Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

A Dream Of Burning



To lift this wanting up out of dead wood.

Something, someone reaches up to stop this rising

as though the movement up is treasonous.



This wanting has been frozen, caught in the grain

of the fallen log for ten thousand years: Memories

of ice ages and mastodons.



But in the wood is the dream of burning--of flames,

heat and tongues of orange/red/leaping up into

the night, warming those who come close by.



This wanting breaks open the wood. The sow bugs,

spiders, beetles and the invisible captains of decay

are relieved of duty.



This wood is for fire and it is time to burn.



- Francis Weller

Sniper

the photograph of the slayer
reveals a pair of shoulders
informed with a furious patriotism
but no face
he killed five and then himself
smoking the insane cigarette of chance
I love my mother it says
right where he aimed the first shot
I love her more than ever it says
in the puzzled heart of the second victim
sky is an illusion
bolstered by clouds of alcohol
and behind sniper's little house
is lit up with roses and perfection
the third victim wears a shoe of blood
and his mouth repeats novenas
to the mohammedan virgin
this doesn't happen every day
festival of blood and determinism
the fourth victim remembers
the illogical shape of the rain
and the fifth victim
a hundred miles from home
is transported to the diamond heaven
where each minute is a monument of love
angry with the seven virtues of maternity
sniper eats the high price of war
and today as on no other day
he talks to the enormous angels whose
munitions whiten the sea's troubled jungle

- Ivan Arguelles

People Like Us Are Dangerous

In Brooklyn days, I wanted to be Carlos Ortiz, lightweight champion
of the world from Ponce, Puerto Rico. I gazed at the radiance
of the black and white television till it spoke to me in tongues,
a boy spellbound by the grainy spirits who stalked each other in the ring.

I wanted to be Carlos Ortiz when twenty thousand people
at Shea Stadium chanted his name. For fifteen rounds the jazz
percussion of his punches beat the sweat from Ismael Laguna,
El Tigre de Santa Isabel, who lurched off the ropes,
backpedaled and swallowed blood till the last bell.

I wanted to crouch and dip into the arc of my uppercut
like Carlos Ortiz on the cover of The Ring magazine,
where they called him a pugilist with clever hands.
I wanted to be a pugilist with clever hands. My father
bought me boxing gloves and I reddened my brother’s face.
I shadowboxed all the way down the hall.

I wanted something from the clever hand of Carlos Ortiz.
My mother and my father’s sister, dressed for the dance floor
at the Club Tropicoro, tracked the champ to the men’s room
and offered him a cocktail napkin to sign for me.
He grinned like the general of a people’s army
greeting the crowd from a balcony at the presidential palace.

I told everyone in the streets of Brooklyn I wanted to be
a Puerto Rican fighter like Carlos Ortiz. Every day I sparred
in the schoolyard until a boy I did not know waved his hands
in a circle, mesmerizing as a hypnotist, then kicked me
with his hard-soled shoe in a place I could not bring myself to name.
The blood crusted between my legs. I threw away my underwear.

Years later, I met Carlos Ortiz stirring milk into his coffee
at a McDonald’s off the New York Thruway.
The black curls on his forehead had disappeared, along
with the Club Tropicoro and the eighty thousand dollars
he counted out in cash to build his palace of trumpets in the Bronx.

Year by year, the whiskey and the beer wore away the levees
of his brain till he walked like a man underwater. One night
at Madison Square Garden, unable to move his arms or legs,
he stared at the canvas and quit on his stool. Carlos Ortiz drove
a cab on graveyard shift to keep away from all the bars on the avenue,
far from the backslappers who wanted to buy the champ a drink.

Carlos Ortiz is sober now. He thinks of Ismael Laguna, who cannot
pry open his hands, selling souvenir newspapers with headlines about
El Tigre de Santa Isabel. Carlos Ortiz says: People like us are dangerous.

- Martín Espada

Penelope’s Song

Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,
Do now as I bid you, climb
The shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;
Wait at the top, attentive, like
A sentry or look-out. He will be home soon;
It behooves you to be
Generous. You have not been completely
Perfect either; with your troublesome body
You have done things you shouldn't
Discuss in poems. Therefore
Call out to him over the open water, over the bright
Water
With your dark song, with your grasping,
Unnatural song--passionate,
Like Maria Callas. Who
Wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite
Could you possibly fail to answer? Soon
He will return from wherever he goes in the
Meantime,
Suntanned from his time away, wanting
His grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,
You must shake the boughs of the tree
To get his attention,
But carefully, carefully, lest
His beautiful face be marred
By too many falling needles.

