Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Children and the Lighthouse Keeper

In memory of the victims of the Great Tsunami of 2004

Children noticed water pulling back,
past where parents let them wade. As if
the Spirit had filled his cheeks by sucking in,
exposing rocks on shore, boats their fathers
used to fish in early morning hours. They saw
for that moment they could walk to earth’s edge.

Just then, a lighthouse keeper at Point Calimere, edge
of India’s face to ocean, turned to look back
towards bare land he had recently observed and saw
a herd of Indian antelope galloping from the seafront, as
if
they knew they must escape. He remembered his father’s
words when he took this job: Learn from them all, in

time understanding he meant the beasts and birds in
this wildlife sanctuary on Nagapattinam’s edge.
He watched and wished he could ask his father
why five hundred black bucks were bounding back
to woodlands from the coast, climbing the hilltop. If
he told anyone about this strange event he saw,

they would laugh and surely say that what he saw
was the result of living alone so long. He recalled that in
the dead of night, working the late watch, he asked
himself if
he had made the right choice. Naming animals near the
edge
of extinction in his notebook, he prayed for everyone to
put back
nature as it used to be, learn from the animals, listen to
his father.

The children did not get the chance to hear their fathers
shout Run at Patanangala beach, before they saw
black water swallow them, felt their small backs
snap against trees, then sensed nothing. In
minutes, sixty people disappeared from the edge
of Sri Lanka’s Yala National Park. What if

just one had recognized why the flamingos flew, if
leopards had led or elephants picked up fathers
with families to ride their backs to higher ground, edging
out disaster. If only birds had relayed what they saw
beyond the ocean foam, translated water’s pulse in
language humans understood, we would have them back.

The lighthouse keeper, if he learned anything from the
animals, saw
how he must tell of graceful figures who ran farther than
ever before, in
search of that safe edge, never looking back.

- Janice Dabney

The Common Living Dirt

The small ears prick on the bushes,
furry buds, shoots tender and pale,
the swamp maples blow scarlet.
Color teases the corner of the eye,
delicate gold, chartreuse, crimson,
mauve speckled, just dashed on.

The soil stretches naked. All winter
hidden under the down comforter of snow,
delicious now, rich in the hand
as chocolate cake; the fragrant busy
soil the worm passes through her gut
and the beetle swims in like a lake.

As I kneel to put seeds in
careful as stitching, I am in love.
You are the bed we all sleep on.
You are the food we eat, the food
we ate, the food we will become.
We are walking trees rooted in you.

You can live thousands of years
undressing in the spring your black
body, your red body, your brown body
penetrated by the rain. Here
is the goddess unveiled,
the earth opening her strong thighs.

Yet, you grow exhausted with bearing
too much, too soon, too often, just
as a woman wears through like and old rug.
We have contempt for what we spring
from. Dirt we say, you're dirt
as if we were not all your children.

We have lost the simple gratitude.
We lack the knowledge we showed ten
thousand years past, that you live
a goddess but mortal, that what we take
must be returned; that the poison we drop
in you will stunt our children's growth.

Tending a plot of your flesh binds
me as nothing ever could, to the seasons,
to the will of the plants, clamorous
in their green tenderness. What
calls louder than the cry of a field
of corn ready, or trees of ripe peaches?

I worship on my knees, laying
the seeds in you that worship rooted
in need, in hunger, in kinship,
flesh of the planet with my own flesh,
a ritual of compost, a litany of manure.

My garden is a chapel, by a meadow
gone wild in grass and flower
in a cathedral. How you seethe
with little quick ones, a vole, field
mouse, shrew and mole in their thousands,
rabbit and woodchuck. In you rest
the jewels of the genes wrapped in seed.

Power warps because it involves joy
in domination; also because it means
forgetting how we too starve, break
like a corn stalk in the wind, how we
die like spinach of drought,
how what slays the vole slays us.

Because you can die of overwork, because
you can die of fire that melts
rock, because you can die of poison
the kills the beetle and the slug,
we must come again to worship you
on our knees, the common living dirt.

