Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

Above the deep-piled carpet of maple leaves
the madrones are slipping free
of summer’s brown paper wrapping,
eager to show off their new winter coats.

The afternoon rain still drips
from the canopy of oak, fir and pine.
Across the creek a turkey chuckles
as a woodpecker beats a drum.

The light is passing swiftly now,
passing from the face of this land.
Shadows are lengthening everywhere,
reaching out across our lives.

Should we not, then, dare to love boldly,
more boldly than ever before -
as if the fate of the Earth itself
depended upon our loving?

And still the stars will surely rise,
revealing the Soul’s deep secret:
that the eye can see farther in the dark of night
than ever it could by day.

- Larry Robinson

Samhain
(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.

- Annie Finch

All Souls
A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.

- Michael Collier

Haunted Houses

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Occupy

Let all the heroes come
Let all the spirits and ancestors join us now

When the veil is thin

Let William Blake and Oscar Wilde

lead an army

of starving Irish peasants

to take back their land

from the English Lords who stole it.

All the great writers join minds

Tolstoy, Marx, Jung, and Camus

Come marching through my sleeping neighborhood

Jonathan Swift come with Seamus Heaney

Join Richard Wright at the White House

And take off our President’s mask

Abe Lincoln sit Bill O’Reilly on your knee

Tell him to spend his time reading

The Complete Works of Frederick Douglas

Who also might have a few words for

Barack Obama whose own ancestors

are out of their minds in rage

over his collusion with Wall Street

Let Aragorn awaken the Dead

Let the Ents and Trees march on the Banks,

The Pentagon, the Trump Towers,

Rupert Murdoch’s empire, the Wells Fargo building

Housing Sheriff Joe Arpolo.

Tear the foundations of greed down to the earth.

Let Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Che Guevara

Take Mr. Arpolo into the desert

Leave him naked and waterless

With Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead

To show him how perverse he is.

Awaken Ronald Reagan for breakfast with

Brian Wilson and the ghosts your Contras

And Death Squads murdered in Latin America.

All are invited, Adoph, Joseph, Mao,

All the Kings, Queens of old Europe

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

Benjamin Franklin—Come Occupy

Break bread with Abraham, Martin, John,

And Bobby along with the hundreds of millions

Murdered, lynched, tortured people of color

In this land of the free and home of the brave.

Give the spirit of Osama a snare drum and permanent

Spot in the eardrum of George Bush

Come you Holocaust spirits to Israel

Bring sweets for Rachel Cory and the

Tortured Palestinians she fought for.

Come Pythagoras, Athena, Hermes, and Homer

Come initiates of the mystery schools

Lead the children out from our dead schools

Occupy the schools of America

Come Druids, Arthur, Merlin

Take the boys and young men

Into the forests, teach them to hunt

And protect the trees, the water, the land

Come Artemis, Joan of Arc, Rachel Carson

Lead the girls to the forest too

Occupy their hearts, souls, minds

Give them back their bodies for themselves

Gandhi, Buddha, Genghis Khan, Hannibal

Rumi, Mohammed, Hafiz, Patton

Occupy the gangs of lost young men

Hold the space for their pain and rage to erupt.

It’s all comin down, the veil is thin

Come William Butler Yeats

Now is the time when the center can no longer hold

Come all you spirits and ancestors

Pour through the cracks

Of this very fucked up world.

Occupy, occupy, occupy.

- Brian McSweeney

Florence in September


In my younger days I walked
the streets of Florence as if I belonged
here. I was familiar at the Uffizi,
had a place at the bar at the foot of
Ponte Vecchio. Younger men on
scooters would wave to me, women
would go out of their way to give me
a smile, knowing I was soaking in their
beauty, loving that someone was.

Returning to my old haunts
I came upon a completely different
world. Young, dark haired boys
in sunglasses, standing
on street corners begging for
attention. Older, sad looking men
hanging at Santa Croce in hopes
of being noticed one last time.

The tourists still flock to see this
treasure trove as they have
for centuries -- David in his splendor,
the works of Michelangelo. The
boys of the Pitti Palace will
fade as summer heat in October.

