Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

To the Light of September

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

- W.S. Merwin

How To Be a Poet

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

- Wendell Berry

Five Dogs

1

I, the dog they call Spot, was about to sing. Autumn
Had come, the walks were freckled with leaves, and a tarnished
Moonlit emptiness crept over the valley floor.
I wanted to climb the poets' hill before the winter settled in;
I wanted to praise the soul. My neighbor told me
Not to waste my time. Already the frost had deepened
And the north wind, trailing the whip of its own scream,
Pressed against the house. "A dog's sublimity is never news,"
He said, "what's another poet in the end?"
And I stood in the midnight valley, watching the great starfields
Flash and flower in the wished-for reaches of heaven.
That's when I, the dog they call Spot, began to sing.


2

Now that the great dog I worshipped for years
Has become none other than myself, I can look within
And bark, and I can look at the mountains down the street
And bark at them as well. I am an eye that sees itself
Look back, a nose that tracks the scent of shadows
As they fall, an ear that picks up sounds
Before they're born. I am the last of the platinum
Retrievers, the end of a gorgeous line.
But there's no comfort being who I am.
I roam around and ponder fate's abolishments
Until my eyes are filled with tears and I say to myself, "Oh Rex,
Forget. Forget. The stars are out. The marble moon slides by."


3

Most of my kind believe that Earth
Is the only planet not covered with hair. So be it,
I say, let tragedy strike, let the story of everything
End today, then let it begin again tomorrow. I no longer care.
I no longer wait in front of the blistered, antique mirror,
Hoping a shape or a self will rise, and step
>From that misted surface and say: You there,
Come with me into the world of light and be whole,
For the love you thought had been dead a thousand years
Is back in town and asking for you. Oh no.
I say, I'm done with my kind. I live alone
On Walnut Lane, and will until the day I die.


4

Before the tremendous dogs are unleashed,
Let's get the little ones inside, let's drag
The big bones onto the lawn and clean The Royal Dog Hotel.
Gypsy, my love, the end of an age has come. Already,
The howls of the great dogs practicing fills the air,
And look at that man on all fours dancing under
The moon's dumbfounded gaze, and look at that woman
Doing the same. The wave of the future has gotten
To them and they have responded with all they have:
A little step forward, a little step back. And they sway,
And their eyes are closed. O heavenly bodies.
O bodies of time. O golden bodies of lasting fire.


5

All winter the weather came up with amazing results:
The streets and walks had turned to glass. The sky
Was a sheet of white. And here was a dog in a phone booth
Calling home. But nothing would ease his tiny heart.
For years the song of his body was all of his calling. Now
It was nothing. Those hymns to desire, songs of bliss
Would never return. The sky's copious indigo,
The yellow dust of sunlight after rain, were gone.
No one was home. The phone kept ringing. The curtains
Of sleep were about to be drawn, and darkness would pass
Into the world. And so, and so . . . goodbye all, goodbye dog.

- Mark Strand

Keeping things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- Mark Strand

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Keeping things Whole

---

Powerful, simple, obvious, and yet such a fresh insight. Thank you for posting that.

Are There Not Still Fireflies?

Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signaling to us
our manifest destiny?

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti....

Sit Quietly

If you have time to chatter,
Read books
If you have time to read,
Walk into the mountain, desert, and ocean
If you have time to walk,
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance,
Sit quiety, you Happy Lucky Idiot.

- Nanao Sakaki

Light

In the first morning of the world created,
on the skin of water reflected,
is the spread of a sun,
and the sun, like god, is a power
you cannot see.
Only what it lights on,
only what it touches with warmth,
and yet it always has a shadow at its feet.

Then there is the sea, the sheer weight of it,
but the lightness of its creatures,
some silver as they leap above it,
and those at the bottom
making their own light
in what would of been
night infinite, as if the sea carries no
shadows at its feet.

Then there is the light of the wood decaying
out by the stagnant pond,
where the eyes of the prey nearby,
shine in the dark, betrayed
when the deer stares one last time
to see the hunter still follows
out in the shadow of living trees.

And bodies of men at war, they say,
give off light.
One I knew fished the sea
and told me of the silver fishes falling
from the mouth of the netted one.
As if in the last breath
perhaps we give back all the swallowed,
all the taken in, and it is light, after all,
first and last, we live for, die for.
We fly toward it
like those who return from it say.

But for now, for here, we fly without will
toward it, drink a glass of it,
see it through green leaves.
There, walk toward it.
Lift it, it has no weight.
Carry it, breathe it, cherish it.

You want to know why god is far away
and we are only shadows at his feet?
Tell me, how long does it take a moth
to reach the moon?

