Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

- Billy Collins

Watching the Jet Planes Dive

We must go back and find a trail on the ground
back of the forest and mountain on the slow land;
we must begin to circle on the intricate sod.
By such wild beginnings without help we may find
the small trail on through the buffalo-bean vines.

We must go back with noses and the palms of our hands,
and climb over the map in far places, everywhere,
and lie down whenever there is doubt and sleep there.
If roads are unconnected we must make a path,
no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

We must find something forgotten by everyone alive,
and make some fabulous gesture when the sun goes down
as they do by custom in little Mexican towns
where they crawl for some ritual up a rocky steep.
The jet planes dive; we must travel on our knees.


- William Stafford

We

(After June Jordan’s – “A Poem for South African Women”)


“We are the ones we been waiting for”

Just listen to yourselves and we will wait no more

No need for another Malcolm or Martin

When you stand ready at the door of greatness

Seeds sewn by Sojourner have now sprouted in her likeness as true

New answers to old questions now lie in the hands of youth

Man or woman in the mirror now serves as your proof

that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for

Challenge is to realize your worth

But not before we understand our birthright to the throne

Our fate is our own

We are the clones of pharaohs and queens

We do not stand alone

We are the people

To end WAR

We Are Responsible

To conclude the long WAIT

We Acknowledge It’s Time - Now

Yes we are the ones we’ve been waiting for you

A community of self

Individuality the wealth that makes the collective unique

New reality that we hold the answers we seek

We need not lean on the crunch

Our government too much overrated

Our concerns too often debated and debated and debated and debated

Yes we are the one we’ve been waiting for

Just listen to yourself and we will wait no more

No need for another Malcolm or Martin

when you stand ready at the door of greatness

Seeds sewn by Sojourner have now sprouted in her likeness as truth

New answers to old questions now lie in the hands of youth

Man or woman in the mirror now serves as your proof

that we are the ones we've been waiting for


– Nathan M. Richardson

The Zen of Housework
I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wine glass,
holding it by the stem and under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches,
is setting in Western America.

I can see thousands of droplets
of steam -- each a tiny spectrum -- rising
from my goblet of grey wine.
They sway, changing directions
constantly -- like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.

Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!

- Al Zolynas

Punishment


They used books as weapons.
This is not a metaphor.
Because there were no blankets and they were cold,
the men in cell block L threw books
with intent to do bodily harm.
They rained down from above.
Rained down from the cells.
Guards shielded themselves
with dinner trays and mop buckets.
The men tossed entire libraries. A rage of books.
Lobbed in high arcs like footballs,
or pitched overhand like grenades.
Hardcovers shattered on cheekbones
or exploded on the back of someone’s head.
Paperbacks spiraled down, loose pages fluttering.
Thin ones skipped across the shiny tile like stones on water.
There was mayhem. There was blood.
Words littered the floor. Guards ran for their lives.
The men had spent years collecting—
biographies, mysteries, histories, science fiction,
even poetry books, their spines fine and reedy,
or thick with free verse.
One man threw his grandmother’s leather Bible.
Inside the front cover in elegant script
she’d noted the date and time of his birth.
Now it lay face down, back broken.
Another man hurled his family album.
It fell from the third floor, the photos scattering
on impact. His wife, his son, his daughter
smiled up from the chaos.

- Nancy Miller Gomez

The Price of Experience

What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house , his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the wagon loaded with corn

It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filled with wine and with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear the sounds of love in the thunder storm
that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field and the sickness
that cuts off his children

While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door
and our children bring fruit and flowers

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten
and the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison
and the soldier in the field
When the shattered bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me

- William Blake

Back Up Quick, They’re Hippies

That was the year we drove
into the commune in Cornwall.
“Jesus Jim,” mam said,
“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,
tents, row after row, flaps open,
long-haired men and women
curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves
wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,
to open the door, drop out and away
from my sister’s aggressive thighs,
Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market
I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,
bought a headband, an afghan coat,
a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

- Lani O’Hanlon

Pine Tree Ode

I was sitting on the top stones of a wall—can you
get even closer to the tree, he said, so I went
inches from the trunk of the tallest of the ones
we'd been standing among like small children
among the legs of the grown-ups.
Now, the side of my face was almost
against the bark, intimate,
I could see where its growing had pulled its surface
open, into wooden lozenges, like
stretch marks, I could not feel it breathe
but I felt it alive beside me, a huge
ant running down, and stopping, and turning
its feelers, in the air, between us, and then
walking so fast it seemed to be pouring back
up. Then I looked, up, along
the branchless stem, into the canopy,
to the needles fanning out in bunches
eating the sun. And the length of it seemed like
bravery, like strong will,
a single, whole, note, like a tenor's
cry, sustained, as if a tree were
a spurt from the earth, a heart's gush.
And the ants flowed from ground to sky,
sky to ground. I don't know where the ants
had been, or their ancestors had been, the noon
the tornado came through, wall of water
a hundred and thirty miles an hour,
solid ferocious grey static.
The tree stood. And now I sat up straight
beside it, feeling my way back
through species, and species, toward the pine, and toward
the ones we both descended from, the
fern, the green cell—the sun,
the star-stuff we are made of.

- Sharon Olds

Anything but Standard

It was the two of us, wasn't it, on those steamy nights
circling the low-slung museum across the street
and lingering by the pond behind the chapel.

It's how the southern clouds passed slowly
overhead, season after season, year after year,

as you followed a low intricate scent
across the stately lit lawn,
and studied the squirrels in the live oaks,
and waded into the brown reflecting pool
with the broken obelisk.

You were a descendent of water dogs
and anything but standard
when you materialized out of the sticky heat
with your dripping black forehead
and delinquent grin, a growl unmuzzled.

It was your Russian face that steadied me
as I sat on a battered wooden bench,
lost in a night that wouldn't end,
and you lay down - calm, poised, watchful -
and stirred beside me on the simmering grass.

Let's get up and go.
Trot ahead of me, old friend,
and shake off the watery darkness.

- Edward Hirsch

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

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

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet -
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

- Denise Levertov

Full Count

Very late watching recorded baseball
It’s still hot here but not as hot as in Phoenix
where this Giants and Diamondbacks game
was played earlier during triple digit weather

Don’t yet know who won and lost
Desert sun unfelt on the field
Roof was closed Something feels wrong
with this indoor artificially cooled baseball

Dictator plays something like airconditioned golf
While a child named Pablo cries Papa
Over and over and over again and
Again as I watch recorded baseball to forget

- Ed Coletti

A Man Talking To His House

I say that no one in this caravan is awake
and that while you sleep, a thief is stealing

the signs and symbols of what you thought
was your life. Now you're angry with me for

telling you this! Pay attention to those who
hurt your feelings telling you the truth.

Giving and absorbing compliments is like
trying to paint on water, that insubstantial.

Here is how a man once talked with his house,
“Please, if you're ever about to collapse,

let me know.” One night without a word the
house fell. “What happened to our agreement?”

The house answered, “Day and night I've been
telling you with cracks and broken boards and

holes appearing like mouths opening. But you
kept patching and filling those with mud, so

proud of your stopgap masonry. You didn't
listen.” This house is your body always

saying, I'm leaving; I'm going soon. Don't
hide from one who knows the secret. Drink

the wine of turning toward God. Don't examine
your urine. Examine instead how you praise,

what you wish for, this longing we've been
given. Fall turns pale yellow light wanting

spring and spring arrives! Trees blossom.
Come to the orchard and see what comes to

you, a silent conversation with your soul.

- Jelalludin Rumi

Mt Kailash, Nepal in the background.

Corfu: Olives Myths and Words

Barely shadowing my parcel of sunlight overlooking the Ionian Sea with
her placid azure waters are silvery green counterpoints, two
diminutive olive trees, bent like an aged couple facing off,
gnarled and twisted, roots exposed, pock marked and struggling.

Who plants trees knowing they will bear no fruit for a dozen years?

Eons pass and Menelaus’s kidnapped wife Helen launches a thousand
ships, kings and warriors battle for a decade, Paris, Achilles and thousands
more die. Another decade unfolds, this drama an underworld of sirens and
sea monsters as the Odyssey bears its narrative fruit for generations.

What Olympian storytelling gods orchestrate such a drama where myth
and history embrace as do the olive, and the tree that births it?

In our time the British authors Lawrence and Gerald Durrell descend into the
waters of Kalami bay for future readers and scholars hungry to partake of word
and verse. They had no titles, guarantees, or even prospects.

What beings plant such seedlings for fruits only to be gathered posthumously?

Knowing how fruitless would be the self-indulgent grasping.
Knowing that creating and even nurturing can reap no instant reward.
Knowing that with olives, myths and words, there is all the time in the world.

- Bruce Silverman

Age Sixty-nine

I keep waiting without knowing
what I'm waiting for.
I saw the setting moon at dawn
roll over the mountain
and perhaps into the dragon's mouth
until tomorrow evening.

There is this circle I walk
that I have learned to love.
I hope one day to be a spiral
but to the birds I'm a circle.

A thousand Spaniards died looking
for gold in a swamp when it was
in the mountains in clear sight beyond.

Here, though, on local earth my heart
is at rest as a groundling, letting
my mind take flight as it will,
no longer waiting for good or bad news.

Often, lately, the night is a cold maw
and stars the scattered white teeth of the gods,
which spare none of us. At dawn I have birds,
clearly divine messengers that I don't understand
yet day by day feel the grace of their intentions.

- Jim Harrison

Idée Fixe

No woman wants to be low-hanging fruit,
my glamorous girlfriend says, but I’m indiscriminate
and love all fruit, I’m tempted to list each kind
right here, in and out of season,
because even just saying the names gives me pleasure,
as does saying your name.
I’m not alone with my passion — my whole family,
we’re a little off in this regard,
we can spend hours talking about cantaloupe
or arguing over how many flats to buy
when it’s Peach-O-Rama at the Metropolitan.
Once I even drove half a day to get to Pence Orchards
where I met and took photos of Bert Pence,
who sold me three boxes of peaches at wholesale prices.
He was so good to me, as was the late-summer freestone
I picked as I walked back through the orchard
in the August heat to the entrance gates,
which were nothing like the Gates of Hell.
On the contrary, I was in heaven there in Yakima.
I can still smell that single peach, which was profusely
low-hanging, it was the definition of low-hanging,
it fell into my hands, as you did — 
or perhaps as I did into yours — 
but that was months ago.
When I walked past the stands yesterday,
on what should have been the first day of spring,
all produce had been covered with heavy blankets
to keep it warm, to mitigate harm.
Today the temperature dropped so low
someone thought to remove the fruit entirely and stash it away.
With this strange weather we’re having, will I see you again?
I can’t help myself.

- Catherine Barnett

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

- Wendell Berry

Holy As A Day Is Spent

Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels

And frying eggs sound like psalms
With a bit of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion’s beat
And the check out girl, Counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today

Hymns of geese fly overhead
And stretch their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog
That runs in her sleep
To catch that wild and elusive thing

Holy is a familiar room and the quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can

I’m letting go of all I fear
Like autumn leaves of earth and air
For summer came and summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
The empty page, the open book
Redemption everywhere I look

Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
With grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent

And morning light sings “providence”
As holy as a day is spent

- Carrie Newcomer

What is Lady Liberty Doing?


Guiding, guarding, illuminating, welcoming

She lifts her lamp beside the golden door

A beacon in the dark, a lighthouse for the world

But like any woman worth her salt, she is multi-tasking

We look up to Lady Liberty when we ought to look down

She has feet, you know,
Not legs, but feet.
She has neatly clipped toenails
And a sturdy pair of traveling sandals.

Why?

Because she is in motion, striding forward,
Her right foot flexed, pushing off,
Her left foot firmly planted ahead.

It cost Bartholdi precious time and expensive materials to carve those feet.
He could have hidden them under her robe.
He could have had her standing still, with just her toes peeping out,
But he made her a woman of action.

Because you cannot embody Liberty standing still.

Now, you cannot see her left foot unless you are airborne
Which is why so many people don’t know
That it is trampling, and breaking, a chain -
By the side, a broken shackle.
Lady Liberty has been a slave, her feet bound,
And now, liberated,
She is taking her first full step into a future of freedom.

Look down and see the story.
She holds the torch to light her own way
As well as ours.
She invites us not to end our journey but to begin it.

- Gail M. Burns

Messages From The Chair

What if the dental chair and reaming of roots were Buddhist trainers?
What if the scent of grinding bone spoke to you softly saying you are blessed beyond measure?
What if the Dylan songs sifting through layers of nitrous
sparked your truthful and rarely contacted conscious self
and allowed your total forgiveness of two ancient lovers?

What if a rarefied Wonder Woman
snatched away your self image of Doubts
and gifted you with deeper wisdom?

What if that wisdom set you in a new colorful chair
where acceptance and compassion replace
the older guides of struggle and striving?

What if Life after the dental chair brought us all to deep knowing
that no matter what is happening we are living our dreams
and those dreams wake us up feeling happy and blessed forever?

- Carole Watanabe

Ode to a Hat


It was down in the hold of the ship:
I crocheted in the half light
of crew arguments and the stomach-bending
pitch of the vessel,
While far away my mother wondered if I still loved her.

It was calico--and I realize now I must have borrowed the yarn
(after all, I didn't board with any--thank you, Angela!).
And its birth insulated me from where I was,
And from whom I had been.

Afterwards, I did mail it to her...my mother.
Then, much later, it appeared in photographs:
Scenes of her spending her mornings
studying Chinese or piano or some such--
those cold Northern California days, half-lit.
Always that special covering, though rarely mentioned...

Well...

then...

"The Fire":

The fire took the hat.
The fire
took most everything--even the piano I learned on.

Plus...

...that silly bit of spindly
cheap poly-thread covering
which Most likely had believed itself safe.
Yes, it did:
Safe in a box
where it had been deliberately placed so as not to be worn to death.
Safe where it might continue--as all love hopes to.
Safe, where, when the flames finally found it,
It told them it had already served a greater purpose.

Greater than all its adversaries possessed, even them.

Can you imagine how it spoke truth to flame?

Addressing the smoke and ash:

"I've mattered more in this world than you could ever ever possibly

Hope to.

I have done my work.

Now take me home.”

- Ladd Holroyd

Made me cry...:tear:

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Ode to a Hat...

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My Proteins

They have discovered, they say,
the protein of itch—
natriuretic polypeptide b—
and that it travels its own distinct pathway
inside my spine.
As do pain, pleasure, and heat.

A body it seems is a highway,
a cloverleaf crossing
well built, well traversed.
Some of me going north, some going south.

Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
are not my own person,
they are other beings inside me.

As ninety-six percent of my life is not my life.

Yet I, they say, am they—
my bacteria and yeasts,
my father and mother,
grandparents, lovers,
my drivers talking on cell phones,
my subways and bridges,
my thieves, my police
who chase my self night and day.

My proteins, apparently also me,
fold the shirts.

I find in this crowded metropolis
a quiet corner,
where I build of not-me Lego blocks
a bench,
pigeons, a sandwich
of rye bread, mustard, and cheese.

It is me and is not,
the hunger
that makes the sandwich good.

It is not me then is,
the sandwich—
a mystery neither of us
can fold, unfold, or consume.

- Jane Hirshfield

In Context: Mekong Delta


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

by the collision of continents that might
as well be gods in a myth we made,
so we could nod, say ah this is how

this came to be. The Mekong does not
know it is destined to lose itself
in the South China Sea, does not know

it is a river. For now it is only a melting
out of silence, a shifting from static
into motion. In the Himalayas

streams blossom with the trees,
glitter their own little Shangri-las
from every cliff and crag and crevice,

until the season avalanches into a tumult
of rapids, ripping new canyons through hills
that only look like they are standing still.

Land of a million elephants, land of smiles,
kingdoms, pagodas, wars working their way
through the salt mines of unwon minds.

When foothills spill into killing fields,
the Mekong yawns wide enough to live
on, to buy and sell on. To be sold on.

Whatever language it has gathered in its rushing
over stones, under bridges, in its lugging
of the dropped, the drowned, the used,

it will lose. Every second it is different
water whispering never again never
again. If we could ride it like a many-headed

serpent as it splays into the sea, for a while
it would remain its own current, but eventually
whatever body it’s become in its loose holding,

whatever sound it has become in its one yearning
toward exactly this disappearing, is replaced
by whatever the sea says when it forgets

the chant it repeats on every beach,
the one we mistranslate ash to ash,
dust to dust.


- Erin Rodoni

Petaluma Moment

Unhurried the heron walks, long skinny legs
across the Petaluma mud
Stands beside the slow-moving river
His long pointy beak preens long blue feathers
Then stares long long long at the rippling water

Long has the heron known
A fish will come
The water will flow
The moon will rise
And he will fly and die and fly again
Long has the heron known

- Doug von Koss

Everybody Loves Trader Joe's


Lost My Job
3 Children
Please Help

He saw the sign,
the woman's face blocked
by a scarf.
He parked, five dollars in hand,
locked the car, walked a few steps,
returned, looked in the glove compartment.
Maybe he had a ten—no, just a twenty...too much.
He shopped at Trader Joe's to save money.
Gave her the bill, said “good luck.”
“God Bless You,” she said.
She looked foreign...from India, Pakistan,
like a gypsy or something.
Actually he didn't want to get blessed.
He went through TJ's— rye bread, bananas, butter, milk, eggs, frozen peas, frozen chicken breast, cottage cheese, almonds.
That was it.
But if he wanted, he could get anything.
Heading back to his car, he passed her again.
He caught her eye.
She gave a slight nod, a certain elegance, a grace.

somehow
he felt diminished


- Jean Wong

Fire

Natural as a stream, a breeze
Hot and insistent in
Summer. Like puma, creosote
Or coyote, fire has its own life.

Our species invades homes
Of bobcat, deer and rabbit.
We invade the home of
Fire, who like us,
Takes all—our worthy adversary.

- Rebecca del Rio

Rabbits and Fire

Everything’s been said
But one last thing about the desert,
And it’s awful: During brush fires in the Sonoran desert,
Brush fires that happen before the monsoon and in the great,
Deep, wide, and smothering heat of the hottest months,
The longest months,
The hypnotic, immeasurable lulls of August and July—
During these summer fires, jackrabbits—
Jackrabbits and everything else
That lives in the brush of the rolling hills,
But jackrabbits especially—
Jackrabbits can get caught in the flames,
No matter how fast and big and strong and sleek they are.
And when they’re caught,
Cornered in and against the thick
Trunks and thin spines of the cactus,
When they can’t back up any more,
When they can’t move, the flame—
It touches them,
And their fur catches fire.
Of course, they run away from the flame,
Finding movement even when there is none to be found,
Jumping big and high over the wave of fire, or backing
Even harder through the impenetrable
Tangle of hardened saguaro
And prickly pear and cholla and barrel,
But whichever way they find,
What happens is what happens: They catch fire
And then bring the fire with them when they run.
They don’t know they’re on fire at first,
Running so fast as to make the fire
Shoot like rocket engines and smoke behind them,
But then the rabbits tire
And the fire catches up,
Stuck onto them like the needles of the cactus,
Which at first must be what they think they feel on their skins.
They’ve felt this before, every rabbit.
But this time the feeling keeps on.
And of course, they ignite the brush and dried weeds
All over again, making more fire, all around them.
I’m sorry for the rabbits.
And I’m sorry for us
To know this.

- Alberto Ríos

Miracle Prayer

Mistress of Miracles, come to us now,
Out of the darkness, out of the earth.
Mistress of Miracles, we offer our vow,
To awaken the tides of our nation’s rebirth.

As the snow-topped peaks melt in rivers and streams,
As the grasses and flowers poke up from the land,
As the baby emerges from the womb’s land of dreams,
May the lies be revealed, may the truth take a stand.

As the rainbow emerges from storms in the sky,
As the eagle sees all with his wide roving eye,
As our deep wounds can heal, as the heart’s wings can fly,
May the old ways of power now wither and die.

May the ways of oppression now move to the past.
May all that is sacred be protected at last.
May wars wrought from killing for power and greed
Be replaced with compassion, that all may be freed.

May our leaders reflect the hopes that we share
For a world ruled in balance, by a people who care.
May the poor be rewarded, may the land be preserved,
May those who exploit get what they deserve.

Mistress of Magic, come out of your cave
Come aid in our efforts, there’s a world to be saved.
We need a miracle, of that we are sure
Save us from madness, bring us a cure.

- Anodea Judith

Another Poetic Argument For Grief

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Have you cried enough
in this lifetime?

Take your grief seriously

Become the ash urn
for the vanishing wilderness

Despair for the Dolphins

Make your own salt water
for the disappearing marshes

The silent Earth is listening

Be called to outrageous acts of despair

And then,

Every now and again

In the face of splendor

Turn toward it.

- Kristy Hellums