Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

After the Lecture

for Martin Luther King Jr.


A woman said I was not polite
to the opposition,
that I was harsh
and did not encourage
discourse.

Perhaps if I were Christ,
I could say, "Forgive them
for they know not what they do."
Or the queen, and apologize
for stubbing my executioner's toes.

But only if I knew
the executioners
were mine only.

What courtesy have I the right to give
to them who break the bones,
the souls of my brothers,
my sisters;
deny bread, books
to the hungry,
the children;
medicine, healing
to the sick;
roofs to the homeless;

who spoil the oceans,
lay waste the forests
and the deserts,
violate the land?

Affability on the lips
of outrage
is a sin and blasphemy
I'll not be guilty of.

- Rafael Jesús González


Después del Discurso

a Martin Luther King Jr.

Una mujer me dijo que no fui cortés
con la oposición,
que fui duro
y que no animé
discusión.

Tal vez si fuera Cristo,
pudiera decir - Perdónalos
que no saben lo que hacen. -
O la reina, y disculparme
por haber pisarle el pie a mi verdugo.

Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.

¿Qué cortesía tengo el derecho a darles
a los que quiebran los huesos
y las almas de mis hermanos,
mis hermanas;
les niegan el pan, los libros
a los hambrientos,
a los niños;
la medicina, el sanar
a los enfermos;
techos a los desamparados;

que estropean los mares,
que destruyen los bosques
y los desiertos,
violan la tierra?

Afabilidad en los labios
de la furia justa
es pecado y blasfemia
de la cual no seré culpable.

- Rafael Jesús González

In California: Morning, Evening, Late January
Pale, then enkindled,
light
advancing,
emblazoning
summits of palm and pine,

the dew
lingering,
scripture of
scintillas.

Soon the roar
of mowers
cropping the already short
grass of lawns,

men with long-nozzled
cylinders of pesticide
poking at weeds,

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at moss in cracks of cement,

and louder roar
of helicopters off to spray
vineyards where braceros try
to hold their breath,

and in the distance, bulldozers, excavators,
babel of destructive construction.

Banded by deep
oakshadow, airy
shadow of eucalyptus,

miner’s lettuce,

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tender, untasted,
and other grass, unmown,
luxuriant,
no green more brilliant.

Fragile paradise.

. . . .

At day’s end the whole sky,
vast, unstinting, flooded with transparent
mauve,
tint of wisteria,
cloudless
over the malls, the industrial parks,
the homes with the lights going on,
the homeless arranging their bundles.

. . . .

Who can utter
the poignance of all that is constantly
threatened, invaded, expended

and constantly
nevertheless
persists in beauty,

tranquil as this young moon
just risen and slowly
drinking light
from the vanished sun.

Who can utter
the praise of such generosity
or the shame?
- Denise Levertov

First Steps In Hawkshead Church


My son strode out into the world today,
twenty one steps on the grave of Ann Braithwaite,
her horizontal slab of repose grey beneath
the lifting red socks, her exit from the world
his entrance to the world of walking.


She must have lain beneath and smiled past
the small arms outstretched to the church tower of Hawkshead,
she must have borne him up, her help from the end of life
his beginning, her hands invisible, reaching to his.


He walked through each line explaining her life,
sixty two years by the small lake of Esthwaite,
lichen, green grass, grey walls and the falling
water of ice cold streams, his small place of play
her mingling with the elements she lived with.


A meeting of two waters,
hers a deep pool, solitary in stillness,
his swift, bubbling from rock to rock,
pouring into her silence, a kingfisher
flare in her darkness, promise of light,


Ineffable, unknowable, the touch of his feet
a promise of a world to come, solid on a life well lived.
His look of surprise when the church bell rang, her knowing.
The sound of time, his now, hers then. New rituals
are always played on the graves of those long dead.


- David Whyte

You and I have

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so much love
That it burns
like a fire
In which we bake
A lump of clay
Molded into
A figure of you
And a figure of me.

Then we take
Both of them
And break them
Into pieces.

And mix the pieces
with water.

And mold again
A figure of you
And a figure of me.

I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share
a single quilt
In death
a single bed.

Chinese Love Poem
Translated By Kenneth Rexroth

Touch The Air

Now touch the air softly,

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Step gently, one, two…
I'll love you till roses
Are robin's-egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red.

Now touch the air softly,
Swing gently the broom.
I'll love you till windows
Are all of a room;
And the table is laid,
And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes
On bottomless air.

I'll love you till Heaven
Rips the stars from his coat,
And the moon rows away in
A glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down
Like a diver below,
And Earth is ablaze,
And Ocean aglow.

So touch the air softly,
and swing the broom high.
We will dust the gray mountains,
And sweep the blue sky;
And I'll love you as long
As the furrow the plow,
As However is Ever,
And Ever is Now.

- William Jay Smith

A Rainy Morning


A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.


- Ted Kooser

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As I crossed the bridge, a hairy hand came out.
"Stop, pay troll."
I gave him 5 euros. He put it not in his purse but in a jar.
"It's for the poor. They are very hungry," he said.
"This week Africa. Maybe next week your country."
He scratched. "When you get to the other side of the bridge, you get it back."
I looked, saw no one giving back. He saw me looking.

"Not THIS bridge," he said.

- Birrell Walsh

Gratitude to Old Teachers


When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,

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We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?


Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.


- Robert Bly

Greed


My ocean town struggles
to pick up leaves,
offer summer school,
and keep our library open.
Every day now
more men stand
at the railroad station,
waiting to be chosen for work.
Because it’s thought
the Hispanics will work for less
they get picked first,
while the whites and blacks
avoid the terror
in one another’s eyes.
Our handyman, Santos,
who expects only
what his hands earn,
is proud of   his half acre in Guatemala,
where he plans to retire.
His desire to proceed with dignity
is admirable, but he knows
that now no one retires,
everyone works harder.
My father imagined a life
more satisfying than the one
he managed to lead.
He didn’t see himself as uneducated,
thwarted, or bitter,
but soon-to-be rich.
Being rich was his right, he believed.
Happiness, I used to think,
was a necessary illusion.
Now I think it’s just
precious moments of relief,
like dreams of Guatemala.
Sometimes, at night,
in winter, surrounded by
the significant silence
of empty mansions,
which once were cottages,
where people lived their lives,
and now are owned by banks
and the absent rich,
I like to stand at my window,
looking for a tv’s futile flickering,
always surprised to see
instead
the quaint, porous face
of my reflection,
immersed
in its one abundance.


- Philip Schultz

Last Call


1


Tonight
moonglow
from within
softly


like a candled egg


and softly
stars diminish
until incandescence washes


the dark sky


until midnight's
lightslick
its ebb and flow


liquid


the candent universe
rolls
softly


2


Midnight
remonstrance:


there are those
I wish honestly
only to remember


being gone
and only memory


and
there are those
I wish to never remember


desiring
only their presence


lasting as long
as my life
until forever


as
I cannot imagine


living in a world
containing
only their memory


3


And you my friend
whom the gods call
into that other alone


wherever you wake
be it desert or forest
mountain or seaside


find tinder
dry moss and kindling
flint


strike a small fire which
being eternity
will flicker beyond forever


sing
your bright poem
fork your lightning dance


I will find you
sooner than later wherever
you wait in the darkness


We will sing together
delirious and off key
We will tell great lies
to shame the heavens
We will cook with wine
I promise you this


- David Lee

What's Left?


Something like a half-person
left my young husband's body,
and something like the other half
left my ovary. Later,
the new being, complete, slowly
left my body. And a portion of breath
left the air of the delivery room,
entering the little mouth,
and the milk left the breast, and went
into the fat cuffs of the wrists.
Years later, during his cremation,
the liquids left my father's corpse,
and the smoke left the flue. And even
later, my mother's ashes left
my hand, and fell as seethe into the salt
chop. My then husband made
a self, a life, I made beside him
a self, a life, gestation. We grew
strong, in direction. We clarified
in vision, we deepened in our silence and our speaking.
We did not hold still, we moved, we are moving
still-- we made, with each other, a moving
like a kind of music: duet; then solo,
solo. We fulfilled something in each other--
I believed in him, he believed in me, then we
grew, and grew, I grieved him, he grieved me,
I completed with him, he completed with me, we
made whole cloth together, we succeeded,
we perfected what lay between him and me,
I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me,
I did not leave him, he did not leave me,
I freed him, he freed me.


- Sharon Olds

Remembering the Big Bang


Before everything flew apart, separated,
It all happened at once. Spring ice storms
And summer thunderheads. Dead of winter
Gray ground and mockingbirds high


In the redwoods telling everyone their song
Was wonderful, worth stealing. Time was
Compact, pressed tight so that birth and death
Overlapped and, at any moment, love happened over and over.


