Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart


How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not a language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.


- Jack Gilbert

Ancient History


Adam, a brown old vulture in the rain,
Shivered below his wind-whipped olive-trees;
Huddling sharp chin on scarred and scraggy knees,
He moaned and mumbled to his darkening brain;
‘He was the grandest of them all—was Cain!
‘A lion laired in the hills, that none could tire;
‘Swift as a stag; a stallion of the plain,
‘Hungry and fierce with deeds of huge desire.’


Grimly he thought of Abel, soft and fair—
A lover with disaster in his face,
And scarlet blossom twisted in bright hair.
‘Afraid to fight; was murder more disgrace? ...
‘God always hated Cain’ ... He bowed his head—
The gaunt wild man whose lovely sons were dead.


- Siegfried Sassoon

CLIMBING THE CHAGRIN RIVER


We enter
the green river,
heron harbor,
mud-basin lined
with snagheaps, where turtles
sun themselves--we push
through the falling
silky weight
striped warm and cold
bounding down
through the black flanks
of wet rocks--we wade
under hemlock
and white pine--climb
stone steps into
the timeless castles
of emerald eddies,
swirls, channels
cold as ice tumbling
out of a white flow--
sheer sheets
flying off rocks,
frivolous and lustrous,
skirting the secret pools--
cradles
full of the yellow hair
of last year’s leaves
where grizzled fish
hang halfway down,
like tarnished swords,
while around them
fingerlings sparkle
and descend,
nails of light
in the loose
racing waters.




- Mary Oliver

Here’s a homely little example concerning ‘regret’ without wishing it otherwise


Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re involved in the break-up, and
Let’s say that you determine that driving off into the ricelands due West,
Even though the sun is below the Coast Range, is a good idea.
And so you do, and it is, and you’re soon strolling about on an irrigation road,
Alone except for hundreds of water fowl and their distant calls that do indeed
Stretch to the color that the sky is, which in this bless-my-soul clear day, now
Hums an avocado hue, swear to god, and (of course) this
Reflects in the flooded fields, in places the sky and water light nearly touching, equally bright.
And the moon is up and the birds are on wing.
So let’s say this is happening and you Realize that the person you must
Leave first showed you that we All
Live in one vast heartland of the World. Our native home.


Then, the feeling that you might be having right then,
Might be an example of the regret I was trying to point at earlier.
From science instruction I know it is always good to provide a concrete example.


- Chris Gaffney

.. concerning ‘ennui without wishing it otherwise

I was sitting here at my desk
having a mini meltdown and
cursing the powers that be
mumbling to my desk, to the walls, to the lights,
to my sandwich and the brown paper bag in which it is packed
cringing at the sound of my co-worker cracking her gum

all the while reading stupid emails from stupid people ...

thanks for breaking through the haze
thanks for an email that is not stupid and mostly
thanks for this poem ... it is spot-on.
from my spiritual practice I know it is always good to express gratitude.

gardenmaniac aka Ruth Steiger

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Here’s a homely little example concerning ‘regret’ without wishing it otherwise


Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re involved in the break-up, and
Let’s say that you determine that driving off into the ricelands due West,
Even though the sun is below the Coast Range, is a good idea.
And so you do, and it is, and you’re soon strolling about on an irrigation road,
Alone except for hundreds of water fowl and their distant calls that do indeed
Stretch to the color that the sky is, which in this bless-my-soul clear day, now
Hums an avocado hue, swear to god, and (of course) this
Reflects in the flooded fields, in places the sky and water light nearly touching, equally bright.
And the moon is up and the birds are on wing.
So let’s say this is happening and you Realize that the person you must
Leave first showed you that we All
Live in one vast heartland of the World. Our native home.


Then, the feeling that you might be having right then,
Might be an example of the regret I was trying to point at earlier.
From science instruction I know it is always good to provide a concrete example.


- Chris Gaffney

---

christian desert realism
for Donna Seamone

Friends, let us not deceive ourselves about
the place where we find ourselves.
Earth
--the pearl in a blue sky--
is where everyone gets injured trying to survive.
It’s hard to make this world more gentle.

