Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

Above the deep-piled carpet of maple leaves
the madrones are slipping free
of summer’s brown paper wrapping,
eager to show off their new winter coats.

The afternoon rain still drips
from the canopy of oak, fir and pine.
Across the creek a turkey chuckles
as a woodpecker beats a drum.

The light is passing swiftly now,
passing from the face of this land.
Shadows are lengthening everywhere,
reaching out across our lives.

Should we not, then, dare to love boldly,
more boldly than ever before -
as if the fate of the Earth itself
depended upon our loving?

And still the stars will surely rise,
revealing the Soul’s deep secret:
that the eye can see farther in the dark of night
than ever it could by day.

- Larry Robinson

Samhain
(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.

- Annie Finch

All Souls
A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.

- Michael Collier

Haunted Houses

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Occupy

Let all the heroes come
Let all the spirits and ancestors join us now

When the veil is thin

Let William Blake and Oscar Wilde

lead an army

of starving Irish peasants

to take back their land

from the English Lords who stole it.

All the great writers join minds

Tolstoy, Marx, Jung, and Camus

Come marching through my sleeping neighborhood

Jonathan Swift come with Seamus Heaney

Join Richard Wright at the White House

And take off our President’s mask

Abe Lincoln sit Bill O’Reilly on your knee

Tell him to spend his time reading

The Complete Works of Frederick Douglas

Who also might have a few words for

Barack Obama whose own ancestors

are out of their minds in rage

over his collusion with Wall Street

Let Aragorn awaken the Dead

Let the Ents and Trees march on the Banks,

The Pentagon, the Trump Towers,

Rupert Murdoch’s empire, the Wells Fargo building

Housing Sheriff Joe Arpolo.

Tear the foundations of greed down to the earth.

Let Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Che Guevara

Take Mr. Arpolo into the desert

Leave him naked and waterless

With Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead

To show him how perverse he is.

Awaken Ronald Reagan for breakfast with

Brian Wilson and the ghosts your Contras

And Death Squads murdered in Latin America.

All are invited, Adoph, Joseph, Mao,

All the Kings, Queens of old Europe

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

Benjamin Franklin—Come Occupy

Break bread with Abraham, Martin, John,

And Bobby along with the hundreds of millions

Murdered, lynched, tortured people of color

In this land of the free and home of the brave.

Give the spirit of Osama a snare drum and permanent

Spot in the eardrum of George Bush

Come you Holocaust spirits to Israel

Bring sweets for Rachel Cory and the

Tortured Palestinians she fought for.

Come Pythagoras, Athena, Hermes, and Homer

Come initiates of the mystery schools

Lead the children out from our dead schools

Occupy the schools of America

Come Druids, Arthur, Merlin

Take the boys and young men

Into the forests, teach them to hunt

And protect the trees, the water, the land

Come Artemis, Joan of Arc, Rachel Carson

Lead the girls to the forest too

Occupy their hearts, souls, minds

Give them back their bodies for themselves

Gandhi, Buddha, Genghis Khan, Hannibal

Rumi, Mohammed, Hafiz, Patton

Occupy the gangs of lost young men

Hold the space for their pain and rage to erupt.

It’s all comin down, the veil is thin

Come William Butler Yeats

Now is the time when the center can no longer hold

Come all you spirits and ancestors

Pour through the cracks

Of this very fucked up world.

Occupy, occupy, occupy.

- Brian McSweeney

Florence in September


In my younger days I walked
the streets of Florence as if I belonged
here. I was familiar at the Uffizi,
had a place at the bar at the foot of
Ponte Vecchio. Younger men on
scooters would wave to me, women
would go out of their way to give me
a smile, knowing I was soaking in their
beauty, loving that someone was.

Returning to my old haunts
I came upon a completely different
world. Young, dark haired boys
in sunglasses, standing
on street corners begging for
attention. Older, sad looking men
hanging at Santa Croce in hopes
of being noticed one last time.

The tourists still flock to see this
treasure trove as they have
for centuries -- David in his splendor,
the works of Michelangelo. The
boys of the Pitti Palace will
fade as summer heat in October.

- Stefan Merken

missed connection


I'm with a friend.
and excuse myself
“I'll only be a moment”
step outside—
cellphone call—
from the plumber
or another friend
my back is turned
solely for an instant
or maybe two

as Life glides by



the sparrow and
the tree shiver
the dog's high-pitched
yelp sails over
“what! I can't hear you!”
the redwood fence
and roof eaves shudder
the very foundations
gasp at
Her magnificence.

- Raphael Block


A KISS OF FALL & MORE

Join us for a joyous evening with Bhavani's and Ananda's music set to the sounds of Raphael's words. Judith Tucker Bhavani plays guitar, keyboard, percussion and harmonium, and Michael Ananda Coffman effortlessly dazzles on a variety of transverse and Native flutes.

Raphael Block is the author of Songs from a Small Universe, and is seeking publication for his second poetry book, Spangling Darkness. You can listen to his work at www.raphaelblock.com

Many Rivers Books & Tea, 130 South Main, Sebastopol
Friday, November 11th at 7:30 pm


For more info go to www.manyriversbooks.com or tel: (707) 829-8871.

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

- W. D. Ehrhart

We Who Prayed and Wept

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

- Wendell Berry

Landscape

The young man who sits between
The grandmother and the other grandmother
Stares into the emerging emptiness that
Fills with evolving cityscape. The city


Empties, then fills with the grandmothers’ banter.
The young man, hair collected in
A puny pony tail, the feathers of a baby beard
Outlining his thin jaw, sits
Invisible, while the grandmothers chat,

Their words, bright birds flutter between them,
Their song light above the drone of engine and parting air.
The blue-glasses grandmother stands.
The bus lumbers to a stop,

A whale on the paved and peopled Ocean of the city. The young man, Waits in the aisle, while the song continues,
He breathes, patient, unhurried air.

The glasses grandmother says, "adeu,"
To the red overcoat grandmother then
Sees the young man for the first time.
He nods, his smile says

You are welcome here, too. As welcome as
The city that arrives and departs
Before our eyes. The next stop, he debarks
Followed by the African Giant who

Sat by the window, next to the red overcoat
Grandmother. The giant takes his dark beauty with him,
Walks beside the young man and
Joins the evolving masterpiece,


- Rebecca del Rio
Barcelona, Nov. 2011

Why should not old men be mad?*
*
Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had*
*Know why an old man should be mad.*
*
- W. B. Yeats

This One Precious Human Life

for Grant Dillon

“One theory says you won’t remember dying any more than being born.” – Franz Wright

At noon
they sat the lama down in front of TV.
Some real experience of life
outside a meditation crib
seemed like a simple request.
Remote control in hand,
he flipped to All My Children.
Stop. “Stop!
“Oh watch out!” he cried inside.
“Amanda, you can’t hide your lies, silly bitch.
“Jake knows David is the daddy.
“You’ll never get away with it.
“How can you be that stupid?”
Where did that thought come from?
These families, really?
Westerners, really.
Love your momma.

Flip more.
One Life to Live.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Great title—
Too Many Lives to Live.
No, far too corny.
“Oh no, David, don’t kiss Oliver!
“Please don’t!
“That Path leads in only one direction—
“All the Teachings agree, male or female,
“male and male, no difference.
“Good luck. Looks like trouble ahead.”
Real tears for imaginary men.

Can’t fast forward but who cares?
General Hospital
ends badly.
Gunfire. Ears. Ouch.
Dominic hustles Sonny into some big black car.
Max, Milo, and Jason escape. Whew.
Joey wasn't so lucky—
Oh dear, bodies scattered all around.
Joey asks a vagrant for help,
who snaps his neck as quick as a skilled headman.
“Is the homeless demon posing Joey's body
“for the final fire?
“He walks away, tosses a coin, says
“‘Keep the change.’
“What can that mean?”

“Can I see some reality less intense,
“perhaps more real?” the lama asks.
“How many times can I do
“Powa with full blast visualization—
“high pixel resolution, all that compressing,
“surround sound?
“I’m tired out,
“and I lost count.”