Inside there was no outside. The day
Your mother threw your brother down
The backstairs isn't separate
From the afternoon, there on a Welsh back road


You, your sister and mother
Laughed beyond reason, parked
beside an ivy-covered wall, turning
Blood red in the Fall.


Together then, those days in a sterile courtroom,
Bored under bright lights, the ice-fringed stream
The hoary mastodon crossed, pursued by ourselves,
Our ancestors, summer Sonoran nights, cicadas buzzing


Making sleep a dream.
Before the Big Bang, everything was
Holy and secular,
A story and a history


No different from one telling or another,
Spoken or sung.
No one,
No other.


- Rebecca del Rio

Hope Chest

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She never used them, the silver coffee spoons.
They huddled in their cardboard cradles,
cushioned in cotton browned with disuse
and saved for a special occasion.
We found them in her hope chest, after she died,
along with the heavy linen tablecloth,
never unfolded from its sharp creases,
and the peach satin nightgown, slippery as love,
the price tag still dangling from its sleeve.

- Jane L. Mickelson

Much kudos to Jane L. Mickelson for a very very touching poem.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Hope Chest

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She never used them, the silver coffee spoons.
They huddled in their cardboard cradles,
cushioned in cotton browned with disuse
and saved for a special occasion.
We found them in her hope chest, after she died,
along with the heavy linen tablecloth,
never unfolded from its sharp creases,
and the peach satin nightgown, slippery as love,
the price tag still dangling from its sleeve.

- Jane L. Mickelson

---

Ars Poetica


A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.


- Archibald MacLeish

One Good Pork Chop


At dinner (her very good pork chops)

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she says something just the tiniest bit critical of me.
The tiniest bit, too tiny to mention, except
just after I got home she said something else
the tiniest bit critical. This is my wife,
and very rarely is she critical of me,
nor am I of her. We have a non-critical relationship.
We tend to just let things slide,
which often makes me anxious, trained as I was
in a previous marriage to believe that growth
and insight come out of very intense criticism, leading to fighting.
And by fighting I mean everything
from whole days of the "silent treatment" (my specialty),
to entire weekends of operatic screaming (hers).
Our hope was that interpersonal growth and clarity
would emerge from these encounters,
but in truth our fighting just made us tired.
When not fighting we would sit tiredly
in the living room, thinking up complicated strategies
for the next fight.
One time we fought almost nonstop
for an entire week, beginning with a little dig
I made at her expense at a dinner party
on a Friday evening, and evolving,
gathering Jihad-like intensity, followed by
a kind of Wagnerian complexity,
progressing to a period of vengeful, Nordic saga brutality
that had us sobbing, moaning, wailing (at one point
I was on my hands and knees in the hallway,
banging my head on the floor), pausing only to sleep
and go to work, displaying an amazing stamina
born of endless hours of fighting,
insulting each other's spiritual beliefs, sex organs,
parents, grandparents, even pets,
until we were drenched in metaphoric blood, luminous
and holy with hatred, various personal knickknacks smashed,
and the usual plates and dishes
shattered on the floor,
all of which passes before me in a flash
as I chew on a piece of very good pork chop
with this almost entirely non-critical wife,
and I raise the spear
of the tiny, perfectly lethal
critical remark I had been sharpening in my smoky prehistoric cave,
toss it on the fire, and say,
Wow. This is one good pork chop. Which it is.


- George Bilgere

The Smallest Vessel


What is the smallest vessel that can hold a human being?


Certainly it is more than the skin and bones that contain

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the pulsing of the individual life within;
one human cannot forever stand alone and separate.
Even the wise woman who lives in the forest
apart from others
serves as the wise woman for those others.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least one other human being.


But two humans cannot forever stand alone and separate.
They need young ones
to raise and teach,
to help with the daily chores,
and, finally, to take charge
and carry on
as the elders grow old, their bodies dying,
releasing their starlight
and becoming stardust once again.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the family.


But the family cannot forever stand alone and separate.
It needs others to help in the gathering of food,
the building of shelter,
and in caring for those who are sick or hurt,
just as it helps others in their own time of need.
The family needs others to bind together with
in times of catastrophe,
of want, and of war,
as well as to rejoice with
in times of plenty, and of peace.
It needs others to share in the knowledge of Earth’s gifts
and to learn the ways of the wise old ones.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the clan.


But the clan cannot long survive alone.
It needs oxygen to breathe, food to eat,
and waters to quench its thirst.
It needs medicines to heal those who are sick.
It needs insects to pollinate and clean
the forests, savannas, deserts, and prairies.
It needs jaguars, hawks, turtles, sparrows,
trees, flowers, vines,
and all manner of animals and plants
both seen and unseen
to teach the wordless songs of the Infinite.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the whole of the Web of Life.


But the Web of Life cannot long survive alone.
It needs a Mother,
willing to share her flesh:
air,
water,
the makings of soil,
and the mixing together of life-giving elements,
so that the Web of Life might form itself
out of her own body.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least Earth herself.


But Earth cannot long survive alone.
She needs a star to draw light from
to warm her creations,
to cause the the winds to blow,
the clouds to form, and the rains to fall.
She needs a Moon
to steady her
as she dances spinning through the seasons
and to cause her oceans to pulse
with life-giving tides.
She needs planets, comets, asteroids,
to pull and push, and sometimes collide with her
and stir the cauldron of creativity.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the Sun and his children.


But the Sun and his children
cannot have come into being alone.
They need a galaxy of stars,
forming, living, dying, exploding,
creating the elements for life.
They need a billion seeds,
a billion possibilities,
and the death of the Grandmother Star
to bring forth that one precise possibility
that allowed our Sun to be born
and his children to emerge.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the galaxy.


But the galaxy cannot have come into being alone.
It needs forces, particles, and fire,
spinning forth
from the first callings of the Infinite,
forming into billions of colossal galactic clouds
spiraling out into the primordial cosmos.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the Universe.


But the Universe cannot have come into being alone.
It needs an Unfathomable Mystery,


a time of no time,


a place of no place,


a Beginning of All Beginnings,


so that the Infinite can then call forth the Universe,
and the Universe can then explode into being.


Therefore . . .


The smallest vessel that can hold a human being,
that can hold you yourself—hold all beings—must include
the whole of the Infinite . . .


at the very least.

- David Christopher
(Excerpted from The Holy Universe: www.theholyuniverse.com)

Under The Vulture-Tree


We have all seen them circling pastures,

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have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old
who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.


- David Bottoms

Visitors from Abroad


1


Sometime after I had entered
that time of   life
people prefer to allude to in others
but not in themselves, in the middle of the night
the phone rang. It rang and rang
as though the world needed me,
though really it was the reverse.


I lay in bed, trying to analyze
the ring. It had
my mother’s persistence and my father’s
pained embarrassment.


When I picked it up, the line was dead.
Or was the phone working and the caller dead?
Or was it not the phone, but the door perhaps?


2


My mother and father stood in the cold
on the front steps. My mother stared at me,
a daughter, a fellow female.
You never think of us, she said.


We read your books when they reach heaven.
Hardly a mention of us anymore, hardly a mention of  your sister.
And they pointed to my dead sister, a complete stranger,
tightly wrapped in my mother’s arms.


But for us, she said, you wouldn’t exist.
And your sister — you have your sister’s soul.
After which they vanished, like Mormon missionaries.


3


The street was white again,
all the bushes covered with heavy snow
and the trees glittering, encased with ice.


I lay in the dark, waiting for the night to end.
It seemed the longest night I had ever known,
longer than the night I was born.


I write about you all the time, I said aloud.
Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.


4


Outside the street was silent.
The receiver lay on its side among the tangled sheets,
its peevish throbbing had ceased some hours before.


I left it as it was;
its long cord drifting under the furniture.


I watched the snow falling,
not so much obscuring things
as making them seem larger than they were.


Who would call in the middle of the night?
Trouble calls, despair calls.
Joy is sleeping like a baby.


- Louise Glück

Fishing in the Dark

If all we know is laid to rest tonight

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and time is left to argue with the dead
two promises the morn will offer bright
so, ease to sleep and rest your weary head.

May as the rumpled clouds do steal across
the moon and stars and eye’s incessant stare
a vision come as soft as feet on moss
though you may not know whence it comes, or where.

Hold fast the empty line, but leave it slack
so little silver trout will pass it by
and larger creatures, deep and bold and black
will come to take the lure, and you thereby.

Ah, dreaming then, although no less awake
the past and future forms invite your take.


- Karl Frederick

The Best Poems Cut

The best poems
Cut like the sharpest sword
In the Zen
Master's hand

Arching so swiftly,
Slicing through one's body of emotions,
You don't even feel it
... until

It's laid bare the guts of a life time
Leaving the blood of tears
Flowing passionately into the
Earth of your soul

- David Imur

In the Basement of the Goodwill Store

In musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid,
an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb.


Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back
two mirrors which flash and glance
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.

- Ted Kooser

Pig at the Mexican Orphanage


Either it's all okay or none of it is,
like the lonely black-and-white sow with the bristly face,


her sty filled with rotting corn cobs
and the deep irremediable odor of pigshit


halfway up the hill behind the orphanage.
Past the yard where kids congregate


by swings and slides. Past pens
of bleating goats and the busy hen-house,


I stopped to talk.
Pig you stink and I have no children,


I said. She snorted in acknowledgment
and came close, her wet snout


with its damp, snuffly nostrils like two black tunnels.
Perhaps if I had a grass wand


I could turn her back into a princess
and avert her fate of becoming carnitas or jambon.


Perhaps if I dared to scratch behind her ears.
There are those whose pens


are definite and wooden, and others
whose only cage is the leaden sky


of their own mind.
Look here, in the exact center of my
divided heart where the blood
is always busy, rushing and returning,


where old questions lie
like quartered rotten potatoes


flung on the compost heap
to spring back new again and whole.


Tell me: when they weigh my heart
against the feather of truth


will it crash the scales like a hammer
to the back of a pig's skull


or float straight up to Heaven
like the shrieks of these children


which reach me, faintly, no matter
how high I climb? Bright sparks


from the welder's arc, they know the language
of foot and soccer ball, frijoles y tortillas, just as I know


abandoned may mean alone, desolate, bereft-
or finally free to feel everything.


- Allison Luterman

Anthropology of an American Guy


Since fourteen I’ve had a thing
for girls and anthropology
so don’t go blaming me
for my crazy audio book fling
with Hilary Hamann’s Anthropology
Of An American Girl
or the way her words made my heart twirl
my mind in full bow to her incarnation Evie
who is so full of poetry
that every time she thinks or speaks
she transports me across the line
from novel to poetry;
with no apology let me like Hilary
wax poetic, polemic, and erotic
weaving threads of voice quixotic
voices that capture American character
and rupture the lack of the latter.


Writers like you capture intimacy with rapture
attract spoken word artists and actors
who clamor for a shot to voice the lines
birthed in your signature mindstuff.
The way you dreamed up Jack, Rob, Mark and Rourke
ploughing up the fucked up American male psyche
making such an exquisite fuss over the wreckage
daring to love us guys with such improbable tenderness,
and ample measure of erotic suggestiveness
that we circle your protagonist like Jupiter’s moons.


We are nothing but water all this rock hard masculinity
and you writer are the sea calling us home to spawn
in your quintessential imagination
where we have no choice;
we are nothing but the offspring
of the vivid eye of your mind
and soon you will abandon us nearly entirely,
you’ll fall for someone else, you can’t help it.




You might think of us, your male progeny
like protective whales or killer sharks
abandoned forever to the placenta sea of your afterbirth
but in reality off your pages we will breach
stunning and haunting feminine readers in our reach,
our male plumage daringly distinctive
our character and strength irrepressible
and our flaws fatally attractive.




- Brian McSweeney

First Kiss


August 2nd, First Kiss.

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I found it written on a scrap of paper, in an old file.
Who was she, what year was it? Wanted to throw it away.
What was the anticipation and wonder
I felt at that moment?
Wondering in my head.
Why do I forget the kiss, but am attached
to the piece of paper?
What other scraps are waiting to be discovered?
A mosaic of moments happy and sad,
filling boxes and drawers.
I notice dreamy romantic music has kept me here,
wallowing in an old affair,
I recycle the scrap of my life.


- Brian Martens

Poem presented graphically.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

First Kiss...

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The Moment

To write down all I contain at this moment
I would pour the desert through an hour-glass,
The sea through a water-clock,
Grain by grain and drop by drop
Let in the trackless, measureless, mutable seas and sands.

For earth's days and nights are breaking over me,
The tides and sands are running through me,
And I have only two hands and a heart to hold the desert and the sea.

What can I contain of it? It escapes and eludes me,
The tides wash me away,
The desert shifts under my feet.

- Kathleen Raine

Rain & Rachamim


I love the rain.
Makes me think of rachamim, of the Divine well spring of compassion.

https://creativejewishliving.com/wp-...rt-225x300.jpg

Nothing better than falling asleep to the rain
the quite rumble on the roof
like a cat purring on your lap
the gurgle of the gutters - the sound of all things wet and soggy outside
while we are warm under the covers
inside.

How lucky we are to have a roof over our heads
so that we can enjoy the rain and
so many other things –

Thank you God for the rain and our roofs
our shelter
from the storm.

Let your rachamim fall on all your creatures,
spread over us a shelter of rachamim
of compassion and
- George Gittleman

Rain and Rachamin graphically illustrated.
Lower portion of image is a modification of Susan Danko's art work.

Sometimes The Problem


Sometimes the problem cannot be solved

no matter what.


It sits there like a granite block a mile high
and glares at you
grinning clown-faced at all your efforts
and your clever approaches, whatever.

At your wild ideas
and your desperate desires
and raging rages

Nope, all go to naught. Nothing.

T'will not be moved. No way.

Then you think, what will it matter anyway
give or take a few decades, to anyone, anyhow,
your miserable obsessed affliction?

Might as well let it go.

Only after you've screamed your brains to sleep
and cussed your guts out

comes the unguarded moment when
you give it up to the Universe

released like a hawk long held prisoner

a found freedom in the wind.

Then the good stuff really gets rolling:

incalculable eons of incandescent stardust,
blasted supernovas and black holes

blackholing

and the Gods and the microns
and the neutrons and all twelve dimensions
and the blooming Johnny Jumpups on the back porch
and your Grandchild's smile

had the answer all along

'Natch.

- L.K. Potts

Boddhisattva Vow

https://www.factzoo.com/sites/all/im...woodpecker.jpg

See more about the ivory billed woodpecker here

"I want to come back
as the disabled child
of someone like Vladimir Putin
to awaken his heart of compassion.


"Then I'll be reborn
as a maybe extinct species -
like an ivory billed woodpecker;
I'll fly to Washington
or wherever I want
to bring the good news of our return.


"Or maybe I'll just be
a breath of wind touching
the world with hope and healing."


This is what Sue said.
I say
she hears the cries of the world.
Om Tara tutare ture swaha!


- Larry Robinson

Ikkyu says


Ikkyu says, "Humans are endowed with the stupidity of horses and cattle."
I think Ikkyu is full of shit.
Humans are endowed with a stupidity all their own.
Horses and cattle know what to do.
They do it well.
He is right about poetry as a work out of hell.
We ought to know.
Phenomena experience themselves as themselves.
They don't need poetry.
We are looking at a mystery here.
How do these things have such an obstinancy and yet are dependent on my consciousness?
When I practice fishing with two teenagers
poetry never occurs to me.
But later it does.
I can go over the whole day.
Hooray! That's what being human is all about.
It is just as much a weakness as a strength.
You say a language is (a wild system born with us.)
I agree.
It is wilder than wild.
If we were just wild we wouldn't need language.
Maybe we are beyond wild.
That makes me feel better.


- Doc Dachtler

Luna espejo


Mi amigo me dijo
que más que todo
la luna está hecha de vidrio
por lo cual cuando llena
tanto refleja la luz del sol.
Lo que yo creo es que
la luna es el escorial
de todo espejo roto en la Tierra
por accidente tal vez
o por rabia
cuando preguntándoles
- espejo, espejo en la pared . . . -
no nos agradan sus respuestas.

- Rafael Jesús González 2014



Mirror Moon

My friend told me
that more than anything
the moon is made of glass
for which when full
she reflects so much light of the sun.
What I believe is that
the moon is the dump-heap
of all the mirrors broken on the Earth
by accident perhaps
or through rage
when asking them,
"mirror, mirror on the wall . . ."
their answers do not please us.


- Rafael Jesús González

Let me make this perfectly clear
I have never written anything because it is a poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act.
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
And in the long light,
Breathing.

Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.

In the end there's just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the Wind)

Out there in the night between two trees is the Poem saying;
Do not hate me
Because I peeled the veil from your eyes and tore your world
To shreds, and brought

The darkness down upon your head. Here is a book of tongues,
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! Now I know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.

- Gwendolyn MacEwen

What to do when the answers leave you

To begin with, be still.
For the first few
minutes, do not say
a word about what
you have lost.

Leave your bed and walk the house.
Nod silently to the chipped cups
and the darkened grout;
calmly acknowledge the rug where it frayed,
and the tea-stained,
should’ve-been-washed curtains.