- Linda Hogan

Manifesto

I know that dying is how we escape
the rest of our lives. I think that trees
send us a message: do not believe

you are lucky. The skins of apples
and the peeler will marry; it's simply
a question of when. Believe

in mourning and carrion birds.
Look how their fleshy treasures
dissolve in the sun before their very eyes.

To love something
you must have considered what it means
to do without. You must have thought

about it - the coefficient of the body
is another body - but do not forget
that there are people who are willing

to staple your palm to your chest.
Know there are places it isn't wise to go.
Begin again if you must: there are ways

to make up for what you have been before,
the dust in the corners that collects you.
Sympathy is overrated.

Rethink how lack
becomes everyone's master, drives us
into town and spends our money.

Quiet: the trees are napping.
Water meets itself again.
We reach for the days that precede us

and the world keeps us from knowing
too much. The body loves music,
the abandoned road of it;

each day a peel
lengthens in the shadow of blossoms,
fabric weaves itself into light.

Pay attention to the patterns. They repeat -
terraces erode, groves lie fallow -
order is cognate of joy.

- Margot Schilpp

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.
All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.
So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.
The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

- Anne Sexton

A Blessing Of Angels


May the angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.
May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
To come alive to the eternal within you,
To all the invitations that quietly surround you.
May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds
Into sources of refreshment.
May the Angel of the Imagination enable you
To stand on the true thresholds,
At ease with your ambivalence
And drawn in new directions
Through the glow of your contradictions.
May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
To the unseen suffering around you.
May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
Where your life is domesticated and safe,
Take you to the territories of true otherness
Where all that is awkward in you
Can fall into its own rhythm.
May the Angel of Eros introduce you
To the beauty of your senses
To celebrate your inheritance
As a temple of the holy spirit.
May the Angel of Justice disturb you
To take the side of the poor and the wronged.
May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you
In worth and self-respect,
That you may live with the dignity
That presides in your soul.
May the Angel of Death arrive only
When your life is complete
And you have brought every given gift
To the threshold where its infinity can shine.
May all the Angels be your sheltering
And joyful guardians.

— John O’Donohue

Security

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.

Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let go.

* - William Stafford

Songster


Oh sweet loquacious songster
I am your eager ear
riding your streams and trills.

Be my companion
so once your notes have risen
beyond range

into silence broken
only by a breeze
weighing on the leaves,

I will not forget
my pledge made
during your ecstatic bursts.

Sing to me, sing!
So my heart may turn
in twilight's ebb

and through the night
be drawn
along liquid ways

until your dawn song
breaks its banks again.

- Raphael Block

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

- Mary Oliver

The Pinnacle

Both of us understood
what a privilege it was
to be out for a walk
with each other
we could tell from our different
heights that this
kind of thing happened
so rarely that it might
not come round again
for me to be allowed
even before I
had started school
to go out for a walk
with Miss Giles
who had just retired
from being a teacher all her life

she was beautiful
in her camel hair coat
that seemed like the autumn leaves
our walk was her idea
we liked listening to each other
her voice was soft and sure
and we went our favorite way
the first time just in case
it was the only time
even though it might be too far
we went all the way
up the Palisades to the place
we called the pinnacle
with its park at the cliff's edge
overlooking the river
it was already a secret
the pinnacle
as we were walking back
when the time was later
than we had realized
and in fact no one
seemed to know where we had been
even when she told them
no one had heard of the pinnacle

and then where did she go

- W. S. Merwin

Frederick Douglass

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

- Robert E. Hayden

A Place In The Heart

Two soldiers
are preparing to surrender.
Right now they are just hunched down in a bunker,
to get below the fire fight and also because,
curled up, you can depend for a moment
on the plainness of gravel,
the kindness of the dark—
its remote memory of a cave or a mother’s arms.
A trench like this is on the way to some other place
where they might be less alone and afraid,
so they didn’t plan to be here.

They have planned to surrender though.
One of them has a white cloth tied to a stick
gripped tightly in his right hand.
The white flag belongs to the nation
without a name.
It doesn’t have a written history
or plans of any kind
and it’s not represented at the UN.
But he hasn’t raised that blank flag yet.
We know that he’s right handed.
It’s possible that the other hand has in it
something important
like the air-dropped leaflets on how to surrender,
but you don’t usually practice
waving a white flag,
so yes, you would grasp it in your dominant hand.
And a white cloth a couple of feet square
is not something that you just have in your pockets;
you must have brought it with you,
and a thick, strong stick, too,
you can’t find that just lying around in miles of sand.

Unfortunately, despite the provision of the white cloth
despite the effort of finding a stick,
and of hunching over as far as they could,
in a posture as touching
as yours or mine would be,
and despite having no visible wounds,
they are dead.