- Marge Piercy

God Wants to Know

she found God's questionnaire
in a Santa Fe souvenir shop
after she had visited
O'Keeffe's place at Abiquiu
and the Anasazi caves of Bandelier

such a spiritual landscape, she said
bones so bleached only God
could have remembered them

the questionnaire asks
how you first found out
about God--TV, word of mouth
or Divine inspiration--
and whether you

use other sources of inspiration--
sex, alcohol, fortune cookies,
insurance policies

the most puzzling one, however,
asks you to rate, 1 to 5, God's attempts
to balance disasters and miracles:

are flood, famine, and war, for example
justly compensated by recovery from disease
heroic rescues, and sports upsets?

she paused for a long time
before she looked for a trash can

- Jan Bowman

Step Into the Network

‘A dying woman plants a garden. Strange.’
‘It must be very strange.’
‘Yes, it goes on but you stop.’

Burned out, as in building,
Drained, as in swamped.
The authentic moment doesn’t
Have to be high energy.
Serotonin junkies
(Not that you..) live
After the wish to
Has dried up. When
You visit the well
To find it sucking
Sand, you may still be
Conscious. What then?
Smash glass?

Plod, plod. Hopkins
Should be living at
This hour. Six months
I hung up this project,
Why ? I was waiting
For one of us to die.
If tonight is bad,
In my exhaustion,
What were these last
Nights, years of them, to you?
Did Hope ever strip
Your dignity?

Young together, callow
I admire the studied
Face balanced on the tilted
Stem, cool swan
Hairdo of 1961,
To hide the greenhorn
Whose I.Q. knew her ignorance,
Older, you told us,
‘Good looks are sent
To use until we have
Something to say.’
Formidable. & today,
Silenced, most eloquent.

- David Bromige (1934-2009)




David Bromige’s bold and experimental poetry won him multiple literary honors and the respect of readers around the world. But the retired Sonoma State University professor and former Sonoma County Poet Laureate, who died June 3 at home in Sebastopol at the age of 75, will be remembered by those who knew and loved him for his rapier wit and generous support of other writers.

“I am happy to say that in the last week of his life his family was reading to him my new memoir and he was laughing at my jokes. He never missed a joke,” said former SSU colleague and novelist Jerry Rosen.

Bromige, he praised, “knew as much about contemporary poetry as any person in the world” and managed to communicate his love for poetry to his students during 25 years at SSU.

His wife of 28 years, Cecelia Belle, said he had a large filing cabinet filled with what he labeled “Uncalled For Manuscripts.” But he gave them all an insightful read and passed along encouragement with his comments.

His prodigious gift for writing mixed with his giving spirit won him many fans. Russian River poet Pat Nolan recalled watching him at a gathering of poets five years ago, seated in the shade of a porch in his signature Panama hat.

“One by one, everyone at that gathering stepped up to pay their respects to him...But the homage that was being paid to him that day was more of that befitting a godfather.”

Bromige had fought his way back from a heart attack and stroke in 2001, going on to serve as Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, writing, mentoring other writers and giving readings. But a lifetime struggle with the effects of diabetes finally caught up with him.

Only last month, he gave his last reading in a gathering by the Healdsburg Literary Society of 16 poet laureates from around the state. The ever dapper British-born writer stood to deliver his piece, the first time he had risen from his wheelchair in many months, said Belle.

The author of more than 40 books of prose and poetry, Bromige was working on a memoir, “Til There Was You,” at the time of his death. He also was eagerly collaborating with Reality Street press in England to publish a complete collection of his poetry.

He could often be seen seated in a chair in the front yard of his Sebastopol home soaking in the sun while pounding on a manual typewriter.

Born in London, he was a childhood survivor of The Blitz of World War II. He attended agricultural college and worked on a farm in Sweden before settling into a teaching program at the University of British Columbia. But it was his poetry and playwriting that won him prizes and a graduate scholarship to UC Berkeley.

He became involved in the emergence of historic poetic movements, and was taken up by the poets known as the San Francisco Renaissance, “who valued his erudition and his abilities with form and narrative,” said fellow poet and provocative poetry blogger Ron Silliman.

Always questioning conventional wisdom in poetry and the arts, Bromige was also adopted by young writers practicing what came to be known as language poetry, said Silliman. His 1980 volume “My Poetry” is considered “a classic of the genre,” he said.

Bromige counted among his distinguished mentors Robert Duncan of the Black Mountain School of Poets and Denise Levertov, for whom he was a teaching assistant at Berkeley.