Now carefully bring out
the torn eagerness
of love, laid
too soon at his feet,
and the dried iris at
your own. See it still
infused with color.
Though you want to
sweep it up, cast it out,
don’t. Instead, not its
beauty in death.

Feel the whole room
of your body,
the mind’s cutlery
entrapped in the skull,
its ache to receive news
of life on other planets.

Tell it the answers
proved unfaithful at last,
that you would rather
have real questions any day.
Act as if you believe this.

- Kate Willens

A "real" question,

Could the line:
Instead, not its
beauty in death.

be:

Instead, note its
beauty in death.
?

Reminder


Yesterday, after days of rain,

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...4_10-58-22.png

the magnolia in full bloom,
open without reservation,
to the soft sweep of afternoon
sunlight,
stopped me in my tracks
and cleansed me with laughter.

Today I drag dark clouds
again around with me
like a moldy sweater,
and off the porch the
magnolia
again communicates
With the soft rain, ready
To let go of every
precious petal
when necessary.

Tomorrow there maybe
no magnolia,
or no me to witness it.
And this recognition
inflates a sadness in
my chest, a tight balloon,
filled with deep gratitude
and joy.
When I exhale
everything is
suddenly
available.
- Barry Vesser

If You Knew


What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

- Ellen Bass

Of What’s Left To Come


Contemplate the days,
Not the ones past,
But those yet to come.


How many remain?
On this earth
In this body
Underneath this sky?

What we deny
Diminishes us


As Death will come
Why not
Embrace death now
As a wise old friend

Let Death
Strip you of your pretense
Awaken your humanity
Humble you in its mystery

Why wait?
Allow Death’s inevitability
To arouse your secret longing for life
And move you to courageous acts of living

What do you have to lose?
But the partial death
you call life


Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate
All that we love will die


Dear Friend,
Please
Come closer
Help me to love this life
While I still can


- Forest Fein

Thank you, Larry.

Life Light

Life. a flame, a flicker,
a slow-burning ember,
a blazing fire,
precious in every form.
You.
Me.
We are.
Open to your self
like a flower to the sun
before fading days come
and life is done.
This moment is...
gone,
now new.
Feel, hear, see, smell life,
It will be over some day.
What did you come to say?
Be it, share it
through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.

©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian


It will be over some day. What did you come to say? Be it, share it through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Of What’s Left To Come


Contemplate the days,
Not the ones past,
But those yet to come.


How many remain?
On this earth
In this body
Underneath this sky?
...

---

The Cornerstone


Imagine the tale a mute stone speaks:
I stood strong at a corner
And on my shoulders a temple upbore.
Sighings and singings of love filled my days
And fed me the strength to stand
Under the weight of that heavy house
The home of him who holds the world in his hand.
Deep in the womb of night when Wyrd brushed by,
I listened oft to ancient tales told by monks
And written on scrolls with marks that spoke.
Thus in the day and in the night I was never alone,
But my goodly thanes, the men of God,
Comforted and upheld me with their praisings and tellings.
And then the Dark Doomer, Woeful Wyrd,
Struck in the night when the waves were wild
And the wind came cold, covering the world in gloom.
Striders of the Deep, the Deadly Danes,
Under the shield of the wailing wind,
Strode up the path and pillaged my temple.
Raging and foaming they felled my last thane,
Made my roof ashes, and now I uphold only silence.
Amid rank weeds I lie in the rubble
Waiting for that which can never return.
I remember the tales of the scrolls and good priests,
Stopped up as dust and scattered as ashes—
And wish I could tell them;
But I am a stone
And silent forever.


- Ed Thompson

Field Trip

You let me out, Lord.
I thank you for that.


Only for an afternoon
but you took me on a field trip to Paradise.


Long ago, you set a path for me
which I have followed faithfully.


The path became a rut,
then a trench and then a ditch.


The ditch became a chasm,
which has now become a canyon.


You held me there like the pupa inside a cocoon
until my eyes had adjusted to a new light.


You lead me to a Ridge overlooking the valley
and showed me the possibilities below.


There in a theater of oaks and grasses
you caused me to unfold my new reality.


The air around was spiced and cool
but your face impersonated a blazing sun.


The others took shelter in the shade of trees
and you tried to bring in a cooling wind.


Still my energy melted away like a once proud candle
or yesterday's ice cream pie.


You want me to speak to all assembled
the words of poetry you allowed me to write.


But before I could finish
I faltered, I failed.


You brought me here to show me
what I can no longer physically do?


Now I see the extent of your cruelty.
Then you said to me, "Open your other eyes and


see the one who stands beside you and loves you most
and steps forward to finish speaking the verse you wrote."


Thank God, Lord, you brought me to this field to see
my Paradise.

- Donald Morris

On the first morning of the world
God gave himself a gift —
an anonymous gift
called wakefulness.
He didn't ask
for anything.
He didn't ask for it.
Like all gifts it was terrible.
Imagine the burden of stars.
Imagine
the burden of mountains,
the burden of hearts.
Imagine a birthday
on which none of your friends
or distant relatives or parents
were present,
a birthday on which everyone
else was present
including the dead
(or only the dead!) —
imagine now
the burden of other times
you carry.
They have showered you with gifts
and left all the cake
on your plate.
They left early,
too soon —
so soon.
How could you make out a particular face
from this general sea of faces?
How could you write one thank-you note?
At night the shame would be vast.


- Zachary Horvitz

Once Only


almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full

moon

in the center of the sky.


- Gary Snyder
Sappa Creek near Singapore
March 1958

The Love of Morning


It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .


God has saved the world one more day

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...1_14-39-05.png

even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;


but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.


- Denise Levertov

The Time Will Come


The time will come when
I know
it’s the last time.


The sun will shine or not
and I will know
that tomorrow for me
is only now.


How will I be, I wonder,
with that knowing?


Will it be so very sad that
I cannot let it in and
will I scream inside while
drinking coffee from my favorite cup?


Or will I just let it happen?
Let the moments pass as they do
(as they must)
All while talking about how
Your hair looks in the sunlight
Thinking about the laundry
Waiting to be done at home.


- Cynthi Stefenoni

The Day Will Come
And the day will come when you hit the switch, but the room will remain dark.

Your computer will not hum, your monitor will not glow, and you will have no flashing games to play.
The gas pump will remain silent, and you will be forced to walk.

If you don’t know how to start a fire, you will be cold.

If you are wealthy, you will be greatly inconvenienced.

If you live under a bridge, you will not notice the difference.

- Armando Garcia

Waters Of March lyrics


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's feeling alone
It's the weight of your load


It's a sliver of glass,
It's life, it's the sun,
It's night, it's death,
It's a knife, it's a gun


A flower that blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush


The mystery of life
The steps in the hall
The sound of the wind
And the waterfall


It's the moon floating free,
It's the curve of the slope,
It's an ant, it's a bee,
It's a reason for hope


And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the promise of spring,
It's the joy in your heart


É o pé, é o chão, [The foot, the ground,]
é a marcha estradeira [The flesh and the bone,]
Passarinho na mão, [The beat of the road,]
pedra de atiradeira [A slingshot's stone]


É uma ave no céu, [A fish, a flash,]
é uma ave no chão [A silvery glow,]
É um regato, é uma fonte, [A fight, a bet,]
é um pedaço de pão [The range of a bow]


É o fundo do poço, [The bed of the well,]
é o fim do caminho [The end of the line,]
No rosto o desgosto, [The dismay in the face,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


A spear, a spike,
A stake, a nail,
It's a drip, It's a drop,
It's the end of the tale


A dew on the leaf
In the morning light
The shot of a gun
In the dead of the night


A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's the will to survive
It's a jolt, it's a jump


A blueprint of a house,
A body in bed,
The car stuck in the mud,
It's the mud, it's the mud


A fish, a flash
A wish, a wink
It's a hawk, it's a dove
It's the promise of spring


And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of despair
It's the joy in your heart


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


É uma cobra, é um pau, [A snake, a stick,]
é João, é José [It is John, it is Joe,]
É um espinho na mão, [It's a thorn in your hand]
é um corte no pé [and a cut in your toe]


São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]


A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
The stump of a tree,
It's a frog, it's a toad


A sigh of breath,
A walk, a run,
A life, a death,
A ray in the sun


And the riverbank sings
Of the waters of march
It's the promise of life,
It's the joy in your heart


São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


- Antonio Carlos Jobim

" ... you put the load right on me." ~ Robbie Robertson



"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." ~ Lena Horne

Why Regret?


Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?


- Galway Kinnell

The Death of Her Dishes

There was a phone call.
When she got the news, she chipped a plate on the faucet,
and dropped it in the sink to finish it off.
Then she grabbed two more and hurled them down hard onto the tile floor.
This was good, the mass of shards and rubble.
She could create something with this, as soon as the destruction was done.