Suddenly
from the base of the spine
to the middle of heart
that remarkable
bodhichitta starts to bloom in all its glory.
Lama loud and clear,
“Cookies and milk all around!
“Ordinary Hope is dead.
“Three cheers for Samsara.”

- Ken Ireland

* (Author's note: I do not even own a TV, but I confess, I have seen All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Guiding Light. The story lines used in the poem are real as real can be. The lama’s inner voices are all made up. Trust me, but if you can’t believe it, check out https://www.soapoperadigest.com/. As real as real can be.)
This work is copyrighted by Kenneth Ireland. Reproduction or quoting in part with attribution is encouraged.

Where else in life but "in poetry" can there be so few rules?

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

- Leonard Cohen

Loading a Boar

We were loading a boar, a goddam mean big sonofabitch and he jumped out of the
pickup four times and tore out my stockracks and rooted me in the stomach and I
fell down and he bit John on the knee and he thought it was broken and so did I
and the boar stood over in the far corner of the pen and watched us and John and I
just sat there tired and Jan laughed and brought us a beer and I said, "John it aint
worth it, nothing's going right and I'm feeling half dead and haven't wrote a poem in ages
and I'm ready to quit it all," and John said, "shit, young feller, you aint got
started yet and the reason's cause you trying to do it outside yourself and aint
looking in and if you wanna by god write pomes you gotta write pomes about
what you know and not about the rest and you can write about pigs and that boar
and Jan and you and me and the rest and there aint no way you're gonna quit," and
we drank beer and smoked, all three of us, and finally loaded that mean bastard
and drove home and unloaded him and he bit me again and I went in the house
and got out my paper and pencils and started writing and found out John he was
right.
- David Lee

Who Are You?

(with appreciation to Pete Townsend)


I am mother, womb filled with galaxies and infinity. Loving a particular child and also every atom of existence.

I am lover, moving across the sacred landscape of his body - diving into the pale blue pools of his eyes and emerging on the timeless shores of his soul.

I am Venus, sacred vessel of the divine feminine - light filling every cell to overflowing radiance - spilling out of fingertips onto paper and creativity in form.

And I am Pluto, dark hands crushing time and existence. New form arising from countless deaths.

I am addict, fearful of immensity, the unfathomable, and the tension between beauty and terror.

I am recovery, renunciation, redemption and revelation - burning away the false in the crucible of my heart.

I am a "man without a country", a woman without a hearth. 5 pounds of paperwork the only remains of my home of 30 years.

I am a hunter and a gatherer, foraging on a planet ravaged by greed. I am one of the countless faces of the 99%.

I am strength, endurance, and hope. Starting over, moving forward - inch by inch. Moving deeper, breath by breath.

I am traveler, questing for Truth - finding everywhere revealed, the luminous face of god.


Sometimes . . .
a window opens
and I hear all of existence
singing at once.
Each earnest voice -
insect, bird, river, thunder, human outcry, super-nova

and then
I remember
to open my mouth
to speak my belonging . . .
I am That!

- Kay Crista

Win & End All Wars

World War I in an American Legion cap,
short stiff steps behind a four-legged cane
through tenderloin trenches
& into the R & R of low cost housing. . .
paid monthly by the social security
of 9.2 howitzer memories & muggings
& the gab of other old scars & wrinkles,
reinforcing a world-view: hell is growing
old in American cities.

We were great then;
broke isolation for the ideal & volunteered
to run like crazy
through the shrapnel & charcoal whore
we made of the old world
spitting bullets & the sperm of tough talk
bottled in melting pot frustration
& the stench of ghetto walk-ups.

We were all whores then;
but whores with a dream
& that was better than being. . .peasants!

World War I shuffles the dirt between soul & concrete;
he must catch up with the pace he sets for himself
in this transvestite night of neon necromania
where “danger” jumps like a stairway junkie
from the thresholds of shadow
dedicated to the unknown soldier & other prisoners of war.
He pushes on. . .
to where the porno palace marquee radiates safety;
he waits at the red light with the laughter of a corner hooker
while steel horses strafe the intersection with obnoxious odors
& the flash of ear-splitting sirens.

We were heroes then, with a job to do.

All around, there is nothing but devotion to purpose:
The gray-skinned panhandlers wrapped in blankets & lice
scrounging through trash cans for their lunch. . .
The holes in the ground. . .
The blood-stained mud below the scream of bullets. . .
The senseless bodies. . .
& the bodies writhing with wounds
& dismemberment. . .
The ruddy faced drunk
passed out & cursing on apartment house steps. . .
The screaming three-time loser, hands cuffed behind him,
pushed head-first into the powder blue
police services car. . .
Crawl over these monuments of manhood.
Feel the rub of flesh & khaki & blood & Earth & horror & bone
& self-hatred. . .

Waiting. . .
waiting & waiting for nightfall, for help from the trenches. . .
Caught in the no-man’s land
between the button & the breaking-point
in the search & destroy mindset of father knows best:
fact finding/fault finding/perfect binding
& the sweet perversity of how much can you take.

The vet in pointed cap & cement shoes
pushes his purple heart
through the shellshock of general headquarters,
Home of the Brave,
till he again reaches relative safety in the hut, two, three
of his room
where he can fall back on his bed,
look up at the ceiling
& think about the good old days. . .

- Bill Vartnaw

(Bill Vartnaw is Sonoma County newest Poet Laureate)

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

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 bears 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

Bless Their Hearts

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

- Richard Newman

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

Sweetness

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it, for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good

- Stephen Dunn

Let Us Meditate the Virtue

Let us meditate the virtue of slogans.
Let us declare onomastic solutions
to difficulties largely unnameable,
and by the mottoes

of euphemism contract verbal righteousness.
Let's indite bulletins to tell everyone
the Jargon of Things, to name Lifestyles, to learn
the Tongue of High Coy:

Do you desire to purchase a beverage?
We thank you for not smoking. Have a nice day.
May we share these suggestions with you? Let us
praise exultation,

never calling a route salesman a milkman,
nor an officer of the law a cop, nor
a senior citizen old, nor a starving
freezing bagwoman

poor. When we can't alter ills that upset us,
we will change their names to prevent compassion
from disturbing our ungulate composure:
words to deny worlds.

Vocabulary voids original sin;
cavalry of the lie reaches Calvary
just in time--to bugle Christ down from the cross.
But: no nails, no Christ.

- Donald Hall

The Earth Pledge

I pledge allegiance to the Earth
on which I live
and to all Her Creatures
Large and Small
and to Her Water, Air, and Soil.
One World, One People
Undivided
with Food, Shelter, Health
Freedom
Love and Justice
for All.

- Lilith Rogers

The End Of Science Fiction

This is not fantasy, this is our life.
We are the characters
who have invaded the moon,
who cannot stop their computers.
We are the gods who can unmake
the world in seven days.

Both hands are stopped at noon.
We are beginning to live forever,
in lightweight, aluminum bodies
with numbers stamped on our backs.
We dial our words like Muzak.
We hear each other through water.

The genre is dead. Invent something new.
Invent a man and a woman
naked in a garden,
invent a child that will save the world,
a man who carries his father
out of a burning city.
Invent a spool of thread
that leads a hero to safety,
invent an island on which he abandons
the woman who saved his life
with no loss of sleep over his betrayal.

Invent us as we were
before our bodies glittered
and we stopped bleeding:
invent a shepherd who kills a giant,
a girl who grows into a tree,
a woman who refuses to turn
her back on the past and is changed to salt,
a boy who steals his brother’s birthright
and becomes the head of a nation.
Invent real tears, hard love,
slow-spoken, ancient words,
difficult as a child’s
first steps across a room.

- Lisel Mueller

Could Have


It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

- Wislawa Szymborska

(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Love The Wild Swan

"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."
--This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

- Robinson Jeffers

The Body Saying goodbye to itself...


The time is coming
just around the bend
when my body will say goodbye to itself...

As the awareness of my own mortality deepens
and courses through me
A new possibility opens
Then maybe these wrinkled eyes
sagging breasts
midriff bulge
spider webbed arms
chunky knees
and flat feet
don't matter so much anymore.
maybe they don't matter at all...

