Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Black Oak


Black oak stands stark in
the gray dawn after
a night of rain.

Soggy leaves, losing
their grip in
the buffeting wind, cover
the ground beneath
the tree like
a brown blanket.

Do you, too, cling this way when the wind blows?
Do you, too, tumble and twist against your life, weakening
the only tie you have ever known?

And when you release at last,
when you float and fall into that leafy mat,
is it the grief of loss you feel?

Or will you find your way content into the dark dirt,
that grand microbial feast, nurturing with
your precious body
the deep mother root?


- Barton Stone

Villanelle for Our Time

From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.

This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.

We loved the easy and the smart,
But now with keener hand and brain
We rise to play a greater part.

The lesser loyalties depart
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.

Not steering by the venal chart
that tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.

Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.

- Frank Scott

Leonard Cohen does a beautiful sung version of this poem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x33Wip2iytE

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Villanelle for Our Time

From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.

This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.

We loved the easy and the smart,
But now with keener hand and brain
We rise to play a greater part.

The lesser loyalties depart
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.

Not steering by the venal chart
that tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.

Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part.

- Frank Scott

---

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.

My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."

Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.

- William Stafford

It's That Time Again

politicians pantomime larger than life family values
high production value camouflages personal failings
myopic faith in righteousness hits all requisite marks

color coordinated spectacles excavate seams of hope
inconvenient facts remain sheathed in duplicity
end stage reckonings are presented in a rosy hue

multi candidate choices of forehead slapping doozies
yammer to be the decider yammer to be the change
history is littered with their aspirations

it's that time again
just like before
buy one... get two for free


- Les Bernstein

A Winter’s Alcove

There are sorrowful, chilled fogs these days that remind one of his mortality. We are in that season when the sun loses the eternal tug-of-war with the icy moon, as exhausted leaves fall like wounded soldiers from desperate trees.

It is the time when the earth falls into her hibernation to conceive the unhappy dreams of lost loves, a time when we are reminded of whom we have offended and forgotten and left behind. It is the time of cold rains and hungry animals.

Let me kiss you, turn your collar up to the gray cold, take your hand, and strut the joyous walk of love defying the face of the storm. I will make fire and create a dry alcove for you in this river of iced waters, put my arms around your sadness and for one brief and exotic moment take you to where we will lay naked on warm blessed sands, bask in the sun, and laugh at our melancholy.

Let us heap our fears in the cold night where they will feel at home, polish our joys, and wear them around our necks.

- Armando Garcia-Dávila

Touched By An Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.


- Maya Angelou

In the Grip of the Solstice


Feels like a train roaring into night,

https://lightworkerssanctuary.com/wp...ersolstice.jpg

the journey into fierce cold just beginning.
The ground is newly frozen, the crust
brittle and fancy with striations,
steeples and nipples we break
under our feet.
Every day we are shortchanged a bit more,
night pressing down on the afternoon
throttling it. Wan sunrise later
and later, every day trimmed
like an old candle you beg to give
an hour’s more light.
Feels like hurtling into vast darkness,
the sky itself whistling of space
the black matter between stars
the red shift as the light dies,
warmth a temporary aberration,
entropy as a season.
Our ancestors understood the brute
fear that grips us as the cold
settles around us, closing in.
Light the logs in the fireplace tonight,
light the candles, first one, then two,
the full chanukiya.
Light the fire in the belly.
Eat hot soup, cabbage and beef
borscht, chicken soup, lamb
and barley, stoke the marrow.
Put down the white wine and pour
whiskey instead.
We reach for each other in our bed,
the night vaulted above us
like a cave. Night in the afternoon,
cold frosting the glass so it hurts
to touch it, only flesh still
welcoming to flesh.

- Marge Piercy

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

- Mary Oliver

Thank you, Mary, for breaking it yet again.

About Solstice Prayers

Here in the northern hemisphere, this is the shortest day of the year. Tonight is the longest time of darkness. We go into the darkness knowing our brothers and sisters in the southern hemisphere are holding the place of the longest day, the shortest night. Through present-moment communication with those on the other side of the world we deepen our awareness of a sacred wholeness, an interdependent balance, and the cycles of our earth-home.

On this side of the globe, celebrations are about the promise of the returning light- something that doesn’t happen all at once, but gradually, a little more light each day from this point on until the summer solstice. It’s a lesson in trust, patience and the natural ebb and flow of life cycles- challenging realities for a culture that often eagerly seeks permanent, instant, life-changing “enlightenment.”

Oh, sometimes things do become clear in an instant- but living full awareness is more about stretching into holding what we know at the deepest level of our being. Today, perhaps a small deepening of the perspective that allows for more kindness or patience than yesterday. Tomorrow, a little more letting go of the illusion of control, a modicum of increased clarity about what we can and cannot do in any given moment. Tonight, perhaps the spontaneous arising of new gratitude and the smallest expansion of compassion for even the ungrateful within and around us.

Today- and especially tonight- I remember and hold in my prayers those aspects of self and my fellow human beings who are experiencing a time of darkness that makes the promise of the returning light feel like an empty daydream. For all those who are feeling lost in the darkness, overwhelmed with loss, unsure of their ability or willingness to continue. . . . may those individuals or aspects of self lean a little into the faith of those who, in this moment, remember and experience the promise of the returning light. For all those sitting in the darkness of confusion and not-knowing, of grief or despair. . . may they feel tonight that someone sits with them, holding in their hearts the seemingly impossible promise of the growing light.

And may we all find in the darkness a place of deep rest and rejuvenation, time for clear dreaming for ourselves and our people that we may co-create a sustainable and soul-full way to live together on this tiny planet we call home.
Blessed be.

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

A Winter Solstice Prayer
The dark shadow of space leans over us. . . . .
We are mindful that the darkness of greed, exploitation, and hatred
also lengthens its shadow over our small planet Earth.
As our ancestors feared death and evil and all the dark powers of winter,
we fear that the darkness of war, discrimination, and selfishness
may doom us and our planet to an eternal winter.
May we find hope in the lights we have kindled on this sacred night,
hope in one another and in all who form the web-work of peace and justice
that spans the world.
In the heart of every person on this Earth
burns the spark of luminous goodness;
in no heart is there total darkness.
May we who have celebrated this winter solstice,
by our lives and service, by our prayers and love,
call forth from one another the light and the love
that is hidden in every heart.
Amen.
- Edward Hayes

The Magi

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.


