Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Secret

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

- Denise Levertov

Labyrinth

I walk the beach
washed in churning sound,
sighting flight soarings,
cormorants, pelicans, gulls
on uplifting currents
shifting in the shore wind,
earful, eyeful coastal motion
and then I find along the sloping shore
a fully realized laid-out labyrinth
not a random residue of tidal flow
but measured paths formed of seaweed, sand, and stone
a shape satisfying the human eye, the foot,
for a circumnambulation of will
mind and questing spirit
of each traveler making the way alone.

Someone has left to a beach wanderer
this circular route map on the longer journey,
a place of time and space to ask directions
where each questing step leads to the center,
each inward step returns outward from the core,
a kind of breathing in and breathing out
endings requiring beginnings, living dying
and dying living on this ever changing shore.

I place my foot onto the winding path
asking what I need to ask myself,
what I hope for and what I fear,
what there is to gain and what to lose,
not that I will die but how
I'll take death's indignities,
accepting dying as but another stage,
how to give up the power to choose.

And at the labyrinthian core,
enlightened, relieved of choice
traveling where my footsteps take me
I turn to marvel where I've been,
how far I've come by walking,
and by the weavings of my mind and hand.
My questing over, I now may yield
to this winding destiny
footprinted on these pathways
soon to be erased in sand.

- Doug Stout

Otherwise

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

- Jane Kenyon

Sunday, Salaam

Gushing forth
from three miles deep
in the Gulf Coast,
clouds roil beneath
the sunrise sheen,
slick acres
of greed.

No one is in
the pews
this Sunday:
the morning is
deadly,
silent

sea birds squat
bewildered,
the shore marsh
dragged, clogged
with the offal
of sacrifice
to strange gods,

the temple bereft,
mud and sandy traces
lie on its ancient, sacred floors,
walls echoing cries
of betrayed souls,
their Mother’s

nascent
thunder.

- Scott O'Brien

In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious

- Lisel Mueller

A Ripe Fig

Now that you live in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

Those other things that entice people,
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made people weep for centuries,
even those are changing now.

What used to be pain is now a lovely bench
where we sit under the roses.

A left hand has become a right.
a black wall, a window,
a cushion in a heel of a shoe,
a leader of an assembly.

Intelligence and silence.
What we say is poison to some,
nourishing to others.

What we say is a ripe fig,*
but not all birds that fly eat figs.

- Jellaludin Rumi

Casualties

Having flown their last miles,
tattered wings flutter, try to rise
from the red-brown skin of a Louisiana beach.
Off the endangered list for one short year,
now just flotsam and jetsam lapping this humid shore.
An open vein, oil and water mix,
unspooling a knotted thread along the coast
to weave this pelican’s shroud.

The hasp of Pandora’s box, so carelessly sprung,
sinks to the ocean floor, eludes us in the current.
For now, an eternity of stars returns each night,
bright reminder that we lost paradise somewhere along the way.

- Susan Collier Lamont

Sit Quietly

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

Another Long Walk


Given enough time,
there is always another long walk,
another proof of civilization's lie,
and all must prepare to run,
for no matter where you are born,
the sky can crack and drown you in fire.

The prophet said it would be fire
licking at our heels next time
and it is anyone’s bad luck to be born
where death comes cloaked as a walk
that goes on and on, until lives run
out of breath, stumble, and lie

in barren fields with nothing to lie
between them and scorching fire.
There is nothing to do, but to run
as fast as you can, to outdistance time
and this nightmare of a walk
where death is borne

on wings of silver and hope dies, unborn,
among hobbled prints that lie
in mute witness to another long walk
that crushes hearts into red grit of fire
and strangles cries of rage that time
after time, someone must pack up a life and run

to nowhere. This walk, too, shall run
its course, new stars will be born
to light up the heavens and, in time,
history will write, not quite truth, not quite lies,
of who and why and how all became fire.
Some will say there never was a walk

of death, that all people are free to walk
a thousand miles of blackened earth, to run
a marathon of fear, while fire
power presides as midwife to newborn
cries of war. Dark clouds gather and lie
low over fallow fields, where time

has run out. On distant horizon, fire is born,
from smoldering ash left to lie untended.
The time has come for another long walk.