Let’s be honest that in the dazzling beauty of day
too much of life is eat-or-be-eaten,
too much blood is spilled competing for fresh water.
Let us observe that sex is controlled by dominance and shame,
Let us proclaim that the starvation of the poor is not their choice.
Let us watch every year as the wars continue.

May we notice that in our nation
the words of Jesus have been twisted by hypocrites,
so that pagans are seen as enemies, and the military grows fat,
while the rich believe
we have only ourselves to thank for our Kingdoms in Heaven.


There is no heaven outside this planet.
Jesus said god is here on earth
whenever love takes place.
He said god is for the losers and the infected,
people like ourselves.

Having a heart makes all the difference.
It creates rare springtime blooms, pink
and yellow, purple orange and white.

Jesus didn’t claimed to be a Savior, only that
an inner parent had unlocked the gates for him.
He asked, what do you profit if you own millions, but
lose your ability to feel for others?
And then… he was murdered.

Jesus was born in this desert and
he was murdered in this desert.
He did not ascend to the right hand of the father, but died instead
with a cry of abandonment on his lips.
If he rises from the dead, it is only in our hearts.

Yet love is a spring that never dries completely!
Or a weed with roots that are deep, deep.
For love is always with us, only underground.

Here we are, anyway.
Stranded, we put our parched shoulders to the rock over the tomb
without pretending we can roll it very far.
Let us not be bitter every time our causes fail, for fail they will.
Our leaven takes ten thousand years to rise.

- Alan Acacia

For One Day


For one day
Give thanks to life
Your life and the lives of others


See the Big Picture
And how it all fits together


Forgive yourself & others
Recognize we're all doing the best we can with what we got


Be grateful
Even for your troubles
And the bitter medicine they bring


Know that everyone you know
And everyone you don't know
Is a messy but necessary character in your tiny/Vast world


For one day
Awaken to the truth of Love


- Guillermo Ortiz

Advice from La Llorona


Each grief has its unique side.
Choose the one that appeals to you.
Go gently.
Your body needs energy to repair the amputation.
Humor phantom pain.


Your brain cells are soaked with salt;
connections fail unexpectedly and often.
Ask for help.
Accept help.


Read your grief like the daily newspaper:
headlines may have information you need.
Scream. Drop-kick the garbage can across the street.


Don’t feel guilty if you have a good time.
Don’t act as if you haven’t been hit by a Mack Truck.
Do things a little differently
but don’t make a lot of changes.
Revel in contradiction.


Talk to the person who died.
Give her a piece of your mind.


Try to touch someone at least once a day.
Approach grief with determination.
Pretend the finish line doesn’t keep receding.
Lean into the pain.
You can’t outrun it.


- Deborah A. Miranda

The Diameter of the Bomb
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.


- Yehuda Amichai

Be Suspicious of Yourself


Everything you do has a quality
which comes back to you in some way.


Every action takes a form in the invisible world,
which may be different from how you thought


it would appear. A crime is committed,
and a gallows begins to be built. One does not


look like the other, but they correspond.
Accept the results of what you've done in anger,


or for greed, or to elevate your ego. Don't blame
fate! That dog lies in the kennel


and will not respond to anyone's calling.
Be suspicious of yourself! Inquire


about your hidden motives. It takes courage
to repent, and more courage to change.


But realize this: just as dust grains shine
in sunlight coming through this window,


so there's a light of reality, within which ideas,
hidden hypocrisies, and the qualities


of every action become clear. All you've done
and will do will be seen in the light of that sun.




- Jellaludin Rumi

Gilead

It has seemed to me sometimes

as though the Lord breathes on
this poor gray ember of Creation

and it turns to radiance-

for a moment or a year or the span of a life.
And then it sinks back into itself again,

and to look at it no one would know
it had anything to do with fire, or light.

But the Lord is more constant and
far more extravagant than my words
seem to imply.

Wherever you turn your eyes
the world can shine like transfiguration.

You don’t have to bring a thing to it
except a little willingness to see.

Only, who could have the courage to see it?


- Marilynne Robinson

Once and For All


for Carolyn B.


She sits, hands resting on the table,
A cigarette, bobbing like a ballon
In the grip of an excited child,
On her thinning lips.