When she got the call, there was no time to think.
The news spread through her like the blue star that travels
across the space in the lightbulb
just before it burns out.

She stared at the phone.
It took the last flying plate.

When so many hours passed that
She couldn’t remember where the vacuum was,
she sat and stared at the new and hopeful form the dishes took.

• • •

I know someday I will get the call, and perhaps I will be holding a plate.
Maybe I will let it go, send it crashing into that dark passage from dish to dust.
Seeing every table set, every saddened supper, how a family fills the space,
I will look upon that pile of broken bone china and unfulfilled desires.

Where is forgiveness kept in the household?
Is it in the cupboard... or on the slipping plate...
Is it in the pile...
Is this how the universe began?

Chris Dec 2001

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Day Will Come
And the day will come when you hit the switch, but the room will remain dark.
Your computer will not hum, your monitor will not glow, and you will have no flashing games to play.
The gas pump will remain silent, and you will be forced to walk.
If you don’t know how to start a fire, you will be cold.
If you are wealthy, you will be greatly inconvenienced.
If you live under a bridge, you will not notice the difference.

- Armando Garcia

---

Wet Weather
Tonight I track them down, slugs in the primroses, snails
in the hyacinths. Even before their sweet bells open,
chewed to slippery brown nubs. I cut the slugs in half,
harvest baby snails off the chrysanthemums, collect
heavy shells in a plastic bag, crunch them all underfoot,
empty this slaughter in the compost. Trying to save the vegetables.
The fog's in, somewhere a dog won't stop barking. In our house
you're dying, going out of yourself, leaving this world.
When we say God to one another, I don't know who God is.
I decide against the snails and slugs, but they keep on,
greedy for hyacinth and lettuce. From the other side
of a gate she's too small to open, a child's crying. She
can't get back to her world of yard and toys, her house.
Outside the circle of my flashlight, the snails
leave silver lines, patterns in the dirt. Outdoors
in this dripping weather, a knife in my hand,
wet plastic sticking to itself in slime and bits of shell,
I want the child's mother here, her answering words:
"It's all right now. Didn't you know I'd come?"

- Jeanne Lohmann

Rain Woman

She wakes me at four in the morning
although the mad drumming that breaks my sleep
is more the resistance of corrugated fiberglass
than the wild velocity of her downpour.

I’m on the porch, zipped into a sleeping bag.
She’s glissading in sheets around the porch.
The roof is running strong interference
and as the saying goes, three’s a crowd.

I want to hear her, only her.
I want to listen with my feathered head
tucked in a downy wing, to be warm
and dry in my den, ears alert

eyes staring into the wet dark. I want to hear
how she eases silver into velvet moss
how she spatters the duff, pummels dusty leaves
so I get up and walk into the storm.

Just before dawn, she disappears.
I become a leaf shedding her shining
a blade of grass silently sipping
a calm, clean, very cold stone.


- Cynthia Poten

Childhood Prayers


Yes, as a child I prayed,
because the nights in bed
were long and dark
and the days


had already shattered my mind
into gleaming fragments
moving quickly upon
a flame of fear.


Yes, I prayed
into the darkness,
for there were holes
in the safe world
and even my parents
were not always
the people I knew.


I tried to hold our family
safely in my arms
so that it would not shatter too,
along the fault lines I knew,
and leave me all alone.


I prayed and never thought
these prayers trying to find
their way upward through thick
layers of tangled, textured shadow


were answered, but it may be
the prayers themselves were
the answer needed then.


- Max Reif

Having intended to merely pick on an oil company,
the poem goes awry


Never before have I so resembled British Petroleum.
They – it? – are concerned about the environment.
I – it? – am concerned about the environment.
They – him? – convey their concern through commercials,
in which a man talks softly about the importance
of the environment. I – doodad? – convey my concern
through poems, in which my fingers type softly
about the importance of the Earth. They – oligarchs? –
have painted their slogans green. I– ineffectual
left-leaning emotional black-hole of a self-sempahore? –
recycle. Isn’t a corporation technically a person
and responsible? Aren’t I technically a person
and responsible? In a legal sense, in a regal sense,
if romanticism holds sway? To give you a feel
for how soft his voice is, imagine a kitty
that eats only felt wearing a sable coat on a bed
of dandelion fluff under sheets of the foreskins
of seraphim, that’s how soothingly they want to drill
in Alaska, in your head, just in case. And let’s be honest,
we mostly want them to, we mostly want to get to the bank
by two so we can get out of town by three and beat
the traffic, traffic is murder this time of year.
How far would you walk for bread? For the flour
to make bread? A yard, a mile, a year, a life?
Now you ask me, when are you going to fix your bike
and ride it to work? Past the plain horses
and spotted cows and the spotted horses and plain cows,
along the river, to the left of the fallen-down barn
and the right of the falling-down barn, up the hill,
through the Pentecostal bend and past the Methodist
edifice, through the speed trap, beside the art gallery
and cigar shop, past the tattoo parlor and the bar
and the other bar and the other other bar and the other
other other bar and the bar that closed, where I swear,
al-anon meets, since I’m wondering, what is the value
of the wick or wire of the soul, be it emotional
or notional, now that oceans are wheezing to a stop?



- Bob Hicok

Getting There


You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You're there. You've arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.


What did you want
To be? You'll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.


What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler's dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.


You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.




- David Wagoner

Weather Report
The vultures of this landscape came to call
this morning—found a bare-limbed tree outside
my kitchen window, settled in & held
my gaze, big tar blobs against a milky sky:
We understand you, their presence informed me,
And I you, I told them in silence.
Right now
this day can’t make up its mind—sun’s half out
but rain’s in those clouds. It it’s that cold wind—
driven stuff that swats your eyes like a drink
full of crushed ice thrown in in your face, I’ll stay
indoors, count my failures & petty crimes,
loathe my life, and completely understand
why friends and loved ones keep their distance.
The barometer yo-yos my mental state—
one day I’m a happy old dude, kitchen
dancer, car-driving harmonizer, hilltop
walker delighted by the world.
Next day
it’s the big not, the mega-never. And where
are you breeze-blown death birds now that I need you?
This mean rain’s rotting the starch right out of me.
Come down from your perch, my beauties, I’m
opening doors and windows, I’m looking for snacks
in the back of the fridge. Here—try roosting
on this chair back. Please just sit with me
around my table. I’ll hold up both ends
of our conversation. It’s like forever
I’ve wanted to talk to you. Here—let me
turn off these lights—I know you like the dark.
- David Huddle

After


after chopping off all the arms that reached out to me;
after boarding up all the windows and doors;

after filling all the pits with poisoned water;
after building my house on a rock of a no,
inaccessible to flattery and fear;

after cutting out my tongue and eating it;
after hurling handfuls of silence and
monosyllables of scorn at my loves;

after forgetting my name;
and the name of my birthplace;
and the name of my race;

after judging and sentencing myself
to perpetual waiting,
and perpetual loneliness, I heard
against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms,

the humid, tender, insistent
onset of spring.

- Octavio Paz

Metamorphoses


There were the stories Ovid wrote.
There is nothing burning there.
Read for your life or not at all.
Curiosity has its fixed bourn.

Change of Myrrha into pith.
Change, change, change, what should change
but the grasp of habit. The refusal
to abide in change. Fear
of Proteus, God-Who-Changes-Too-Fast.

The monkey of the mind seeking
the next attention fleeting from tree
to tree, going nowhere for nothing,
not for food, for fun, for fear.
Flying as a form of marking time in place.
Bludgeoning the ground with consistency.

Myrrha’s Refusal
births Adonis.
Yes, and Venus’ oval eye
falls into the jail of his beauty.
She spaniels him
everywhere.

Atalanta’s dress falls to her feet
as she preps to race naked.
And Hippomenes who’s mocked
her for her slaughtered suitors
cries out in his brains for her now.

And she for him.
He’s so lovely.
If he outrun her he wins her.
If she him,
he dies.

He wants only three apples
of red gold
to do it.
Yes.

Her fleet feet fled for the first gold ball.
Such a trinket. He, from Lady Venus
tutored how to toss it.
The second – pitched as she passed him –
and she caught it in midflight
flying to the fatal finish.

Only one left. Far ahead of him she,
she saw it lob into the arroyo
dark. Oh, heavy laden with two,
she hoped to spurn the last
and win. But Lady Venus said, No. So
down among the brambles she sought it
and won the lost loss.

The gore of slaughtered suitors
was not to be her rug. And he,
Hippomenes? He, fool, forgot
to thank Venus for it. Who made them into
lions as they fucked.