What if I were to bless them.
caress the flat feet and the fat knees
gently hold the bulge and the arms and the breasts
and these eyes became so very beautiful to me?

What if I can't remember your name
or what I had for dinner
or what day it is?
What if I have completed my life's work?
and really can't keep the garden up anymore?
What if my short term memory is gone or at least going?
And, I can’t walk or eat or pee on my own anymore?

Then, my sweet heart
Would you still stroke my face tenderly?
And, could you put a damp cloth on my parched lips?
And, would you read to me so that I can fall asleep tonight?
And, would you sing to me so that I can wake up this morning?

Better to start saying goodbye to my body now
The memory of dying is good medicine for me…

- Patricia Flasch

Vespers

As light departs to let the earth be one with night,
Silence deepens in the mind, and thoughts grow slow;
The basket of twilight brims over with colors
Gathered from within the sacred meadows of the day
And offered like blessings to the gathering Tenebrae.

After the day's frenzy, may the heart grow still,
Gracious in thought for all the day brought,
Surprises that dawn could never have dreamed:
The blue silence that came to still the mind,
The quiver of mystery at the edge of a glimpse,
The golden echoes of worlds behind voices.

Tense faces unable to hide what gripped the heart,
The abrupt cut of a glance or a word that hurt,
The flame of longing that distance darkened,
Bouquets of memory gathered on the heart's altar,
The thorns of absence in the rose of dream.

And the whole while the unknown underworld
Of the mind, turning slowly, in its secret orbit.
May the blessing of sleep bring refreshment and release
And the Angel of the moon call the rivers of dream
To soften the hardened earth of the outside life,
Disentangle from the trapped nets the hurts and sorrow,
And awaken the young soul for the new tomorrow.

- John O'Donohue

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 Olsvary Ginzberg

To A Siberian Woodsman
(after looking at some pictures in a magazine)


1.
You lean at ease in your warm house at night after supper,
listening to your daughter play the accordion.
You smile with the pleasure of a man confident in his hands,
resting after a day of long labor in the forest,
the cry of the saw in your head,
and the vision of coming home to rest.
Your daughter's face is clear in the joy of hearing her own music.
Her fingers live on the keys
like people familiar with the land they were born in.


You sit at the dinner table late into the night with your son,
tying the bright flies that will lead you along the forest streams.
Over you, as your hands work, is the dream of the still pools.
Over you is the dream of your silence while the east brightens,
birds waking close by you in the trees.


2.
I have thought of you stepping out of your doorway at dawn,
your son in your tracks.
You go in under the overarching green branches of the forest whose ways,
strange to me,
are well known to you as the sound of your own voice
or the silence that lies around you now that you have ceased to speak,
and soon the voice of the stream rises ahead of you,
and you take the path beside it.
I have thought of the sun breaking pale through the mists over you
as you come to the pool where you will fish,
and of the mist drifting over the water,
and of the cast fly resting light on the face of the pool.


3.
And I am here in Kentucky in the place I have made myself in the world.
I sit on my porch above the river that flows muddy
and slow along the feet of the trees.
I hear the voices of the wren
and the yellow-throated warbler whose songs pass near the windows
and over the roof.
In my house my daughter learns the womanhood of her mother.
My son is at play,
pretending to be the man he believes I am.
I am the outbreathing of this ground.
My words are its words as the wren's song is its song.


4.
Who has invented our enmity?
Who has prescribed us hatred of each other?
Who has armed us against each other with the death of the world?
Who has appointed me such anger that I should desire the burning of your house
or the destruction of your children?
Who has appointed such anger to you?
Who has set loose the thought
that we should oppose each other with the ruin of the forests and rivers,
and the silence of birds?
Who has said to us that the voices of my land shall be strange to you,
and the voices of your land strange to me?


Who has imagined that I would destroy myself in order to destroy you,
or that I could improve myself by destroying you?
Who has imagined that your death could be negligible to me
now that I have seen these pictures of your face?
Who has imagined that I would not speak familiarly with you,
or laugh with you,
or visit in your house and go to work with you in the forest?
And now one of the ideas of my place will be
that you would gladly talk and visit and work with me.


5.
I sit in the shade of the trees of the land I was born in.
As they are native I am native,
and I hold to this place as carefully as they hold to it.
I do not see the national flag flying from the staff of the sycamore,
or any decree of the government written on the leaves of the walnut,
nor has the elm bowed before monuments
or sworn the oath of allegiance.
They have not declared to whom they stand in welcome.


6.
In the thought of you I imagine myself free of the weapons
and the official hates that I have borne on my back like a hump,
and in the thought of myself
I imagine you free of weapons and official hates,
so that if we should ever meet
we would not go by each other looking at the ground
like slaves sullen under their burdens,
but would stand clear in the gaze of each other.


7.
There is no government so worthy as your son
who fishes with you in silence beside the forest pool.
There is no national glory so comely as your daughter
whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys.
There is no national glory so comely as my daughter
who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house.
There is no government so worthy as my son
who laughs,
as he comes up the path from the river in the evening,
for joy.


- Wendell Berry

Masterful. Just right...

Chinatown

An overcast San Francisco afternoon.
Chinatown. Pulling me by the arm,
my mother walks quickly past the sidewalk markets
where they sell old soft oranges,
cabbages, bad radios, cheap shoes.
I have a cold. My head is full
of dreams and I cannot keep up.


I dream a saucer-eyed dragon
grinning with long, lolling tongue,
breathing white porcelain clouds
across the sky. They drift, aimless boats,
sticks flagged with leaves
and set upon the river. Old man in a jacket
tosses me a good luck orange, but I miss.
It bobs along the curb, then goes under.


Again I let go of her hand.
Like a leaf floating on water
I lose myself quickly in the rush
of coats. Where am I going?
I am the drowning boy.
Nothing to look for now,
not abandoned mother, not lost luck.
The current closes my eyes.


- Yosha Bourgea

The Return


The deed took all my heart.
I did not think of you.
Not til the thing was done.
I put my sword away,
And then no more the cold
And perfect fury ran
Along my narrow bones,
And then no more the black
And dripping corridors
Held anywhere the shape
That I had come to slay.
Then, for the first time,
I saw in the cave's belly
The dark and clotted webs,
The green and sucking pooks
The rank and crumbling walls,
The maze of passages.


And I thought then
Of the far earth,
Of the spring sun
And the slow wind,
And a young girl.
And I looked then
At the white thread.


Hunting the minotaur
I was no common man
And had no need of love.
I trailed the shining thread
Behind me for a vow,
And did not think of you.
It lay there, like a sign,
Coiled on the bull's great hoof
And back into the world.
Half blind with weariness
I touched the thread and wept.
O, it was frail as air.


And I turned then
With the white spool
Through the cold rocks,
Through the long webs,
And the mist fell,
And the webs clung,
And the rocks tumbled,
And the earth shook.


And the thread held.


- Mary Oliver

Water's Prayer

Leafless aspens groom
the iced breeze, while below

a brook descends the mountain
with its musical story, remembering

the serenity of sky, and lightning's clear passion.
Water knows what is far will be near.

Water says choose that which closes distance,
choose touch. When snow falls,

and a green mystery is carried
by all that moves,

choose love.

- James Bertolino

I want to love you with every piece of this body


I want to love you with every piece of this body:
I want these strong and simple hands to divine
each delicate sound inside of you; I want
these faithful legs to gallop at midnight
through the sleeping orchards of your heart;
I want these eyes, these singing eyes
that have survived the brutal clocks, the days
lost in daily space, to blossom in some high bed
of human heaven; I want these feet that never sleep
to wander in the deepest part of you, like ghosts
unchained, ecstatic in this desert sea;
I want this blood, this red tenderness,
to be your blanket; I want this brown and peasant face
to race through solitude and rock, until
with you at last The Book of Moon is read;
I want this tongue, that like some acrobat insane
tumbles towards you with what little words I have,
to sip some virgin secret that you hold;
I want this heart, in time both infinite and now,
to know the reason for the light in you that lifts me.