"I get tired of starting over every day,"
She tells us.
Not that she's complaining,
A simple statement we all understand.


"Like sometimes I'd like it to be done
Once and for all.
Like I could eat breakfast today and never
Have to do it again."


- Rebecca del Rio

FALLEN LEAVES

after Sandy Hook

Red leaves are mounded in the cold.
Crushed by the stilled flight of them
we leave our bodies for the night sky.

Inside our chests hobby horses rock,
tiny pianos play brief, familiar tunes.
In hand-knit wools, we sit beneath

one star, then another, another … and on.
We wait for the sun. Will it come through
our heavy sighs? Will we be cured of

this expanse — an angel apiece
burning so far out of reach?
- Katherine Hastings

Toward the Winter Solstice

Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.


Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.


Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.


And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.


Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.


- Timothy Steele

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
what they flee is what
you move toward. All your senses
sing, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees' blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you knew
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that the One who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, II 1
(tr. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows with a few tweaks by Kim Rosen)

A Christmas Carol


Away in a manger
or a crack house
or under a bridge
or in a bombed-out village
or a refugee camp
or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
some Mary is giving birth.


Even as you read this
a child is being born.


What if one of these were the promised one,
the beacon of hope,
the seed of a new light
in a dark time?


What if they all were?
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?


- Larry Robinson

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Magi and elders are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among all peoples,
To make music in the heart.

- Howard Thurman

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

- Rainier Maria Rilke

The Great Matter

Cooking, eating, sleeping,
every deed of everyday life
is nothing else than the Great Matter.
Realize this!
So we extend tender care
with a worshipping heart
even to such beings as beasts and birds--
but not only to beasts,
not only to birds,
but to insects too.
Even to grass, to one blade of grass,
even to dust, to one speck of dust.
Sometimes I bow to the dust....


- Soen Nakagawa

Thank you, Larry, for broadening my horizons
with the words and the thoughts you have shared.
As days grow longer and darkness wanes,
I look forward each day to my dose.

Thank you, Larry, for a perfect New Year's greeting....

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Great Matter

Cooking, eating, sleeping,
every deed of everyday life
is nothing else than the Great Matter.
Realize this!
So we extend tender care
with a worshipping heart
even to such beings as beasts and birds--
but not only to beasts,
not only to birds,
but to insects too.
Even to grass, to one blade of grass,
even to dust, to one speck of dust.
Sometimes I bow to the dust....


- Soen Nakagawa

---

A New Year’s Blessing


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

Larry,

I thank you for your dedication in providing these nuggets of truth daily. I read one that spoke to me the day it was available, and now read everyone of them . They seem to follow my needs, and the course of my life in some way. Speaking to the things in my life, as if planned to directly touch me. As we all go through so much in our lives, I couldn't imagine I was the only one feeling this way. In the light of that, I would like to give you my gratitude for your continued presents/presence, both work well for me. May the New Year bless us all with peace, inside our hearts, and across our world. Thank you for your contribution to that peace.

I agree, and "dedication" is the right word. We feel your gift personally, Larry, but our benefit is collective. Your dedication to bringing poetry into our lives moves us subtly and immeasurably in the direction of health, love, peace, and sanity, as individuals, as a community, as a people.

While we know and appreciate your enthusiasm for poetry, we're all familiar with mornings when nothing is easy. For all the mornings, from the happily easy to the vexingly hard, when you pass along to us poems that touch lives, open hearts, and hone minds, thank you, thank you, thank you.

We are all better for your effort, and pass along the mysterious threads of sensibility. One of the 108 names of Tara is She Who Increases Beauty and Intelligence in the World. Thank you for helping Tara live up to Her name.

