Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Mary

Mary you're covered in roses, you're covered in ashes
You're covered in rain
You're covered in babies, you're covered in slashes
You're covered in wilderness, you're covered in stains
You cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud
Of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
On some sunny day and always stay, Mary

Jesus says Mother I couldn't stay another day longer
Fly's right by me and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary she moves behind me
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere
Every time the snow drifts, every time the sand shifts
Even when the night lifts, she's always there

Jesus said Mother I couldn't stay another day longer
Fly's right by me and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

Mary you're covered in roses, you're covered in ruin
you're covered in secrets
You're covered in treetops, you're covered in birds
who can sing a million songs without any words
You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud
of another man, who served the world proud
You greet another son, you lose another one
on some sunny day and always stay
Mary, Mary, Mary

- Andrea Bertolini

All the Road Signs

Are in people's eyes,
The driver said after
Winning at Chicken.
The passenger terrified
Wonders at narrow streets
Designed for walking
Clogged with cars,
Men, backs bent under bundles
Women, baskets top their heads
Not teetering, but gliding
As the women do.

In a world
Where Fate rules,
No worries.
My time or yours
Who yields
Who moves forward
The road signs
In our eyes.

- Rebecca del Rio

A Timbered Choir

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

- Wendell Berry

Mother Drum

The new day opens in truck rumble
and a scatter of chickadee song
Clusters of fruit sing at my window
lemony airs in the Key of Light
sun waking the leaves
sweeping long shadows from the grass
igniting each parched blade

Each blade is a beat of the Mother drum
pulsing her rhythms of birth and rebirth
the earth, the water, the light, the air
pulsing morning, pulsing mourning
for a four-year old, for her mother
as murder moves on

And everywhere, in this world on fire
the missing beats … the lost wing tribes
the wild fur tribes
so certain, so silent, so pouncing swift
the bee tribes lost to the honey-bloom

Still the living pulse calls … and calls
and I don’t know if trust is Grace
or a chord the heart hears
a galaxy chord of dust and stars,
of miracle rains and warm breath

My friend Alan tells me nobody apprehends
that the We can know and the I can not

I think he must mean the legacy I
Europe’s conqueror, lonely, angry I
locked into self serving selves
feeding the fires of violence
grave over grave
families grieving
refugee storm clouds flashing

And I ask you, what is left us now
but to trust the We, the knowing We
to enter each day holding hands
singing in the Key of Praise
singing care for all Being
singing for equality and kindness
singing forgiveness and mercy
singing the harmonies that bind us

- Cynthia Poten

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

- W. S. Merwin

A Day is Coming

A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.
I hear it coming.
A day is coming
in which the
campesino
will gather his children a green spring
and go on vacations.
I believe it.
I see it.
A day is coming
in which a soldier will be
decorated
for helping
instead of killing
his poor brother.
A day is coming
in which lovers
will serve themselves from large bowls
warm love and faithfulness.
A day is coming
in which the Christ who returns
is the Christ who never left.
A day is coming
in which the father will ask the son
for friendship
instead of respect.
A day is coming
in which the student
and a poor laborer
will be half and half.
A day is coming
in which the prisoners
come out
running in the fields and shouting
about their freedom.
A day is coming,
I see it coming.

- Lalo Delgado

Nothing But

your smiling face on the frig
your little boy laughing there too
and the one curious eye of your girl
just a moment in time
am I missing it?
closest living relative
a shutter clicks inside
what’s been chasing me all evening
gash of sadness, siren wailing in my belly
four foods later, still gnawing
sleep dances away yet again

almost like a daughter
which makes me not a mother
mine told me too much
so i’m only wishing i could
tell you the whole story
open like the sky and pour
the whole truth down
but another fire calls
your name into the night
and my fuzzy-headed prayer
floats up and gently follows

you still have time and
the chance to connect the dots
the faces, the hearts
dangling in your field
while mine are moving
surely and quietly away
like the rapidly expanding
universe, i simply let go
surf the waves of uncertainty
pray for your future
and theirs

- Fran Carbonaro

Early August Evening

This time of year the grass
on these gentle uplands
is already dry
except for the green swale
bordered by blackberry and wild rose.

