Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

If, On Account Of The Political Situation


If, on account of the political situation,
there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men
Lying about in the countryside neither drunk or asleep,
If all sailings have been cancelled till further notice,
If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,
Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,
The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,
That is not at all unusual for this time of year.
If that were all, we should know how to manage. Flood, fire,
The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,
Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal grief,
These are after all our familiar tribulations,
And we have been through them all before, many, many times.
As events which belong to the natural world where
The occupation of space is the real and final fact
And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,
They occur again and again but only to pass
Again and again into their formal opposites,
From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to work,
So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern composed
By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly happen
Is permanent in a general average way.


Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we seemed
To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the tiger,
The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,
Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:
To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not
So impossible after all; to cut our losses
And bury our dead was really quite easy. That was why
We were always able to say: "We are children of God,
And our Father has never forsaken His people."

But then we were children: That was a moment ago,
Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced
Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.
Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain
We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone
In the waiting room of the country junction, looking
Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion
But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?

Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:
We can only say that now It is there and that nothing
We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,
For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if
We had left our house for five minutes to mail a . letter,
And during that time the living room had changed places
With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;

It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered
Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching our shadow
Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean
That the world of space where events reoccur is still there,
Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere
Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:
I mean that although there's a person we know all about
Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,
That person has become a fiction; our true existence
Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.

That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome
The nursery bogey or the wine cellar ghost, why even
The violent howling of winter and war has become
Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are afraid
Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare
Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.
This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.

- W.H. Auden

This could have been written yesterday. Thanks, Barry.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

If, On Account Of The Political Situation


If, on account of the political situation,
there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men
Lying about in the countryside neither drunk or asleep,
If all sailings have been cancelled till further notice,
If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,
Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,
The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,
That is not at all unusual for this time of year.
If that were all, we should know how to manage. Flood, fire,
The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,
Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal grief,
These are after all our familiar tribulations,
And we have been through them all before, many, many times.
As events which belong to the natural world where
The occupation of space is the real and final fact
And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,
They occur again and again but only to pass
Again and again into their formal opposites,
From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to work,
So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern composed
By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly happen
Is permanent in a general average way.


Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we seemed
To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the tiger,
The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,
Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:
To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not
So impossible after all; to cut our losses
And bury our dead was really quite easy. That was why
We were always able to say: "We are children of God,
And our Father has never forsaken His people."

But then we were children: That was a moment ago,
Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced
Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.
Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain
We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone
In the waiting room of the country junction, looking
Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion
But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?

Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:
We can only say that now It is there and that nothing
We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,
For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if
We had left our house for five minutes to mail a . letter,
And during that time the living room had changed places
With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;

It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered
Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching our shadow
Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean
That the world of space where events reoccur is still there,
Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere
Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:
I mean that although there's a person we know all about
Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,
That person has become a fiction; our true existence
Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.

That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome
The nursery bogey or the wine cellar ghost, why even
The violent howling of winter and war has become
Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are afraid
Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare
Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.
This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.

- W.H. Auden

---

Happiness

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

- Jane Kenyon

Henry James

“Poor Mr. James,” Virginia Woolf once said:
“He never quite met the right people.”
Poor James. He never quite met the
children of light and so he had to invent them.
Then, when people said: No one is like that.
Your books are not reality, he replied:

So much the worse for reality.

He described himself as “slow to conclude,
orotund, a slow-moving creature, circling his rooms
slowly masticating his food.”

Once, when a nephew asked his advice
on how to live, he searched his mind.
Number One, be kind, he said.
Number Two, be kind and
Number Three, be kind.

- June Beisch

Life While-You-Wait

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run —
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).

You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there’s no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I’ve done.

- Wisława Szymborska
(translation by Clare Cavanaugh and Stanislaw Baranczak)

Tao Te Ching

(Verse 29)

Those who would take over the earth
And shape it to their will
Never, I notice, succeed.
The earth is like a vessel so sacred
That at the mere approach of the profane
It is marred
And when they reach out their fingers it is gone.
For a time in the world some force themselves ahead
And some are left behind,
For a time in the world some make a great noise
And some are held silent,
For a time in the world some are puffed fat
And some are kept hungry,
For a time in the world some push aboard
And some are tipped out:
At no time in the world will a man who is sane
Over-reach himself,
Over-spend himself,
Over-rate himself.