- William Butler Yeats

Christmas Letter

I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.
There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much,
very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can
come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.
Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within
our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!
Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering,
cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you
will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand that brings it to you.
Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there.
The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too,
be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering,
that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all!
But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together,
wending through unknown country home.
And so, at this time, I greet you, not quite as the world sends greetings,
but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and
forever, the day breaks and shadows flee away.

- Fra Giovanni
(Written on Christmas Eve, 1513)

Sewing Lessons

- On Crafting a Human Life

It is worth it,
going inside.
It mends a torn life,
sews the pieces together.

More beautifully
than if they’d never been apart.
Impossible to know this,
being in pieces.

Lacking instruction
and stitching practice
for new beginnings
delusions tear, inexhaustibly

Humbly consider:

In a room full of darkness

Practice lights the candle,
Intention threads the needle,
Courage guides the stitch,
Through the cloth that is this life.

And the tailor begins …… again.


- Scott Bader

Sewing Lesson


between clouds and abyss
the garment of self
is sewn with the patient enemy time

beyond the hem of language
a selected collision
of eloquence and gibberish
tailor the world we live in

fashioned of earth
embellished with moon
the tight suit of existence
is darned to follow its own light

- Les Bernstein

Threads of Silk

Mother moon spins threads of silk
to knit shining orbs,
evidence of spirit dreams.
Fear unravels the sun and stars
until darkness swallows the universe.
Follow threads of light
glowing in the darkest night,
for divine hands are weaving
the sacred cloth of our lives.
Look for shimmering strands of joy
beneath even sorrow that runs deep.
Be still and feel wings of angels,
gentle as whispers, soft as down.
Heavenly beings, seamstresses of the heart,
reveal our beauty through light and dark.

©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Sewing Lesson


between clouds and abyss
the garment of self
is sewn with the patient enemy time

beyond the hem of language
a selected collision
of eloquence and gibberish
tailor the world we live in

fashioned of earth
embellished with moon
the tight suit of existence
is darned to follow its own light

- Les Bernstein

---

The Night Before Christmas redux

two day after christmas and all the thru the store
people were shouting "we need to buy more"
most feared they'd missed out on the best deals of all
so early they got up and drove to the mall

I'm sorry to say it's the 'merican way ...
there's never enough in old Santy Claws sleigh
to fill up that void we buy things we don't need
it's really appalling to witness such greed

I remember when we would behave in this way
only that one late November Friday
we forget to be grateful for all that we've got
so here's an idea let's give it a shot

maybe next weekend to start the new year
we can relish our good health and those we hold dear
be grateful for everything good in our lives
our sisters our brothers our husbands and wives.

peace out, Ruth

This Christmas Altar

Come. Come to this Christmas altar.
Bring any and all that have or have not been invited.
Come and come again.

Guilt shows up. Guilt wants to come and be touched by the light.
It has given its gifts for so many years. Meet it with gratitude.
Let it be the gift that is seen for all that it has brought to this moment.

Any self judgement gets to come also.
Grateful that its job has been very useful in bringing consciousness to this point.
Let it now come to rest in this Light.

May all be invited in and out of the darkness of denial.
All showing up at the door. Open it widely.
Knocking softly at times, and louder with joy when it enters.

Who is knocking?
Anyone you have left out and refused to embrace fully.
Saying “Open your heart to me. I am your Christmas gift to yourself."

I SEE!! It is Christ being born.
Christ is this hand, this body, this Blood.
Let that be the gift that keeps on giving.

The altar keeps growing.
Heart opening and embracing.
The True gifts of this Christmas that keep giving.

- Mary Morgan

Another to Echo


How beautiful you must be
to have been able to lead me
this far with only
the sound of your going away
heard once at a time and then
remembered in silence
when the time was gone
you whom I have never seen
o forever invisible one
whom I have never mistaken
for another voice
nor hesitated to follow
beyond precept and prudence
over seas and deserts
you incomparable one
for whom the waters fall
and the winds search
and the words were made
listening


- W.S. Merwin

A Prayer For Old Age

https://smithsonianassociates.org/ti...tler-yeats.jpg

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;
From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?
I pray -- for word is out
And prayer comes round again --
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.


- William Butler Yeats

Oh, how I've always loved this--even more, I guess, as time goes on. Thank you!

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

A Prayer For Old Age
....

---

Close to Home

Let me ask of us gathered here today--
Can we bring the balance back we lost along the way?
And running short on answers there's gonna be hell to pay-
It's close to home--so close to home

I see the ice is melting, the oceans coming up--
Storms gettin' stronger, there's devastation done
And the ones hit the hardest have nowhere to run--
It's close to home, so close to home

My old friend's a farmer, he says you reap what you sow--
It's been a silent spring the bees don't come around no more
And I'm gonna miss those apples down at the country store--
It's hittin' home, so close to home

Back in eighteen forty-three Chief Seattle said it first--
The earth does not belong to man--man belongs to earth

The truth is inconvenient now it's something we've got to face--
A do or die scenario for a fragile rock in space
Set aside our differences so we can save-- our home--our only home

Let me ask of us gathered here today-
Can we bring the balance back we lost along the way
This is our home--our only home--
Close to home--our only home

- Larry Potts
(L.K Potts/George Merrill
2012 album Close to Home)

A New Year’s Blessing

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...1_10-55-41.png

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

Janus


this scatter-trove of planets has plie-ed its practiced way
around our fire-star one more time:
winter to spring to summer to fall to winter again

this throbbing globe has spun around
upon itself one more time:
dawn to day to dusk to dark to dawn again

turn the page
from 31^st to first

take down the old
tack up the new
what will I hang on my wall this year
to harbor hopes, remember memories?:
calligraphies of ancient wisdom?
labial O’Keefe posies?
impossibility of hummingbirds?

beyond the falling ball of crystal
I sense the whirling dance of asteroids and planets
swirling symphony of stars
waltzing me toward eternity

turn the page from 31^st to first
take down the old tack up the new
listen for the music
whirl with the dance inward outward
as I balance en pointe
on this narrow beam of time
Janus looking backward/forward
until
that which endures
is finally told


- Vilma Ginzberg

Our Story


Remind me again - together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
Some time we’ll cross where life
ends. We’ll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
I’ll touch you - a new world then.
Stars will move a different way.
We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.


Remind me again.


- William Stafford

Lower Your Standards


Bill Stafford
continues to encourage me.
“Lower your standards,” he says.

I try.

But this morning,
just when I thought
I had them good and lowered,

an Anna’s hummingbird
popped at the bottom of his dive,
just three feet above my head,

and the woman next door
began yelling
at her husband again.


- Trout Black

The Age Demanded

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.


- Ernest Hemingway

Malheur Before Dawn

An owl sound wandered along the road with me.
I didn’t hear it—I breathed it into my ears.

Little ones at first, the stars retired, leaving
polished little circles on the sky for a while.

Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.
Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.

From across a pond, out of the mist,
one drake made a V and said its name.

Some vast animal of sound began to rouse
from the reeds and lean outward.

Frogs discovered their national anthem again.
I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.

So magic a time it was that I was both brave and afraid.
Some day like this might save the world.


- William Stafford

thanks, Larry; this lovely image is a stark contrast to the storms we face today ...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Malheur Before Dawn
...
Then the sun began to shout from below the horizon.
Throngs of birds campaigned, their music a tent of sound.
...

---

It's so nice to hear my local frogs singing their national anthem.....

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac:

thanks, Larry; this lovely image is a stark contrast to the storms we face today ...

---

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac:

thanks, Larry; this lovely image is sharp contrast to these dark and stormy days

---

You want to hear frogs singing their national anthem, visit the upper levels of Graton Casino"s parking structure at sunset. The concert there is angelic. There used to be a bullfrog farm nearby in times past. Don't know if their decendents are still singing.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Malheur Before Dawn
...
Frogs discovered their national anthem again.
I didn’t know a ditch could hold so much joy.
...

---

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Malheur Before Dawn
...

---

A Northern Harrier at Malheur Wildlife Refuge, a national treasure that few know about.

Becoming Old


Like leaves in autumn

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...13-22-40-1.png
Alexandra Hart

The days fall off the tree of my life.
Bright, some — dull-colored, others,
Which makes the brilliants shine.

All precious, gathering speed,
While I valiantly try to slow,
Never quite fast enough,
Never quite succeeding.

One day, closer, closer, my tree
Will be bare, the branches bony,
No longer dressed in anything
But the memories of my folly,
And those few bright moments that
Make it all worthwhile.

- Alexandra Hart

thank you!
complements my experience just a moment ago when I was in our parking area, looking at a bare maple (gum) tree. (Parenthetically, then I noticed its sister, same variety of maple and similar size, just 100 feet or so across the way, still almost completely clothed in many-colored leaves.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Becoming Old


Like leaves in autumn
The days fall off the tree of my life.
Bright, some — dull-colored, others,
Which makes the brilliants shine.

All precious, gathering speed,
While I valiantly try to slow,
Never quite fast enough,
Never quite succeeding.

One day, closer, closer, my tree
Will be bare, the branches bony,
No longer dressed in anything
But the memories of my folly,
And those few bright moments that
Make it all worthwhile.

- Alexandra Hart

---

Catholicism


There’s a possum who appears here at odd times,
often walking up the path to the house
in the middle of the day like a little ghost
with a long tail and a blank expression on his face.

He likes to slip behind the woodpile,
but sometimes he gets so close to the window
where I am standing with a glass in my hand
that I start to review my sins, systematically

going from one commandment to the next.
What is it about him that causes me
to begin an examination of conscience,
calling to mind my failings in this time of reflection?

It could just be the twitching of the tail
and that white face, but his slow priestly pace
also makes a contribution, as do the tiny paws,
more like hands, really, with opposable thumbs

able to carry a nut or dig a hole in the earth
or lift a chalice above his head
or even deliver a document,
I am thinking as he nears the back door,

not merely a subpoena but an order
of excommunication with my name and a date
written in fine Italian ink
and signed with a flourish of the papal sash.

- Billy Collins

I've seen that possum! And his excommunication document with my name on it! But it wouldn't have reached my conscious awareness without your original vision, Billy Collins. Thank you, Larry R. and Billy C.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

There’s a possum who appears here at odd times,
...

---

Monarch

https://cdn-2.monarch-butterfly.com/...r-emerging.jpg

https://cdn-1.monarch-butterfly.com/...h-emerging.jpg

yellow black stripedtiger worm

spits spider glue on
milkweed
then swings ass

to mouth to close
in on itself

waiting for glory
or just hangs

half
finished like the
rest of us.

- Richard Retecki

To Be a Slave of Intensity


Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think. . .and think. . .while you are alive.
What you call “salvation’ belongs to the time before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten--
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of
Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you
will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


- Kabir
(version by Robert Bly)

Black Boys Play The Classics

The most popular "act" in
Penn Station
is the three black kids in ratty
sneakers & T-shirts playing
two violins and a cello—Brahms.
White men in business suits
have already dug into their pockets
as they pass and they toss in
a dollar or two without stopping.
Brown men in work-soiled khakis
stand with their mouths open,
arms crossed on their bellies
as if they themselves have always
wanted to attempt those bars.
One white boy, three, sits
cross-legged in front of his
idols—in ecstasy—
their slick, dark faces,
their thin, wiry arms,
who must begin to look
like angels!
Why does this trembling
pull us?
A: Beneath the surface we are one.
B: Amazing! I did not think that they could speak this tongue.

- Toi Derricotte

Definition of the Frontiers

First there is the wind but not like the familiar wind but long and without lapses or falling away or surges of air as is usual but rather like the persistent pressure of a river or a running tide.

This wind is from the other side and has an odor unlike the odor of the winds with us but like time if time had odor and were cold and carried a bitter and sharp taste like rust on the taste of snow or the fragrance of thunder.

When the air has this taste of time the frontiers are not far from us.

Then too there are the animals. There are always animals under the small trees. They belong neither to our side nor to theirs but are wild and because they are animals of such kind that wildness is unfamiliar in them as the horse for example or the goat and often sheep and dogs and like creatures their wandering there is strange and even terrifying signaling as it does the violation of custom and the subversion of order.

There are also the unnatural lovers the distortion of images the penetration of mirrors and the inarticulate meanings of the dreams. The dreams are in turmoil like a squall of birds.

Finally there is the evasion of those with whom we have come. It is at the frontiers that the companions desert us—that the girl returns to the old country

that we are alone.


- Archibald McLeish

For the New Year, 1981 I have a small grain of hope— one small crystal that gleams clear colors out of transparency. I need more. I break off a fragment to send you. Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink. Please share your fragment so that yours will grow. Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source— clumsy and earth-covered— of grace. - Denise Levertov

Dear Ashraf Fayadh,

Outside my window men speak

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...5_14-21-34.png

in a tongue I do not completely
understand. These are the men
who work the soil, the vineyards,
who pray to another god and the
god’s mother, who sing you are
never alone. We are all orphans
searching for light, harmony lost
to the stark meaning of man-made
laws. In our hearts, the poem of
Love is perfected, is the most holy
relic of Time. Dear Ashraf Fayadh,
may you live happily among the
living, neither lashed nor beheaded,
on little islands of wonder, feeling
for all the gods what they are
incapable of feeling, each word,
each brush stroke, a golden bee
bathed in the breath of heaven.


- Katherine Hastings

Note: Ashraf Fayadh is a Saudia Arabian artist and poet who has been sentenced to death, accused of promoting atheism in his 2008 book of poems Instructions Within.

I would I might Forget that I am I

Sonnet VII
I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body’s tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; ’tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessèd the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone


- George Santayana

Prayer
I want a god
as my accomplice
who spends nights
in houses
of ill repute
and gets up late
on Saturdays

a god
who whistles
through the streets
and trembles
before the lips
of his lover

a god
who waits in line
at the entrance
of movie houses
and likes to drink
café au lait

a god
who spits
blood from
tuberculosis and
doesn’t even have
enough for bus fare

a god
knocked
unconscious
by the billy club
of a policeman
at a demonstration

a god
who pisses
out of fear
before the flaring
electrodes
of torture

a god
who hurts
to the last
bone and
bites the air
in pain

a jobless god
a striking god
a hungry god
a fugitive god
an exiled god
an enraged god

a god
who longs
from jail
for a change
in the order
of things

I want a
more godlike
god

- Francisco X. Alarcon
February 21, 1954-January 15, 2016
(Translation by Francisco Aragon)

Fantastic, Larry! I want a god I can thank for creating you to show us this poem. You and Francisco X. Alarcon!

Roland

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Prayer
I want a god
as my accomplice...

---

Coretta Scott King

Watching her funeral on TV, 2006

four tall white men

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...8_12-49-26.png

southerners all
presidents all
bush carter clinton bush
stand together today
in a congregation of accolades
to honor a small black woman
sweet soprano voice of peace
silenced finally
resting beneath a mound of
scarlet roses sun-yellow lilies
bright and passionate as her courage

no mere appendage
to her towering royal mate
she rose from his ashes
spoke with steely purpose
for the softest of virtues
endured assaults
of spiked and forked tongues
hearth-destroying bombs
to raise to dignity
the petty lives of garbage collectors
the poverty-enveloped
the forgotten children
the unjustly deprived

without bomb or tank she moved nations
lacking armor she prevailed
her only uniform the light of care
her only bugle the call for peace

she stood in silence
walked in grace

for you, now, sister in peace,
we stand in the fist of silence
walk in hope of grace

- Vilma Olivary Ginzberg

thanks for remembering Mrs. King with such eloquence, Larry

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Coretta Scott King

Watching her funeral on TV, 2006

four tall white men
...

---

God Does Not Answer Prayer

God does not answer prayer.
It is a sacrilege to think so.
An insult to the god-drenched hearts
of all who pray through the night
and in the morning are nonetheless
handed a dead child.

The churches in Salem used to burn heretics
to increase attendance. Now those who feel
their prayer didn't reach quite far enough,
that they were not pure enough,
are victims of a merciless atheism
that says all good fortune comes from God
though the brutal often prosper
and it is not uncommon to torture
the pure of heart.

We pray for the best, forgetting
the unpredictable unfolding
that must occur for us to learn
prayer for others works better
than for ourselves. Jesus prays
in the garden of Gethsemane
and is refused. Ten thousand,
ten million prayers rise in Latin,
Arabic, Hindi, and Hebrew

yet their husbands and wives,
children and sisters, fathers and brothers
do not survive well if at all
though in their chest beats the strong sacred heart.

No prayers are granted, none denied.
True prayer reaches well beyond the edge of the world.
It enters head bowed into the arms of the Beloved.


- Stephen Levine
(7/17/1937-1/17/2016)

There’s A Beat


There’s a beat,
and a sound there,
you hear it,
and a tone when we feel it,
a meter to the planet,
and such majesty to life.
There’s the song of our emotions
in the syncopation of our confusions,
and the cry of our devotions
to the heart’s expansive score.
There’s a melody to take us
through the storms of our rehearsals,
through the seasons we must improvise
a counterpoint to dying.


Oh holy music made of love and suffering,
bathe us in your colors.
Let the silence still us
to the ache in our fingers and our bones.
Let us find the harmony,
the notes that plot a passage,
that spell a message of reflection and protection,
if only we will trust and pay attention,
trust and pay attention
to the intervals that link us,
the relations that give meaning
in our symphony of loss.


- Tim Hicks

Bedrock
a message from my father


may I counsel you
from this distance
25 years after cremation
most of the fire extinguished
ashes scattered in four directions
our cup of sorrows aged like wine

allow me to cradle your head
and look into your eyes
allow me to make my amends
to soothe the hurt i caused
to nudge you toward a new calm
here, in the eye of the storm

now, let’s get down to bedrock
there is no perspective to defend
nor angle on which to balance
nothing to fix or forgive
your life is enough
hold it in your lap like a newborn

never cease to be amazed
by the shimmer
of your own soul
expect nothing
greet everything
raise the cup, drink deeply

- Fran Carbonaro

Blessed Disillusion

I thought it would be sudden,
instead it is gradual, graceful.
The sky falls leisurely.
A Chagall sky, it breaks
apart, slices of cobalt,
creamy eddies of clouds
drift down like feathers,
freed. Little by little,
pieces liberate, float down like ash
wafting away from the whole.
Here, chunks of indigo, shot
through with streaks of sunset, morning
silver. Venus shines in my hands.
Mars burns my eyes.
The sky lies at my feet
slices and wedges.
I pick them up, wonder,
turn them in my hands,
Warp and weft without the whole.
It happens unhurriedly. I always thought
it would be sudden. The sky would fall.
Instead it slips gradually from its moorings.
Overhead measureless emptiness
wheels and turns.

- Rebecca del Rio

MushroomsRising surreptitiously in the nightthese low lives cower in shadegossiping and whispering musty secrets.They conspire with rotting wood;some shake mute bells in cow dung.some come with death in damp pouches.You know them allthese bloodless friends of nightwho make no sound under the knife. - Robert Samarotto

Outside
The least little sound sets the coyotes walking,
walking the edge of our comfortable earth.
We look inward, but all of them
are looking toward us as they walk the earth.
We need to let animals loose in our houses,
the wolf to escape with a pan in his teeth,
and streams of animals toward the horizon
racing with something silent in each mouth.
For all we have taken into our keeping
and polished with our hands belongs to a truth
greater than ours, in the animal´s keeping.
Coyotes are circling around our truth.
- William Stafford

For the Family and Friends of a Suicide

As you huddle around the torn silence,
Each by this lonely deed exiled
To a solitary confinement of soul,
May some glow from what has been lost
Return like the kindness of candlelight.

As your eyes strain to sift
This sudden wall of dark
And no one can say why
In such a forsaken, secret way,
This death was sent for...
May one of the lovely hours
Of memory return
Like a field of ease
Among these graveled days.

May the Angel of Wisdom
Enter this ruin of absence
And guide your minds
To receive this bitter chalice
So that you do not damage yourselves
By attending only at the hungry altar
Of regret and anger and guilt.

May you be given some inkling
That there could be something else at work
And that what to you now seems
Dark, destructive, and forlorn,
Might be a destiny that looks different
From inside the eternal script.

May vision be granted to you
To see this with the eyes of providence.
May your loss become a sanctuary
Where new presence will dwell
To refine and enrich
The rest of your life
With courage and compassion.

And may your lost loved one
Enter into the beauty of eternal tranquility,
In that place where there is no more sorrow
Or separation or mourning or tears.


- John O'Donohue

Monet Refuses the Operation


Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.


- Lisel Mueller

Tree Marriage


In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere, two
trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding.


- William Meredith

The Optimist’s Bag

It slouches on the foyer table
tries to look invisible
but its innards jive
like a troop of spider monkeys
playing Twister in a pillow slip.
Like Pinocchio in the cavern of Monstruo’s belly
they holler, let us out!
Desire is the loudest.
It rattles the buckles from
deep within the leather folds.
Loneliness picks up the chorus
in call and response.

Next the twins, tenderness and hope—
smooth white hands soft as school girls’—
pick at the lock
while tongues of connection
slide over the gaping rim
and force it open
like a bellows pushing air
fanning the lilies of lust.

Your eyes track the play-by-play
like dreamtime pupils.
When you reach for it
the bag plays dead.

- Sandra Anfang

Wedded to the Darkness

Only when the storm comes
roaring off the wild California coast
bringing its raging rain and wind
swirling around the edges of my fears
can I know the power
of the magnificent roots of the old oak tree
clinging like a net of tangled hair
twisted and knotted into the earth
wedded to the dark
holding the swaying branch-laden tree
firmly to its source.
Only then can I feel
and bow down to the darkness
to the fertile terrain
where life is held and nourished
Only then can I know
I depend on the darkness for light.


- Judith Shiner

Otter Sight

After three days of rain
the Laguna is doing its old job -
keeping the river from flooding downstream.
A vast sheet of water welcomes
incoming flights of mallards and grebes.
Egrets poke around the margins,
their serpentine stealth yielding
bounties of frogs and crawdads.

Ripples spreading around the bend of the current
herald their whiskered faces:
the otters I have long heard of
but never, until now, seen.

The new neighbor says
“I bought the place for the view.”
I say “You got a good one.”

- Larry Robinson

Millennium blessing

There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

It does not come in time,
but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us to surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

We know we must pass
beyond knowing
and fear the shedding.

But we are pulled upward
none-the-less
through forgotten ghosts
and unexpected angels,
luminous.

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.

- Stephen Levine

Added my Illustration & typography to the poem.

Dear Sebastopol -

Hard not to get dizzy, here, under tides of scent -
how they grade and terrace the air.

salt thick tang of wet earth fat with limestone
against sweet rot of wind falls.

Pine sap town built on stolen ground.
Wagon rutted streets. Hills once lush

with redwood and oak, cleared
to the root for acres of orchards.

Century-wide berths of scrub oaks
smoldering in the Laguna de Santa Rosa

A train that carried its screaming
weight down Main Street for nearly 100 years.

But the WPA mural on the post office wall
still frames the hard won promise:

neat rows of apple trees
flanked by white chicken coops.

Once, your accepted story swallowed me under its bell glass sky.

Now I wake slowly. Learn to waver
in the air above what history we’ve learned,

sense what’s pushing up underneath.

- Iris Jamahl Dunkle

O, Pilgrim!

O pilgrim, where have you been?
Where are you now?

While you have been searching the world
the Beloved has been here all along
waiting for you.

Let the caravan carry you home
to your deepest heart’s desire.
The treasure you sought was buried in your own garden.

Come home, o wanderer, and behold the face in the mirror.
Look behind the eyes and see the One
who has been searching for you.

You are seen;
you are known
and you are beloved.

If your seeking has brought you here at last,
you know that there is nowhere else to go
and nothing more to say.

- Jellaludin Rumi
(version by Larry Robinson)

At a Workshop with Bill Plotkin ~ a poem for the beloved

Called to the gate
chain-linked to the long wooden fence
running along the road into Commonmweal

I wanted to climb over you,
sit atop the highest bar,
remembering rodeos
and other echoes of the forgotten West

But instead I unhooked the chain
and sat beside you, inside the enclosed field,
drawn also by the standing poles
and the mysterious wires anchoring them
to the ground and to each other

Such a powerful symbol of our (post)modern industrial culture

Let me love YOU!
You too must be alive,
carrying within yourself
some longing for wholeness
underneath the layers of power, greed and domination
that have so distorted the promise of your gift
(thinking of Rilke and how the ore wants to go back into the mountain)

Just so, the wires and wirelesses of our global interconnection
want to reach into our deepest beings
to touch our deeper longings

Blessings and gratitude
to those heroes of our day,
setting free the dirty secrets
of our wars - against each other
and against the earth

The Chelsea Mannings and the Julian Asanges,
the Edward Snowdens,
the warriors of the West,
sparking our imaginations
with the fires of freedom
and the passion for justice, integrity and honor

Respect for ALL beings

May we discover, in the depths of our own beings,
the way forward into a world that celebrates
connection, wholeness,
ringing forth a song of joy
over the wires that weave in and out
of our lives here together
on this most glorious earth


- Debora Hammond

Burning

Midday sun a smear,
a shimmering smudge burning behind
slate skies, burning
through hopelessness and hope.

There is always burning.
Somewhere fields are burning to clear
for crops: cane, corn, poppies.
Spirits burn in defiance of helplessness.

Burning somewhere
palaces, markets, monuments,
broad hallways, humble homes alight
with someone’s certainty.

Always burning somewhere,
Bodies burn against bulldozer
blades poised to bury lies, secrets. Bodies
in Poland, Guatemala, Bosnia, Iraq, Palestine.

There is always burning,
libraries burn, also oil wells,
dreams, outrage and grief
Pushed to the grave’s edge.

In America and Africa
children burn with hunger, confusion,
mothers burn with sorrow, outrage.
Grandmothers gaze at the sun,

imagine a future
poised on the sun’s corona, tumbling
End over dazzling end
until time itself ends.

- Rebecca del Rio

A Zero-Circle


Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.


Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.


We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we¹ll be lying.


If we say "No, we don¹t see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.


So let us not be sure of anything,
beside ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.


Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."


When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
we¹ll become a mighty kindness.


- Jelalludin Rumi
Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

The Guest House


This being human is a guest house.

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...6_16-19-18.png

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

- Jelalludin Rumi
(Coleman Barks translation)

What Would An Indigenous Grandmother Do?


I don’t want to change
my thoughts.

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...7_13-21-15.png

I want to change
the way I think.
I want to think
in images, in stories
spun as threads
arising long and slow
out of culture and
out of the Grandmother Spider
of indigenous mind.


I want to learn
to live in the old ways,
the ways of spirit.
I want to see
the signs and the
deep, precise wisdom
of the true ones –
ancestors, elders, any and all
trying to inform us that
there is a way -
there is a way
to heal,
there is a way
to see,
there is a way
to change direction,
there is a way
to give the children
what they need
to be safe
to be listening
to be healthy
to be whole.


I, too,
want to be whole
all the way into
death and, yes,
I’ll say it,
beyond death,
beyond it but not beyond
the cycle of being -
the ring, the hoop of
being together.
This is the place where
Love remains, where
Love sustains, where
Love comes
into and through
all things.
Love is spirit
flowing into the life
of the world.
Knowing this
I am left with a question
to pose to myself:
What would an
indigenous grandmother do?

- Maya Spector

A different format using my typography and design, the image is modified from an unattributed Pinterest post.

Angels


This is how an angel comes

out of the earth, upwards

from the underworld

when everybody thought

they came from the light wings

of the sky - no

they are massive -

on nights of rain and sleet, split

the soil, splash and muddy the grass

wingspans wide as lakes

wearing mud armour, they crawl

full length up rivers and streams

dam ditches, seep through drains

penetrate walls, barns, chicken coops

unsettle bats with wing-beats

that shake down trees -

remind us, cradled in our prayers

how we like to remain dry, sheltered.

This is how angels come

mouths full of earth

spitting verses

of poetry.

- Miriam Darlington

Wood and Steel

first day at sea
The steel deck hums

Rolling ocean bringing back dreams
Of wooden ships and creaking ropes

Wood once home to squirrel and bird
Roots knowing darkness and moisture

This steel ship knows no life
But for the guest in my cabin

A ladybug has stowed away with me

I place her in the steel drawer
Of the steel desk
On the steel ship

I bring her water
And bits of food
This ambassador of all living things
Trapped in a cold steel world

That bug, a living icon
Impossibly red with magic black spots
I fell in love with her
And all creation at the same time

But she did not survive

Heartbroken in mid-Atlantic
A burial at sea
Inside a matchbox coffin

The only wood I could find


- Brian Narelle

The Night She Danced


A smoky basement in Seville,
cigar plumes hanging low,
a single bulb
with a bent green shade
lights it all.

Underneath the singer’s bleeding voice
an ancient rhythm throbbed
from an old guitar and there
on the bottom step,
something leaned
against the wall.

It was then Delilia stood up
on the pitted mahogany floor,
and danced the whole history of Andalusia
out of the night and into the room.

All those times of exquisite pain
and painful joy.
Like the night the grandmother died
and the grandchild was born in Favencia.
And that year that the Guadalimar
leaped from it’s banks and carried away
the lemon orchard and the mule.
And the time the bull with the broken horn
crashed through Alejandro’s bodega
just before siesta.
And the time the wine turned to vinegar.
And the Christmas mass when the priest died.

It was all there.
The winter shawl made by Maria Helena
for the statue of Our Lady.
And the perfect olives grown by Tio Miguel
on his dry and scorched huerto.
The music caught it all in a flaming cauldron
of blazing heels and chattering castanets.

Delilia, consumed by Duende, was danced
by the joy the sorrow, the pleasure the pain,
the sugar the lemon, the life and the death,
the laugh and the scream. The pain and the fire.
Nothing escaped that pulsing dance.
We could all die! Santo Padre! Death is near!

Then a sudden dark silence
caught it all by the throat.
Madre de dios! What had she done?

Delilia’s last step
had smashed it all
without remorse.

Death was there that night
slinking nearer the singer’s heart
but Death left the basement
with empty arms.
No match for the Duende in the room
the night Della danced flamenco.


- Doug von Koss

Wonderful poem, Larry. Here's a similar one from R. M. Rilke, translated by C. F. MacIntyre:

SPANISH DANCER

As in the hand a match glows, swiftly white
before it bursts in flame and to all sides
licks its quivering tongues: within the ring
of spectators her wheeling dance is bright,
nimble, and fervid, twitches and grows wide.

And suddenly is made of pure fire.

Now her glances kindle the dark hair;
she twirls the floating skirts with daring art
into a whirlwind of consuming flame,
from which her naked arms alertly strike,
clattering like fearful rattlesnakes.