We're picking Gravensteins now
and the redwoods are beginning
to shed last year's needles
though the tomatoes are only
beginning to ripen.

On the savannah below
shadows lengthen
over the green carpet
beneath the valley oaks.
The main channel of the Laguna
carves a green meander lined
with tule and willow.

The fog is rolling in off the ocean
through the Petaluma gap
and circling north around
Sonoma Mountain and Sugar Loaf.

The small family of deer -
mother and two yearlings -
picks its way through cockleburrs
to the water's edge.

The egrets are making their evening commute
back to the pines on HIgh Street
to roost for the night.

I make my way up the swale
through pennyroyal,
ryegrass and spiders
to the source of all this
life-giving moisture:
the air conditioning unit
behind the hospital
condensing the vapor
of ten thousand breaths.

- Larry Robinson

Too funny.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Early August Evening

This time of year the grass
on these gentle uplands
is already dry
except for the green swale
bordered by blackberry and wild rose.

We're picking Gravensteins now
and the redwoods are beginning
to shed last year's needles
though the tomatoes are only
beginning to ripen.

On the savannah below
shadows lengthen
over the green carpet
beneath the valley oaks.
The main channel of the Laguna
carves a green meander lined
with tule and willow.

The fog is rolling in off the ocean
through the Petaluma gap
and circling north around
Sonoma Mountain and Sugar Loaf.

The small family of deer -
mother and two yearlings -
picks its way through cockleburrs
to the water's edge.

The egrets are making their evening commute
back to the pines on HIgh Street
to roost for the night.

I make my way up the swale
through pennyroyal,
ryegrass and spiders
to the source of all this
life-giving moisture:
the air conditioning unit
behind the hospital
condensing the vapor
of ten thousand breaths.

- Larry Robinson

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It Is Surely Late August

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...860e7eea5d.jpg

It is surely late August and –
The leaves on the seedless concord grapevines
turned a bright yellow and lurid magenta
almost over night, or so it seems,
all grapes long since eaten one by one
by my daughter each day till only a few green stems remain.
A few leaves on the plum trees have turned bright yellow,
again it seems just over night and are ready to leave their perch,
the anise stalks have long since turned a dusty brown
with yellow seed heads full formed with seeds to fly here and there
on the first strong afternoon gusts.
The hills long since turned brown or golden
depending on preference or ideology.
and now crown of thorns are everywhere,
making progress across desiccated fields all too painful,
Flocks of Canada Geese pass loudly, heading south
each night and each day in more or less perfect ‘v’s
in formations of six, or eight or twelve.

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...6_13-11-19.png

The nights are just a bit colder,
these later summer days a bit less warm,
yet I know there will still be warm spells,
the strong heat of summer not relaxing its grip all at once
and there will be days to keep the fans turning all day,
keeping doors and windows tight shut
after the morning has advanced but a little.
Yet signs of autumn are to be heard and seen and felt -
only stand and listen,
only stand and see,
only stand and taste the breeze.

- Sam Doctors

For Women Who are Difficult to Love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

- Warsaw Shire

Dump Him!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

For Women Who are Difficult to Love

...he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do, love
split his head open?
...

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Sonoma

On the path to the studio
tarweed sticks to my shoes
and in the warmth of late afternoon
releases its musky scent.
It is the smell of dry brown hills,
of horses sweet with sweat,
of dried manure and valley oak,
the bouquet of my childhood.

By the creek, nearly dry
from summer's drought,
the blue heron searches
for a small fish swimming
in the trickle that remains.
Hawks circle above,
wings carving the dry hot sky,
and a garden snake basks languorously
against the stone wall.

Once I was 12, then 20, now 60
And still the parched land binds me
to a distant history
of grasses blowing brown
in hot summer wind,
of cracked earth and lizards' skin
and the memory of my cheek
against the horse's warm neck
as I inhale her damp perfume.