– Louise Gluck

The Curator

We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come,
were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two,
the youngest assistant curator in the country.
I had some good ideas in those days.

Well, what we did was this. We had boxes
precisely built to every size of canvas.
We put the boxes in the basement and waited.

When word came that the Germans were coming in,
we got each painting put in the proper box
and out of Leningrad in less than a week.
They were stored somewhere in southern Russia.

But what we did, you see, besides the boxes
waiting in the basement, which was fine,
a grand idea, you’ll agree, and it saved the art—
but what we did was leave the frames hanging,
so after the war it would be a simple thing
to put the paintings back where they belonged.

Nothing will seem surprised or sad again
compared to those imperious, vacant frames.

Well, the staff stayed on to clean the rubble
after the daily bombardments. We didn’t dream—
You know it lasted nine hundred days.
Much of the roof was lost and snow would lie
sometimes a foot deep on this very floor,
but the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell.

Here is the story, now, that I want to tell you.
Early one day, a dark December morning,
we came on three young soldiers waiting outside,
pacing and swinging their arms against the cold.
They told us this: in three homes far from here
all dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad
to see the Hermitage, as they supposed
every Soviet citizen dreamed of doing.
Now they had been sent to defend the city,
a turn of fortune the three could hardly believe.

I had to tell them there was nothing to see
but hundreds and hundreds of frames where the paintings had hung.

“Please, sir,” one of them said, “let us see them.”

And so we did. It didn’t seem any stranger
than all of us being here in the first place,
inside such a building, strolling in snow.

We led them around most of the major rooms,
what they could take the time for, wall by wall.
Now and then we stopped and tried to tell them
part of what they would see if they saw the paintings.
I told them how those colors would come together,
described a brushstroke here, a dollop there,
mentioned a model and why she seemed to pout
and why this painter got the roses wrong.

The next day a dozen waited for us,
then thirty or more, gathered in twos and threes.
Each of us took a group in a different direction:
Castagno, Caravaggio, Brueghel, Cézanne, Matisse,
Orozco, Manet, da Vinci, Goya, Vermeer,
Picasso, Uccello, your Whistler, Wood, and Gropper.
We pointed to more details about the paintings,
I venture to say, than if we had had them there,
some unexpected use of line or light,
balance or movement, facing the cluster of faces
the same way we’d done it every morning
before the war, but then we didn’t pay
so much attention to what we talked about.
People could see for themselves. As a matter of fact
we’d sometimes said our lines as if they were learned
out of a book, with hardly a look at the paintings.

But now the guide and the listeners paid attention
to everything—the simple differences
between the first and post-impressionists,
romantic and heroic, shade and shadow.

Maybe this was a way to forget the war
a little while. Maybe more than that.
Whatever it was, the people continued to come.
It came to be called The Unseen Collection.

Here. Here is the story I want to tell you.

Slowly, blind people began to come.
A few at first then more of them every morning,
some led and some alone, some swaying a little.
They leaned and listened hard, they screwed their faces,
they seemed to shift their eyes, those that had them,
to see better what was being said.
And a cock of the head. My God, they paid attention.

After the siege was lifted and the Germans left
and the roof was fixed and the paintings were in their places,
the blind never came again. Not like before.
This seems strange, but what I think it was,
they couldn’t see the paintings anymore.
They could still have listened, but the lectures became
a little matter-of-fact. What can I say?
Confluences come when they will and they go away.

- Miller Williams

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

- Harry Caudill

The Time We Have

I have seen
some of the best minds
of my generation
seduced by power
or easy comfort
or second-hand certainty.

And I have seen
others - those of the Great Heart -
who plant sequoias
or ideas
and sow seeds
of joy and justice.

I don't know
if the world will end
in fire or ice,
soon or late.

I do know
that I am glad to be here
and in whose company
I would spend my time.

- Larry Robinson

Crows Calling

One-by-one
each crow calls out to the next
and so it continues
to otherwise be known as
caw forwarding.

- Bill Krumbein

Crow’s Gift

I stretch and yawn.
The early summer sun
strikes my face
I squirm, wriggle and twist
placing one foot on the floor.
Why am I drawn to the front door?
My dog barking?
Or searching for a deep breath
of cool air?
Unbolting the door
I open it wide.
Looking down I see
one clean, fresh, black crow’s feather
neatly placed across the top step.
Like a gift it says,
"I am Crow Medicine.
Keeper of the Sacred Laws.
I can shape shift physical laws
To aid in creating peace!
You can know the unknowable.
Look to the mysteries of life."