- james tipton

Prescription for the Disillusioned


Come new to this
day. Remove the rigid
overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud
your vision.


Leave behind the stories
of your life. Spit out the
sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs
waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.


Arrive curious, without the armor
of certainty, the plans and planned
results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you, new
every breath, every blink of
your astonished eyes.


- Rebecca del Rio

Terra Incognita


There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of
vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps,
we know nothing of, within us.
Oh when man has escaped from the barbed-wire entanglement
of his own ideas and his own mechanical devices
there is a marvelous rich world of contact and sheer fluid beauty
and fearless face-to-face awareness of now-naked life
and me, and you, and other men and women
and grapes, and ghouls, and ghosts and green moonlight
ruddy-orange limbs stirring the limbo
of the unknown air, and eyes so soft
softer than the space between the stars,
and all things, and nothing, and being and not-being
alternately palpitant,
when at last we escape the barbed-wire enclosure
of Know Thyself, knowing we can never know,
we can but touch, and wonder, and ponder, and make our effort
and dangle in a last fastidious fine delight
as the fuchsia does, dangling her reckless drop
of purple after so much putting forth
and slow mounting marvel of a little tree.


- D. H. Lawrence

Ode to a Brown-spotted Orb

A simple portico, its arms open wide to the forest below.
An upright leaf points the way to the web's east quadrant
and, in the west, there's the light that gives warmth and
brings sustenance and is the source of this venture.

What luck brought her here? Of all of the doorways, why mine?
Perhaps it was my sympathetic nature or the elementary fascination,
the too-long-neglected windows or the ever-thirsty plants?

In a moment the spell is broken, the hard-won magic gone.
A chance toppling of the object of anchor, the prompt to my intrusion.
For the plants needed watering and lives collide, the inner and the outer.
She's gone to find a quieter place to send her gossamer threads
and is lacing another part of the forest's edge.

The leaf has fallen, the simple portico, now unimpeded, reaches to the staircase
that leads to the border of the forest.
The crossing over of the lives passes-a simple conjunction, a brief encounter.
I can only hope her weaving repaired the hole in the world she found there.
What luck brought me here?


- Morgan Vierheller

For Freedom

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

- John O'Donohue

The Ghost of Heaven

Sleep to sleep through thirty years of night,
a child herself with child,
for whom we searched

through here, or there, amidst
bones still sleeved and trousered,
a spine picked clean, a paint can,
a skull with hair


Sewn into the hem of memory:
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
God not
of philosophers or scholars. God not of poets.


Night to night:
child walking toward me through burning maize
over the clean bones of those whose flesh
was lifted by zopilotes into heaven.

So that is how we ascend!
In the clawed feet of fallen angels.
To be assembled again
in the work rooms of clouds.


She rose from where they found her lying
not far from a water urn, leaving
herself behind on the ground
where they found her, holding her arms
before her as if she were asleep.

That is how she appears to me: a ghost in heaven.
Carrying her arms in her arms.


Blue smoke from corn cribs, flap of wings.
On the walls of the city streets a plague of initials.


Walking through a fire-lit river
to a burning house: dead Singer
sewing machine and piece of dress.

Outside a cashew tree wept
blackened cashews over lamina.

Outside paper fireflies rose to the stars.


Bring penicillin if you can, surgical tape, a whetstone,
mosquito repellent but not the aerosol kind.
Especially bring a syringe for sucking phlegm,
a knife, wooden sticks, a surgical clamp, and plastic bags.

You will need a bottle of cloud
for anesthesia.

Like the flight of a crane
through colorless dreams.


When a leech opens your flesh it leaves a small volcano.
Always pour turpentine over your hair before going to sleep.


Such experiences as these are forgotten
before memory intrudes.

The girl was found (don’t say this)
with a man’s severed head stuffed
into her where a child would have been.
No one knew who the man was.
Another of the dead.
So they had not, after all,
killed a pregnant girl.
This was a relief to them.


That sound in the brush?
A settling of wind in sorghum.

If they capture you, talk.
Talk. Please yes. You heard me
right the first time.

You will be asked who you are.
Eventually, we are all asked who we are.

All who come
All who come into the world
All who come into the world are sent.
Open your curtain of spirit.


- Carolyn Forché

Autumn Quince

How sad they are,
the promises we never return to.
They stay in our mouths,
roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.
Houses built and unwittingly lived in;
a succession of milk bottles brought to the door
every morning and taken inside.

And which one is real?
The music in the composer's ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself --
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.

- Jane Hirshfield

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

- Denise Levertov

Colds and Other Departures

are tagged as any number of states
in the psycho-biological index of disease:
blocked energy
germ invasion
immune mechanisms out of gas
or in high gear
a daisy chain of self evasion
old grief insisting yet upon its due

whatever these theorized tags
those of us aching with fever,
and blowing our flooded nostrils

know illness for what it really is:
an abject altered state
all things lovely and familiar in abeyance
work, gusto, high purpose
bursts of creation
the intricate tangle of sensing and thought --
gone, just plain gone
as life flows on
a ship we can’t see
sailing along in an ocean
far beyond a tabled horizon
cluttered with bottles and tissues
and steaming cups of tea

- Cynthia Poten

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let there be a
season
when holiness is
heard, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let ehre be a
season
when holiness is
hear, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker

Thank you, Rebecca Parker, for sharing your insight, and Larry for sharing the poem (twice : ). There is nothing to do in this moment but be still and feel the earth move in two directons.
...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps....

---

Testimony

(for my daughters)

I want to tell you that the world
is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to know that spring
is no small thing, that
the tender grasses curling
like a baby's fine hairs around
your fingers are a recurring
miracle. I want to tell you
that the river rocks shine
like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death,

I want to remind you to look
beneath the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you
are no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.
I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness",
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

- Rebecca Baggett

If You Knew


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

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

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

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

- Ellen Bass

Follow Her Down


She treads with slow footfalls,
Deliberate and careful,
Her breath the same.
This is her way.
This is familiar terrain,
The journey repeated.
Always saying farewell.
Always turning away.


Because we deny our mortality
The one who moves between the worlds
Walks for us.
The day will come
When each of us will follow her down.
It is to her that we will go.


Safe journey, then, traveler.
My heart holds you as
I hope your does me -
Willingly,
Willingly.


- Maya Spector
(from The Persephone Cycle)

Christmas


This year
I let Christmas in.


And it occurs to me that
every year
the spirit of Christmas goes wandering
looking for room at the inn
of my heart


turned aside
by the hurry of business
the demands of desires
the walls of grudge, bitterness


but when at last
a door of willingness opens
there comes inside
each year
a newborn spirit


of hope
joy of this life
the courage of kindness
the warm embrace of forgiveness


so powerful,
it draws shepherds,
wise ones, some who hold sway in this world,
even humble animals respond,
look up to the silent chorus
of shimmering angels
among the stars, bending
low, to welcome again this
simple


overwhelming
grace.


- Scott O'Brien

Winter's Cloak
This year I do not want
the dark to leave me.
I need its wrap
of silent stillness,
its cloak
of long lasting embrace.
Too much light
has pulled me away
from the chamber
of gestation.

Let the dawns
come late,
let the sunsets
arrive early,
let the evenings
extend themselves
while I lean into
the abyss of my being.

Let me lie in the cave
of my soul,
for too much light
blinds me,
steals the source
of revelation.

Let me seek solace
in the empty places
of winter's passage,
those vast dark nights
that never fail to shelter me.
- Joyce Rupp

In the Chapel at Monserrat


In this place, a holy place
Not because someone said it was
But because it is, we created
Stories, histories and art to tell us
Why. The stories, the histories,
The art are not needed.
Like ancient ash, they bury
The holy of the holiest.


Here in this chapel, we arrive
After touching the Holy Hand,
The dark, blessed hand that holds
The universe. We descend, enter
A room of relics, where in the quiet
Of not-knowing, a man photographs
His wife, dark as the Mother of God,
Whose night dark hand holds


Everything. She, the wife, smiles shyly,
Too aware of our presence.
She stands at the altar, a blessed place made beautiful
By her self-conscious smile,
Not knowing
That the vision, the visage, the holy
Image is her. Holy for being,
For being here, her face,
The darkness of God's Mother's face.