And the failed magic of cloth, stick, hunching over,
goes on reaching, unfailed, in another dimension,
struggling, struggling to touch.
It shows how intimate you are, my enemy,
and how much like me.
Now that I have seen your death,
I shall have to live for you—
I can’t help but carry you so that you can see,
and smile, and embrace;
I can't help but make for you
a place in my heart.

- John Tarrant

Cave Painting At Font du Gaume

Of course, even his bones
are now dust,
his flowing mane
taken by the wind,
those sturdy hooves
and solid flesh consumed
and reborn in endless forms.

Even so, through two hundred centuries
of darkness and lamplight
he is still running free
across that vast savannah of time.

And the hand that captured,
in a few spare lines
on the limestone wall,
that wild grace,
sending it down through the years -
hand of my ancestor,
hand of our ancestor -
has long since returned
to the formless.

A day will come,
certainly,
when all this
will be gone:
you and I,
the painting,
even the wall,
carved by ages of
drip and flow,
through uplifted memories
of countless tiny beings
who spent their short lives
in that primordial sea.

And yet this beauty -
this grace -
offers itself to us
in this moment,
the only time we have.

- Larry Robinson

Climbing Along the River

Willows never forget how it feels
to be young.

Do you remember where you came from?
Gravel remembers.

Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.

Exactly at midnight
yesterday sighs away.

What I believe is,
all animals have one soul.

Over the land they love
they crisscross forever.

- William Stafford

Wow! That is an amazing poem! M

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Cave Painting At Font du Gaume

Of course, even his bones
are now dust,
his flowing mane
taken by the wind,
those sturdy hooves
and solid flesh consumed
and reborn in endless forms.

Even so, through two hundred centuries
of darkness and lamplight
he is still running free
across that vast savannah of time.

And the hand that captured,
in a few spare lines
on the limestone wall,
that wild grace,
sending it down through the years -
hand of my ancestor,
hand of our ancestor -
has long since returned
to the formless.

A day will come,
certainly,
when all this
will be gone:
you and I,
the painting,
even the wall,
carved by ages of
drip and flow,
through uplifted memories
of countless tiny beings
who spent their short lives
in that primordial sea.

And yet this beauty -
this grace -
offers itself to us
in this moment,
the only time we have.

- Larry Robinson

---

Return

A little too abstract, a little too wise,
It is time for us to kiss the earth again,
It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies,
Let the rich life run to the roots again.
I will go down to the lovely Sur Rivers
And dip my arms in them up to the shoulders.
I will find my accounting where the alder leaf quivers
In the ocean wind over the river boulders.
I will touch things and things and no more thoughts,
That breed like mouthless May-flies darkening the sky,
The insect clouds that blind our passionate hawks
So that they cannot strike, can hardly fly.
Things are the hawk’s food and noble is the mountain,
Oh noble
Pico Blanco, steep sea-wave of marble.

- Robinson Jeffers

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

- Robert Frost

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.

- Li Po

The Heat of Autumn

The heat of autumn
is different from the heat of summer.
One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.
One is a dock you walk out on,
the other the spine of a thin swimming horse
and the river each day a full measure colder.
A man with cancer leaves his wife for his lover.
Before he goes she straightens his belts in the closet,
rearranges the socks and sweaters inside the dresser
by color. That’s autumn heat:
her hand placing silver buckles with silver,
gold buckles with gold, setting each
on the hook it belongs on in a closet soon to be empty,
and calling it pleasure.

- Jane Hirshfield

The Harvest Bow

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall--
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser--
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

- Seamus Heaney

Fog Drip

Fog drip, they say,
replenishes the aquifer.
Redwood needles pull
moisture from the mist,
guiding it down to the roots -
and below.

Even in the driest years
these patient old ones
remain ever green.

Some elders are like that.
They find the goodness there is
and draw it down,
sustaining themselves
while feeding the deeper stream.

They don’t demand attention;
they don’t seek profit or approval.
Usually they don’t even know
they are doing this.
Do the redwoods know - or care -
where the water goes?

Francis of Assissi called down grace
by the simple act of gratitude.
The foxes and the sparrows
drank deeply from his fog drip.

- Larry Robinson

El Paletero

His fingers stop ringing the string of small brass bells and he peddles harder and faster as he pulls out of a lazy neighborhood street and onto the avenue of honking horns and screeching tires. Cars speed past this mobile vendor, some a little too close for comfort drawing concerned or vexed glances from harried drivers.

He offers, paletas; frozen fruit bars of coconut, strawberry, tamarind, watermelon. How many can he possibly sell today; enough to feed his family? The back of his shirt is dark with sweat, but one must do what one must to meet his obligations; si no trabajes no comes (if you don’t work, you don’t eat.)

A sparrow who lives this adage pulls a worm from out of a lawn where cats are known to dwell – a risky business indeed. He flies upward into a street tree eyeing the man who peddles the large insulated box on bicycle wheels passing below.