- Lao Tzu

(translation by Witter Bynner)

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full,
the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;
on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean,
and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full,
and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

- Matthew Arnold

A thousand thanks for words like these.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night....

- Matthew Arnold

---

Occupy Wall Street


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

[Drew Dellinger, 2001]



I take exception to the rule
of the greedy and the cruel.

This fall, school’s in session
and the lesson is Wall Street.
It’s time for action
and your name’s on the call sheet.
It’s time we all meet
and name what it is:
the game has been rigged
to enrich corporate
business interests that sent this economy spinning.
Charlie Sheen is not the only clueless dude that thinks he’s winning.

See, the one percent done spent all the rent.
And now the rent’s due, so we’re coming to a tent near you.

We’re the like-minded ninety-nine percent
standing up to corruption with loving dissent.

We stand for justice,
and the future,
and all of humanity.
Embracing all people.
Yes, even Sean Hannity.

The message is simple:
greed, injustice, and eco-destruction have to go.
Pay attention corporate media. We’ll try to say it slow.

It’s time to
rock the nation,
rock this occupation.

It’s time for the people to peacefully fight back.
Tell Congress and the media we’re taking the mic back.

Tell the jaded it’s that long-awaited revolution.
Put away the pepper spray and re-read the Constitution.
These cops are paid to go crazy, yo.
But we’re peaceful.
Don’t tase me, bro.

We came to incite insight,
unite and discuss this.
We came to hang, and to bang the drums of justice.

Let’s occupy
with our love and our light.

Let’s occupy
the earth and the sky,
and live with all beings
as a planet-wide tribe.

Occupy the divine mind residing inside.

See, I’m the type writer
that’s known to light fires
and prone to inspire
the moment’s own higher desire.

‘Cause history knows it’s the time
for resisting the team at the scene of the crime.

Tell your friends I’ll meet ‘em there at Freedom Square.
They can’t stop us, from Seattle to Chiapas.
It’s our mission to envision
what comes after the catastrophe.
How do we move past
the capitalist disaster?

Our communities need us.
We are all leaders.

How could we ask for anything less than the future?


- Drew Dellinger

- a favorite one of mine, for decades. Thank you.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night....

- Matthew Arnold

---

Happiness
after the fires


We’ll find it again
Perhaps not as much
as the dog in Scotland
who wagged his tail so hard

so often
it had to be
amputated

Not that happy.
But
Okay happy.

After two years in a pound
he found a home.
It will take at least that long

for some in Sonoma County
and when they do
we’ll wag our behinds

like Buster
though I don’t care what they say
there’s no such thing

as a forever home.

- Katherine Hastings

Note: Buster, named “the happiest dog in Scotland” is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier who had to have his tail amputated due to excessive wagging. Reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 13, 2017

Advent Lament Psalm


Mother of us all,
our hearts are like burned landscapes
pleading for water

We are dry, helpless
not knowing how to birth you
in this dark hate place

Yet, in times like this
our ancestors called on you
and You guided them

The people in fear
fractured within and without
and You came to them

Shine into us now
make our land fertile again
hearts watered with Light
Pregnant with the light

- Ruah Bull

Tell

Here we walk through the woods


down a road

paved with two words:

us.



The hour before dawn is the hour

when dawn will never come,

waiting to be born

for breakfast.



I give you only masterpieces.

Because since your arms are already wide enough

to go around the whole world and hug it

nothing less will fit them.



Take responsibility for this secret.

Tell everyone.

- Bruce Moody

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

Lovely poem, Larry. Thanks for sharing. It reminded me of Mary Oliver's wonderful poem, a kind of corollary:


WILD GEESE


You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.


Mary Oliver

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

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

---

And thanks to Larry, too, of course!

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

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

---

“Monday Monday, can’t trust that day”

The woman with the suitcase

I. BACK
Monday 10.2.17

wake up call 4:45 am
pack a snack water
wear a warm jacket walk
hotel to the bus

hour and a half
ride through grasslands
light forest some towns
arrive at the gate
Auschwitz
. . .