- Emily Axelrod

The Iraqi Nights


In Iraq,
after a thousand and one nights,
someone will talk to someone else.

Markets will open
for regular customers.

Small feet will tickle
the giant feet of the Tigris.

Gulls will spread their wings
and no one will fire at them.

Women will walk the streets
without looking back in fear.

Men will give their real names
without putting their lives at risk.

Children will go to school
and come home again.

Chickens in the villages
won’t peck at human flesh
on the grass.

Disputes will take place
without any explosives.

A cloud will pass over cars
heading to work as usual.

A hand will wave
to someone leaving
or returning.

The sunrise will be the same
for those who wake
and those who never will.

And every moment
something ordinary
will happen
under the sun.

- Dunya Mikhail
(translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid)

A Ritual to Read to Each OtherRelated Poem Content Details

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the
world
and following the wrong god home we may miss
our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of
childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each
elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the
park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something
shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should
consider -
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the
dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to
sleep;
the signals we give - yes or no, or maybe -
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

- William Stafford

Sacred Wine

Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it like a sacred wine in a golden cup.
The wine may break you and if it does, let it.
To be human is to be broken,
and only from brokenness can
one be healed.
The ancestors say:
the world is full of pain,
and each is allotted a portion.
If you do not carry your share,
then others are forced to carry it for you,
And the suffering you bring to the world is your sin,
But the suffering you bring to yourself will be your hell.
Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it there like a sacred wine in a golden cup.

- Greg Kimura

So, You Must Talk to the Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones

When a fish swims up to you with a barrel and rifle already attached, sometimes it almost feels wrong to go out of your way to shoot it. Nonetheless:

So it has come to this.
You must speak to the woman who is wearing headphones.
I am so, so sorry.
You must pray that she is single and looking and will wish to hear your words.
It is not enough for her to be single
She must also be looking, or there is no hope for you.

But you already know this.
You have seen what happened to the other men who tried to speak.
The whole Panera is littered with what remains of the men who came before you.
They tried to speak to the Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones.
They failed.
Remember the training and you may yet survive.
Remember what they told you.
You must be confident, relaxed and easygoing.
You must show no fear.
If you show fear, she will strike.
Speak calmly, they said.
Show confidence.
Do not blink.
If you blink, she will know.
If you blink, she will move from 1 to 1.5 meters away to much closer, so close that you can hear the whisper of what is in her headphones.
That is much too close.

You have no choice.
These are your instructions.

You can talk to anyone, you tell yourself.
It is only a woman, you tell yourself.
But you know that it is not.
Women were something different.
Your comrade made the awful mistake of talking to the Woman Who Is Reading A Book On The Subway. You watched it happen.
He made her look up from the book and her basilisk eyes fell on him, unblinking, and he melted.
You still remember the screams.
They were so horrible that the city lay awake for days trying to forget them.

You do not know how it happened.
But the women who stood there politely and were receptacles for your words are gone.
They once smiled politely and they laughed even and sometimes they would make a spark with you.
But something changed in the air or perhaps the water and the women do not stand there and listen any longer.
The city is full of men who have been turned to stone.
You opened the door to your neighbor’s apartment and there was a startled deer standing inside wearing a college sweatshirt. You think it used to be your neighbor but you are not certain.
You have changed your route to work so that you do not have to pass the stone men with their open, screaming mouths.

Yesterday half your comrades were ordered to shout “Smile!” at the Woman Who Is Walking.
And the woman did. Too wide.
So wide that her mouth engulfed the street and became a vast cavern.
Six of your friends were devoured.
You could hear the unladylike slurping sounds from blocks away as you beat a hasty retreat between the Scylla of the Woman Who Has Put Her Bag Next To Her On A Bar Stool and the Charybdis of the Woman Who Is Just Jogging.
You did not attempt to speak to either of them.
They passed you.
You were left unscathed.

But that was before they came to your apartment and gave you the orders.

So here you are.
It has come to this.