El Paletero relaxes his tempo as he rides onto another neighborhood street and like a maestro he begins working his bells, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and a little extra to spend.

The sparrow bounces branch to branch until he is at his nest then places bits of today’s earnings into anxious little beaks as children line up at the curb hopping with excitement clutching coins in their small hands.

- Armando Garcia-Dávila


Workers get a meal and a message
Poet's 'The Bread of Words' an opportunity to bring poetry to unconventional settings


CHRISTOPHER CHUNG/ PD
Armando Garcia-Davila reads his poetry for Gaddis Nursery employees on Thursday, September 24, 2009.

By DAN TAYLOR
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Friday, September 25, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 25, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
The workers who gathered at noon Thursday in a warehouse at Santa Rosa's Gaddis Nursery probably came for Armando Garcia-Dávila's home-cooked chili verde and refried beans as much as his poetry.

"The food is my bait," Armando Garcia-Dávila, an active Sonoma County poet for the past 12 years, said with a quick grin. "If the poetry's good enough, they'll stay. If not, then it's my own fault."

The event was an experiment, the first in the poet's new "The Bread of Words" program. It's funded by a $500 grant -- enough for gas and the food -- from Arts Sonoma, a program of exhibits and performances running through early October in unconventional venues all over Sonoma County.

People have to work and they have to eat lunch, Garcia-Dávila reasoned, so if they couldn't come to poetry readings, he decided he'd take his poetry to them. It seemed to work.

"Well, I came for the food, and to listen a little bit," said Jesus Romero, who has has worked at the wholesale nursery for three years.

A dozen Gaddis employees, almost half the permanent work force, came to hear readings in both Spanish and English by Garcia-Dávila and Beatriz Lagos, a published poet and novelist who was born in Argentina and settled in Petaluma four decades ago.

Even third-generation nursery owner Bill Gaddis, who gave the program his blessing, stopped by.

"People need something in their lives besides work and taking care of the family," he said.

Garcia-Dávila, reading from one of his two self-published poetry collections, spoke of immigrants and their Americanized children, who wonder if they'll be able to find hamburgers while visiting their grandparents in the old country.

Lagos, who has published seven books of poetry and four novels in Spain and Mexico, related stories of Argentina, and her own discovery of local wine upon her arrival in Sonoma County.

At the end of lunch hour, Garcia-Dávila was enthusiastic about continuing his series, and ready to keep cooking and reading until his money runs out.

"They stayed, they listened and they were attentive," the poet said. "I'm going to do this again next Thursday at the Graton Labor Center."

Monarch and Mulberry

Listen—those two M’s—mulberry tree,
crawling with monarchs,

that birdshit beautiful
mess, staining bare feet and slopping

cars, and under the leave’s web of light all of us
squatting, pushing tiny free toys

finger-deep into the soft, purple loam,
all of us plucking those live yellow petals

wing by wing, all of us ignorant
of the butterfly’s migration to Mexico.

Who knew then they traveled
so far? Who knew there was anywhere

to go, or how years later
there would be so little left—

that tract of land razed flat
and vinyled up in every shade

of beige, every clean drive ending
with a rubbermaid mailbox and a bradford

pear popping its popcorn styrofoam
of blooms? Who can remember the

brambles and the rusted fence, the darkwater
paths of brittle-limbed weed trees,

and the butterflies, who remembers
so many, those milkweed-nursed sunbursts

of the cricketing world now for sale
in double-panes of glass on Bleecker,

a junk table of blue morphos and blue-winged
cicadas, some even shellacked into pendants,

shrinky-dink art debris bought and locked
in a box of gum and plastic beads and a puffed-up

sand dollar rattling its five tiny dove bones,
a bleached legend of goodwill and peace?

Oh, monarch. Not you. You don't remember.
And no wonder we feel this way now, the world

less of a thing to love. For us, we barely remember
that humid summer, the fan oscillating, the kitchen,

always the fly-speck kitchen. We were watching you,
all of you, flit in the mulberry out back, and after, because

we were children, we tracked that crushed fruit across
the linoleum. After that, the sound of hammers and crows

through the open window, then somebody needs to
cut down that goddamn tree. He was the one said that,

and she agreed. And while we were busy not caring
anything our parents said, there you were, all of you,

no more able to steer yourself
than plastic grocery bags or receipts or anything

littered to the wind, but you knew something
we didn’t—exactly where to go.

- Nickole Brown

Why Bodhidharma Went to Howard Johnson's
*
*
"Where is your home," the interviewer asked him.
*
Here.
*
"No, no," the interviewer said, thinking it a problem of translation,
"when you are where you actually live."
*
Now it was his turn to think, perhaps the translation?
*
- Jane Hirshfield

A Speech To The Garden Club Of America

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

- Wendell Berry