- Patrice Warrender

Homing Song: Two Stanzas

Because any place
you affix as home is an astonishment
Destiny or destination-- you are home
and you know instinctly how to doubt it
a talent for searching, you begin
with maps and roots and tributaries
in a backyard or in a city park
unearthing cedar systems or star charts
or at your father's cabin
mapping the riverlogic of the Nemakagan
while otters skim and pack the trail
for you, while sand coyotes pull in
midnight air, and sing a capella
all the lonely way back
to you
And you sing back, throwing out
round songs to anonymous canyons
and the fine criminal lives
you admire and while
Invoking nothing more than the
comfort of the faraway familiar,
echoes like whispers
the sound of a descending star
your own long distance
it's all the same
Once you were reminded
of the throatsingers in Canada
as a child cried behind you
Each enhanced private legends
you used to decipher alone,
tremeloes come back
signifying you, signifying them
at the same time, a song
means all of us.

- Denise Sweet

The Gardener of Eden

I am the old dreamer who never sleeps
I am timekeeper of the timeless dance
I preserve the long rhythms of the earth
and fertilize the rounds of desire

In my evergreen arboretum
I raise flowering hopes for the world
I plant seeds of perennial affection
and wait for their passionate bloom

Would you welcome that sight if you saw it?
Revalue the view you have lost?
Could you wake to the innocent morning
and follow the risks of your heart?

Every day I grow a dream in my garden
where the beds are laid out for love
When will you come to embrace it
and join in the joy of the dance?

- James Broughton

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path -- but that's when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here on earth, again and again.

- William Stafford

The Time

Summer is the time to write. I tell myself this
in winter especially. Summer comes,
I want to tumble with the river
over rocks and mossy dams.

A fish drifting upside down.
Slow accordions sweeten the breeze.

The Sanitary Mattress Factory says,
"Sleep is Life."
Why do I think of forty ways to spend an afternoon?

Yesterday someone said, "It gets late so early."
I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.
Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. - Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

- William Wordsworth

Because

Lately she's been falling in love everywhere--
at the market, in the pharmacy, always in the cafeteria
sliding her tray over the metal rails,
last week with the hands of the attendant at the gas station.
Sometimes it happens all day long.

Yesterday at the campus it was everything again--
The way the postmaster was whistling,
or how the frisbee players sing the quad.
The way some students stay after class, that usually gets her.
Cashiers, people who sing at stop lights--all fair game.
Cab drivers--forget it.

With ice cream scoopers, with their little paper hats,
it is often love at first sight,
and she will never forget how at the sandwich shop--
the young man working said anything to drink, miss?
to the 80-year-old woman in front of her,
then when it was her turn, said ma'am instead.

Later today, blessed by all this loving
she will make some tea and play a violin concerto
for her dog who is deaf.
She will play the music as loud as it will go
because she can,
and because somehow he'll hear it,
and he will stand on the porch
of the fine yellow house, glowing.

She will be all choked up
because the lawn chairs
have never been this white before,
and because, tired ears flapping
in a soft Autumn breeze,
the old dog will bark back his joy.

- Lisa Starr

I Tell You

[excerpt]
I could not predict the fullness
of the day. How it was enough
to stand alone without help
in the green yard at dawn.

How two geese would spin out
of the ochre sun opening my spine,
curling my head up to the sky
in an arc I took for granted.

And the lilac bush by the red
brick wall flooding the air
with its purple weight of beauty?
How it made my body swoon,

brought my arms to reach for it
without even thinking.

***

In class today a Dutch woman split
in two by a stroke — one branch
of her body a petrified silence,
walked leaning on her husband

to the treatment table while we
the unimpaired looked on with envy.
How he dignified her wobble,
beheld her deformation, untied her

shoe, removed the brace that stakes
her weaknesses. How he cradled
her down in his arms to the table
smoothing her hair as if they were

alone in their bed. I tell you—
his smile would have made you weep.

***

At twilight I visit my garden
where the peonies are about to burst.

Some days there will be more
flowers than the vase can hold.

- Susan Glassmeyer

Cormorants

When the door to the chapel of dusk is ajar the cormorants flock and fly west,
necks outstretched towards salvation; nuns en route to vespers.
The silhouettes of their habits cut across the shadowed sky.
They form a cluster, as from the cloister hurrying to Evensong,
Then thread themselves along a line too fine to see.

I can tell them like beads, a sunset rosary: Ave Maria, Stella Maris, ora pro avis.
Pray for your dark daughters, now and at the closing of each day.
May the oceans continue to feed them;
May the winds bear up the black flames of their wings,
And may the rocky islands lend them sanctuary, at their journey's end.


- Jane L. Mickelson

Atlas

Extreme exertion
isolates a person
from help,
discovered Atlas.
Once a certain
shoulder-to-burden
ratio collapses,
there is so little
others can do:
they can't
lend a hand
with Brazil
and not stand
on Peru.