During his years at Sonoma State he helped launch and maintain the university’s literary magazines while bringing a host of internationally known writers to campus.

His numerous honors include the Western States Book Award, the Pushcart Prize for poetry, the Canada Council award and the Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. In 1994 the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts named him a Sonoma County Living Treasure.

In addition to his wife he is survived by his son Christopher Bromige, of Vancouver, B.C., his daughter Margaret Belle Bromise, of Sebastopol, two grandchildren and numerous in-laws, nieces and nephews.

Bromige will be buried at Pleasant Hills Memorial Park in Sebastopol. A public celebration of his life is being planned for sometime in July.

The family suggests memorial contributions to the Sonoma County Book Fair, socobookfest.org/donate.shtml.

Sebastopol

It’s hard won fitness climbing
the ashen road that carries you up
the “Three Sisters” by bike.
Three ever steeper climbs, hot,
exposed, until the peak.
At the top, the air is cool dappled-shade.
Lying down beneath thick-knuckled trees.

Today, at the peak all is bare.
The trees split like boxed bodies in a magic trick.

Many fields have been cleared.
Apples for grapes. The new farmers say: Apples
are yesterday—as they till the earth for a new crop.
The old, who for generations have trimmed
the delicate limbs of the Gravenstein
are now red-faced and gnarled as their heirloom trees.

At the top, the ridge is a permeable line
between green hills that roll to the sea,
and the patchwork of farmed valley that leads to town.
What is good/bad is brackish as history:
A two-day stand-off between two men,
one inside the general store, the other
pacing the street. Nothing could come between.
Crowds gathered murmuring—it’s like the battle of Sebastopol—
and the name stuck. But, after the naming, what happened?
Someone must have stepped outside,
or someone must have stepped inside—
that much isn’t remembered.

I crest at the top—this time without stopping
look out at the ridge dividing sea from town,
push the pedal down, into the descent
into the rush and risk of air.

- Iris Dunkle

There Is No Going Back

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

- Wendell Berry

Poem for Thomas Berry

we were dreamed
in the cores
of the stars.
like the stars,
we were meant to unfold

we were dreamed in the depths
of the undulating ocean.
like the waves,
we were meant to unfold

like bursting supernovas, birthing elements,

which crucibles give rise to creativity?

the world makes us
its instrument.

Father Thomas,
speaking for stars, in a voice
old as wind: 'origin moments
are supremely important'

what are the origins
of a prophet?

found in syllables of Sanskrit,
or Chinese characters?
in a decade of midnight prayer?

in childhood epiphanies
rising like heat?
blue Carolina sky;
dark pines;
crickets;
birds;
sunlight
on the lilies,
in the meadow,
across the creek.

born in Carolina
on the eve of the Great War,
Saturn conjoining Pluto in the sky.
raised in a world of wires and wheels,
watching dirt roads turn to pavement.

brooding intensity,
measuring loss
when others could see only progress.

white hair communing with angels of Earth

Father Thomas, reminding us
we are constantly bathed in shimmering memories
of originating radiance

we are constantly bathed in shimmering memories
of originating radiance

the psychic stars:
the conscious soil:

this thin film of atmosphere;

and only gravity
holding the sea from the stars.

when a vision of the universe takes hold
in your mind, your soul becomes vast as the cosmos.

when the mind is silent,
everything is sacred.

like the spiral
like the lotus
like the waves
like the trees
like the stars,

we were meant to unfold.

- Drew Dellinger

Prisoners

Though the road turn at last
to death’s ordinary door,
and we knock there, ready
to enter and it opens
easily for us,
yet
all the long journey
we shall have gone in chains,
fed on knowledge-apples
acrid and riddled with grubs.

We taste other food that life,
like a charitable farm-girl,
holds out to us as we pass—
but our mouths are puckered,
a taint of ash on the tongue.

It’s not joy that we’ve lost—
wildfire, it flares
in dark or shine as it will.
What’s gone
is common happiness,
plain bread we could eat
with the old apple of knowledge.

That old one—it griped us sometimes,
but it was firm, tart,
sometimes delectable ...

The ashen apple of these days
grew from poisoned soil. We are prisoners
and must eat
our ration. All the long road
in chains, even if, after all,
we come to
death’s ordinary door, with time
smiling its ordinary
long-ago smile.

- Denise Levertov

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

- W.B. Yeats

In this moment…

Love called my name
this morning.
I almost missed it
because
I wasn’t paying attention.

So I stopped
whatever I was doing,
relaxed
and
became very still.

Even
my shadow
took a seat
and
waited.

Love called my name
this morning.
We laughed
in this moment.

And then,
love held me
with such a sweet fierceness,
a vast letting go
that
all I could do was bask
in the
preciousness
of being awake.

- Shahara Godfrey

THESE WORDS, THIS PEN

These words which you read
are not the first from this pen.
The pen has been primed for decades
in a reservoir of wonder.

This pen has been used as forceps, hammer, tweezer.
It has lifted words, delicate specimens, one by one,
picked them up in strips,
turned and explored them at every angle,
written words just to see how they’re shaped,
just to feel their curved vines easing into cursive,
just to whisper their sounds.

It has separated a word from its brothers and sisters on a page
to see how it behaves alone, associations and etymologies trailing like tails.
It has repeated a word across a page until the word has become meaningless,
totally strange.

This pen has dipped itself in the well of words,
has gone swimming in the sea of words.
It has dived with me
deep in some obscure, transmuting sea
where memory becomes image, image suggests itself as language,
language dies into silence,

where experience rests after its brief stint in the pop-up world
and is carried to where it can feed spirit
the way food is carried in the blood.

This pen is a hawk who has dived
from trees into wilderness lakes
under a full moon after prey.
This pen has grown fins
and swum where currents carried it.

This pen has been domesticated
in slow stages of trust,
man for pen and pen for man.
It has been dipped a few times
in a holy inkwell and written pure gold.

This pen sleeps at night, horizontal like me,
and like me it does not know
what it knows.

It despairs, feels numb,
then suddenly comes alive flashing
with the poise it learned as a hawk,
regurgitating what it has drunk
partly from the immediate, sensible world, partly
from a pure pool beside the seat
of the oracle at Delphi.

Then the lightning flash ends,
the cobra has finished striking,
the pen rests.

- Max Reif

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

- Marge Piercy

Tao Says

To lead the people
you must follow behind them.
When the leaders wear the finest clothes
the fields are filled with weeds.
The man who is brave and calm
will always preserve life.
Those who conquer
do so only when they yield.
Good men do not argue.
They know that the tree
which does not bend
will finally be broken.

- Joseph Bruchac

After All

Whether or not there is a God
We cannot know and -
does it matter?
What does:
To live this life as if there was.

Whether life has meaning does not matter.
What does:
To give our life meaning
In how we choose to live.

Whether we have suffered failure
Does not matter.
What should:
To have sifted from the ashes
Any diamonds that we could.

To have loved and suffered the pain of parting
Does matter.
But what matters even more:
To be grateful for the time
We were given togther before.

Whether or not there is a heaven
Does not matter.
What does, when it's our time:
To have brought a smile
To sweeten the tears
Of those we will leave behind.

- Scott O'Brien

With Peacemaker’s Eyes

1.

We are watching
from within the longhouse
where our leaders were chosen
by the patient wisdom
of the gathered Clan Mothers,
raised up by the will
and the love of all the people
where the eagle's wings answered
the songs of peace for the children,
the elders, the coming generations.

We are watching
as the Eagle watched
from the top of the great Pine Tree
buried over the weapons
of fraternal war.

2.

We are watching
from within the kiva
where the calm water in the seeing bowl
trembled and the picture formed
of distant events no longer distant,
broken arrows, steel winds of death,
black and burning rain.

3.

We are watching
from within the lodge
where the male deer removed their horns
so that even by accident
no one might be injured.
There, where the fire was held
in the glowing eyes of Grandfather Rock,
we sweated to purify ourselves
for all our relations
as we prayed health and help
for all that lives

4.

We are watching
from the eagle catching pit
without food or water or sleep
as Bear and Deer stood before us to speak
as wind and cloud took shape to whisper
as we saw the far-off forms of greed
of hatred and hunger turn to spears of fire

5.

We are watching
from the shaking tent
from the ghost dance circle
from the dreamer's lodge
from beside the cross fire
where the water bird's wings
throbbed from the water drum.

6.

We are watching from Ndakinna,
from the Paha Sapa,
from beside the Sipapu,
from Cante Ista,
from the Big House,
from the 7th Direction
from the Heart of the World
from that humble place
within our own hearts
that only speaks
when we see ourselves
as Creation always sees us.

7.

We are watching
as the old Muskogee man watched
when the whirlwind approached,
the great cyclone column
swept over the plain
toward his small house
till he raised the hatchet
in both his hands
to strike it down into the willow stump,
splitting the storm
to pass on each side.

We are watching
as the grandmother watched
the small silver screen
in her unheated trailer,
shaking her head in ancient pity
as the men in black judicial robes
sewed stones into their garments
and waded chanting Hail to their Chief
into the dark water and its unknown depths

We are watching
as the white stone canoe
returns once more to the western shore
we are watching as the calm Peacemaker
and Ayontwatha and the Mother of Nations
observe the approach of the new Tadadahos.

The earth shakes beneath their behemoth feet.
Their bodies are contorted by power.

Snakes grow from their hair,
the snakes of greed
the snakes of hate,
the snakes of envy
the snakes of deceit.

They hiss and coil,
those snakes of oil,
those snakes of blood diamonds,
those snakes of death squads
those snakes of disease.

There is no magic,
no weapon of war,
no human law,
no gathered force
that can defeat these Tadadahos,
these Twisted Minds with all their power.

Yet the Peacemaker and Ayontwatha
and the Mother of Nations are unmoved before them.
They wait in the cool shade of the Tree of Peace.
Behind them stand all of the people
who remember what Great Turtle taught them,
hands joined together, they hear the drum
with its heartdeep rhythm begin to beat.
The Great Song of Peace will resound again.
Ayontwatha holds the bone comb in his hand.

- Joseph Bruchac

A Brave And Startling Truth
*

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
*
When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil
*
When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
*
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
*
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets
*
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
*
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
*
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines
*
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear
*
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
*
- Maya Angelou

Butterfly Behemoth

lying in the road,
your fine feather-like antennae
and massive wings
spanning East to West

furry brown body
upon stout brown legs,
undercarriage to a glory
of painted panels.

So, this is where
the Seminole and Algonquin,
in wood and bead,
found delicacy of line,
subtle color fusion;

the Navajo Nation
fantastically threaded,
dyed design;

the Pomo, Miwok,
painstakingly wrought
bighearted basketry.

the Acoma,
sacred, secret,
dazzling-patterned clay.

Let me lift you
on a leaf
for our coming journey.

Your rare magnificence
is fanning out, fanning out,
lightening a way.

- Raphael Block

The Meaning Of Birds

Of the genesis of birds we know nothing,
save the legend they are descended
from reptiles: flying, snap-jawed lizards
that have somehow taken to air. Better the story
that they were crab-apple blossoms
or such, blown along by the wind; time after time
finding themselves tossed from perhaps a seaside tree,
floated or lifted over the thin blue lazarine waves
until something in the snatch of color
began to flutter and rise. But what does it matter
anyway how they got up high
in the trees or over the rusty shoulders
of some mountain? There they are,
little figments, animated—soaring.
And if occasionally a tern washes up
greased and stiff, and sometimes a cardinal
or a mockingbird slams against the windshield
and your soul goes oh God and shivers
at the quick and unexpected end
to beauty, it is not news that we live in a world
where beauty is unexplainable
and suddenly ruined
and has its own routines. We are often far
from home in a dark town, and our griefs
are difficult to translate into a language
understood by others. We sense the downswing of time
and learn, having come of age, that the reluctant
concessions made in youth
are not sufficient to heat the cold drawn breath
of age. Perhaps temperance
was not enough, foresight or even wisdom
fallacious, not only in conception
but in the thin acts
themselves. So our lives are difficult,
and perhaps unpardonable, and the fey gauds
of youth have, as the old men told us they would,
faded. But still, it is morning again, this day.
In the flowering trees
the birds take up their indifferent, elegant cries.
Look around. Perhaps it isn’t too late
to make a fool of yourself again. Perhaps it isn’t too late
to flap your arms and cry out, to give
one more cracked rendition of your singular, aspirant song.

- Charlie Smith

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don't turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what's alive in the furrow, what's dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

- Miguel De Unamuno

The True Love

There's a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never
believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held
out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man
who would walk every morning on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals, who would press his
hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his
prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the waters.

And I think of the story of the storm and the people
waking and seeing the distant, yet familiar figure,
far across the water calling to them.
And how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling and that moment when we have to say yes!
Except it will not come so grandly, so biblically,
but more subtly, and intimately in the face
of the one you know you have to love.
So that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find, everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage.

And if you wanted to drown, you could,
But you don't, because finally, after all
this struggle and all these years,
you don't want to anymore.
You've simply had enough of drowning
and you want to live, and you want to love.
And you'll walk across any territory,
and any darkness, however fluid,
and however dangerous to take the one
hand and the one life, you know belongs in yours.

- David Whyte

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and works and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

- Hafiz

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

- William Blake

The Altar of This Moment

Place everything you can perceive -
Everything you can
See,
Hear,
Smell,
Taste,
Or touch,
Upon the altar of this moment
And give thanks.

It is over so soon -
This expression,
This single moment of your precious life,
This one heart
pounding itself open
with fear or wild joy,

This one breath rising
in the cold winter air
smoothly and gently
or coughing and sputtering,

Bow, while you can, before
This one taste
Of afternoon tea
Warming its way to your belly,
Or the fragrant orange
exploding its sweet juice
in your grateful mouth.

You have to love
The antics of your mind,
Imagining life should only be sweet.
The bitter makes the sweet; and life is both.
It is whole, like you,
Before you think yourself to pieces.

Place this moment's pain and confusion on the altar, too,
And give special thanks for such grace
That wakes you up from sleeping through your life.
Pain is greatly under-rated as a pointer to Unknowing,
yet greatly over-rated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,
Your eyes meet mine and there is
a single looking.
What is peering from behind our masks?
Can it touch itself across the room?

Place your palms together;
Touch your holy skin.
In another moment it will shed itself.
What will you be then?
What were you before you had two hands?
What are you now?

You cannot capture That
and place It on the altar of this moment.
It is the altar,
And this moment's infinite expressions,
And the Seeing,
And its own devotion to itself.

You are That.

- Dorothy Hunt

Coyotes

Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.

The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

- Mark Jarman

What the Animals Teach Us

that love is dependent on memory,
that life is eternal and therefore criminal,
that thought is an invisible veil that covers our eyes,
that death is only another animal,
that beauty is formed by desperation,
that sex is solely a human problem,
that pets are wild in heaven,
that sounds and smells escape us,
that there are bones in the earth without any marker,
that language refers to too many things,
that music hints at what we heard before we sang,
that the circle is loaded,
that nothing we know by forgetting is sacred,
that humor charges the smallest things,
that the gods are animals without their masks,
that stones tell secrets to the wildest creatures,
that nature is an idea and not a place,
that our bodies have diminished in size and strength,
that our faces are terrible,
that our eyes are double when gazed upon,
that snakes do talk, as well as asses,
that we compose our only audience,
that we are geniuses when we wish to kill,
that we are naked despite our clothes,
that our minds are bodies in another world.

- Chard deNiord

Monkey Mind

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at that girl over there
In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like
To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip
And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts
Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions
And instead of answering she told her mother
Who told the teacher who told my father.
After all these years, I can almost feel his hand
Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision
Then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
And up again in that small arc
To smack his open palm against my butt.
I'm a slow learner
And still sometimes I'm sitting here wondering what my father
Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five,
Plunged down into his easy chair half the night
Listening to Bach cantatas. I know that he's going to die
Because he told my mother and my mother told me.
I didn't cry or cry out or say I'm sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered what
He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

- Steve Orlen

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

- W.S. Merwin

Another Spring

The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

- Kenneth Rexroth

Mule Heart
*
On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours --
flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and passion,
the other for all you have lost.
Both empty,
it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree's thin shade.
Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
This too is a gift of the gods,
calm and complete.
*
- Jane Hirschfield

One Day

One day I will
say
the gift I once had has been taken.

The place I have made for myself
belongs to another.
The words I have sung
are being sung by the ones
I would want.

Then I will be ready
for that voice
and the still silence in which it arrives.

And if my faith is good
then we'll meet again
on the road
and we'll be thirsty,
and stop
and laugh
and drink together again

from the deep well of things as they are.

- David Whyte