- Stefan Merken

missed connection


I'm with a friend.
and excuse myself
“I'll only be a moment”
step outside—
cellphone call—
from the plumber
or another friend
my back is turned
solely for an instant
or maybe two

as Life glides by



the sparrow and
the tree shiver
the dog's high-pitched
yelp sails over
“what! I can't hear you!”
the redwood fence
and roof eaves shudder
the very foundations
gasp at
Her magnificence.

- Raphael Block


A KISS OF FALL & MORE

Join us for a joyous evening with Bhavani's and Ananda's music set to the sounds of Raphael's words. Judith Tucker Bhavani plays guitar, keyboard, percussion and harmonium, and Michael Ananda Coffman effortlessly dazzles on a variety of transverse and Native flutes.

Raphael Block is the author of Songs from a Small Universe, and is seeking publication for his second poetry book, Spangling Darkness. You can listen to his work at www.raphaelblock.com

Many Rivers Books & Tea, 130 South Main, Sebastopol
Friday, November 11th at 7:30 pm


For more info go to www.manyriversbooks.com or tel: (707) 829-8871.

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

- W. D. Ehrhart

We Who Prayed and Wept

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

- Wendell Berry

Landscape

The young man who sits between
The grandmother and the other grandmother
Stares into the emerging emptiness that
Fills with evolving cityscape. The city


Empties, then fills with the grandmothers’ banter.
The young man, hair collected in
A puny pony tail, the feathers of a baby beard
Outlining his thin jaw, sits
Invisible, while the grandmothers chat,

Their words, bright birds flutter between them,
Their song light above the drone of engine and parting air.
The blue-glasses grandmother stands.
The bus lumbers to a stop,

A whale on the paved and peopled Ocean of the city. The young man, Waits in the aisle, while the song continues,
He breathes, patient, unhurried air.

The glasses grandmother says, "adeu,"
To the red overcoat grandmother then
Sees the young man for the first time.
He nods, his smile says

You are welcome here, too. As welcome as
The city that arrives and departs
Before our eyes. The next stop, he debarks
Followed by the African Giant who

Sat by the window, next to the red overcoat
Grandmother. The giant takes his dark beauty with him,
Walks beside the young man and
Joins the evolving masterpiece,


- Rebecca del Rio
Barcelona, Nov. 2011

Why should not old men be mad?*
*
Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had*
*Know why an old man should be mad.*
*
- W. B. Yeats

This One Precious Human Life

for Grant Dillon

“One theory says you won’t remember dying any more than being born.” – Franz Wright

At noon
they sat the lama down in front of TV.
Some real experience of life
outside a meditation crib
seemed like a simple request.
Remote control in hand,
he flipped to All My Children.
Stop. “Stop!
“Oh watch out!” he cried inside.
“Amanda, you can’t hide your lies, silly bitch.
“Jake knows David is the daddy.
“You’ll never get away with it.
“How can you be that stupid?”
Where did that thought come from?
These families, really?
Westerners, really.
Love your momma.

Flip more.
One Life to Live.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Great title—
Too Many Lives to Live.
No, far too corny.
“Oh no, David, don’t kiss Oliver!
“Please don’t!
“That Path leads in only one direction—
“All the Teachings agree, male or female,
“male and male, no difference.
“Good luck. Looks like trouble ahead.”
Real tears for imaginary men.

Can’t fast forward but who cares?
General Hospital
ends badly.
Gunfire. Ears. Ouch.
Dominic hustles Sonny into some big black car.
Max, Milo, and Jason escape. Whew.
Joey wasn't so lucky—
Oh dear, bodies scattered all around.
Joey asks a vagrant for help,
who snaps his neck as quick as a skilled headman.
“Is the homeless demon posing Joey's body
“for the final fire?
“He walks away, tosses a coin, says
“‘Keep the change.’
“What can that mean?”

“Can I see some reality less intense,
“perhaps more real?” the lama asks.
“How many times can I do
“Powa with full blast visualization—
“high pixel resolution, all that compressing,
“surround sound?
“I’m tired out,
“and I lost count.”

Suddenly
from the base of the spine
to the middle of heart
that remarkable
bodhichitta starts to bloom in all its glory.
Lama loud and clear,
“Cookies and milk all around!
“Ordinary Hope is dead.
“Three cheers for Samsara.”

- Ken Ireland

* (Author's note: I do not even own a TV, but I confess, I have seen All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital, and Guiding Light. The story lines used in the poem are real as real can be. The lama’s inner voices are all made up. Trust me, but if you can’t believe it, check out https://www.soapoperadigest.com/. As real as real can be.)
This work is copyrighted by Kenneth Ireland. Reproduction or quoting in part with attribution is encouraged.

Where else in life but "in poetry" can there be so few rules?

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

- Leonard Cohen

Loading a Boar

We were loading a boar, a goddam mean big sonofabitch and he jumped out of the
pickup four times and tore out my stockracks and rooted me in the stomach and I
fell down and he bit John on the knee and he thought it was broken and so did I
and the boar stood over in the far corner of the pen and watched us and John and I
just sat there tired and Jan laughed and brought us a beer and I said, "John it aint
worth it, nothing's going right and I'm feeling half dead and haven't wrote a poem in ages
and I'm ready to quit it all," and John said, "shit, young feller, you aint got
started yet and the reason's cause you trying to do it outside yourself and aint
looking in and if you wanna by god write pomes you gotta write pomes about
what you know and not about the rest and you can write about pigs and that boar
and Jan and you and me and the rest and there aint no way you're gonna quit," and
we drank beer and smoked, all three of us, and finally loaded that mean bastard
and drove home and unloaded him and he bit me again and I went in the house
and got out my paper and pencils and started writing and found out John he was
right.
- David Lee

Who Are You?

(with appreciation to Pete Townsend)


I am mother, womb filled with galaxies and infinity. Loving a particular child and also every atom of existence.

I am lover, moving across the sacred landscape of his body - diving into the pale blue pools of his eyes and emerging on the timeless shores of his soul.

I am Venus, sacred vessel of the divine feminine - light filling every cell to overflowing radiance - spilling out of fingertips onto paper and creativity in form.

And I am Pluto, dark hands crushing time and existence. New form arising from countless deaths.

I am addict, fearful of immensity, the unfathomable, and the tension between beauty and terror.

I am recovery, renunciation, redemption and revelation - burning away the false in the crucible of my heart.

I am a "man without a country", a woman without a hearth. 5 pounds of paperwork the only remains of my home of 30 years.

I am a hunter and a gatherer, foraging on a planet ravaged by greed. I am one of the countless faces of the 99%.

I am strength, endurance, and hope. Starting over, moving forward - inch by inch. Moving deeper, breath by breath.

I am traveler, questing for Truth - finding everywhere revealed, the luminous face of god.


Sometimes . . .
a window opens
and I hear all of existence
singing at once.
Each earnest voice -
insect, bird, river, thunder, human outcry, super-nova

and then
I remember
to open my mouth
to speak my belonging . . .
I am That!

- Kay Crista

Win & End All Wars

World War I in an American Legion cap,
short stiff steps behind a four-legged cane
through tenderloin trenches
& into the R & R of low cost housing. . .
paid monthly by the social security
of 9.2 howitzer memories & muggings
& the gab of other old scars & wrinkles,
reinforcing a world-view: hell is growing
old in American cities.

We were great then;
broke isolation for the ideal & volunteered
to run like crazy
through the shrapnel & charcoal whore
we made of the old world
spitting bullets & the sperm of tough talk
bottled in melting pot frustration
& the stench of ghetto walk-ups.

We were all whores then;
but whores with a dream
& that was better than being. . .peasants!

World War I shuffles the dirt between soul & concrete;
he must catch up with the pace he sets for himself
in this transvestite night of neon necromania
where “danger” jumps like a stairway junkie
from the thresholds of shadow
dedicated to the unknown soldier & other prisoners of war.
He pushes on. . .
to where the porno palace marquee radiates safety;
he waits at the red light with the laughter of a corner hooker
while steel horses strafe the intersection with obnoxious odors
& the flash of ear-splitting sirens.

We were heroes then, with a job to do.

All around, there is nothing but devotion to purpose:
The gray-skinned panhandlers wrapped in blankets & lice
scrounging through trash cans for their lunch. . .
The holes in the ground. . .
The blood-stained mud below the scream of bullets. . .
The senseless bodies. . .
& the bodies writhing with wounds
& dismemberment. . .
The ruddy faced drunk
passed out & cursing on apartment house steps. . .
The screaming three-time loser, hands cuffed behind him,
pushed head-first into the powder blue
police services car. . .
Crawl over these monuments of manhood.
Feel the rub of flesh & khaki & blood & Earth & horror & bone
& self-hatred. . .

Waiting. . .
waiting & waiting for nightfall, for help from the trenches. . .
Caught in the no-man’s land
between the button & the breaking-point
in the search & destroy mindset of father knows best:
fact finding/fault finding/perfect binding
& the sweet perversity of how much can you take.

The vet in pointed cap & cement shoes
pushes his purple heart
through the shellshock of general headquarters,
Home of the Brave,
till he again reaches relative safety in the hut, two, three
of his room
where he can fall back on his bed,
look up at the ceiling
& think about the good old days. . .

- Bill Vartnaw

(Bill Vartnaw is Sonoma County newest Poet Laureate)

Grace

Thanks & blessings be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessings to them
who share it
(& also the absent & the dead).
Thanks & Blessing to them who bring it
(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want - for their hunger
sours the wine & robs
the taste from the salt.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & work of justice, of peace.

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

Arms Full

Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,
love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.

To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic’s world.
Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.

Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.

Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.

What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

- Rebecca del Rio

Bless Their Hearts

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

- Richard Newman

Just Now

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever
believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

- W.S. Merwin

Sweetness

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear one more friend
waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness has come
and changed nothing in the world

except the way I stumbled through it, for a while lost
in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk
to mouth-size,
hand-size, and never seeming small.

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

Tonight a friend called to say his lover
was killed in a car
he was driving. His voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed
to repeat, and I repeated
the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.
Often a sweetness comes
as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
then returns to its dark
source. As for me, I don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road
it’s traveled
to come so far, to taste so good

- Stephen Dunn

Let Us Meditate the Virtue

Let us meditate the virtue of slogans.
Let us declare onomastic solutions
to difficulties largely unnameable,
and by the mottoes

of euphemism contract verbal righteousness.
Let's indite bulletins to tell everyone
the Jargon of Things, to name Lifestyles, to learn
the Tongue of High Coy:

Do you desire to purchase a beverage?
We thank you for not smoking. Have a nice day.
May we share these suggestions with you? Let us
praise exultation,

never calling a route salesman a milkman,
nor an officer of the law a cop, nor
a senior citizen old, nor a starving
freezing bagwoman

poor. When we can't alter ills that upset us,
we will change their names to prevent compassion
from disturbing our ungulate composure:
words to deny worlds.

Vocabulary voids original sin;
cavalry of the lie reaches Calvary
just in time--to bugle Christ down from the cross.
But: no nails, no Christ.

- Donald Hall

The Earth Pledge

I pledge allegiance to the Earth
on which I live
and to all Her Creatures
Large and Small
and to Her Water, Air, and Soil.
One World, One People
Undivided
with Food, Shelter, Health
Freedom
Love and Justice
for All.

- Lilith Rogers

The End Of Science Fiction

This is not fantasy, this is our life.
We are the characters
who have invaded the moon,
who cannot stop their computers.
We are the gods who can unmake
the world in seven days.

Both hands are stopped at noon.
We are beginning to live forever,
in lightweight, aluminum bodies
with numbers stamped on our backs.
We dial our words like Muzak.
We hear each other through water.

The genre is dead. Invent something new.
Invent a man and a woman
naked in a garden,
invent a child that will save the world,
a man who carries his father
out of a burning city.
Invent a spool of thread
that leads a hero to safety,
invent an island on which he abandons
the woman who saved his life
with no loss of sleep over his betrayal.

Invent us as we were
before our bodies glittered
and we stopped bleeding:
invent a shepherd who kills a giant,
a girl who grows into a tree,
a woman who refuses to turn
her back on the past and is changed to salt,
a boy who steals his brother’s birthright
and becomes the head of a nation.
Invent real tears, hard love,
slow-spoken, ancient words,
difficult as a child’s
first steps across a room.

- Lisel Mueller

Could Have


It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.

- Wislawa Szymborska

(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Love The Wild Swan

"I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting
Hash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."
--This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

- Robinson Jeffers

The Body Saying goodbye to itself...


The time is coming
just around the bend
when my body will say goodbye to itself...

As the awareness of my own mortality deepens
and courses through me
A new possibility opens
Then maybe these wrinkled eyes
sagging breasts
midriff bulge
spider webbed arms
chunky knees
and flat feet
don't matter so much anymore.
maybe they don't matter at all...

What if I were to bless them.
caress the flat feet and the fat knees
gently hold the bulge and the arms and the breasts
and these eyes became so very beautiful to me?

What if I can't remember your name
or what I had for dinner
or what day it is?
What if I have completed my life's work?
and really can't keep the garden up anymore?
What if my short term memory is gone or at least going?
And, I can’t walk or eat or pee on my own anymore?

Then, my sweet heart
Would you still stroke my face tenderly?
And, could you put a damp cloth on my parched lips?
And, would you read to me so that I can fall asleep tonight?
And, would you sing to me so that I can wake up this morning?

Better to start saying goodbye to my body now
The memory of dying is good medicine for me…

- Patricia Flasch

Vespers

As light departs to let the earth be one with night,
Silence deepens in the mind, and thoughts grow slow;
The basket of twilight brims over with colors
Gathered from within the sacred meadows of the day
And offered like blessings to the gathering Tenebrae.

After the day's frenzy, may the heart grow still,
Gracious in thought for all the day brought,
Surprises that dawn could never have dreamed:
The blue silence that came to still the mind,
The quiver of mystery at the edge of a glimpse,
The golden echoes of worlds behind voices.

Tense faces unable to hide what gripped the heart,
The abrupt cut of a glance or a word that hurt,
The flame of longing that distance darkened,
Bouquets of memory gathered on the heart's altar,
The thorns of absence in the rose of dream.

And the whole while the unknown underworld
Of the mind, turning slowly, in its secret orbit.
May the blessing of sleep bring refreshment and release
And the Angel of the moon call the rivers of dream
To soften the hardened earth of the outside life,
Disentangle from the trapped nets the hurts and sorrow,
And awaken the young soul for the new tomorrow.

- John O'Donohue

Miracles



Here I sit at my computer on 11-11-11, reading hours of emails and petitions and forwards about Delaware River fracking, and Mississippi’s rejection of personhood for women’s eggs, and move-your-money-day, and tar sands pipelines, and constitutional amendments to limit campaign funds, and Occupy Oakland’s massive challenge to stay non-violent in this most violence-racked city, and polar bears without ice floes, and torture of lesbians in Ecuador, and, and,............ and I am overcome with gratitude:

.... to Hippocrates and Hahnemann and Curie and Pasteur and Salk and my Dr. Michael and Debbie and herb gardens and bees and sunshine and rain and the loyalty of seed, for helping me be here still, octogenarian on fire

.... to my parents and grandparents and their ancestors for their good genes and their good sense to cross the daunting Atlantic to labor in coal mines and cigar factories to make me, to make me better, to make me a better life

.... to Ben Franklin and Tom Edison and Singer and to my furnace for keeping me warm, and to all the other comforting and safety-making inventions in this shelter where I can close my eyes in sleep unafraid

.... to those who created language out of grunts, and Gutenberg, and my Dad who taught me to read while tending to my sixth-year chickenpox, and to Miss Hanson who liked my third-grade poems, and to those colonials who created Rutgers University without ever having me in mind

.... to a lifetime of listening wonderment for the Mozart melodies that reside in my head, my brain’s personal MP3 downloads

.... to Susan and the other suffragettes who marched and suffered nights in jail for my right to be a woman voting, though they never knew me personally

.... to Ghandi and MLK and Mother Theresa and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Friends and COs and Occupy-all, all those who hold the light

.... to the power of those who loved me and love me still, and by so doing keep me whole still, whether they walk the earth or no longer grace it

.... to whatever mysteries keep my mind alert and capable of outrage, keep my soul alive and capable of gratitude

.... to my diaphragm that keeps me breathing, I know not why


- Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg

To A Siberian Woodsman
(after looking at some pictures in a magazine)


1.
You lean at ease in your warm house at night after supper,
listening to your daughter play the accordion.
You smile with the pleasure of a man confident in his hands,
resting after a day of long labor in the forest,
the cry of the saw in your head,
and the vision of coming home to rest.
Your daughter's face is clear in the joy of hearing her own music.
Her fingers live on the keys
like people familiar with the land they were born in.


You sit at the dinner table late into the night with your son,
tying the bright flies that will lead you along the forest streams.
Over you, as your hands work, is the dream of the still pools.
Over you is the dream of your silence while the east brightens,
birds waking close by you in the trees.


2.
I have thought of you stepping out of your doorway at dawn,
your son in your tracks.
You go in under the overarching green branches of the forest whose ways,
strange to me,
are well known to you as the sound of your own voice
or the silence that lies around you now that you have ceased to speak,
and soon the voice of the stream rises ahead of you,
and you take the path beside it.
I have thought of the sun breaking pale through the mists over you
as you come to the pool where you will fish,
and of the mist drifting over the water,
and of the cast fly resting light on the face of the pool.


3.
And I am here in Kentucky in the place I have made myself in the world.
I sit on my porch above the river that flows muddy
and slow along the feet of the trees.
I hear the voices of the wren
and the yellow-throated warbler whose songs pass near the windows
and over the roof.
In my house my daughter learns the womanhood of her mother.
My son is at play,
pretending to be the man he believes I am.
I am the outbreathing of this ground.
My words are its words as the wren's song is its song.


4.
Who has invented our enmity?
Who has prescribed us hatred of each other?
Who has armed us against each other with the death of the world?
Who has appointed me such anger that I should desire the burning of your house
or the destruction of your children?
Who has appointed such anger to you?
Who has set loose the thought
that we should oppose each other with the ruin of the forests and rivers,
and the silence of birds?
Who has said to us that the voices of my land shall be strange to you,
and the voices of your land strange to me?


Who has imagined that I would destroy myself in order to destroy you,
or that I could improve myself by destroying you?
Who has imagined that your death could be negligible to me
now that I have seen these pictures of your face?
Who has imagined that I would not speak familiarly with you,
or laugh with you,
or visit in your house and go to work with you in the forest?
And now one of the ideas of my place will be
that you would gladly talk and visit and work with me.


5.
I sit in the shade of the trees of the land I was born in.
As they are native I am native,
and I hold to this place as carefully as they hold to it.
I do not see the national flag flying from the staff of the sycamore,
or any decree of the government written on the leaves of the walnut,
nor has the elm bowed before monuments
or sworn the oath of allegiance.
They have not declared to whom they stand in welcome.


6.
In the thought of you I imagine myself free of the weapons
and the official hates that I have borne on my back like a hump,
and in the thought of myself
I imagine you free of weapons and official hates,
so that if we should ever meet
we would not go by each other looking at the ground
like slaves sullen under their burdens,
but would stand clear in the gaze of each other.


7.
There is no government so worthy as your son
who fishes with you in silence beside the forest pool.
There is no national glory so comely as your daughter
whose hands have learned a music and go their own way on the keys.
There is no national glory so comely as my daughter
who dances and sings and is the brightness of my house.
There is no government so worthy as my son
who laughs,
as he comes up the path from the river in the evening,
for joy.


- Wendell Berry

Masterful. Just right...

Chinatown

An overcast San Francisco afternoon.
Chinatown. Pulling me by the arm,
my mother walks quickly past the sidewalk markets
where they sell old soft oranges,
cabbages, bad radios, cheap shoes.
I have a cold. My head is full
of dreams and I cannot keep up.


I dream a saucer-eyed dragon
grinning with long, lolling tongue,
breathing white porcelain clouds
across the sky. They drift, aimless boats,
sticks flagged with leaves
and set upon the river. Old man in a jacket
tosses me a good luck orange, but I miss.
It bobs along the curb, then goes under.


Again I let go of her hand.
Like a leaf floating on water
I lose myself quickly in the rush
of coats. Where am I going?
I am the drowning boy.
Nothing to look for now,
not abandoned mother, not lost luck.
The current closes my eyes.


- Yosha Bourgea

The Return


The deed took all my heart.
I did not think of you.
Not til the thing was done.
I put my sword away,
And then no more the cold
And perfect fury ran
Along my narrow bones,
And then no more the black
And dripping corridors
Held anywhere the shape
That I had come to slay.
Then, for the first time,
I saw in the cave's belly
The dark and clotted webs,
The green and sucking pooks
The rank and crumbling walls,
The maze of passages.


And I thought then
Of the far earth,
Of the spring sun
And the slow wind,
And a young girl.
And I looked then
At the white thread.


Hunting the minotaur
I was no common man
And had no need of love.
I trailed the shining thread
Behind me for a vow,
And did not think of you.
It lay there, like a sign,
Coiled on the bull's great hoof
And back into the world.
Half blind with weariness
I touched the thread and wept.
O, it was frail as air.


And I turned then
With the white spool
Through the cold rocks,
Through the long webs,
And the mist fell,
And the webs clung,
And the rocks tumbled,
And the earth shook.


And the thread held.


- Mary Oliver

Water's Prayer

Leafless aspens groom
the iced breeze, while below

a brook descends the mountain
with its musical story, remembering

the serenity of sky, and lightning's clear passion.
Water knows what is far will be near.

Water says choose that which closes distance,
choose touch. When snow falls,

and a green mystery is carried
by all that moves,

choose love.

- James Bertolino

I want to love you with every piece of this body


I want to love you with every piece of this body:
I want these strong and simple hands to divine
each delicate sound inside of you; I want
these faithful legs to gallop at midnight
through the sleeping orchards of your heart;
I want these eyes, these singing eyes
that have survived the brutal clocks, the days
lost in daily space, to blossom in some high bed
of human heaven; I want these feet that never sleep
to wander in the deepest part of you, like ghosts
unchained, ecstatic in this desert sea;
I want this blood, this red tenderness,
to be your blanket; I want this brown and peasant face
to race through solitude and rock, until
with you at last The Book of Moon is read;
I want this tongue, that like some acrobat insane
tumbles towards you with what little words I have,
to sip some virgin secret that you hold;
I want this heart, in time both infinite and now,
to know the reason for the light in you that lifts me.


- james tipton

Prescription for the Disillusioned


Come new to this
day. Remove the rigid
overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud
your vision.


Leave behind the stories
of your life. Spit out the
sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs
waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.


Arrive curious, without the armor
of certainty, the plans and planned
results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you, new
every breath, every blink of
your astonished eyes.


- Rebecca del Rio

Terra Incognita


There are vast realms of consciousness still undreamed of
vast ranges of experience, like the humming of unseen harps,
we know nothing of, within us.
Oh when man has escaped from the barbed-wire entanglement
of his own ideas and his own mechanical devices
there is a marvelous rich world of contact and sheer fluid beauty
and fearless face-to-face awareness of now-naked life
and me, and you, and other men and women
and grapes, and ghouls, and ghosts and green moonlight
ruddy-orange limbs stirring the limbo
of the unknown air, and eyes so soft
softer than the space between the stars,
and all things, and nothing, and being and not-being
alternately palpitant,
when at last we escape the barbed-wire enclosure
of Know Thyself, knowing we can never know,
we can but touch, and wonder, and ponder, and make our effort
and dangle in a last fastidious fine delight
as the fuchsia does, dangling her reckless drop
of purple after so much putting forth
and slow mounting marvel of a little tree.


- D. H. Lawrence

Ode to a Brown-spotted Orb

A simple portico, its arms open wide to the forest below.
An upright leaf points the way to the web's east quadrant
and, in the west, there's the light that gives warmth and
brings sustenance and is the source of this venture.

What luck brought her here? Of all of the doorways, why mine?
Perhaps it was my sympathetic nature or the elementary fascination,
the too-long-neglected windows or the ever-thirsty plants?

In a moment the spell is broken, the hard-won magic gone.
A chance toppling of the object of anchor, the prompt to my intrusion.
For the plants needed watering and lives collide, the inner and the outer.
She's gone to find a quieter place to send her gossamer threads
and is lacing another part of the forest's edge.

The leaf has fallen, the simple portico, now unimpeded, reaches to the staircase
that leads to the border of the forest.
The crossing over of the lives passes-a simple conjunction, a brief encounter.
I can only hope her weaving repaired the hole in the world she found there.
What luck brought me here?


- Morgan Vierheller

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

The Ghost of Heaven

Sleep to sleep through thirty years of night,
a child herself with child,
for whom we searched

through here, or there, amidst
bones still sleeved and trousered,
a spine picked clean, a paint can,
a skull with hair


Sewn into the hem of memory:
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
God not
of philosophers or scholars. God not of poets.


Night to night:
child walking toward me through burning maize
over the clean bones of those whose flesh
was lifted by zopilotes into heaven.

So that is how we ascend!
In the clawed feet of fallen angels.
To be assembled again
in the work rooms of clouds.


She rose from where they found her lying
not far from a water urn, leaving
herself behind on the ground
where they found her, holding her arms
before her as if she were asleep.

That is how she appears to me: a ghost in heaven.
Carrying her arms in her arms.


Blue smoke from corn cribs, flap of wings.
On the walls of the city streets a plague of initials.


Walking through a fire-lit river
to a burning house: dead Singer
sewing machine and piece of dress.

Outside a cashew tree wept
blackened cashews over lamina.

Outside paper fireflies rose to the stars.


Bring penicillin if you can, surgical tape, a whetstone,
mosquito repellent but not the aerosol kind.
Especially bring a syringe for sucking phlegm,
a knife, wooden sticks, a surgical clamp, and plastic bags.

You will need a bottle of cloud
for anesthesia.

Like the flight of a crane
through colorless dreams.


When a leech opens your flesh it leaves a small volcano.
Always pour turpentine over your hair before going to sleep.


Such experiences as these are forgotten
before memory intrudes.

The girl was found (don’t say this)
with a man’s severed head stuffed
into her where a child would have been.
No one knew who the man was.
Another of the dead.
So they had not, after all,
killed a pregnant girl.
This was a relief to them.


That sound in the brush?
A settling of wind in sorghum.

If they capture you, talk.
Talk. Please yes. You heard me
right the first time.

You will be asked who you are.
Eventually, we are all asked who we are.

All who come
All who come into the world
All who come into the world are sent.
Open your curtain of spirit.


- Carolyn Forché

Autumn Quince

How sad they are,
the promises we never return to.
They stay in our mouths,
roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.
Houses built and unwittingly lived in;
a succession of milk bottles brought to the door
every morning and taken inside.

And which one is real?
The music in the composer's ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself --
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.

- Jane Hirshfield

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

- Denise Levertov

Colds and Other Departures

are tagged as any number of states
in the psycho-biological index of disease:
blocked energy
germ invasion
immune mechanisms out of gas
or in high gear
a daisy chain of self evasion
old grief insisting yet upon its due

whatever these theorized tags
those of us aching with fever,
and blowing our flooded nostrils

know illness for what it really is:
an abject altered state
all things lovely and familiar in abeyance
work, gusto, high purpose
bursts of creation
the intricate tangle of sensing and thought --
gone, just plain gone
as life flows on
a ship we can’t see
sailing along in an ocean
far beyond a tabled horizon
cluttered with bottles and tissues
and steaming cups of tea

- Cynthia Poten

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let there be a
season
when holiness is
heard, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let ehre be a
season
when holiness is
hear, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker

Thank you, Rebecca Parker, for sharing your insight, and Larry for sharing the poem (twice : ). There is nothing to do in this moment but be still and feel the earth move in two directons.
...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps....

---

Testimony

(for my daughters)

I want to tell you that the world
is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to know that spring
is no small thing, that
the tender grasses curling
like a baby's fine hairs around
your fingers are a recurring
miracle. I want to tell you
that the river rocks shine
like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death,

I want to remind you to look
beneath the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you
are no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.
I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness",
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

- Rebecca Baggett

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

Follow Her Down


She treads with slow footfalls,
Deliberate and careful,
Her breath the same.
This is her way.
This is familiar terrain,
The journey repeated.
Always saying farewell.
Always turning away.


Because we deny our mortality
The one who moves between the worlds
Walks for us.
The day will come
When each of us will follow her down.
It is to her that we will go.


Safe journey, then, traveler.
My heart holds you as
I hope your does me -
Willingly,
Willingly.


- Maya Spector
(from The Persephone Cycle)