- Kay Ryan

In The Coffin

“I am not saying, I am not saying”.

The Roshi had thought deeply between the first and second saying?

The question, “Alive or dead?”

Mother Nature, alive or dead?

My closed eyes, alive or dead.

The spirit of growing things, alive or dead?

It is ours to say.

Sit and cry and wait.

It is ours to say.

- Bruce Gibbs

Imagine

Imagine the time the particle you are
Returns where it came from.
The family darling comes home!
Wine without being contained in cups
Is handed around.
A red glint appears in a granite outcrop
And suddenly the whole cliff turns to
Ruby!

- Jelalludin Rumi

Call It Accident


Call it midnight thump and boom.
Gumbo lockdown.

Call up gush;
swirl and spread.

Forward moving call it stalled.
Call a party, crown petroleum queen.

On call the creeping,
race for land.

Call it caught

drifting

in a starless sea.

Long-billed or swell-bellied, sway in the bilge.
Call it quits—trolled, talked-down.

Roll call: Plover, Egret, Tern.
Shrimp estuaries and pelican rookeries. Songbirds

who “I used to come here from America.”
Call it marshes packed in sludge.


- Monique Wentzel

At Thomas Merton’s Grave

We can never be with loss too long.
Behind the warped door that sticks,
the wood thrush calls to the monks,
pausing upon the stone crucifix,
singing: “I am marvelous alone!”
Thrash, thrash goes the hayfield:
rows of marrow and bone undone.
The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,
sealing the blue hills with vermilion.
Moss dyes a squirrel’s skull green.
The cemetery expands its borders—
little milky crosses grow like teeth.
How kind time is, altering space
so nothing stays wrong; and light,
more new light, always arrives.

- Spencer Reece

The Wings of Love

I will row my boat on Muckross Lake when the grey of the dove
Comes down at the end of the day; and a quiet like prayer
Grows soft in your eyes, and among your fluttering hair
The red of the sun is mixed with the red of your cheek.
I will row you, O boat of my heart! Till our mouths have forgotten to speak
In the silence of love, broken only by trout that spring
And are gone, like a fairy’s finger that casts a ring
With the luck of the world for the hand that can hold it fast.
I will rest my on my oars, my eyes on your eyes, till our thoughts have passed
From the lake and the sky and the rings of the jumping fish;
Till our ears are filled from the reeds with a sudden swish
And a sound like the beating of flails in the time of corn.
We shall hold our breath while a wonderful thing is born
From the songs that were chanted by bards in the days gone by;
For a wild white swan shall be leaving the lake for the sky,
With the curve of her neck stretched out in a silver spear.
Oh! When the creak of her wings shall have brought her near,
We shall hear again a swish, and a beating of flails,
And a creaking of oars, and a sound like wind in sails,
As the mate of her heart shall follow her into the air.
O wings of my soul! We shall think of Angus and Caer
And Etain and Midir, that were changed into wild white swans
To fly round the ring of the heavens, through the dusks and the dawns,
Unseen by all but true lovers, till judgment day
Because they had loved for love only. O love! I will say,
For a woman and man with eternity ringing them round
And the heavens above and below them, a poor thing it is to be bound
To four low walls that will spill like a pedlar’s pack,
And a quilt that will run into holes, and a churn that will dry and crack
Oh! better than these, a dream in the night, or our heart’s mute prayer
That O’Donaghue, the enchanted man, should pass between water and air
And say, I will change them each into a wild white swan,
Like the lovers Angus and Midir, and their beloved ones, Caer and Etain
Because they have loved for love only, and have searched through the shadows of things
For the Heart of all hearts, though the fire of love, and the wine of love, and the wings.

- James H. Cousins

The New Colossus

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


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

A Letter to Ruth Stone

Now that you have caught sight
of the other side of darkness
the invisible side
so that you can tell
it is rising
first thing in the morning
and know it is there
all through the day

another sky
clear and unseen
has begun to loom
in your words
and another light is growing
out of their shadows
you can hear it

now you will be able
to envisage beyond
any words of mine
the color of these leaves
that you never saw
awake above the still valley
in the small hours
under the moon
three nights past the full

you know there was never
a name for that color

- W.S. Merwin

A Section of the Oconee Near Watkinsville

Before I get in,
the aluminum canoe floats flat on the shine
of water. Then I ruin its poise.
Middle of the first shoal through, I’m out,
stumbling through the ankle-breaking rocks.
Canoe free-floating downstream, without decision
or paddle. I lunge and bruise across the shallows
To get a forefinger in the rope eye on the stern.