Venus only once forgot.
Aloft she flew with a taunt
to a youth who hunted, and
his dogs took scent
of a boar who gored him up his groin.
She saw, came down, gathered
into her arms the perfect dead
Adonis. Scored her face with anguish
and with its blood mixed with his
into pomegranates he was changed.

So I do not take Lorenzo de’ Medici’s
“Nothing lasts. Only death” as mine,
when what is Change but death,
death coming like a flower of spring
whose nectar is a venom that can cure?


- Bruce Moody

In honor of National Poetry Month the Sebastopol Center for the Arts invites you to join us for a delightful evening of poetry Thursday, April 10 at 7:00 PM. Twenty poetry lovers from the community, including Sonoma County Poet Laureate Katherine Hastings, will read or recite their favorite poems.

The event is free and refreshments will be served. Please plan to join us.

The Sebastopol Center for the Arts is located at 282 South High Street, Sebastopol.




The Morning’s News

The morning’s news drives sleep out of the head
at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
in the agony of the old giving birth to the new
without assurance that the new will be better.
I look at my son, whose eyes are like a young god’s,
they are so open to the world.
I look at my sloping fields now turning
green with the young grass of April. What must I do
to go free? I think I must put on
a deathlier knowledge, and prepare to die
rather than enter into the design of man’s hate.
I will purge my mind of the airy claims
of church and state. I will serve the earth
and not pretend my life could better serve.
Another morning comes with its strange cure.
The earth is news. Though the river floods
and the spring is cold, my heart goes on,
faithful to a mystery in a cloud,
and the summer’s garden continues its descent
through me, toward the ground.

- Wendell Berry

Master of the Universe

Master of the Universe
laid an egg,
sat upon it for eternity,
Dreamed it was an oyster
discovered by a child
visiting the sea.
Child pried it open
found a pearl
which became the world
as we know it,
It hangs to this day
around the child’s neck
while the Master rests patiently
upon the egg
inside
of all things.
- Gary Turchin

Saturn's Rings


Last night I saw the rings of Saturn

https://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/rings-of-saturn-2.jpg

for the first time, that brilliant band
of icy crystals and dust. Mirrors
shepherding the light, collecting it
like pollen or manna
or pails of sweet clear water drawn
from the depths of an ancient well.
The gleam poured through my pupils
into this small, temporary body,
my wrinkled brain in its eggshell skull,
my tunneling blood, breasts that remember
the sting and flush of milk.
Saturn, its frozen rings fire-white,
reflecting the sun from a billion miles.
Maybe there's a word in another language
for when distance dissolves into time.
How are we changed when we stand out
under the fat stars of summer,
our pores opening in the night?
The earth from Saturn is a pale blue orb,
smaller than the heart of whoever you love.
You don't forget the poles of the earth
turning to slush,
you don't forget the turtles
burning in the Gulf.
Burger King at the end of the street
is frying perfectly round patties,
the cows off I-5 stand ankle deep
in excrement. The television
spreads its blue wings over the window
of the house across from mine
where someone's husband pressed a gun
against the ridged roof of his mouth.
This choreography of ruin, the world breaking
like glass under a microscope,
the way it doesn't crack all at once,
but spreads out from the damaged cavities.
Still for a moment it all recedes.
The backyard potatoes swell quietly
buried beneath their canopy of leaves.
The wind rubs its hands through the trees.


- Ellen Bass

The Mask of Anarchy


Written on the occasion of the massacre carried out by the British Government
at Peterloo, Manchester 1819


As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.


I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:


All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.


Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.


And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.


Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.


And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.


Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.


And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'


With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude.


And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.


And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.


O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.


And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.


For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King.


'We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our Purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'


Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering - 'Thou art Law and God.' -


Then all cried with one accord,
'Thou art King, and God and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!'


And Anarchy, the skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.


For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.


So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament


When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:


'My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!


He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me -
Misery, oh, Misery!'


Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses' feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.


When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:


Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,


It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.


On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.


With step as soft as wind it passed
O'er the heads of men - so fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked, - but all was empty air.


As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.


And the prostrate multitude
Looked - and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:


And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.


A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt - and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose


As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother's throe


Had turned every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood, -
As if her heart had cried aloud:


'Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;


'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.


'What is Freedom? - ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well -
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.


'Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell,


'So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.


'Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak, -
They are dying whilst I speak.


'Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;


'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More that e'er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.


'Paper coin - that forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.


'Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.


'And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you -
Blood is on the grass like dew.


'Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood - and wrong for wrong -
Do not thus when ye are strong.


'Birds find rest, in narrow nest
When weary of their wingèd quest
Beasts find fare, in woody lair
When storm and snow are in the air.


'Asses, swine, have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one -
Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!


'This is slavery - savage men
Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do -
But such ills they never knew.


'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demand - tyrants would flee
Like a dream's dim imagery:


'Thou art not, as impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
Echoing from the cave of Fame.


'For the labourer thou art bread,
And a comely table spread
From his daily labour come
In a neat and happy home.


'Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude -
No - in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.


'To the rich thou art a check,
When his foot is on the neck
Of his victim, thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake.


'Thou art Justice - ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England - thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.


'Thou art Wisdom - Freemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado.


'Thou art Peace - never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.


'What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.


'Thou art Love - the rich have kissed
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Give their substance to the free
And through the rough world follow thee,


'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
War for thy belovèd sake
On wealth, and war, and fraud - whence they
Drew the power which is their prey.


'Science, Poetry, and Thought
Are thy lamps; they make the lot
Of the dwellers in a cot
So serene, they curse it not.


'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou - let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.


'Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.


'Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.


'From the corners uttermost
Of the bounds of English coast;
From every hut, village, and town
Where those who live and suffer moan,


'From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold -


'From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares -


'Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around


'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale -


'Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -


'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -


'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.


'Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
Troops of armed emblazonry.


Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses' heels.


'Let the fixèd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.


'Let the horsemen's scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.


'Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,


'And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armèd steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.


'Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute,


'The old laws of England - they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo - Liberty!


'On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.


'And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, -
What they like, that let them do.


'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.


'Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.


'Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand -
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.


'And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.


'And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.


'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -


'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'


- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Common

Imagine being common, crow-common
Lupine-common, an oak surrounded by dry,
Wild grasses common.

One day, I cross a high school parking lot,
Common asphalt, meeting my common soles.
Before me, an explosion of gulls,
White as a bride's dress, shoot as one
Up, then spill over, a fountain pouring perfectly
Each bird, a bead of liquid life. Again,
They explode, shoot skyward and spill over
Again and again, threaded through by trails
Of blue-black crows, woven into the flying
Fabric by necessity, desire and instinct.

I comment to a man pushing a compost can,
Remark at the remarkable. He says, "Oh,
They do that every day. At lunch the students,
Leave behind bits of bread," treasures
From barely-noticed food, common fare eaten daily.

I want to be that common,
Common as the gulls, rising and descending,
And the crows, weaving their way
To the feast, that bread,
That common manna.

- Rebecca del Rio

The Dream Gardener
For My Brother Michael (April 7, 1950 - February 1, 2007)


You arrive in my dream
planting figs in my garden walls.
“These figs can be found all over the world,” you say.


Even now, as I send these words
across the night divide,
Lovers are tasting voluptuous sweetness,
delectable orbs
bearing ripe possibility and promise.


Walls disguised as mortar and mud
are reborn as miracles of life,
invisible riches
coaxed from the cracks
of what has hollowed and dried,
tended into their own becoming
against all odds,
by the dream gardener’s hands.


I wonder about those worldwide tasting strangers,
are they swallowing their fate,
partaking of its bittersweet flavors,
whether heaven or hell?


When expelled from the garden
like you,
have they found their own beauty
at the edges of loss,
made their particular peace
with freedom and fear?


Or have they thrust themselves
righteous as beacons
away from this earth?
Offered themselves
like gathered fruits
to the limitless silence
of the land of the dead,


somehow arising
from that dark altar of mystery,
as seeds of hope,
where figs grow from walls,
and all the departed
all over the worlds
arrive as gardeners
growing food for the hungry
the humbled
the heartsick
they have destined to leave behind.


- Terry Ebinger

Wait


Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.


Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.


- Galway Kinnell

Advaita


You say "non-dual",

https://nondualityamerica.files.word...g-72.jpg?w=300

Not that,
Which describes this and that.
Or even "not this, not that",
Which implies a third thing.


Let us see instead
The pink blossom of the lotus
Hanging in our chests
And the golden window there
Leading to our hearts.


Let us hear the sound of the universe
In our own voice,
And feel everything here
That God cannot.


Let us know
Our one soul
By looking in each other's eyes.


- B Sue

Too Many Problems


The dilemma, my love, is
your life is constructed of all these
magnificent problems,
and were you to fix them all
there'd be nothing left of you,
save a naked beautiful soul
weeping to God for love
which is what we all are in the end.


