Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

- David Wagoner

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Lost

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The Kookaburras

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

- Mary Oliver

Bird Bath

only this
matters: this ecstatic
baptism

this standing on stick-
thin legs where the singing
creek pools at the lip
of the waterfall

only this
ruby-feathered
chest diving to meet
its reflection

this beak piercing
again and again that quivering
surface, these wings half-
unfolding, a ruffle

of joy guiding rivers
of light a tumble
of droplets dressed
in rainbows along your hidden
spine

shattering all
decorum beneath
blue branches in quiet

assent.


- Elizabeth Reninger

1969

The summer everyone left for the moon
even those yet to be born. And the dead
who can’t vacation here but met us all there
by the veil between worlds. The number one song
in America was “In the Year 2525”
because who has ever lived in the present
when there’s so much of the future
to continue without us.
How the best lover won’t need to forgive you
and surely take everything off your hands
without having to ask, without knowing
your name, no matter the number of times
you married or didn’t, your favorite midnight movie,
the cigarettes you couldn’t give up,
wanting to kiss other people you shouldn’t
and now to forever be kissed by the Earth.
In the Earth. With the Earth.
When we all briefly left it
to look back on each other from above,
shocked by how bright even our pain is
running wildly beside us like an underground river.
And whatever language is good for,
a sign, a message left up there that reads:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
Then returned to continue the war.

- Alex Dimitrov

Earth from the Hubble telescope,
rose stem from Sonoma County back yard,
poem from Boulder's William Rain.

Wait Without Hope

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

- T. S. Eliot

July in Washington

The stiff spokes of this wheel

touch the sore spots of the earth.



On the Potomac, swan-white

power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.



Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,

raccoons clean their meat in the creek.



On the circles, green statues ride like South American

liberators above the breeding vegetation—



prongs and spearheads of some equatorial

backland that will inherit the globe.



The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes,

and die dishevelled and soft.



We cannot name their names, or number their dates—

circle on circle, like rings on a tree—



but we wish the river had another shore,

some further range of delectable mountains,



distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid.

It seems the least little shove would land us there,



that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies

we no longer control could drag us back.

- Robert Lowell

Witchgrass

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much
don’t bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
One enemy—

I’m not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can’t rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

- Louise Glück

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

traveled at speed
round a shaped wing
easily holds our weight.

So may we, in this life trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.

- David Whyte

Light Hoofed

What if we enter each day
so silently, so seamlessly
the birds don't sound alarms and dart away,
our minds so well released from fits of thought
we are kin to all that breathes,
like grazing deer
hidden in dapples of green

O how we would walk then
light hoofed and elfin eyed, even on crowded days,
each trembling leaf a welcome
Silky beating wings
would cool our errant fevers of mind
would keep us filled with awe
and kind


- Cynthia Poten

Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America


It's a day when all the dogs of all
the borrowed houses are angel footing
down the hard hardwood of middle-America's
newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors,
and the world's nicest pie I know
is somewhere waiting for the right
time to offer itself to the wayward
and the word-weary. How come the road
goes coast to coast and never just
dumps us in the water, clean and
come clean, like a fish slipped out
of the national net of "longing for joy."
How come it doesn't? Once, on a road trip
through the country, a waitress walked
in the train's diner car and swished
her non-aproned end and said,
"Hot stuff and food too." My family
still says it, when the food is hot,
and the mood is good inside the open windows.
I'd like to wear an apron for you
and come over with non-church sanctioned
knee-highs and the prettiest pie of birds
and ocean water and grief. I'd like
to be younger when I do this, like the country
before Mr. Meriwether rowed the river
and then let the country fill him up
till it killed him hard by his own hand.
I'd like to be that dog they took with them,
large and dark and silent and un-blamable.
Or I'd like to be Emily Dickinson's dog, Carlo,
and go on loving the rare un-loveable puzzle
of woman and human and mind. But, I bet I'm more
the house beagle and the howl and the obedient
eyes of everyone wanting to make their own kind
of America, but still be America, too. The road
is long and all the dogs don't care too much about
roadside concrete history and postcards of state
treasures, they just want their head out the window,
and the speeding air to make them feel faster
and younger, and newer than all the dogs
that went before them, they want to be your only dog,
your best-loved dog, for this good dog of today
to be the only beast that matters.