You are about to talk to the Woman in Headphones.
My God, I pity you.
You are close now. Almost in range.
Before The Woman and behind her the ground is littered with shoes and hats and pick-up manuals and AXE body spray.
She sits patiently gnawing on a thigh bone.
You do not think she is single or looking.
You cannot make out the words she is listening to.

You know how this will go.
You know what the headphones mean.
You know what will happen when you ask her to remove the headphones.


- Alexandra Petri

'bout says it, I think.

What a bizarre 'poem'. What is the meaning of this?

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

So, You Must Talk to the Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones

When a fish swims up to you with a barrel and rifle already attached, ...

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'bout says what???

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Posted in reply to the post by REALnothings:

'bout says it, I think.

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Scotland


It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.

Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.

And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:

'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'

- Alastair Reid

um....finding this woman is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel??

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Posted in reply to the post by JayS:

What a bizarre 'poem'. What is the meaning of this?

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OR Don't presume you can approach just any woman who takes your fancy and expect to be welcomed.

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Posted in reply to the post by kpage9:

um....finding this woman is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel??

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God, what a wonder of a poem!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Scotland


It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet
when larks rose on long thin strings of singing
and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels.

Greenness entered the body. The grasses
shivered with presences and sunlight
stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills.
Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat,
the woman from the fish-shop. 'What a day it is!'
cried I, like a sunstruck madman.

And what did she have to say for it?
Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves
as she spoke with their ancient misery:

'We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for it!'

- Alastair Reid

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Every Riven Thing

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sings his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why
God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where
God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.

- Christian Wiman

AH

I want to love as deeply
As love allows
I want to fall into the center
Of a rose and see
And smell as much as I can
See and smell
I want to be trusted
My life at stake
Should I break loyalty
I want to dance
As high and rhythmically as
My body allows
I want to embrace
I want to sing
I want to find joy
In each moment
Something good to say
About the smallest thing
Gracias por la vida
Thank you for life
And breath
And the smile on my face

- Corlene Van Sluizer

Just doesn't get better than that.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Every Riven Thing

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he's made
sings his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why
God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he's made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where
God goes belonging. To every riven thing he's made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see
God goes belonging to every riven thing. He's made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,
God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.

- Christian Wiman

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The Joy of Writing

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence - this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."

Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.

Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.

They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.

Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?

The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.

- Wislawa Szymborska

The Big Heart

‘Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.’ - W. B. Yeats

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.

They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.

- Anne Sexton

The Traveling Onion: A Poem

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was
an object of worship —why I haven't been able to find out. From Egypt
the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.”
—Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Icarus


When Icarus falls

   a fragmented world’s wounds

receive the falling boy
   who has suffered an excess of light

his frantic wings
   collapsed in distracted flight.

He falls
   into every burning abandonment.

He falls into the last tiger’s dream.

   He falls into the lies

told by those who have
   to those who have not.

He falls into the lives
   of black men dying of brutality

the women and children

   caught in the fire storm, the agony gasp

of refugees.

   All suffocating beneath the ashes of

words injustice fear
   betrayal hate separation bigotry

He is falling into city streets
   bloodied in homelessness

scarred in desperation

   broken by illusion.

In the old story
   no one listens to the cries
   no one turns to look
   no one decides to do something to help.

But we are not in that story.
   We are listening
   We are looking

for the boy has fallen into our hearts
   Ignited us and we are awake.
   Our wings beat as One

The wounded words will rise from the ashes
   Justice love honor connection
   Can we pledge to care enough

to shout to roar
   what really matters?

to do what we can
   In the ways we can

While we can

- Gail Onion

The Moth

“New research suggests that butterflies and moths come with mental baggage…left over from their lives as larvae.”

- Science

He’d like to be at one with his new self
but memories sit in him like eyes.

Sometimes scent implies an unheard-of
idea and he’s off
but it’s just another of the given forms.

You’d think flight would be decent redress,
the power to sift himself through air
and leave each thought in its old place,
where hard feelings also could be left.

He shrugs and the wings
quiver with great precision,
nature will have to live with what it’s done,
he cannot manage even resignation
without a show of grace.