Instead of fixing all
those problems
perhaps it would be easier
to let them go and just start
weeping


- Greg Kimura

Inventing a Horse


Inventing a horse is not easy.
One must not only think of the horse.
One must dig fence posts around him.
One must include a place where horses like to live;

or do when they live with humans like you.
Slowly, you must walk him in the cold;
feed him bran mash, apples;
accustom him to the harness;

holding in mind even when you are tired
harnesses and tack cloths and saddle oil
to keep the saddle clean as a face in the sun;
one must imagine teaching him to run

among the knuckles of tree roots,
not to be skittish at first sight of timber wolves,
and not to grow thin in the city,
where at some point you will have to live;

and one must imagine the absence of money.
Most of all though: the living weight,
the sound of his feet on the needles,
and, since he is heavy, and real,

and sometimes tired after a run
down the river with a light whip at his side,
one must imagine love
in the mind that does not know love,

an animal mind, a love that does not depend
on your image of it,
your understanding of it;
indifferent to all that it lacks:

a muzzle and two black eyes
looking the day away, a field empty
of everything but witch grass, fluent trees,
and some piles of hay.


- Meghan O’Rourke

For Art Warmouth (1936-2014)


I have walked along many roads,
and opened paths through brush,
I have sailed over a hundred seas
and tied up on a hundred shores.


Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve seen
excursions of sadness,
angry and melancholy
drunkards with black shadows,


and academics in offstage clothes
who watch, say nothing, and think
they know, because they do not drink wine
in the ordinary bars.


Evil men who walk around
polluting the earth. . .


And everywhere I’ve been I’ve seen
men who dance and play,
when they can, and work
the few inches of ground they have.


If they turn up somewhere,
they never ask where they are.
When they take trips, they ride
on the backs of old mules.


They don’t know how to hurry,
not even on holidays.
They drink wine, if there is some,
if not, cool water.


These men are the good ones,
who love, work, walk and dream.
And on a day no different from the rest
they lie down beneath the earth.


- Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)

At Last


It is not true that every son
and father come to this
the rough bass of your voice
singing the endless tune
I'm sorry I'm sorry
two words you have not spoken
your ninety years till now
Each time they seem to end
or begin some long tale told
in a tongue neither of of us speaks
and in this room just you and I
to hear those two small words
drift down and settle in your hands
where they have fallen on the sheets
opened in defeat or peace
I take one hand in two of mine
and though it never was
say It's all right It's all right
and of course at last it is


- Richard Lehnert

Brahma


If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.


Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.


They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.


The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.


- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ancient Egyptian Love

This love is as good

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As oil and honey to the throat,
As linen to the body,
As fine garments to the gods,
As incense to worshippers when they enter in,
As the little seal-ring to my finger.

It is like a ripe pear in a man's hand.
It is like the dates we mix with wine.
It is like the seeds the baker adds to bread.

We will be together even when old age comes.

And the days in between
Will be food set before us,
Dates and honey, bread and wine.

Translated by Michael V. Fox




This song/poem dates from the 19^th or 20^th Egyptian dynasty
(ca. 1300-1100 B.C.E.).


It was found written in hieroglyphics on a vase.

Prothalamium
Come, all you who are not satisfied
as ruler in a lone, wallpapered room
full of mute birds, and flowers that falsely bloom,
and closets choked with dreams that long ago died!
Come, let us sweep the old streets - like a bride;
sweep out dead leaves with a relentless broom;
prepare for Spring, as though he were our groom
for whose light footstep eagerly we bide.
We'll sweep out shadows, where the rats long fed;
sweep out our shame - and in its place we'll make
a bower for love, a splendid marriage-bed
fragrant with flowers aquiver for the Spring.
And when he comes, our murdered dreams shall wake;
and when he comes, all the mute birds shall sing.


- Aaron Kramer

April Prayer


Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we’ve
all been listening to: Go make the call.


- Stuart Kestenbaum

Lunas de los arcángeles

a Gabriel García Márquez


Dice Gabriel el arcángel
que por cada minuto
que uno cierre los ojos
se pierden sesenta segundos
de luz -
por eso vigila de noche
y enciende velitas de azucenas,
las estrellas sin cuenta,
con su lámpara redonda
de la luna plena.

Dice Rafael el arcángel
que por cada minuto
que uno duerma
se escapan sesenta peces
de ensueño -
por eso vaga la playa nocturna
para coger los peces de azogue,
las estrellas sin cuenta,
en redes con el flotador
de la luna plena.

Dice Miguel el arcángel
que por cada minuto
que uno olvide
se marchitan sesenta flores
del recuerdo -
por eso va por la noche
segando con su espada de plata
los jazmines de llama,
las estrellas sin cuenta,
que recoge en su escudo
de la luna plena.

© Rafael Jesús González 2015

---

Moons of the Archangels

for Gabriel García Márquez


Gabriel the archangel says
that for each minute
one closes the eyes
are lost sixty seconds
of light -
that is why he watches at night
and lights votive candles of lilies,
the stars beyond count,
with his round lamp
the full moon.

Rafael the archangel says
that for each minute
one sleeps
there escape sixty fishes
of illusion -
that is why he roams the night beach
to catch the quicksilver fish,
the stars beyond count,
in nets with their float
the full moon.

Michael the archangel says
that for each minute
one forgets
there wither sixty flowers
of remembrance -
that is why he goes through the night
reaping with his silver sword
the jasmines of flame,
the stars beyond count,
he gathers on his shield
the full moon.

- Rafael Jesús González 2014

Easter Morning In Wales


A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
Neglected for years,
The layers of its soil deep and thick.
Trees in the corners with branching arms
And the tangled briars like broken nets.


Sunrise through the misted orchard,
Morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs.
I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
If I am really seeing, or dreaming,
Or simply astonished
Walking toward sunrise
To have stumbled into the garden
Where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.


- David Whyte

Hurricane


Pistols shots ring out in the barroom night

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...n_Carter_4.jpg

Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out "My God they killed them all"
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.


Three bodies lying there does Patty see
And another man named Bello moving around mysteriously
"I didn't do it" he says and he throws up his hands
"I was only robbing the register I hope you understand
I saw them leaving" he says and he stops
"One of us had better call up the cops"
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashing
In the hot New Jersey night.


Meanwhile far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are driving around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Patterson that's just the way things go
If you're black you might as well not shown up on the street
'Less you wanna draw the heat.


Alfred Bello had a partner and he had a rap for the corps
Him and Arthur Dexter Bradley were just out prowling around
He said "I saw two men running out they looked like middleweights
They jumped into a white car with out-of-state plates"
And Miss Patty Valentine just nodded her head
Cop said "Wait a minute boys this one's not dead"
So they took him to the infirmary
And though this man could hardly see
They told him that he could identify the guilty men.


Four in the morning and they haul Rubin in
Take him to the hospital and they bring him upstairs
The wounded man looks up through his one dying eye
Says "Wha'd you bring him in here for ? He ain't the guy !"
Yes here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.


Four months later the ghettos are in flame
Rubin's in South America fighting for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley's still in the robbery game
And the cops are putting the screws to him looking for somebody to blame
"Remember that murder that happened in a bar ?"
"Remember you said you saw the getaway car?"
"You think you'd like to play ball with the law ?"
"Think it might-a been that fighter you saw running that night ?"
"Don't forget that you are white".


Arthur Dexter Bradley said "I'm really not sure"
Cops said "A boy like you could use a break
We got you for the motel job and we're talking to your friend Bello
Now you don't wanta have to go back to jail be a nice fellow
You'll be doing society a favor
That sonofabitch is brave and getting braver
We want to put his ass in stir
We want to pin this triple murder on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim".


Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
It's my work he'd say and I do it for pay
And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse.


All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy nigger
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The DA said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed.


Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder 'one' guess who testified
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand ?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.


Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
That's the story of the Hurricane
But it won't be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he's done
Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.


- Bob Dylan

For Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014)

We Have A Beautiful Mother


We have a beautiful
Mother
Her hills
Are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
Hills.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her oceans
Are wombs
Her wombs
Oceans.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her teeth
The white stones
At the edge
Of the water
The summer
Grasses
Her plentiful
Hair.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything we know.