- Ada Limón

Coming to Know Silence

30 miles west of Ketchum
In the heart of the Sawtooths
I came to know silence.
It tiptoed in shyly
Following the belated curtain call of the sun,
As it eased into the maw of the mountains.

Slowly the cranes packed up their raucous squawks,
The ground squirrels ceased their alarming squeaks.
The wind, which whipped the pines fiercely all afternoon,
Dropped to a library whisper,
Then nothing at all.

I knew the night was alive with deer and elk,
Antelope and sheep,
But they seemed to walk in stocking feet.

I felt like the trail horse
Swiveling my ears to the window
Hearing a nothingness as vast as an Idaho valley,
As wide as the Western sky.

Deep beneath an alpine quilt,
I listened
And listened
And listened
To that most holy silence.


- Melissa Kelley

I Confess

These days I think too much
about assassination, and let me just say
I have come down against it every time,
swatting it away, a plague-ridden fly
in my otherwise mild and law-abiding imagination,
and that I do not accept the legal argument
that targeted killings are a country’s form
of self-defense, regardless of whether the target
will ever see the inside of a detention center,
and be faced with deciding, like thousands
of seven-year-olds, whether the assigned Mylar blanket
goes over or under on the mud-caked concrete floor.
Every time, I rise up on the right side of the question
though I have gone so far as to research the word:
From the Arabic, hashshashin, the Assassins of Persia,
perhaps so-named for the necessity of getting high
before slipping in the blade. (In private,
some Border Patrol agents consider migrant deaths
a laughing matter; others are succumbing to depression,
anxiety, or substance abuse.)
How, with or without the name, the act
is older than our ability to write it down.
How way back in the Old Testament,
there it was alongside the begetting and begats.
How in the Roman Empire, strangling in the bathtub
was the method of choice for murdering one’s king,
while, as you might expect, in Japan it was the sword.
Here in the U.S. we, as always,
prefer the gun, and let me just say,
I do not and will not own one.
I confess only to the image in my mind
of the mongrel dogs of history lapping at the wound.

- Pauletta Hansel

What Changes


My father’s hopes travel with me

years after he died. Someday

we will learn how to live. All of us

surviving without violence

never stop dreaming how to cure it.

What changes? Crossing a small street

in Doha Souk, nut shops shuttered,

a handkerchief lies crumpled in the street,

maroon and white, like one my father had,

from Jordan. Perfectly placed

in his pocket under his smile, for years.

He would have given it to anyone.

How do we continue all these days?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

The Elder of the Sea



We gather, reverently rooting shapes into the soft sand.

You rise and bow, filling the sea with gratitude

Your profoundly deep and moist breaths echo inside our silent hearts

And the full spectrum of your body sounds

Shake the undulating tides toward shore.

You silently speak in many tongues so each of us can hear

the Truth inside our own and eager hearts.

We listen with unbroken intent.

Nothing is missed, no one is forgotten.

After many breaths, you breathe your ancient counsel:

I carry my young through these sacred waters that have

Known many births.

One day my calf will travel alone and carry her own message

In the tongue of the Great Mother.

Your own young already travels the Great Sea and

Listens before her time.

You belong to this timeless knowing

And now free to live among your own sacred waters.

Swim your way Home now,

Swim your way Home now,

You will always find me living in the Great chamber

of your own heart.


- Shirley C Gillotti

Things About The Sun


Any time the sun
touches our part of the earth
we say the sun shines.

Sometimes dogs bark at the sun,
but I don’t mind it.

There are flowers the sun never sees.

Many times I have said to it,
“Wait!” And it waited.