- Rebecca del Rio

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him--at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; - and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man - one man - can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

- Robert Frost

how light

the body burns


how light
cannot take
the body


how the body cannot
lay me down
how it cannot rise or rest


how the body
cannot take
the burns


how burns
cannot take
the body


lovers in beds of straw
blessed
with brand or fire


how carefully at first, then hard
they take
what the body gambles

- Thaisa Frank

Mulled Wine

It begins where the smoke
Hits your eyes: smouldering peat,
Mutton stew on a broad iron hook,
Deep snow: how can it ever
Have been summer? Applies wrinkling
And mice in the barley:
With so much to fear, thank the gods
For company! We'll tell our tales,
Remember how we passed the cold
Last year, and last, and those
Who couldn't. The grape leans across
The seasons, clasps the hand of summer's
Dried rind, dreaming the new fruit,
Calling the sun back
World without end amen.
- Mark Green

New Year’s Dawn, 1947


Two morning stars, Venus and Jupiter,
Walk in the pale and liquid light
Above the color of these dawns; and as the tide of light
Rises higher the great planet vanishes
While the nearer still shines. The yellow wave of light
In the east and south reddens, the opaque ocean
Becomes pale purple: Oh the delicate
Earnestness of dawn, the fervor and the pallor.
—Stubbornly I think again: The state is a blackmailer,
Honest or not, with whom we make (within reason)
Our accommodations. There is no valid authority
In church or state, custom, scripture nor creed,
But only in one’s own conscience and the beauty of things.
Doggedly I think again: One’s own conscience is a trick oracle,
Worked by parents and nurse-maids, the pressure of people,
And the delusions of dead prophets: trust it not.
Wash it clean to receive the transhuman beauty: then trust it.
- Robinson Jeffers

Morning Praise


There is nothing more to be said
but still it must be said.
This yellow pen has words it wants to speak
and would cry out
and shake the house down
were it retired and put away.

For, yes, the words that must be said
have already been said.
My masters have said them. But
God did not bid them to be silent
any more than He said to the trees,
“You have made enough leaves.”

No. So I sit here in the swirl of all
my masters’ words. I smile at
the foolish necessity of poems.

But let me tell you, I am alive now,
so it’s my turn to praise God.
The sequoias of my masters live beyond me,
true, but if you look in these woods
and look hard, you will see me too,
the primordial sapling of praise,
a bigger joy than shade can drown.

Why should the morning not be honored then?
I, who have nothing memorized,
not Koran nor scripture, know only this
by heart: to bend my neck back and sing.


- Bruce Moody

The Restaurant


A dimly lit alleyway, noiseless and clean
A few hanging lights and one sign, barely seen
With anticipation we stand at the door
Dressed to the nines, not quite sure what's in store


A table is reserved, it's simple and spare
We're cheerfully welcomed and escorted there
Two slender candles, a single carnation
Intimately suited for food allocation
We take to our seats and then jointly espouse
That ours might well be the best seats in the house


With a sense of tradition, we share the belief
That our evening should start with an aperitif
The bartender's famous for drinks smooth as satin
An old fashioned perhaps? Or a bourbon manhattan?
Before we endeavor to make a selection
The waiter appears and imparts a suggestion
He weaves us a tale of a vintage that's flown
In barrels direct from the Valleé du Rhône
The finest discovered by the sommelier
And he pours a small glass with no further delay
We agree it's divine and without competition
Who cares if it costs more than Harvard's tuition
It's like riding a magic carpet that cruises
On winds from the land of ten thousand masseuses
We order two bottles, since two is more fun
And the having of fun has just barely begun


The menu is made up of several small courses
A dozen at least, and from regional sources
Each taste is designed to improve on the last
Modern art for your mouth, with a nod to the past
The first course is served, then more start to come, steady
Yet leisurely paced so the palette is ready


Nantucket Bay Scallops In Two Preparations
Crudo and served with assorted crustaceans


Summer squash blossoms with veal marrow bones
Endive and watercress, locally grown


Oregon coast razor clams in the shell
Sautéed Foie Gras with fig and chanterelle


Creole inspired spotted sea trout fillets in
A pecan meuniere sauce with chardonnay raisins


Farm-raised suckling pig braised in bourbon molasses
Fed from organically grown native grasses


Provençal bouillabaisse, piled high and teaming
With mussels and langoustine, smoking and steaming


Slow roasted shoulder of blue wildebeest
From Kenyan ranch land that was blessed by a priest


Citrus basil sorbet, castelmagno soufflé,
Pan steamed blue crab from the Chesapeake Bay


Hog island oysters in goose island beer
Caramelized starfruit with melted gruyere


Sweet mixed with sour, then bitter with salt
Each paring sublime, not one place to find fault
The flavors so good that we chirp like canaries
To describe them in full would take twelve dictionaries
And a lake of black ink, and a pen ten feet tall
With which to record the pure joy of it all


And somehow, at some point, without noticing when
The room starts to feel like an opium den
The walls disappear, crystal air fills my lungs
The skies open up, you are speaking in tongues
Angels start dancing round white crystal fountains
That spout liquid gold beneath snowy white mountains
We're flying, propelled by invisible jets
Swinging about, human marionettes


And quick as it came the show draws to a close
Familiar sights start to superimpose
I return to my body and survey the scene
My plate's in my hands, and I'm licking it clean
With my cheeks getting hot, I look over at you
And discover with joy that you're doing it too
We both start to laugh, we fall out of our chairs
Tears roll from our eyes, though we earn some cruel stares


And eventually as we feel more subdued
And it seems like the night is about to conclude
We're struck with amazement by one last surprise
A four decker double wide cheese cart arrives
Hard ones and soft ones and others that smell
Like spoiled eggs soaked in the rivers of hell
Though there's no doubt the flavor is simply divine
Particularly when pared with the right wine
Wedges of gold with the texture of peach
And a little back story provided for each


The rest of the meal is a glorified blur
The details of which I am mostly unsure
It appears that dessert involves further elation
But I'm lost in a state of entranced mastication
And as we float home I cannot understand it
Was this real or a dream? Just the way the chef planned it?
Is there some other answer for what came to pass?
Did they slip us hard drugs? Was the room filled with gas?
We may never know, and maybe that's best
And there's no single theory that I could suggest
For now I'm consumed with one earthly concern
And it's counting the days until we may return


- Max Spector

The Pond in a Bowl, Five Poems


1) In old age I'm back to childhood pleasures.
A bowl in the ground - Just add water- it's a pool!
Throughout the night frogs croaked til it dawned
as they did when I fished as a child at Feng-k'ou.


2) Who says you can't make a pond out of a bowl?
The lotus sprig I planted not long ago has already grown full size.
Don't forget, if it rains stop in for a visit.
Together we'll listen to raindrops splash on all the green leaves.


3) Come morning, the water brightens as if by magic.
One moment alive with thousands of bugs too small to have names,
Next moment they're gone, leaving no trace,
Only the small fish, this way and that, swim in formations.


4) Does the bowl in the garden mock nature
when night after night green frogs gather to prove it's a pool?
If you choose to come and keep me company need you fill
the dark with noise and endless squabble like husband and wife?


5) Say the bright pond mirrors the sky, both blue.
If I pour water, the pond brims.
Let night deepen --the moon go---
how many stars shine back from the water!


- Han Yu, (768-824)
(translator unknown)

From Underneath

A giant sea turtle saved the life of a 52 year-old woman lost at sea
for two days after a shipwreck in the Southern Phillipines. She rode on the turtle's back.
–Syracuse Post-Standard



When her arms were no longer

strong enough to tread water

it came up beneath her, hard
and immense, and she thought

this is how death comes,

something large between your legs

and then the plunge.

She dived off instinctively,

but it got beneath her again

and when she realized what it was
she soiled herself, held on.

God would have sent something winged,

she thought. This came from beneath,

a piece of hell that killed a turtle

on the way and took its shape.

How many hours passed?

She didn't know, but it was night

and the waves were higher.

The thing swam easily in the dark.


She swooned into sleep.

When she woke in the morning,

the sea calm, her strange raft

still moving. She noticed the elaborate

pattern of its shell, map-like,

the leathery neck and head

as if she'd come up behind

an old longshoreman
in a hard-backed chair.

She wanted and was afraid to touch

the head – one finger
just above the eyes –

the way she would touch her cat

and make it hers.
The more it swam a steady course

the more she spoke to it

the jibberish of the lost.

And then the laughter

located at the bottom
of oneself, unstoppable.

The call went from sailor to sailor

on the fishing boat: A woman

riding an "oil drum"

off the starboard side.

But the turtle was already swimming

toward the prow

with its hysterical, foreign cargo

and when it came up alongside

it stopped
until she could be hoisted off.

Then it circled three times

and went down.

The woman was beyond all language,

the captain reported:

the crew was afraid of her

for a long, long time.


- Stephen Dunn

Acid


In Jakarata
among the venders
of flowers and soft drinks
I saw a child
with a hideous mouth,
begging,
and I knew the wound was made
for a way to stay alive.
What he gave me
from the brown coin
of his face
was a look of cunning.
I carry it
like a bead of acid
to remember how,
once in a while,
you can creep out of your own life
and become someone else--
an explosion
in that nest of wires
we call the imagination.
I will never see him
again, I suppose.
But what of this rag,
this shadow
flung like a boy's body
into the walls
of my mind, bleeding
their sour taste--
insult and anger
the great movers?


- Mary Oliver

TURTLE DREAM

Why can't a turtle fly? Really!
Like it did last night.

Flying and gliding above
the crowed ballroom floor
we swooped over the startled dancers
far below as they pointed up
with their jeweled fingers
to my flying turtle
with it's glistening
cloisonné carapace.

Clinging to his geometric back
the shell grew hot
as we moved lower,
gliding in slow tilting circles
to the marbled inlaid floor.

Calmly and deliberate
he blew out his turtle breath
turtle breath of sea green clouds
smelling of burning sage.

It was so easy then
to roll off his glowing back
and walk gracefully in the mist
just above the dancers
now sleeping quietly
in the seaweed
and the grass.

- Doug von Koss

I remember being so perplexed the first time I heard the phrase "turtle power."

That is NOT a sexy totem animal.

I now have a different perspective...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

TURTLE DREAM

Why can't a turtle fly? Really!
Like it did last night.

- Doug von Koss

---

To World War Two


Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafe's.
It was a time of general confusion
Of being a body hurled at a wall.
I didn't do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.
I stood while the typhoon splashed us into morning.
It felt unusual
Even if for a good cause
To be part of a destructive force
With my rifle in my hands
And in my head
My serial number
The entire object of my existence
To eliminate Japanese soldiers
By killing them
With a rifle or with a grenade
And then, many years after that,
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think about these things
From a great distance
If I survived
I was "paying my debt
To society" a paid
Killer. It wasn't
like anything I'd done
Before, on the paved
Streets of Cincinatti
Or on the ballroom floor
At Mr. Vathe's dancing class
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith
Have thought of me
If instead of asking her to dance
I had put my BAR to my shoulder
And shot her in the face
I thought about her in my foxhole--
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night
We take precautions but it is night and it is you.
The typhoon continues and so do you.
"I can't be killed--because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write
it."
I thought--even crazier thought, or just as crazy--
"If I'm killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny
When it's reported" (I imagined it would be reported!)
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach on
Leyte
Was "The surf comes in like masochistic lions."
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping me alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,
"You won't believe this, but some day you may wish
You were footloose and twenty on Leyte again." I have never wanted
To be on Leyte again,
With you, whispering into my ear,
"Go on and win me! Tomorrow you might not be alive,
So do it today!" How could anyone win you?
You were too much for me, though I
Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me
You'd use me, and then forget. How else
Did I think you'd behave?
I'm glad you ended. I'm glad I didn't die. Or lose my mind.
As machines make ice
We made dead enemy soldiers, in
Dark jungle alleys, with weapons in our hands
That produced fire and kept going straight through
I was carrying one,
I who had gone about for years as a child
Praying God don't let there be another war
Or if there is, don't let me be in it. Well, I was in you.
All you cared about was existing and being won.
You died of a bomb blast in Nagasaki, and there were parades.
- Kenneth Koch

Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket


I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, though law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
- Vachel Lindsay

Toward Bethlehem
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats

Yes, I know.
This is the time
of the second coming.
The great beast lurking,
the savage heart
beating once again.

Somewhere in the desert, yes,
that blank and pitiless stare.
The haunches moving.
The stealthy advance.

Shall we watch in horror and dismay?
Do we turn away
or witness in silence and despair?.

The vision falters,
the image fades again.
That distant struggle
in the clouds of dust--
is this the specter
we ourselves have made,
created from our inner dreamscape
of grasping and desire?
Are we ourselves
the approaching shape
of darkness drawing near?

- Dorothy Walters

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal


After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,

I heard the announcement:

If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any

Arabic,

Please come to the gate immediately.


Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own

gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,

Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor,

wailing loudly.

Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her.

What is her

Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four

hours late and she

Did this.


I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.

Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway,

min fadlick,

Sho bit se-wee?



The minute she heard any words she knew -- however

poorly used -

She stopped crying.



She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.

She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical

treatment the

Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get

there, just late,



Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.

We called her son and I spoke with him in English.

I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on

the plane and

Would ride next to her -- southwest.



She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just

for the fun of it.



Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while

in Arabic and

Found out of course they had ten shared friends.



Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call

some Palestinian

Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took

up about 2 hours.



She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her

life. Answering

Questions.



She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies --

little powdered

Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts --

out of her bag --

And was offering them to all the women at the gate.



To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It

was like a

Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler

from California,

The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered

with the same

Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better

cookies.



And then the airline broke out the free beverages from

huge coolers --

Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our

flight, one African

American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving

us all apple juice

And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar

too.



And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were

holding hands --

Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some

medicinal thing,



With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling

tradition. Always

Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.



And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones

and thought,

This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.



Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of

confusion stopped

-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.



They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other

women too.

This can still happen anywhere.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

Winter Solitude


Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.






When The Winter Chrysanthemums Go


When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there's nothing to write about
but radishes.


- Matsuo Basho

Practice

Not the high mountain monastery
I had hoped for, the real
face of my spiritual practice
is this:
the sweat that pearls on my cheek
when I tell you the truth, my silent
cry in the night when I think
I’m alone, the trembling
in my own hand as I reach out
through the years of overcoming
to touch what I had hoped
I would never need again.


- Kim Rosen

Cleaning Up After the Poetry Salon

It's not always easy.

Proper nouns are manageable.
They stack well.
Biggest on the bottom -
The Great Plains, Idaho, Mt. Rainier -
then the smaller stuff left behind -
Boxcars, photographs, you know.

Adjectives are remarkably tough to clean up.
The dry ones catch on the furniture,
bury themselves in cracks
hide in the pocket of an old sweater.
They crumble to awkward, ungainly,
unmanageable, yes fragile
pieces …that somehow cunningly avoid
the shedding broom some poet has
left behind.
And wet ones like sticky and slimy - yikes!

Cleaning up the leavings of Wendell Berry?
it's a grange meeting hall.
Rich black dirt everywhere,
corn stalks, the lingering thick odor of
compost and just a hint of cow manure
on your shoes and your best carpet.

And Jesus! Those poems about stars -
the poets have no idea.
Whole constellations left behind -
Watch it with the Pleides, they have sharp points
And yes, the Dog Star does bite.

My rule would be -
you brought 'em, you take 'em home.

Food is good in a poem.
Mom's apple pie and romantic dinners for two
are usually digested by the salon - no leftovers.
It's the ethnic dishes with strange names
luedafisk, sauerkraut, gefiltafish
and anything made with hot peppers
Well, you know.

Poets - a little consideration -
slip in some sponges, maybe
a mop or really - just a mouthful of food,
a spoonful -
yes, spoons for everybody.

And come on,
no animals bigger than a cat or small dog.
polar bears and coyotes are disasters.

Oh I could go on…
mixed metaphors sliding
down the walls and tangled
in the drapes.

Cliches hiding their heads in the corners.
shy, embarrassed marmots standing by dead seals.
stinking sea weed and sharks behind the sofa
And fish - fish beyond number -
flopping on the floor.

Verbs are easy - they move around
so much - just
open the door and they
take care of themselves.

But poets,
It's the birds left behind…
Egret, Robin, wrens, a flock of seagulls,
a murder of crows…
For God's sake leave a window open.

But eagle, oh my friends, the eagle
he glowers there
from the chandelier
Royally pissed!
A moment in a poem
then forgotten
in the closed room.

I know, I know.
I'm making a new mess now -
I'll need some help here with
Idaho and that eagle.

For the rest
I brought 'em.
I'll take 'em home.

- Doug von Koss

Let America Be America Again



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


(America never was America to me.)


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


(It never was America to me.)


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


The free?


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


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


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


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


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


- Langston Hughes

Antepasados We are one because America is one continent tied by the slender curves of Panama. We are one people tied by the buried bones of ancestors the buried bones of ancestors from Asia to America from Africa to America from Europe to America Back to the first mothers and the first fathers back to the first gardens of flowers and fruits, where vegetables grew wild. The soft thick grasses cushioned their bodies when they lay down to love. Warm water gurgled up from the earth and spilled down into clear pools. Feathers waved their heads and floated across their bodies as they strutted in the afternoon But then the snake of greed grew like a weed planted the seed that made one person think that to fill their need or to succeed they had to use someone else's labor for their own profit. Wars came. Animals died. Women and cattle became property, Slaves were chained, put to work, endless work that finally built factories and smog, rich parts of town and poor built on the buried bones of antepasados the buried bones of ancestors. Shake the bones hear their ghostly moans. We learn from our past to build our future. - Nina Serrano

Morning Prayers


I have missed the guardian spirit
of the Sangre de Cristos
those mountains
against which I destroyed myself
every morning I was sick
with loving and fighting
in those small years.
In that season I looked up
to a blue conception of faith
a notion of the sacred in
the elegant border of cedar trees
becoming mountain and sky.


This is how we were born into the world:
Sky fell in love with earth, wore turquoise,
cantered in on a black horse.
Earth dressed herself fragrantly,
with regard for the aesthetics of holy romance.
Their love decorated the mountains with sunrise,
weaved valleys delicate with the edging of sunset.


This morning I look toward the east
and I am lonely for those mountains
though I've said good-bye to the girl
with her urgent prayers for redemption.
I used to believe in a vision
that would save the people
carry us all to the top of the mountain
during the flood
of human destruction.


I know nothing anymore
as I place my feet into the next world
except this:
the nothingness
is vast and stunning,
brims with details
of steaming, dark coffee
ashes of campfires
the bells on yaks or sheep
sirens careening through a deluge
of humans
or the dead carried through fire,
through the mist of baking sweet
bread and breathing.


This is how we will leave this world:
on horses of sunrise and sunset
from the shadow of the mountains
who witnessed every battle
every small struggle.




- Joy Harjo

Splendor

One day it's the clouds,
one day the mountains.
One day the latest bloom
of roses - the pure monochromes,
the dazzling hybrids - inspiration
for the cathedral's round windows.
Every now and then
there's the splendor
of thought: the singular
idea and its brilliant retinue -
words, cadence, point of view,
little gold arrows flitting
between the lines.
And too the splendor
of no thought at all:
hands lying calmly
in the lap, or swinging
a six iron with effortless
tempo. More often than not
splendor is the star we orbit
without a second thought,
especially as it arrives
and departs. One day
it's the blue glassy bay,
one day the night
and its array of jewels,
visible and invisible.
Sometimes it's the warm clarity
of a face that finds your face
and doesn't turn away.
Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,
that will radiate farther
than you might imagine.
One day it's the entire day
itself, each hour foregoing
its number and name,
its cumbersome clothes, a day
that says come as you are,
large enough for fear and doubt,
with room to spare: the most secret
wish, the deepest, the darkest,
turned inside out.

- Thomas Centolella

Wow.

Leaving Enterprise


Walking away
from the rental car
feeling clean, finished,
practice


for a future walking
away from all
I thought I was.


- Max Reif

Skunk Cabbage


Dust of fresh snow on frost heaved earth
January's brown stalks flutter in the breeze.
A quest in search of skunk cabbage,
a plant both common and magical,
first wildflower of spring
using the stored energy in its roots
to create a bubble of warmth
in its strange purplish spathe
like hands cradling a candle flame.


Lots to see on the way.
Flock of turkeys,
marching single file across the trail.
one, two, seventy-five, seventy-six.
And the dark upright skeletons of cockle burr plants.
Burr after burr, hooked barbs
and double seeds inside every one,
one will sprout this spring, and one the next,
a natural insurance policy for survival.
These fed the multitudes of Carolina parakeets,
who fly no more in these faster paced days.


Harley told me this plant biography,
one long ago summer day
as I painfully plucked the burrs from my dogs,
sending an arrow of beauty into a dark, cussing moment.
He seemed old then, full of jokes and
facts he slipped in about how he loved this natural world.


After the hike and the miracle of
flowers in the frozen ground,
we go to the hospital to see Harley, now ninety six,
bruised arms and wasted body,
swathed in sheets and confusion, and still
a glimmer in his eyes.
He takes the chocolate malt, and sips hard
through his straw while we talk,
old stories pulled from the cobwebs of memory,
taking their last bow in the afternoon's pale light.


"My hands are cold", he says as I take the cup,
and wrap my hands around his,
the strength and warmth of mine
cradling what seems now so cold and frail.
The strength and warmth of mine,
hewn long ago from these shadowy roots I now hold,
like the skunk cabbage,
returning last summer's sun to this day.


- Alan Cohen

Notice


This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into his street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

- Steve Kowit

A Reminder To Myself


Reading about writing
is not writing.
Having the perfect pen and paper
or notebook
is not writing.
Thinking about writing
is not writing.
Procrastinating about writing
is not writing.

Mashing and wedging words
and ideas and feelings
and thoughts
onto a flat surface
then turning them on the wheel of time
is writing.
Centering the mass,
shaping it with the
hands of experience
and its invisible playmate imagination,
is writing.

Opening the center,
building the walls, feeling them
thin against your fingers--
but still hold--
is writing.

Cutting the pot free
to stand on its own,
to hint at its future as
useful and beautiful,
is writing.

Trimming, carving, firing,
glazing, and firing once more,
are re-writing.

Removing the work from the kiln
and seeing that it is transformed
yet whole, uncracked, unflawed,
perfect in its inperfection,
is writing "The End."


- Jane Mickelson

Circles


See how the daughter cleanses her mother’s
cracked mouth with lemon swabs
feeds her tiny bites of ice cream from a plastic spoon
as when the mother unhinges her bra and places her nipple
between the child’s eager open lips


how she strokes her arm with the tips
of her fingers, rotates it slowly at the shoulder
whispering that’s it, you can do it
like the mother holds her child’s hands over
her head and walks with her while she takes
her first steps


now she rolls the socks down her
swollen ankles, applies cream to the cracked
dry veins above the shin
as the mother unwraps the diaper
from the child’s hips, undoes the pins
from the wet cotton and wipes the skin clean


watch how she arranges the soft blanket
around her mother’s wrinkled form, leans down to
kiss her good-night, pulls the metal
cord on the over head light
fading blue linoleum to grey


in the half light of the room the child sleeps
with one hand against her cheek, the other on the
white pillow, mouth open, lips moving
as if speaking to God.




- Claire Drucker

The Excesses of God


Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.


- Robinson Jeffers

Song Original
A dream remembered on reading Denise Levertov's 'A Tree Telling of Orpheus'




When the sun rays of the night
first caress the insides of my body
waking me from thick-wooded slumber
faint notes begin to surge within my sap
and as they swarm through my veins
vibrating with the eddying air
my roots stir to the strain of chords—
dying to dance.