Fantasia: a weekly cycle

come Monday, a man in chainmail robe with
star-stained hands and a bone-handled blade
will mount and ride toward Tuesday whose

abandoned brick kiln houses a curved
bowl shard pointing toward Wednesday
where a wild woman flaunts silk-clad feet

and ash-dark eyes in which is reflected
Thursday hosting a chieftain who issues orders
germane to war and leads young men to the

edge of an acidic lake where Friday, re-floating
a silver-edged saddle once taken across Rumania
in a wooden oxcart, demands that Saturday’s starchily

uniformed Prussian officers pull down barbed wire
from atop a cobbled wall so Sunday, incarcerated,
bitter, may get a view of daffodils, forget-me-

nots and squat cork trees lording it on a grassy bank
where a horse with demented eyes and feet shod in cobalt
rears on back legs and runs pell-mell so come Monday

- David Beckman

Dirge without Music I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. - Edna St. Vincent Millay

Thoughts In The Cabin


Why do I suddenly feel free of panic?
Here a summer afternoon, wind-
Blown lake, a cabin of strong logs.


I can live and die with no more
Fame; I'd like ground to walk on,
A few books, occasionally a storm.


I know stories I can tell, and I may
Or may not. There is more
To learn: the wind and the screendoor.


The granary of images, the Norwegian
Lore, the power of Schmad Razum,
Good or evil, success or failure.


Expect something else from me—
Less— and don't rule out
Misdirection, silence, misinformation.


- Robert Bly

A December Without Snow


Moon smaller each morning
its medium a dense darkness
meadow grasses rimed with frost
ice tipped cedars and pines and
naked oak branch whippets strange
a December without snow


I walk in the woods toward this
pallid moon in a flat gray sky
turn suddenly on a whim and
walk in the opposite direction
surprising a young coyote
I am his first human
he's tracking me in a light trop
we both stop to stare at
one another
sensing something's wrong
the angelus of purity abandons
our sky there are no wise men
no rare gifts
of the eternal and sacred to be
found wrapped around leaves
or the tri-fold bond of acorns


No footprints in this frozen dust
the world turns into its long night
bracts of cones and mistletoe
join deer and hooded juncos
on this path into a dark copse
all of us hoping for lost mornings
when everything drifts white


- Daniel Williams

Flamenco


"I have four dogs," he tells us, apropo
Of nothing. "One weighs one kilo, five.
They had to operate on her," he says. I ask
Her name. Olivia, then there's Pepe, Prisci,
Juanito. He used to have eleven, when he lived in Avila–
That walled medieval attraction that sits on a rise
Exposed to vicious cold, endless winds. No wonder
Teresa became a saint to withstand such boredom.


But the taxista never mentions Teresa, nor the walls,
Just the cold, the dogs, a life of rural routine.
Then, he asks if we like flamenco. Flamenco:
Gypsy music, what most tourists think
When they think of Spain, what most Spaniards disparage.
A culture of crude, separatist fortune-telling
Thieves, liars, prostitutes and pick-pocket children.


"Would you like to hear some flamenco?"
He slips in a CD and
A cry fills the car, a cry of joy,
Of agony, longing sought for the sake of longing.
To love what one has, the cry says, to want
The heat, the burn of wanting itself.
"I'm the singer," he says,
With neither pride nor humility.His face shines
Like a small, satisfied sun, escaped
From the prison of austere Avila.


- Rebecca del Rio

Museum of Fools


I imagined I walked the west wing of the Victoria-Albert
Museum and came upon an exhibition entitled,
"The Fools' Journey to the East" Inside were
displays of the relics of the 60's road travels of
Westerners in India. A glass case contained the
tools used for drugs-- chillums and pipes with
filter rags and screens and famous syringes
without the drugs to fill them. Another displayed
samples of shaved hair, beads and prayer shawls-
typical offerings at temples. Necklaces had been
worn, walking staffs carried on pilgrimages by the
illuminated, the likes of Eight-finger Eddie, Brunos
the French one, the Italian, the Spanish one,
Desire the Dutch bride of wonder and Peter the bride
groom of new frontiers, Blind George and Crippled
George and Coffee Beans. These were the names
of heroes in my road mythology, relics of the royalty
that blazed and blundered the paths of the seekers,
bodies some decades gone now.
Emptied of life now, crowns outlasted heads,
legends outlasted limbs. That conch shell on the wall
sounded at the twilight hour when many gathered
around communal fires. Since eternity could not fit
into this temporary exhibit, artifacts were amassed
instead. Costumes were laid out for view along with
those silver belts from Goa that had circled the
waists of the nudes that bounced upon the waves of
the Arabian Sea.
As for me in all of this, I'm still alive.There remains
a wistful sigh in my feelings for these objects, the hand
still warm in that glove someone wore, the earrings and
sacraments my reveling heart still reaches for. Yes, I'm
still here with this requited love for that tribe that adopted
me. I'm stubborn and determined to live when I'm gone.
I will revisit this wing of the museum for years after I fade away.