With the sun, it will be all right
after I’m gone.

Where it can, the sun endlessly
examines things, nothing too large
or small for long, long attention.
When I walk I would view
like that -- all: rich, poor, young,
old, near, far. And I’d save a report
for whenever the sun does.

Mornings when it looks
at me, for an instant there are
all those other times.

- William Stafford

Questionnaire

How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.


- Wendell Berry

August 6

can we forget that flash?
suddenly 30,000 in the streets disappeared
in the crushed depths of darkness
the shrieks of 50,000 died out

when the swirling yellow smoke thinned
buildings split, bridges collapsed
packed trains rested singed
and a shoreless accumulation of rubble and embers - Hiroshima
before long, a line of naked bodies walking in groups, crying
with skin hanging down like rags
hands on chests
stamping on crumbled brain matter
burnt clothing covering hips

corpses lie on the parade ground like stone images of Jizo, dispersed in all
directions
on the banks of the river, lying one on top of another, a group that had crawled to
a tethered raft

also gradually transformed into corpses beneath the sun's scorching rays
and in the light of the flames that pierced the evening sky
the place where mother and younger brother were pinned under alive
also was engulfed in flames
and when the morning sun shone on a group of high-school girls
who had fled and were lying
on the floor of the armory, in excrement
their bellies swollen, one eye crushed, half their bodies raw flesh with skin ripped
off, hairless, impossible to tell who was who
all had stopped moving
in a stagnant, offensive smell
the only sound the wings of flies buzzing around metal basins

city of 300,000
can we forget that silence?
in that stillness
the powerful appeal
of the white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return home
that tore apart our hearts
can it be forgotten?!

- Toge Sankichi (translated by Karen Thornber)

Toge Sankichi (1917 – 1953) was a Japanese poet, activist and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Aerial Photograph Before the Atomic Bomb


Why did such terrible events
catch my eye? After Hiroshima,
I turned the picture in Life around
in circles, trying to figure out this huge
wheel in the middle of the air, how it turned,
like a ferris wheel, its lights
burning like eyes.
The atom spinning
on course over the sleeping
vulnerable planet. I turned it the way one might
turn a kaleidoscope or prism. Even then I
knew about the town lying under,
like a child sleeping under the
watchful gaze of a rapist, before the spasm of
stopped breath, the closure at the
scream of the throat, before the body is awakened
along its shocked spine to bursting
light, the legs closing, the arms,
like a chilled flower. That eye, that spinning eye

seeking the combustible.
This was a heat
I had felt already in our house on Norwood.
Everything
looked green, placid as a green field,
predictable as machinery — an antique clock.
This was the instant
before destruction,
the fiery atom stuck
as if under the control of the artist
before it spilled and became irretrievable.
Could it be sucked back
in its lead bag, the doors of the underbelly slammed,
and those men who would go on to
suicide and madness, go on instead
to become lovers, priests, Buddhist
smilers and scholars, gardeners in the small plots
of contained passion?

- Toi Derricotte

Who Are We, Anyway?


July is our month for ducklings.

The first weeks I'll see 6 to 10,
once 12 !
wondrous
ducklings
paddling in the creeks and ponds
on the trails I hike
in early mornings.

Then,
as our predators,
coyote, fox, turtle,
egret, heron, raccoon,
once an osprey,
owl at night,
hawk during the day,
feed on the little ducks,
I'll see the parents with fewer kids:
4, then 2,
then sometimes 1,
and, for many:
none.

I say "Life," to myself.

This morning
though
it wasn't so easy.

I saw a single duckling
paddling at the pond's edge,

and I hurt for it.

My heart went south,
to our border,
where we separate
hundreds !
of little kids
from their desperate parents.

Coyote, heron, raccoon,
I understand.

I don't understand us,
we Americans:
who are we ?

I don't understand.

Who are we, anyway ?

- Trout Black

I share the poet's sorrow for the ducklings, though, around here, the ducks' predator is more likely a well-fed domestic cat!