- Alice Walker

Water Table


It is on dry sunny days like this one that I find myself
thinking about the enormous body of water
that lies under this house,
cool, unseen reservoir,
silent except for the sounds of dripping
and the incalculable shifting
of all the heavy darkness that it holds.
This is the water that our well was dug to sip
and lift to where we live,
water drawn up and falling on our bare shoulders,
water filling the inlets of our mouths,
water in a pot on the stove.
The house is nothing now but a blueprint of pipes,
a network of faucets, nozzles, and spigots,
and even outdoors where light pierces the air
and clouds fly over the canopies of trees,
my thoughts flow underground
trying to imagine the cavernous scene.
Surely it is no pool with a colored ball
floating on the blue surface.
No grotto where a king would have
his guests rowed around in swan-shaped boats.
Between the dark lakes where the dark rivers flow
there is no ferry waiting on the shore of rock
and no man holding a long oar,
ready to take your last coin.
This is the real earth and the real water it contains.
But some nights, I must tell you,
I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep.
I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness.
I sing a love song as well as I can,
lost for a while in the home of the rain.
- Billy Collins

Maker Of All things, Even Healings


All night
under the pines
the fox
moves through the darkness
with a mouthful of teeth
and a reputation for death
which it deserves.
In the spicy
villages of the mice
he is famous,
his nose
in the grass
is like an earthquake,
his feet
on the path
is a message so absolute
that the mouse, hearing it,
makes himself
as small as he can
as he sits silent
or, trembling, goes on
hunting among the grasses
for the ripe seeds.
Maker of All Things,
including appetite,
including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us, sometime or other,
flee for the sake
of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow–
let me hold on
to the edge of your robe
as you determine
what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.
- Mary Oliver

A Momentary Creed


I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
it extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me
there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me
even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me
- W.S. Merwin

Seychelles


Suddenly a green coast appears through
the freighter's portal. It's the first view of land
since the voyage began eight days ago from
the port of Mombasa, Kenya. At last, scenery
after so much bland horizon over the Indian
Ocean. The islands are called the Seychelles,
perfect canopies of palms, fruit grows ripe with
the colors of tropics, perfect invitation cards.
Silence hovers like the sun-dazed air, hidden
weeds grow flowers.The long voyage to India
once more.
The islands of my life appeared as blessing
after a long fever, how health pushed forward
from the locked door of an old house with the
resilient memory of how to find the new house.
How the writhing days with malaria stacked up
against all the divine story of who I thought I was.
I had nothing to fall back on except the smiling
current that took me by surprise to these islands.
I felt so grateful for the coming of surprise after
the poisoning of longing. After the tempest and
the salted wounds in dreams which I could
observe but not interpret, after the gust and gasps,
my heart ebbs toward a new tide. I can rise fearless
from my hammock, walk out on deck, walk upon
one island or another, rise out of the feverish haunting
of the deep sea in which I was the ghost. As wanderer
I had to meet my restless self and wake up to the island
that arises in that desperate faith of healing, waking up
to myself, nourished and refreshed.


- Rich Meyers

I am Avalokiteshvara

I am Avalokiteshvara.

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I hear the cries of the suffering world.
I have no tools to help,
not one.
I cannot sleep,
no matter how
I adjust the pillow behind my head.
How can I be comfortable,
when they are not?
My head explodes with grief and pity,
shame and guilt.
How is it that we who can penetrate the farthest star
and dissect the tiniest atom
have not discovered in ourselves
the simple heart,
the heart that would rejoice
to remove the suffering
of those
in Syria,
in Sing Sing
in a warehouse for the aged on East 79th Street
those cast away everywhere
who cry out in thirst and hunger
and the need to be seen
as human?


- Nina Mermey Klippel

The Plan

My old friend, the owner
of a new boat, stops by
to ask me to fish with him.

And I say I will –- both of us
knowing that we may never
get around to it, it may be

years before we’re both
idle again on the same day.
But we make a plan, anyhow.

In honor of friendship
and the fine spring weather
and the new boat

and our sudden thought
of the water shining
under the morning fog.

- Wendell Berry

Advice


An ink-black crow yelled at me, saying,

Be responsible for everything: your life, and the lives of others.

The war in Iraq, and children dying of starvation.

Your neighbor’s happiness – and the Amazon rainforest.

Your body’s health, and the community of elders in Tajikistan.

The bacterial network in the soil, and the fungal mat beneath the roots of trees.

The farm workers being slowly poisoned by pesticides, and the wilderness being stripped of its wildness.

I complained loudly that I was not big enough to hold the whole world.

Do not stop there, he cawed.

You are also responsible for galaxies spinning on their axis, and the birth of stars.

Gravity, and the expansion of space.

All beliefs of every species, and the transformation of hydrogen from one form to another.

What then, I beseeched, does it mean to be responsible?

He looked at me from his perch on the branch outside my window,

first with one eye, then the other,

as if contemplating an answer simple enough for me to understand.

Care, he replied.

Care, Care, Care.


- Lion Goodman

The Vulnerability of Children


Lives inside all of us
the small animal heart beat,
the quiver of quickening,
the womb-bound baby's sensing
her possibilities.


On edge, unsure, but sure
someone is certain, we guard
our ignorance, hide it
like buried scat instead of the jewel
naïveté is, forgetting the blessing
of curiosity without contempt.


The boy bends over the microscope,
studies blossoms in stone,
the certain beat of a heart aware
of the miraculous. In that moment
fear of mistakes, knowledge of right
or wrong recede and the boy's vulnerability blesses him,


gifts him with precious perspective,
the vision of quotidian miracles
hidden in the mundane.
Possessed of wide-open
wonder, sweet sensitivity,
he enters, lives in eternity,
our original blessing.




- Rebecca del Rio

In memory of Angeles Arrien 1940-2014


A Morning Offering


I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
- John O'Donohue

To This May

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

- W.S. Merwin

For Freedom
As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.
As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.
As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.
-*John O’Donohue

In the Month of May
In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well all things
lean on each other, how the bees work,
the fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high; then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.
I love you with what in me is still
changing, what has no head or arms
or legs, what has not found its body.
And why shouldn't the miraculous,
caught on this earth, visit
the old man alone in his hut?
And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
whose holy bodies are not yet born.
Along the roads, I see so many places
I would like us to spend the night.
- Robert Bly

The Excesses of God


Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.


- Robinson Jeffers

The Vulnerability of Adults


We carry divine ignorance
in tiny pockets of our secret selves,
like polished stones, scoured
in the wide ocean of wonder.
Our secret: we are not certain.
Odd, to secret away our
common gift, common inheritance.


Birth brings the burden of love,
carried from the Unknowable,
calls for tenderness, the language of
kindness. Once aware, our
ignorance becomes a curse,
curiosity exposes inherent humanity
in a world of would-be gods.


In flickers of not-knowing lives
Light-bright naïveté, the guileless
Birthright of babies, blessing
of the birds, sand, spiders–
Our blessing, hidden from view, by
learned blindness, lost wonder.


- Rebecca del Rio

Lake Shore In Half Light


There is a question I want to ask
and I can’t remember it
I keep trying to
I know it is the same question
it has always been
in fact I seem to know
almost everything about it
all that reminds me of it
leading to the lake shore
at daybreak or twilight
and to whatever is standing
next to the question
as a body stands next to its shadow
but the question is not a shadow
if I knew who discovered
zero I might ask
what there was before


- W.S. Merwin

The Moment


The moment when, after many years

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...8_14-40-36.png

of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

- Margaret Atwood


In memory of Farley Mowatt: 1921-2014

Have you seen the movie Snow Walker, based on a Farley Mowat story? It's one of my very favorite movies. Box Office has the dvd, which includes footage of the author in the special features.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Moment

....

In memory of Farley Mowatt: 1921-2014

---

Enough

I may never see
the sun rise glow
on Fujiyama.

Or the shadows
of sunset
from Machu Picchu.

But I have seen
the morning light
on the lake with you,

and it is enough.

- Doug von Koss

My Mother is a Talking Poem
My mother is a talking poem
her inside turned out.
the threads that weave her thoughts together
unravel into surrender,
lifted up on currents of dark wings
that caress the night sky

Her tongue is loosened and her words fall out
here and there, fumbling their way
from dreams to memories
to visits from loved ones long-departed.
She strings them together in open-eyed wonder
at the sounds they impress upon the air.
She laughs at her own inner secrets.

The angels of music and poetry visit her at night.
They are singing loose the keynote
that anchors her body to this earth.

In their presence I allow her words
to meander around inside of me
I open to drink in the sounds of her voice
My blue petals imprinted with each inflection.
Under their spell
I have become my mother’s Forget-Me-Not
each memory bud blessed
with the cross-pollination
of her meter and her rhyme.

- Julie Ann Schrader

Mothers' Day Proclamation
Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870:

https://davidgmiller.typepad.com/.a/...d203970b-600wi

mothers

his eyes are different, she says

just yesterday
her son honed his skills
on those silly video games
racking up points
winning, laughing

today, barely twenty,
he returns from war
a sniper-hero
fingers no longer itching
for video triggers

his eyes are different, she says

- Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg