the animal's passing
shadow
in the grass.

- Dorothy Walters