Prayer of the Unconceived

Men and women who are on Earth
You are our creators.
We, the unconceived, beseech you:
Let us have living bread
The builder of our new body.
Let us have pure water
The vitalizer of our blood.
Let us have clean air
So that every breath is a caress.
Let us feel the petals of jasmine and roses
Which are as tender as our skin.

Men and women who are on Earth
You are our creators.
We, the unconceived, beseech you:
Do not give us a world of rage and fear
For our minds will be rage and fear.
Do not give us violence and pollution
For our bodies will be disease and abomination.
Let us be wherever we are
Rather than bringing us
Into a tormented self-destroying humanity,

Men and women who are on Earth
You are our creators.
We, the unconceived, beseech you:
If you are ready to love and to be loved,
Invite us to this Earth
Of the thousand Wonders.
And we will be born
To love and to be loved.

- Laura Huxley

For Keeps

Sun makes the day new.
Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
Birds are singing the sky into place.
There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

- Joy Harjo

Dark Heart Warrior

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...2_13-48-34.png

What kind of a whack job would wanna head into a dark, cold cave?
Particularly when you're already ill and bone tired?
Show me the man who wants to pursue the heart of his fear, who chooses to move into the deeper darkness.
Rumi tells us to, "invite in the dark thought, the shame, the malice".
Are you willing to invite in your sadness and fear, consciously choose to hold it and push into your most tender places?
Seeking the light won't help you now
You can't find darkness with light
You need to go dark
You have to feel into those painful places
Willing to tolerate the gaze of your own dark eyes
Trusting that by exploring our suffering we will find salvation
Dark heart Warrior step forward, take a breath and say the prayer of deep trust
Let me know if you have something better to do

- Alan Cohn

section of my painting circa 1959, man and woman in a cave…awaiting the light.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Dark Heart Warrior

What kind of a whack job would wanna head into a dark, cold cave?
Particularly when you're already ill and bone tired?
Show me the man who wants to pursue the heart of his fear, who chooses to move into the deeper darkness.
Rumi tells us to, "invite in the dark thought, the shame, the malice".
Are you willing to invite in your sadness and fear, consciously choose to hold it and push into your most tender places?
Seeking the light won't help you now
You can't find darkness with light
You need to go dark
You have to feel into those painful places
Willing to tolerate the gaze of your own dark eyes
Trusting that by exploring our suffering we will find salvation
Dark heart Warrior step forward, take a breath and say the prayer of deep trust
Let me know if you have something better to do

- Alan Cohn

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How Can Goodness Prevail?

How can goodness prevail in the lockstep of our fears
and the torments of our othering?
To tread ever so lightly that we do not injure
seems a tall order for our troubled psyches
stepping into the future, blind in a dark room.
Hate is so easy,
love so often a kind of unbearable vulnerability,
the exposure of uncertainty,
the humility of tolerance.
Violence is so easy,
just an afterthought to our cruel certitudes,
gentleness ill-afforded
in the bankruptcies of our presumptions.
We dance as we do,
but what piper calls the tune,
which piper do we pay,
and at what cost?
The trampling continues,
the din disturbs deeply.
No solutions.

- Tim Hicks

If you Want to Watch the Perseids

If you want to watch the Perseids
you have to understand the power of night
to ice your bones inside the thin fleece jacket.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you have to find a quiet road away from street lamps
and the moon’s cheesecake grin.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you have to hoard patience like four-leaf clovers
and swallow words you want to speak.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you have to sprawl across the hood of your car
and cock you head at an impossible angle.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you have to soft-focus your eyes
‘til they sweep the village of sky.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you must be willing to be distracted
by the courtship of Great-Horned Owls.

If you want to watch the Perseids
you must risk disappointment
and count your gratitude one star at a time.

- Sande Anfang

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


- Emma Lazarus
New York City, 1883
(Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)

Note "the world-wide welcome." The Trumpettes will probably want to excise it, given their "Europeans only" policy.