I want to tell you
you are remembered
I don’t know you
I can’t find you among lists of names
grainy black and white photos

inside a window box
thousands of wire-rimmed glasses
piled willy-nilly in a heap
. . .

there is a magnitude
of this holocaust
which I cannot grasp
a level of atrocity
difficult to fathom
perhaps the most incredulous
of my impressions
is the utter organization
the mechanistic operation
of this killing factory
. . .

whether Dachau Theresienstadt
the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC
the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem
its thin metal arms and legs sticking into the air
each with their slanted interpretations
the genocide is unmistakable

here in Poland
in and around orderly buildings
I peer through barbed wire
see torn striped clothing
run my fingers
along with the brick wall backdrop
of a firing squad

gaze at photos of castrated inmates
hollow-cheeked children stare
wide-eyed into the unknown
. . .

how can I reach you
any one person unknown
to cradle your fear
your suffering
your disbelief
hold it as my own
which in some way it is

I am among visitors
from Japan Germany
other parts of Europe
young faces drinking in atrocities
I hear sobbing
wooden torsos walk through the museum walls
tour guides tell their stories
in multiple languages
so it should not be forgotten

for a moment I go
into that trance place
to honor you
even the perpetrators
so hardened off from compassion

on the bus back to Kraków
humbled for this life
I eat my sandwich
drink water
embarrassed at the wealth
of food and drink
transportation and warmth

I return to the hotel
learn of the massive shooting in Las Vegas
it is still Monday, October 2 2017
the largest massacre in US history
a drop in the bucket
of humans unable to get along
whether one person or 6 million
whether a Jew or a Pole
a white rocker at a concert
the sacrilege of taking life
has become the norm
our human race races
toward annihilation

I think of you again
the person thrown
into a mass grave
after the bullets the beatings
your skeleton shoveled into the furnace
after the gas
Auschwitz Aleppo Nagasaki

are our survivor skills
stronger than the systematic slaughtering
engineered with the precision
of our developed frontal brain?

what happened?

I forgot to take a stone from the camp
to bring home as a remembrance
maybe just as well
the stones belong there
in sacred territory

II. FORWARD
1991 to the present

resilience in the Baltics
independence from oppression
capitalism and new energy
NATO and the EU
there’s humor optimism
smart people extol virtues of victory
I wander north through Vilnius
my maternal grandfather was born here
then further north into Latvia
search for the hometown
of my paternal grandmother
its name not on a map
the territory occupied by many regimes
in a few short years
I can’t quite find the “old country” where
Grandma Becky left her home
as a young woman seeking
a new life taking
only her suitcase
with the requisite candlesticks

III. BACK AND FORWARD
Monday 10.9.17

still in Riga with its
vitality and rich chocolate
awake to the ping
an email around 4 a.m.
my neighborhood evacuations
northern California on alert
safe not safe
national news disaster zone

up by day more touring more chocolate
restored buildings opulence of castles
collections pilfered through centuries
Tallinn Helsinki St. Petersburg
pride of history celebrating culture

by night hours in bed linking
to a newly charred past
through the 2.5 x 4 inch smart phone screen
streaming KSRO across the Atlantic

flames first responders
yelling “get out get out”
coverage of my neighborhood
one street over
chaos fear dread
then the aerial photos
it’s gone all of it
structures car computer
all records
memorabilia
the entire neighborhood
it’s gone all of it

a different kind of firing squad
not the systematic mechanized way
of the Nazi empire
but random capricious fire
ashes ashes
they all fell down
a tree stands amid its dead brothers
and the stones remain
sacred territory

I have returned like Dorothy from OZ
I have become what I sought to understand
homeless ungrounded fractured
moving to new territory
with only the clothes I brought with me

I have become the woman
with the suitcase
not grasping my
grandmother’s adventure
to get out
but now learning to navigate
my own where
I cannot go back in

- Sharon Bard

I wish you much greening and renewal, as you face your own personal 'ground zero'....

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

“Monday Monday, can’t trust that day”

The woman with the suitcase...

---

We Breathe You


There was a curious dusting of a talcum-like substance on my car one morning last week.

I drove away. It flew off, disappearing into the air.

Then it came to me.

The fires.

The terrible, terrible fires reducing your homes, your towns, even some of you into fine ash and carried on the wind thirty, forty, fifty, miles off.

We read newspapers, see the pictures and videos, wring our hands and pray.

My wife packed blankets, pillows, food and water.
“Paper says you can leave them at Community Market. They’ll get them to the victims.”

I couldn’t get into the market’s driveway for the long lines of those dropping off their boxes filled with concern and love.