The Great Spirit harkens.
Pay Attention!
Know your life’s mission.
Speak your truth.


- Natalie Rogers

White Crow


This little crow wears a coat of snow.

Shaking like a pup, his up

feels the weight of light.



His wings, his feathered chest, are blank

as morning stars erased. His eyes

shards of night through the low fog flow.



Mottled bud of shroud and cloud,

he flashes onyx —

is gone



- Katherine Hastings

Persephone Again

Everyone wants to talk
about Persephone.
Especially the poets.
How she was grabbed
and carried off,
how she was kept in darkness
so many months,
while her mother searched everywhere,
waited for her darling
to come home.

Some say
the daughter
liked what had happened
(you know the story,
how women really want it
even when they say no),
others claim it is in fact
the mother who is at fault,
that it is she
who drove her daughter
away, forced her to
leave home and
flee into that hidden world,
because of her own impossible
demands.

And then of course
there are those
who read it as a simple
nature myth--nine months
of fertility and sun,
three of winter and death
over the land.

What do I think?
I think she is the soul
of each of us,
going down to obscurity,
resurrecting like a flower
over and over
as the seasons return.

- Dorothy Walters

Persephone Speaks

You know very well that death comes,
Yet you live as though it won’t touch you.
You exile any thought tinged with darkness.

In a world of your design there would be:
Flowers without soil;
Sleep without nightmares;
Bodies without pain;
People without flaws.

This world does not meet your expectations.

Open your mind to the fullness of life!
Yes, to wars, child prostitutes, mudslides, tsunamis.

Yes, to cancer, wildfires, car accidents, homicides.

Yes, to abuse, greed, environmental degradation, Republicans.


Until you welcome all the contradictions into your tender heart
You are only half alive.
You feel reality pressing down on you -
A burden growing heavier each day.

Time is the great illusion.
Let this be your resolve –
To live with grateful eyes
And a vast mind.

- Maya Spector

The Ancient Ones

From the beginning
We have been with you.
We are the Ancient Ones,
And we remember.

We remember the time when there was only love,
The time when all breathing was one.
We remember the seed of your being 

Planted in the belly of the vast black night.


We remember the red cave of deep slumber, 

The time of forgetting, 

The sound of your breath, 

The pulse of your heart.
We remember the force of your longing for life,
The cries of your birth 

Bringing you forth.

We are the Ancient Ones, 

And we have waited and watched.

You say that you cannot remember that time,
That you have no memory of us. 

You say that you cannot hear our voices, 

That our touch no longer moves you. 

You say there can be no return, 

That something has been lost, 

That there is only silence.

We say the time of waiting is over, 

We say the silence has been broken, 

We say there can be no forgetting now.


We say, Listen.
We are the bones of your grandmother's grandmothers. 

We have returned now, 

We say you cannot forget us now,
We say we are with you,
And you are us. 

Remember,
Remember.

- Patricia Reis

Matt’s Guitar

Sometimes when I hear
The sad single strings of a Spanish guitar
Played by a man alone
In an old rhythm that wandered from Madrid
My heart fills to bursting
With a sweet pain
A glorious sadness
A grief so immense
I could not eat it all
If I had a thousand
lonely Sunday mornings.

- Doug von Koss

Descended from Dreamers

And what did I learn, a child, on the Sabbath?
A father is bound to kill his favorite son,
and to his father's cherishing
the beloved answers Yes.

The rest of the week, I hid from my father,
grateful I was not prized. But how deserted
he looked, with no son who pleased him.

And what else did I learn?
That light is born of dark to usurp its ancient rank.
And when a pharaoh dreams of ears of wheat
or grazing cows, it means
he's seen the shapes of the oncoming years.

The rest of my life I wondered: Are there dreams
that help us to understand the past? Or

is any looking back a waste of time,
the whole of it a too finely woven
net of innumerable conditions,
causes, effects, countereffects, impossible
to read? Like rain on the surface of a pond.

Where's Joseph when you need him?
Did Jacob, his father, understand
the dream of the ladder? Or did his enduring
its mystery make him richer?

**

Why are you crying? my father asked
in my dream, in a which we faced each other,
knees touching, seated in a moving train.

He had recently died,
and I was wondering if my life would ever begin.

Looking out the window,
one of us witnessed what kept vanishing,
while the other watched what continually emerged.