- Rich Meyers

The Tamalpais Solution

When asked what he did to take care of himself,
her father John would reply, “That mountain,
three times a week, I walk up that mountain.”

That eminence where meandering plants thrive
in serpentine soils, where the redwood creek
drains into the John Muir-discovered woods,
and where Arroyo Corte Madera del Presidio
cascades to Richardson’s Bay opening radiantly
upon the Golden Gate—indeed that mountain
dominating the horizon beyond his front door
as it had long before doors and houses,
animals, neighbors, humanity, et al.

This mountain looming many ages before
oak and Douglas-fir began sprouting,
eons prior to any Scotsman David Douglas
at Scone Palace 1837 where the sweet quick bread
Scone (rhyming with “John”) also was born.

When the area began budding with people,
the coastal Miwok believed that a witch,
not a good witch so many now prefer, but
a malignant scheming witch cast poisonous
soap root like a fish net over this mountain
where she dwelt glutted with venom at its peak
where no Miwok brave dared tread lest
long-imagined horrors would engulf them.

After pausing for awhile at the top,
John looks over all that has been given,
sits to rest, unwraps his sandwich of
salami, swiss, mustard and lettuce
on rye bread and determines that for now,
“All is good,” and makes preparations
for his return home to the foothills.

With his back to the mountain’s peak,
John misses the Miwok witch, her arms
spread in malevolent welcome—
he, descending, unwittingly escapes
one more time until he will not again.


- Ed Coletti

Mount Tam at dusk

If I walk through my front door,
step off the stoop,
swing my body to the left
and start toward the hills,
the hills that hide from me
the sun’s early morning rays,
the ground beneath my feet falls away,
slowly at first, then with more speed,
till it bottoms out at the first cross street
and begins a rapid ascent
that takes an effort to mount.

And if I stop to catch my breath
half way up this steep slope,
and if the day is over
and the sun is dropping
into the sea
and all around me
will soon grow slowly gray,
and if I turn, as I rest,
look back over the pass,
I have a near clear view
through the crisscrossed wires
that hang from poles on the edge of my sight,
of that familiar shape the earth takes—
the rise and dip and rise and fall
of Mount Tam across the bay.
And if the sky is cloudless,
the summer evening air crystalline and cool,
I see the edge of the earth glow red
along its dark, rough spine—fire red,
as air burns to touch the mountain top,
cools to magenta, to mauve, to light pink, to nearly white,
this thinnest of blankets, this rarest of good night kisses
from the deepening, clear, gray, blue, early evening sky.
And if I turn again toward the hills,
I find a lightness in my step,
a joy in my breath.
- Bill Denham

Prologue: The Way of Power


I will tell you how it is with Power
The Way is hard
and easily lost.


Take me for example.
Once I had a tiny power
no greater than the breath of a bird,
the power to make words.
But it was more than I could handle.


I was sloppy with it,
spoke too much
and at the wrong times,
used the poems badly
for my own glory.


So the Power was taken away.
Even the breath of a bird
made me vain and arrogant
and I used it to make myself little.


Now I sit still on my porch
and I see how
I am a stupid man
who was made sick
by the bird's breath.


I am dying of it
because the breath got inside me
before I made myself strong
and now it is blowing me away
like a small frail bird
caught in a high wind.


What is left for me
is to die quietly
because my stupidity made a bid noise.
This is what I know
about Power.
- Red Hawk

Burning in the Rain
Someday compassion would demand
I set myself free of my desire to recreate
my father, indulge in my mother’s losses,
strangle lovers with words, forcing them
to confess for me and take the blame.
Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet
by sheet on the patio and gathered them
into a pyre. I wanted to let them go
in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding
beside the azaleas and ficus bushes,
let them crackle, burst like winged seeds,
let them smolder into gossamer embers—
a thousand gray butterflies in the wind.
Today was that day, but it rained, kept
raining. Instead of fire, water—drops
knocking on doors, wetting windows
into mirrors reflecting me in the oaks.
The garden walls and stones swelling
into ghostlier shades of themselves,
the wind chimes giggling in the storm,
a coffee cup left overflowing with rain.
Instead of burning, my pages turned
into water lilies floating over puddles,
then tiny white cliffs as the sun set,
finally drying all night under the moon
into papier-mâché souvenirs. Today
the rain would not let their lives burn.


- Richard Blanco

The Railway Children


When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.


Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.


We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops,


Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinitesimally scaled


We could stream through the eye of a needle.


- Seamus Heaney

A SONNET FOR EURYDICE

Recall the time we swam beneath the wave.
We never thought of air as something we


might need, and never lived in time. The sea
was all we breathed, and all that Nature ever gave.

And then we went our sep’rate ways. Oh, woe!
Yes, you to Hades’ secret lair, and I,
while playing lyric songs, consumed, did die
a thousand deaths, each one another low.

But, when I came, at last, my life so gone,
and you fell back along our trek, you sang
out Hermes’ name! Oh, he it was who turned

to look! And, as he fell, we then moved on
together to the light. Then strings did hang
above the fire…oh, where they nicely burned!


- Jon Jackson

Remember




That to have the eyes of an artist,


That can be enough,


The ear of a poet,


That can be enough.


The soul of a human


just pointed


in the direction of the divine,


that can be more than enough.


I tell you this to remind myself.


Every gesture is an act of creation.


Even empty spaces and silence


can be the wings and voices of angels.


- Michele Linfante

Finch Song


A solitary red male Cassin
played his note for me.
Billowy dark cumulus clouds
the remnant of a storm passed,
pressed the background.
Mountains cast in shadow
and sunlight.

Sun as bright as gold,
cutting through the early afternoon.
My friend’s chest ruffled out
Red, streaked, proud, confident
His note filled the air.
The day holds promise of
something grand.

His notes were not
just for me I know
but the expectation
of a better day and some
grand achievement not understood.
I did not mind.
His soulful note on these
diminished years,
good enough.


- Ernie Carpenter

The most logical place to begin

is not always the best.
Often the beginning is buried
in the midst of a terrible tangle;
by pulling on the salient thread
you will only tighten the knots.
Start softly.
Sift apart the strands.
Don't be afraid to cut.
Make some knots of your own--
the knit will hold.
Gray goes well with gold.
Slubs of overlapping color
add to texture
and if you have pieces
left over, well...
let the cat play with them,
stuff a pillow,
or save them for a rainy day.


- Barbara Hazard

The Inward Revolution




One must be willing to stand alone—


in the unknown,


with NO reference to the known


or the past


or any of one's conditioning.


One must stand where no one has stood before


in complete nakedness,


innocence,


and humility.


One must stand in that dark light,


in that groundless embrace,


unwavering and true


to the Reality beyond all self,


not just for a moment


but forever without end.


For then,


that which is sacred,


undivided,


and whole


is born with consciousness


and begins to express itself.


That expression is the salvation of the whole.


It is the ACTIVITY of an inward revolution


brought down into time and space.




- Adyashanti

I like this poem! Thanks for bringing it to us.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Inward Revolution

One must be willing to stand alone—

...

- Adyashanti

---

Power

Power made me a coat. For a long time I
kept it in the back of my closet. I didn't like to
wear it much, but I always took good care of it.
When I first started wearing it again, it smelled
like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting
better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.

I was afraid if I wore the coat too much
someone would want to take it or else I would
accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room.
But it has my name on the label now, and it
doesn't really fit anyone else. When people ask
me where I found such a becoming garment, I
tell them about the tailor, Power, who knows
how to make a coat that you grow into. First
you must the courage to approach him
and ask him to make your coat. Then, you
must find the patience inside yourself to
wear the coat until it fits.



- J. Ruth Gendler

For George Snyder


I Have Walked Along Many Roads


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


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


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


Evil men who walk around
polluting the earth. . .