June afternoon light. June afternoon water.

I know there’s a life being led in lightness,
out of my reach and discipline.
I keep trying to climb in its words,
and so unbalance us both.
The teacher’s example is everywhere open,
like a boat never tied up, no one in it,
that drifts day and night, metallic dragonfly
above the sunken log.

- Coleman Barks

Lanling Hermitage

Up high to a cloister of rock walls
I pushed aside clouds and climbed
a fine hike was what I hoped for
ignoring the dangers I reached my prize
but as light on the escarpment faded
and streams branched out like the lines in my hand
and the forests held nothing but loneliness
and the pinnacles disappeared into space
a man of the Way after reaching such heights
descended alone in the stillness of night
the mountain turned dark after sunset
a hundred springs echoed across the fall sky
my lamentable burdens reappeared intact
why can't I stay free of cares


- Wei Ying-wu
(translated from the Chinese by Red Pine)

The Word

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

- Tony Hoagland

Recycling Day


In my neighborhood we put out three rolling cans
brown for trash, green for compost ( raw veggies and yard clippings only)
and blue for paper, plastics number 1 & 2 and aluminum.

At San Francisco General Hospital the green bin takes all food
dead or alive, animal, vegetable or mineral.
the blue accepts every hard plastic except number 7 (which can go in green if its made of compostable corn).

But I want to live in that other county--
you know, the one that takes it all.

On Monday they’ve got a green bin for envy, jealousy and greed,
Tuesday’s grey for despair, desperation and the desire to die.
Wednesday is puce and smells nasty –
bitterness, resentment and grudges you’ve held onto forever go in that one,
even the worms don’t like it,
so its sent off to the microbrial sludge plant for rehabilitation.

Thursday they do lavender for lost loves, unfulfilled dreams and broken hearts.
These get recycled into sperm and ovum
for people who can’t make their own children.

Friday is pink with orange polka dots for all thoughts obssessive,
addictive and self deprecating
And Saturday’s a rainbow can that the homeless folk like to rifle through
for sorrow and grief they wrap around their shoulders for warmth.

On Sunday the collectors go out for beer and hot dogs and watch football games,
while all the people in town wake at dawn to dance in the streets.
Faces like the next blank page in your favorite journal,
they dance to the silent songs in their minds
to the soft, strong beats of their coherent, empty hearts.

- Monnie Reba Efross

To Those Born After Us


I. Truly, I live in a time of darkness!
The innocent word is foolish. A smooth brow
Suggests lack of sensitivity. Those who are laughing
Just haven’t heard the terrible news yet.

What kind of times are these,
When a conversation about trees is almost a crime,
Because so many misdeeds are left unspoken?
That person there – calmly crossing the street,
Is probably no longer available
To his friends who are in trouble.

It’s true: I’m still earning a living.
But that’s pure coincidence.
Nothing in what I do justifies my eating my fill.
By chance, I am spared. (When my luck runs out, I’m lost).

People say to me: Eat and drink! Be glad that you can.
But how can I eat and drink, when what I eat
Is taken from the mouths of the hungry, and the
Water I drink deprives one who is thirsty?
But still…I eat and I drink.

I would like to be wise.
In ancient books one can read what is wise:
To not participate in the conflicts of the world,
To be without fear, in the short time we have,
Also to get along without violence,
To requite evil with good,
To not satisfy one’s wishes, but to forget them –
These things are considered wise.
All of them are beyond me.
Truly I live in a time of darkness!

II. I came into the cities at a time of disorder,
A time of hunger.
I came among people at a time of uproar,
And I was outraged with them.
So passed the time
I was given on Earth.

I took food between battles,
And laid down to sleep among killers.
I was careless in love,
And regarded nature without patience.
So passed the time
I was given on Earth.


In my time, all roads led to a swamp.
My language gave me away to the executioner.
I could do very little. But the rulers
Sat more securely without me – that was my hope.
So passed the time
I was given on Earth.

III. You, who are the ones who will rise up
From the flood in which we went down,
Remember,
When you speak of our weaknesses,
The dark times from which you escaped.

We travelled, changing countries more often than shoes,
Through the wars between classes, in despair
Because we found injustice, but no outrage.

And yet we do know this:
Hatred, even of meanness,
Distorts the visage.
Anger, even at injustice,
Makes hoarse the voice. Alas,
Though we wanted to prepare the ground for kindness,
We didn’t know how to be kind ourselves.

But you, when the time comes,
When human beings can help one another,
Remember us
With forbearance.

- Bertolt Brecht