Heard that I could take the items to a union hall – “We hoped to get enough to fill a semi truckload,” the man at the hall said, “but we got that on the first day, we’re sending another.”

So many good people.

And the ash of your homes, towns, of you - we breathe it in taking you into our bodies - you literally become us - streaming through our hearts.


- Armando Garcia-Dávila
September 2015

The Yellow Leaf


In Washington Square Park


A yellow leaf
drifts
slowly down,
turning langorously
like a swimmer afloat
on gentle waves.
I watch it go
down,
slantwise,
down
till it is lost
in a patch of pale asters.

“Do it again!”
I cry, almost aloud.
But no.
Never again.
Never in the history of the universe
past and to come
will it happen again.

And so, the moments of my life
each unique, inimitable, irretrievable,
gone forever.

And yet,
unlike that singular leaf,
another follows,
and another
giving the illusion
of immortality.

- Nina Mermey Klippel

Protest

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.

- Ella Wheeler
(1914)

Strong stuff! And never so important as right this moment!

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Protest...

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Finding The Space In The Heart

I first saw it in the sixties,
driving a Volkswagen camper
with a fierce gay poet and a
lovely but dangerous girl with a husky voice,

we came down from Canada
on the dry east side of the ranges. Grand Coulee, Blue
Mountains, lava flow caves,
the Alvord desert—pronghorn ranges—
and the glittering obsidian-paved
dirt track toward Vya,
seldom-seen roads late September and
thick frost at dawn; then
follow a canyon and suddenly open to
silvery flats that curved over the edge

O, ah! The
awareness of emptiness
brings forth a heart of compassion!

We followed the rim of the playa
to a bar where the roads end
and over a pass into Pyramid Lake
from the Smoke Creek side,
by the ranches of wizards
who follow the tipi path.
The next day we reached San Francisco
in a time when it seemed
the world might head a new way.

And again, in the seventies, back from
Montana, I recklessly pulled off the highway
took a dirt track onto the flats,
got stuck—scared the kids—slept the night,
and the next day sucked free and went on.

Fifteen years passed. In the eighties
With my lover I went where the roads end.
Walked the hills for a day,
looked out where it all drops away,
discovered a path
of carved stone inscriptions tucked into the sagebrush

“Stomp out greed”
“The best things in life are not things”

words placed by an old desert sage.

Faint shorelines seen high on these slopes,
long gone Lake Lahontan,
cutthroat trout spirit in silt—
Columbian Mammoth bones
four hundred feet up on the wave-etched
beach ledge; curly-horned
desert sheep outlines pecked into the rock,

and turned the truck onto the playa
heading for know-not,
bone-gray dust boiling and billowing,
mile after mile, trackless and featureless,
let the car coast to a halt
on the crazed cracked
flat hard face where
winter snow spirals, and
summer sun bakes like a kiln.
Off nowhere, to be or not be,

all equal, far reaches, no bounds.
Sound swallowed away
no waters, no mountains, no
bush no grass and
because no grass
no shade but your shadow.
No flatness because no not-flatness.
No loss, no gain. So—
nothing in the way!
—the ground is the sky
the sky is the ground,
no place between, just

wind-whip breeze,
tent-mouth leeward,
time being here.
We meet heart to heart,
leg hard-twined to leg,
with a kiss that goes to the bone.
Dawn sun comes straight in the eye. The tooth
of a far peak called King Lear.

Now in the nineties desert night
—my lover’s my wife—
old friends, old trucks, drawn around;
great arcs of kids on bikes out there in darkness
no lights—just planet Venus glinting
by the calyx crescent moon,
and tasting grasshoppers roasted in a pan.

They all somehow swarm down here—
sons and daughters in the circle
eating grasshoppers grimacing,

singing sūtras for the insects in the wilderness,

—the wideness, the
foolish loving spaces

full of heart.

Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns

Streams and mountains never stay the same.


The space goes on.
But the wet black brush
tip drawn to a point,
lifts away.

- Gary Snyder

Marin-an 1956—Kitkitdizze 1996

Photo: William Rain

Late Autumn

Late Autumn's shiver peels loose
the petals the sun warmed in summer
preparing for the sharp winds and fury
of rains, winter's threshold the startled
psyche now crosses.
The fall, harbinger of changing moods,
pulled the net of the lowering sun into the
sleek inlets of contemplation, inviting impasse
and withdrawal. November air freezes the
nailed,half-peeled calender page that signals
the solstice and the bracing for the cold and
demanding days ahead. Already we've seen
geese on their flights spreading omens of
change. For some winter will signal renewed
intentions while for others unfinished chores
will have to wait. We will survive and in time
bless this cycle as the song that endures
in the sound of adversity with it's brave note
of will and self-forgiveness.
Such sounds were heard in Fall's elegies
of birds, moods felt in the trees' disrobing of
their colored leaves, flowers tearful in the morning's
veils of frost. Now the earth will become even more
reclusive. Windows will darken, maybe our spirits
as well. Sudden December will pull away from
much of what's tentative and irresolute inside us,
precipitating perhaps an adaptation to a deeper
and unstoppable will. Late Autumn is the corridor
preceding a sharp shift. It allows us to shelter
in our gathered bedding for that nestled gift of
intimate sleep.

- Rich Meyers

Season of skinny candles

A row of tall skinny candles burns
quickly into the night

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air, the shames* raised
over the rest
for its hard work.

Darkness rushes in
after the sun sinks
like a bright plug pulled.
Our eyes drown in night
thick as ink pudding.

When even the moon
starves to a sliver
of quicksilver
the little candles poke
holes in the blackness.

A time to eat fat
and oil, a time to gamble
for pennies and gambol

- Marge Piercy

*shames: the middle candle that lights the others every night

When Random Sharks Attack

When a frenzy of orange threshers
battle-sharpened yellow teeth ablaze
rushes to take your home
nothing can prepare you for the carnage
Denial an oh so temporary refuge
briefly houses your future plans and hopes
It too is overtaken by voracious marauders
I speak as one consumed
I dream of a huge red bear
I am empty sad feel worthless
I don’t know what to do be still or fight
Luck had saved me up 'til the present
I’m watching scores of rock doves swoop
these Oakland hills evade the stoop of circling
red tail hawks eye level with our refuge from
the fire oh that black senses-deadened early morning
blind eyed rush without a single dorsal fin
to warn or woo while now and here in hills
across the Bay awake to strangeness:
curse of phantom pain we know but still
we want the easy comfort of our house
the sense of going home to what we know
to what we together purchased once we married
I seek a new thesaurus to explain things
Here in space where furniture doesn’t fit me
in and out of my body feeling freaky
If it’s true that attachment equaled suffering
I’ve been shoved on to the road of enlightenment
all too quickly here in a region known as Purgatory
atoning for my sin of routine comfort

We almost died
We did not die
We lost a house
And all possessions
Much more remains
In the rubble of our pain
The innocence of sharks
very much maligned

- Ed Coletti

A Winter Solstice Prayer

The dark shadow of space leans over us. . . . .
We are mindful that the darkness of greed, exploitation, and hatred
also lengthens its shadow over our small planet Earth.
As our ancestors feared death and evil and all the dark powers of winter,
we fear that the darkness of war, discrimination, and selfishness
may doom us and our planet to an eternal winter.

May we find hope in the lights we have kindled on this sacred night,
hope in one another and in all who form the web-work of peace and justice
that spans the world.

In the heart of every person on this Earth
burns the spark of luminous goodness;
in no heart is there total darkness.
May we who have celebrated this winter solstice,
by our lives and service, by our prayers and love,
call forth from one another the light and the love
that is hidden in every heart.
Amen.

- Edward Hayes

Winter Solstice


Perhaps

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for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling
the computers desist
from 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

Winter Solstice: Persephone's Return

I stand at my kitchen window
in the silence of the still sleeping
house and watch the sun
scatter eucalyptus light into leaves,
peel red strips of sky from
smoothed trunks.
Naked in the morning.

Gathering up the shards of light,
I arrange them into day, work,
and they emerge
into sudden brilliance.
Jays flash blue glints.
The sun warms my back.

The winter garden grows green,
all leaves. A single turnip
purples the earth where I dig
into clumped earth, press clay,
mold the vessel that gathers the rain.
The birds drink from the earthen moon.

Evening, I hold the water-colored
sky bowl in my hands, descend
as daughter of the earth, and dream,
as the moon rises, tipping
the bowl, awakening to each return
of the day with crimson lips,
pomegranate seeds
still on my tongue.
When it grows light,
I will plant them.

- Fran Holland-Claggett