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


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


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


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


- Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)

And this one, Larry... your own, which in October 2011 made me think of George after hearing about his cancer:


Twilight in Hendy Woods

This is the hour of magic
When this world and the other world
Touch in a lingering kiss
And a deep stillness settles over all things.

This is the hour of magic
When the Earth,
For one eternal moment, holds its breath
Before turning from the sun.

This is the hour of magic
When, if you listen
With an open heart and a quiet mind,
You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest

Telling the old stories:
Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
Of the great ice ages and the birth of mountain ranges;
Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.

They are leaving us now.
When they are gone,
Who will tell these stories?

-Larry Robinson

A Revolver

Here is a revolver.
It has an amazing language all its own.
It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
It is the last word.
A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery, hide behind it.
It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
When it has spoken, the case cannot be appealed to the supreme
court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of ex-
ecutation come in and interfere with the original purpose.
And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the
old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the
most revolvers.

- Carl Sandburg

Clean

The man sitting beside me,
his drink flew straight up
from his glass,
hit the ceiling,
and splashed down
onto his wrist and his hand
and his pants.

“Shit!” I thought,
“this plane’s going to break up,
and we’re going to die.”

And then,
where did this come from?
I thought to ask my dead parents
how it is up there.
Up?
A habit I’d learned.

The old plane continued to buck
and I asked.

My mom came on first.
I’d never spoken to her after she died,
her rigor-mortised arm crooked
like that famous photo
of Chief Big Foot
after the massacre
at Wounded Knee.

“We’re clean up here,”
she said.
“There’s nothing left
of the stuff
of our lives.
We’re just clean,
waiting for our next chance
to live again.”

Then Dad said,
“All our mistakes,
all the hurts,
all our confusions,
are gone.
The good stuff, too.
It’s all gone.
We’re completely clean.
Just us.”

Later,
the bucking stopped.

Our windows were under the wing.
I saw the plane’s wheels
as they hit the runway’s pavement.
They went from being still
to a big smoke of rubber
to spinning
as fast as the pavement
went whizzing past.
We slowed,
and turned,
and taxied over to the terminal.

----------

Three years later,
surrounded by death,
-suicides,
our cat,
Newtown’s massacre,
Susan gone,
Steve sick,
Silvia’s dad could die any day
(each of us, too)-
I walked up the fishtail trail
and thought to ask
Mom and Dad
more about what it was like.

They weren’t there.

They’d left
to inhabit new bodies.

An answer came through though,
from spirit,

“What you’re wondering about
is true.


Your job,
here in this life,
is to get as clean as you can.
Not pure,
that’s worthless.
Just clean.

When Buddha
admired a daisy
in front
of hundreds of listeners,
only one person smiled.

He was clean.
Be like that.”


- Trout Black

Discover the moment


Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down
and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?


Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there's a pearl.


A vagrant wanders empty ruins
Suddenly he's wealthy.


But don't be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.


- Jellaludin Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

[This is the poem that was read at the inauguration]

One Today

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mDrk8AC4G4

peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.
One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn't give what you wanted.
We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.


- Richard Blanco

Note To Reality

Without even knowing it, I have
believed in you for a long time.

When I looked at my blood under a microscope
I could see truth multiplying over and over.

—Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma
persuaded me

but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass
thrust up above the January snow.
Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,
from the museum series on European masters.

When my friend died on the way to the hospital
it was not his death that so amazed me

but that the driver of the cab
did not insist upon the fare.

Quotation marks: what should we put inside them?

Shall I say “I” “have been hurt” “by” “you,” you neglectful monster?

I speak now because experience has shown me
that my mind will never be clear for long.

I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid
than ever in my life.

“For my heart is tangled in thy nets;
my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time...”

The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites.

The parade for the slain police officer
goes past the bakery

and the smell of fresh bread
makes the mourners salivate against their will.

- Tony Hoagland

Jerusalem


"Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine."
-Tommy Olofsson, Sweden


I'm not interested in
who suffered the most.
I'm interested in
people getting over it.


Once when my father was a boy
a stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.


Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
"I am native now."
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child's poem says,
"I don't like wars,
they end up with monuments."
He's painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.


Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it's ridiculous.


There's a place in my brain
where hate won't grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.


It's late but everything comes next.


- Naomi Shihab Nye