Then, as the fire presses her too closely,
imperiously she clutches it and throws it
with haughty gestures to the floor and watches
it rage and leap with flames that will not die--
until, victorious, surely, with a sweet
greeting smile, and holding her head high,
she tramples it to death with small, firm feet.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Night She Danced...

---

Berryman


I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write

- W.S. Merwin

Blessings for the Tomb, the Cocoon, the Liminal Space

May you surrender to the tender gravity of your grief and loss

May you give honor and homage to that which has fallen away

May you integrate the wisdoms of your passage

May you feel the sacred burden of your own life in your arms

May you treat yourself with exquisite kindness and patience

May you find peace in your cocoon . . . acceptance and surrender

May you be transformed by your own darkness and rise renewed

- Kay Crista

TheSoldiers In The Garden


After the coup,
the soldiers appeared
in Neruda’s garden one night,
raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
From the bedroom window
they could have been
the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
back from the sea to finish
plundering the coast.


The poet was dying;
cancer flashed through his body
and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
Neruda faced him and said:
There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
apologized to señor Neruda
and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
The lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.


For thirty years
we have been searching
for another incantation
to make the solders
vanish from the garden.


- Martín Espada

Touch the Air Softly


Now touch the air softly, step gently, one, two ...
I'll love you 'til roses are robin's egg blue;
I'll love you 'til 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 'til 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 'til heaven rips the stars from his coat,
And the moon rows away in a glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down like a river below,
And earth is ablaze, and oceans aglow.


So touch the air softly, and swing the broom high.
We will dust the grey mountains, and sweep the blue sky:
And I'll love you as long as the furrow the plough,
As however is ever, and ever is now.


- William Jay Smith

The New Song


For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then

there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song


- W.S.Merwin

The Delight Song of Tsoai-talee


I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
I am the shadow that follows a child
I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows
I am an eagle playing with the wind
I am a cluster of bright beads
I am the farthest star
I am the cold of dawn
I am the roaring of the rain
I am the glitter on the crust of the snow
I am the long track of the moon in a lake
I am a flame of four colors
I am a deer standing away in the dusk
I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche
I am an angle of geese in the winter sky
I am the hunger of a young wolf
I am the whole dream of these things
You see, I am alive, I am alive
I stand in good relation to the earth
I stand in good relation to the gods
I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful
I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte
You see, I am alive, I am alive


- N. Scott Momaday

Quarantine, 1918

There were towns that knew about the flu before it arrived; they had time to imagine the germs on a stranger’s skirts, to see how death could be sealed in an envelope, how a fever could bloom in the evening, and take a life overnight. A few villages, deep in the mountains, posted guards on their roads, and no one was allowed to come or go, not even a grandmother carrying a cake; no mail was accepted and all the words and packages families sent to one another went unopened, unanswered. Trains were told not to stop, so they glowed for a moment before swaying towards some other place. The food at the corner store never came from out of town and no one went to see a distant auntie or state fair. For awhile, the outside world existed in imagination, in memory, in books or suitcases, deep in closets. There was nothing but the town itself, hiding from what was possible, and the children cutting dolls from paper, their scissors sharp. - Faith Shearin

Storm

rain drops strike
batter black wood
spark leap collapse
mirrors of sky

cypher of lights
a deluge
in intricate wild
steps of rain

the wind takes rest
in bright glass
quieting pools
dimple daintily

sinews of clouds
open the sky to view

but soon the storm curls
this corner room a friend
beating and gusting
these windows now


- Kevin Pryne

Bedtime


We are a meadow where the bees hum,
mind and body are almost one


as the fire snaps in the stove
and our eyes close,


and mouth to mouth, the covers
pulled over our shoulders,


we drowse as horses drowse afield,
in accord; though the fall cold


surrounds our warm bed, and though
by day we are singular and often lonely.


- Denise Levertov

Lines for Winter


Tell yourself
as it get cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you found yourself -
inside the dome of dark
or under the crackling white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tunes your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.


- Mark Strand

The man pictured has terminal lung cancer, he quit smoking 15 years ago but had no chest x-rays during that period, when he did —it was too late.

I'll send him Mark Strand's poem "Lines for Winter", now illustrated with his image.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Lines for Winter...

---

Traveling Through the Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already; almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason --
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all -- my only swerving --
then pushed her over the edge into the river.


- William Stafford

The Powwow at the End of the World


I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after an Indian woman puts her shoulder to the Grand Coulee Dam
and topples it. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the floodwaters burst each successive dam
downriver from the Grand Coulee. I am told by many of you
that I must forgive and so I shall after the floodwaters find
their way to the mouth of the Columbia River as it enters the Pacific
and causes all of it to rise. I am told by many of you that I must forgive
and so I shall after the first drop of floodwater is swallowed by that salmon
waiting in the Pacific. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Columbia
and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors
of Hanford. I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after that salmon swims through the mouth of the Spokane River
as it meets the Columbia, then upstream, until it arrives
in the shallows of a secret bay on the reservation where I wait alone.
I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after
that salmon leaps into the night air above the water, throws
a lightning bolt at the brush near my feet, and starts the fire
which will lead all of the lost Indians home. I am told
by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall
after we Indians have gathered around the fire with that salmon
who has three stories it must tell before sunrise: one story will teach us
how to pray; another story will make us laugh for hours;
the third story will give us reason to dance. I am told by many
of you that I must forgive and so I shall when I am dancing
with my tribe during the powwow at the end of the world.


- Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie for Poet Laureate of America!

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Powwow at the End of the World
...
- Sherman Alexie

---

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Roland Jacopetti:

Sherman Alexie for Poet Laureate of America!

---

I second that!
Janet

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bumped into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy
holy


- Pesha Gertler

Tending the Sedge


The land was first the land’s. Then, the Pomo,
the Miwok and the Wappo lived on it.
The tribelets of the Konohomtara,
the Kataictemi and the Biakomtara
settled on different sections of the wide
Laguna for over 10,000 years.
Little changed except the roots and stalks of
the coarse sedge plants that grew half-submerged in
the water. The Pomo basket weavers
cultivated the sedge fields, passed prayers
for straight stalks and supple roots from mouth to
ear to mouth. Prayed and sang, untangled and threaded.
The basket is in the roots, that’s where it begins.


- Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Listening To The Republicans
Winter 2016


I don’t want
to be inspired


I don’t need
to be uplifted


I want
to descend


to walk down
to where their pain is,
to where fear,
like a
week-old
rotting corpse,
has absolutely
nothing good to say


I want to listen
to the stench


to the terror


so that when I return
I can keep my heart
open,


so that I
can remember
where
and what
they were
taught.

- Trout Black

Wild Common Prayer


I dreamt you were whole again, radiant, calm: your hair still golden but
tinged with red — a halo of rosy, burnished light — and your hands
untrembling in your lap. I was surprised to find you home. But I’ve been here
all along, you said. Or might have said. You didn’t speak. You’d only aged
as women age whose bodies ease them toward death; grown softer, more
yourself. And I was the one who stood amazed, there in the kitchen where
we’d spent so many quiet mornings, friend. Wanting to touch you, wanting
to simply not forsake you now. Outside, the pasture lay down calmly; each
blade shimmered in the wind. This is eternity, I thought, and felt you breaking
into all your lovely fragments as I woke.


- Cecilia Woloch

Of the Color Blue

First in the stark relief
of black and white,
the day emerges through the cottonwoods.
Know the likelihood of that blue
that’s been called headstrong.
It’s the same one
that can represent the distance,
that can awaken the optimist within,
speaking in one of its assorted voices.
Listen carefully while assembling one’s self,
while choosing which mask to put on,
or to leave off.
Today’s reality show will attempt
to make you the star,
competing agendas will clamor
for attention,
for center stage.
Hold tight to your heart center,
to your own firm resolve.
It is your circus,
and your choice of participating simians.


- Pamela Williams

Poem In Which My Legs Are Accepted

Legs!
How we have suffered each other,
never meeting the standard of magazines
or official measurements.

I have hung you from trapezes,
sat you on wooden rollers,
pulled and pushed you
with the anxiety of taffy,
and still you are yourselves!

Most obvious imperfection, blight on my fantasy life,
strong,
plump,
never to be skinny
or even hinting of the svelte beauties in history books
or Sears catalogues.
Here you are -- solid, fleshy and
white as when I first noticed you, sitting on the toilet,
spread softly over the wooden seat,
having been with me only twelve years,
yet
as obvious as the legs of my thirty-year-old gym teacher.

Legs!
O that was the year we did acrobatics in the annual gym show.
How you split for me!
One-handed cartwheels
from this end of the gymnasium to the other,
ending in double splits,
legs you flashed in blue rayon slacks my mother bought
for the occasion
and tho you were confidently swinging along,
the rest of me blushed at the sound of clapping.

Legs!
How I have worried about you, not able to hide you,
embarrassed at beaches, in highschool
when the cheerleaders' slim brown legs
spread all over
the sand
with the perfection
of bamboo.
I hated you, and still you have never given out on me.

With you
I have risen to the top of blue waves,
with you
I have carried food home as a loving gift
when my arms began un-
jelling like madrilenne.

Legs, you are a pillow,
white and plentiful with feathers for his wild head.
You are the endless scenery
behind the tense sinewy elegance of his two dark legs.
You welcome him joyfully
and dance.
And you will be the locks in a new canal between continents.
The ship of life will push out of you
and rejoice
in the whiteness,
in the first floating and rising of water.

- Kathleen Fraser

Marrying God


Dark of the moon making
Ritual my own, stone altar
My fire, low and quieted
The incessant tide insists
I hear its rhythmic chant
Above the scratching sound
My own voice attempts
To remember words that
Call forth a Power, protection.
I am asking for answers
Requesting questions.
Ritual to heal the hearts
I have broken—my own,
My daughter's, her fathers.
Is it right this joy surrounding
The molten center of grief?
As I sing, resurrecting hymns
Of a childhood of certainty
A God of consequence and presence,
Another presence presents,
A shadow rushes past, so close
I feel its wake. This obscure shade
Mine? His rage? A stranger
Come to make the beach
A bed for the night?
My fire doused, I climb the cliff,
Feel foolish, but certain
Rituals of my own always
Leave me chagrined, find me
Later rewarded. Weeks later
Full sun, I return, armed
With incense and photos—my
Father, his father, hoping to find
A balm, a cure for this crack
In my soul's center, wound inflicted
By life that makes men
Other, condemns us to struggle.
Moonless night, firelight
Now passed. Atop ashes a ring
Wedding ring. Mine now
I wed an uncertain god,
One who promises nothing
Gives all. With this ring
Relic of another's broken
Heart, released to the ocean
Returned to the shore,
I thee wed.


- Rebecca del Rio

Spiritual Chickens


A man eats a chicken every day for lunch, and each day the ghost of another chicken joins the crowd in the dining room.
If he could only see them!
Hundreds and hundreds of spiritual chickens, sitting on chairs, tables, covering the floor, jammed shoulder to shoulder.
At last there is no more space and one of the chickens is popped back across the spiritual plain to the earthly.
The man is in the process of picking his teeth.
Suddenly there is a chicken at the end of the table, strutting back and forth, not looking at the man but knowing he is there, as is the way with chickens.
The man makes a grab for the chicken but his hand passes right through her. He tries to hit the chicken with a chair and the chair passes through her.
He calls in his wife but she can see nothing.
This is his own private chicken, even if he fails to recognize her.
How is he to know this is a chicken he ate seven years ago on a hot and steamy Wednesday in July, with a little tarragon, a little sour cream?
The man grows afraid.
He runs out of his house flapping his arms and making peculiar hops until the authorities take him away for a cure.
Faced with the choice between something odd in the world or something broken in his head, he opts for the broken head.
Certainly, this is safer than putting his opinions in jeopardy.
Much better to think he had imagined it, that he had made it happen.
Meanwhile, the chicken struts back and forth at the end of the table.
Here she was, jammed in with the ghosts of six thousand dead hens, when suddenly she has the whole place to herself.
Even the nervous man has disappeared.
If she had a brain, she would think she had caused it.
She would grow vain, egotistical, she would look for someone to fight, but being a chicken she can just enjoy it and make little squawks, silent to all except the man who ate her, who is far off banging his head against a wall like someone trying to repair a leaky vessel, making certain that nothing unpleasant gets in or nothing of value falls out.
How happy he would have been to be born a chicken, to be of good use to his fellow creatures and rich in companionship after death.
As it is he is constantly being squeezed between the world and his idea of the world.
Better to have a broken head - why surrender his corner on the truth? - better just to go crazy.


- Stephen Dobyns