My branches sway while
out of my crown issue clear
resonating sounds, the silent pulse
of unfurling leaves
high pitched melodies
in an ancient tongue
that know my name
that know each atom of my being
so sweet and wounding.


All night I revel
abandoned to its might
even while my knotted trunk
harbors a secret fear.


All through that day I marvel—
yet before three full moons
steal over my limbs
dewy mists dim my remembrance.


Weighted by pelting rains
blinding gales, dark snows
countless weathered seasons
one star-filled sky
a slivered moon
slides down a beam
splintering my being.


My screams tear at the frenzied air
until high pitched notes
driven deep within
gush out
echoing in rippling pools—
in all you are and do
my ancient song sings you.




- Raphael Block

The Good Man

The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.
Watches our bogus roses, our rank wreath, our
love's unreliable cement, the gray
jubilees of our demondom.
Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.


- Gwendolyn Brooks

The Shoelace

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the, market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.


- Charles Bukowski

Matins


Now we are awake
and now we are come together
and now we are thanking the Lord.
This is easy,
for the Lord is everywhere.
He is in the water and the air,
He is in the very walls.
He is around us and in us.
He is the floor on which we kneel.
We make our songs for him
as sweet as we can
for his goodness,
and, lo, he steps into the song
and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,
having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us in the air and water,
having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,
having given us
each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world.




- Mary Oliver

Making Peace


A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light--facets
of the forming crystal.


- Denise Levertov

Even The Smallest Trees Have Tops




Even the smallest trees
have tops.


Even the smallest hummingbirds
have wings.


Even the smallest rain drops
Hold the sea.


Even the faintest quail call
is enough to open the heart.


Even the Silence on top of Vision Mountain
has Sounds


Even the smallest ant
has legs to go.


Even the poorest of people
hold life's riches.


Even the damaged
have curiosity.


Even the tortured
embraces a bit of peace.


Even those who fail a thousand times
still will come and come again.


- Mary Morgan

A Diamond in the Rough


A faint glimmer glitters under
her hardened, dusty surface
as the guy at the bike shop says
"She's a diamond in the rough!"


Rusty spokes on ancient wheels
placated and worn
still effortlessly spin
willing to ride and be ridden
like new!


Tho' the world has made a mess
of her paint job
metal rubber aluminum hardware
and skin, tough on sight...


Her bristled curves turn smooth
softening as she rides
freedom's wind sweeping through
pedals licking the air
handle bars trembling in the quickening
her frame firmly rooted
steady open leaning
into the distance


Pushing forward wanting nothing
less than
this joy-ride
through time and space
holding firm
holding true
to the invisible force
of God's Hand


No more reckless far out deceptive
"I'm doing it alone!"
clanging beneath the surface
I choose now to lean in
to listen and to hear
God's voice breathing life
from the heart of creation
into this breath of life
called julie.


- Julie Bennion

Villanelle for Our Time




From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.


This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.


We loved the easy and the smart,
But now with keener hand and brain
We rise to play a greater part.


The lesser loyalties depart
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.


Not steering by the venal chart
that tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.


Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.


- Frank Scott (1899 - 1985)

A word on statistics

Out of every hundred people

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
nearly all the rest.

Ready to help,
as long as it doesn't take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four--well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
forty and four.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it's better not to know
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life but things:
thirty
(although I would like to be wrong).

Doubled over in pain,
without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three,
sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few at thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred--
a figure that has never varied yet.


- Wislawa Szymborski

(from the collection Miracle Fair, translated by Joanna Trzeciak)

Hunting

Hunter’s Moon – a full moon in October, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise, which facilitates the hunting of nocturnal animals
One October evening, under the waning influence of a Hunter’s Moon, I went to hear three poets read in Occidental. They spoke of wisdom and doubt, their own and ours. Mike Tuggle read from his new book, What Lures the Foxes, but had nothing to say about foxes that night.

Later, as I pulled out of the parking lot, a grey fox slipped from behind a bush and ran down the road alongside my car. The street lamps outshone the moon as the fox shape-shifted, adapting under some ancient instruction, now beaten silver, now beaten gold. Pitched between dream and waking, we traveled that road together, she with her wisdom – or so I like to think – I with my doubts – as I know only too well. She and I have met before and I pondered how diminished I would be without her. But as we reached the edge of the light, the fox dashed across the road and vanished.

Under the night’s cool dappling of redwood and fir, having found what I had not sought, I drove on wondering what lures the foxes and how I could spread the news when some cowardice keeps me in this car, speaking in dead tongues.


- Susan Lamont

Keeping Cool While Being Transported




The time will be here.
I will be carried away like a fish,
or a bird scooped up from a pond of sky.
Winged creatures of mythical belief will assemble
at one synaptic point, just for me.
The time will be here
when I will go hot and heavy,
or coolly into the flowing night,
into darkness or light carried by one nose hair.
Perhaps I will be tethered to a bloodless back,
new grown moth wings curled and singed
as I pass through thestral drapes?
The time will be here
or over there, where I pause.
The cold side of the moon may open
like a pure Day-Lily,
a ghost writing of God's best seller,
reflecting at that time
the white satin lining of funeral flowers,
once more boxing me snugly in,
against infinity.


- Eric Ashford

Benedicto


May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you--
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.


- Edward Abbey

God, I love Edward Abbey. At age 18 I went on a week long river rafting trip with Outward Bound, and during the slow parts where the river widened and we just let it carry us downstream, our guide would pull out Edward Abbey and read to us. Abbey's environmental activism and deep love of nature really spoke to me then and still does. What a passionate voice. Thanks for this poem Larry. It brings back those great memories.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Benedicto


May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you--
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.


- Edward Abbey

---

Blue


Picasso, the favored one, didn't suffer, but
Knew some form of suffering should be
Sought to leave the comfort of good-enough.
Then, a friend's suicide spirals the world into winter. Blue
Begins the path that belongs to those
He'll never be, gifted as he is with genius.
Suffering, for him, must be to be imagined
Or sought. He begins the road
That belongs to others, journeys
Where none of them have ever been, nor
Will ever be. Blue and beyond.


- Rebecca del Rio


(after visiting the Picasso Museum in Barcelona)

Walking Ahead


They'll walk ahead, they tell us, and my
brother and I don't argue-we know the
drill, and love it:
our wives, two peas in a pod, walking
ahead, husbands behind them
surely and steadily
losing ground, until behold the women
are out of sight, but not before
the men have studied their
receding figures, backsides in a jiggling
syncopation-bear cubs wrestling in
gunny sacks, the one
beside me says, and I nod. And now, the
bear cubs having disappeared,
we pause on a small bridge
spanning a branch of the Republican.
Early October, early afternoon,
autumn flaunting itself
one hundred thousand falling leaves at
a time. Overhead, blueness
accented by white clouds
billowing. We lean on the wooden rail
to study the clear running water:
beneath it,
pebbles too many to count, glistening.
No aches, no requests, no
complaints. And
no one else to be seen. We therefore
unzip and relieve ourselves
into the river. Oh,
it's a perfect day to be doing what we
are doing, minnows at school
in the clear running
water, bird noises from a grandstand of
branches above us cheering
us on. And the girls?
Lost somewhere in this wilderness, we
say, and no doubt walking tirelessly in
circles-bear
cubs in gunny sacks, wrestling. So when
the time is ripe, and the spoils of separation
have been sweetly and equally
depleted, we will leave
this Elysium where
we have found relief and, by the power
derived from concern,
we will join them.


- Bill Kloefkorn

A Geography of Poets is all wrong, ed what poets now live where they say they do where they started out where they want to half the midwesterners did time in new york the other half in california only new yorkers write as if they are from new york and mostly they are not the ones in california were wounded elsewhere when they feel better or can't afford the rent they'll go back where they came from this is america you get hurt where you are born you make poetry out of it as far from home as you can get you die somewhere in between the only geography of poets is greyhound general motors rules them all ubi patria ibi bene or ibi bene ubi patria bread out of nostalgia not a lot of it either some of us came from very far maps don't help much - Andrei Codrescu

Some of us come from just right here
And hold our West Coast traumas dear ...

The Powwow at the End of the World

I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.

- Sherman Alexie