- Li-Young Lee

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

- Donald Hall

A Man's A Man for A' That*
*
Is there for honest poverty*
That hings his head, an a' that?*
The coward slave, we pass him by -*
We dare be poor for a' that!*
For a' that, an a' that,*
Our toils obscure, an a' that,*
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,*
The man's the gowd for a' that.*

What though on hamely fare we dine,*
Wear hoddin grey, an a' that?*
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine -*
A man's a man for a' that.*
For a' that, an a' that.*
Their tinsel show, an a' that,*
The honest man, tho e'er sae poor,*
Is king o men for a' that.*

Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord,'*
What struts, an stares, an a' that?*
Tho hundreds worship at his word,*
He's but a cuif for a' that.*
For a' that, an a' that,*
His ribband, star, an a' that,*
The man o independent mind,*
He looks an laughs at a' that.*

A prince can mak a belted knight,*
A marquis, duke, an a' that!*
But an honest man's aboon his might -*
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!*
For a' that, an a' that,*
Their dignities, an a' that,*
The pith o sense an pride o worth.*
Are higher rank than a' that.*

Then let us pray that come it may*
[As come it will for a' that],*
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,*
Shall bear the gree an a' that.*
For a' that, an a' that,*
It's comin yet for a' that,*
That man to man, the world, o'er*
Shall brithers be for a' that.*

- Robert Burns

*

This is not a courtroom anymore!

The time of judging who's drunk or sober, who's right or wrong, who's closer to God or farther away, all that's over.

This caravan is led instead by a great Delight, the simple joy that sits with us now, that is the grace.

Hafiz, it may be that you've just poured a toast that will wash love clean of all it's pictures.

- Hafiz

Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides...
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

- Wendell Berry

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you've broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come.

- Jelalludin Rumi
(Coleman Barks translation)

A King Dressed As a Servant

A sweet voice calls out,
"The caravan from Egypt is here!"
A hundred camels with what amazing treasure!

Midnight, a candle and someone quietly
waking me, "Your friend has come."

I spring out of my body, put a ladder
to the roof, and climb up to see if
it's true.

Suddenly, there is a world within this world!
An ocean inside the water jar!
A king sitting with me wearing
the uniform of a servant!
A garden in the chest of the gardener!

I see how love has "thoughts,"
and that these thoughts are circulating
in conversation with majesty.
Let me keep opening this moment
like a dead body reviving.

Shamsi Tabriz saw the placeless one
and from That, made a place.

- Jelelludin Rumi
Ghazal 2730
(Version by Coleman Barks)

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
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)

The Poetry Reading

I answered a call
for a poetry gathering
hosted at the home (as I’d misread)
of a woman who bore the name
of the street on which she lived.
Expecting perhaps a home
gracious and well settled,
a hostess adorned with baubles,
poets reading from their work,
and ... how would it be?
I arrived late
at a simple home,
Buddhist prayer flags,
heads silhouetted inside
a picture window at dusk.
I paused outside,
was beckoned silently
through the screen door
into the living room,
stood, listening as a voice
seeming to read, instead reciting
with feeling and at length a work
not by him. Ah.
I was offered
the sole remaining chair
in a circle surrounding
a hospital bed
on which lay the thin form
of a member of the group,
her eye patched,
her left arm wrapped completely
in bandages, overhead a steel triangle.
Voices arose, each in random turn, and
offered from beyond the walls
words from the deepest waters
of human experience. We grew dark, disembodied.
The bed glowed in the center.
Her voice, at last, spoke her own poem. Fluttered, whispered.
We grew quiet.
Our breath held her spirit
poised between this world and beyond.

- Scott O’Brien

Losing Our Minds


Watching you
I notice
the way a life
narrows down
to such a few
simple things

Sunlight streaming in your window
to wrap you in a veil of warmth
a view of our pond
and the distant wooded hills
once apples, now grapes
your fingers roaming the pages
of fading photographs
the comfort of familiar food
and a newspaper from your hometown

This morning
I found your purse
hidden at the bottom of your laundry basket
and felt
your fear of things
slipping away

Sometimes, you tell me
you don't mind
that you're losing your mind
"I'm not in any pain" you say
and all the while
I, in another room,
sit in silence, every morning
hoping to lose my mind

In the way Guatama Buddha
lost his

- Kay Crista

Hymn to the Sacred Body of the Universe



Let's meet

at the confluence

where you flow into me

and one breath

swirls between our lungs



Let's meet

at the confluence

where you flow into me

and one breath

swirls between our lungs



for one instant

to dwell in the presence of the galaxies

for one instant to live in the truth of the heart

the poet says this entire traveling cosmos is

"the secret One slowly growing a body"



two eagles are mating--

clasping each other's claws

and turning cartwheels in the sky

grasses are blooming

grandfathers dying

consciousness blinking on and off

all of this is happening at once

all of this, vibrating into existence

out of nothingness



every particle

foaming into existence

transcribing the ineffable



arising and passing away

arising and passing away

23 trillion times per second--

when Buddha saw that

he smiled



16 millions tons of rain are falling every second

on the planet

an ocean

perpetually falling

and every drop

is your body

every motion, every feather, every thought

is your body

time

is your body,

and the infinite

curled inside like

invisible rainbows folded into light



every word

of every tongue

is love

telling a story to her own ears



let our lives be incense

burning

like a

hymn to the sacred body of the universe



my religion is rain

my religion is stone

my religion reveals itself to me in sweaty epiphanies



every leaf, every river, every animal,

your body

every creature

trapped in the gears of corporate nightmares,

every species made extinct

was once your body



ten million people are dreaming that they're flying

junipers and violets are blossoming

stars exploding and being born

god is having deja vu

I am one elaborate crush



we cry petals as the void is singing

you are the dark that holds the stars

in intimate distance

that spun the whirling, whirling world into existence



let's meet at the confluence

where you flow into me

and one breath swirls between our lungs.



- Drew Dellinger

Larry,

Just wanted to say thank you for posting the daily prose. While I have little history in the world of poetry, I find it helps wake up my brain each morning and provides me a brief reflection before I jump into the day. Thanks for the effort and sharing.

Have a great day.

John

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Losing Our Minds


Watching you
I notice
the way a life
narrows down
to such a few
simple things

Sunlight streaming in your window
to wrap you in a veil of warmth
a view of our pond
and the distant wooded hills
once apples, now grapes
your fingers roaming the pages
of fading photographs
the comfort of familiar food
and a newspaper from your hometown

This morning
I found your purse
hidden at the bottom of your laundry basket
and felt
your fear of things
slipping away

Sometimes, you tell me
you don't mind
that you're losing your mind
"I'm not in any pain" you say
and all the while
I, in another room,
sit in silence, every morning
hoping to lose my mind

In the way Guatama Buddha
lost his

- Kay Crista

---

Old Man, Old Man

Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you remember? Was it perched in a tree?
Did it hover deep in the white water? Was it covered over
With dead stalks in the grass? Will we taste it
If our mouths have long lain empty?
Will we feel it between our eyes if we face the wind
All night, and turn the color of earth?
If we lie down in the rain, can we remember sunlight?

He answers, I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.

- David Wagoner

Animals Are Passing from Our Lives
It’s wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I’m to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,

suffering the consumers
who won’t meet their steady eyes
for fear they could see. The boy
who drives me along believes

that any moment I’ll fall
on my side and drum my toes
like a typewriter or squeal
and shit like a new housewife

discovering television,
or that I’ll turn like a beast
cleverly to hook his teeth
with my teeth. No. Not this pig.
- Philip Levine

The Great Winter Wood Pellet Rush of '07


Dropped the broom in mid-sweep
grabbed my breakfast bowl
forgot all else
and left home

a rush of adrenalin
drawing me to the store
a fever kindled in the instant of that call
“Come for those bags, while they last!”

Dashing in
wondering how many
dare I ask for? Six, ten?

Paid for the goods
precious seconds ticking by
cars revving in the yard
lined up for that last palette.

“Five bags apiece!”
quieted all questions
the hurried, satisfying thumps
landing in the truck.

Driving away with the catch
feeling triumphant in
taking so much—
more than my need.

Perhaps, the price is higher
than the tallest pines
lower than the earth's fiery bowels
wider than our appetites
as slender as the bonds
that bind us here.

And what if that same fever—
that same unfulfillable need—
were to grip and drive me
to the heaped palettes of truths
sitting unsold
in my own backyard?

- Raphael Block

Flowers for Robert Bly

on reading The Sibling Society


Once more, Robert Bly, you have disturbed the soil of my soul.
Once more, you have aimed your harrow
Straight down the row my mule hauled it.

Listen to me, crusty old man, cranky as a child,
Once more you have done your job
And your duty with your story of the stories.

I know you take a look at these wayside flowers,
Okay, but you pick them not.
One hand, and the plough aim falters.

- Bruce Moody