- Jana Prikryl

Paul Robeson

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other's
harvest:
that we are each other's
business:
we are each other's
magnitude and bond.

- Gwendolyn Brooks

He was a Deep River.

To Those Born After Us


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

- Bertolt Brecht

Ah, Brecht...worth your weight in gold as a poet, just for this poem, if one never sees another. The greatest "time capsule" ever penned, imo. If we think we have problems... and yet, fittingly chosen for the 15th anniversary of 9/11.
Also known in English under the title "To Posterity," and available online in a few different translations. This poem has brought me to tears many times over the years. Always grateful to see its nuggets of truth being shared publicly. :heart:

Onions


Of relationships,
and of our individual lives,
they say that once
you finally figure-out
what’s really going on,
what’s actually true,
you discover that it’s only
one layer
of an onion,

which then presents
a new layer
for us to solve.

Ahh,
those who compare this
to an onion
have never
savored stew's delicious
carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, celery, broth
until only a single translucent onion is left
in the bottom of the pot
awaiting our large spoon
to pick it up
the whole onion
and slip
its entire delicious slurp
all at once
into our mouth.

- Trout Black

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal


After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any
Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.


Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own
gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor,
wailing loudly.

Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her.
What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four
hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway,
min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew -- however
poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical
treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get
there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on
the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just
for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while
in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call
some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took
up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her
life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies --
little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts --
out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It
was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler
from California,

The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered
with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better
cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from
huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our
flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving
us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar
too.

And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were
holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some
medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling
tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones
and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of
confusion stopped
-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other
women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

A Speech To The Garden Club Of America

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

- Wendell Berry

End Of Summer

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

- Stanley Kunitz

Master Dogen Walks on the South Fork


The eyes of the fox are shells,
Her home is sand, this luminous beach.

She is washed by saltwater, bleached by sun,
Wrapped in the calcium ribbon of shellfish.

Her body is a skeletal map, a lens, a geographic mark.

Did she leave the security of oaks,
Descend the dune of scrub and marl,
Or rise, carried by the waves of the Sound?

Myriad things come forth
To make the map of eyes and bone,
To mark the art of shell and stone.

Water, wind, stone, luminous sand, wind, water . . .


- Scott Chalky

Sky Slope

The strange September sun departs
A soft breeze cracks the wall of humidity
Those on the way to work glide above the pavement
Happy as if Second Avenue were transformed:
Ah, a brick lane in an ancient city on the day
Of the morning of a religious revival
When the prophets and clowns come to town

Yes, we all deserve the best
Isn’t that so?

Looking east: tiny clouds piled
One on top of another
Like stones on a trail elsewhere
Shift your head and the frail blue sky is empty
High and empty
This is the void
Nobody wants to die

We all deserve the best
Isn’t that so?

If I were to follow the path of clouds
Mind recollecting, backtracking then brazenly
Galloping ahead, never releasing the thread
Of what the sky has to offer
Might I not catch a glimpse of promise
Buried deep
In weather dying:

Look at it another way
Perhaps an image of a subsistence farmer
Blissfully encountering
A rare eatable fungus
Beneath a rock
In a patch of barren soil

Conversely
Would the void resurface

Dry fissure in the mud


We all deserve the best

Isn’t that so?



- Barry Denny

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

- Naomi Shihab Nye


"The person who is in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘Tis of the wave and not the rock;
‘Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee, -are all with thee!

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I didn't know the Trumpster was THAT old!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! ...

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The Campesinos’ Maestra


And it was in that season when the countryside is a painter’s pallet of yellows, and reds, and crimsons that I met her.

She walks in a deliberate step even as campesinos in stained and soiled pants run row to row, slicing stems, stretched from the weight of bunches, sagging with the liquid sugar of the vines. Instinctively they find only the ripe.

Cut go. Cut go. Cut go.

But it was her wont to smile and speak with the certitude of a warm breeze, soft, gentile, quiet, but unquestioned resolve.

She has countless children under her charge loving each as her own, encouraging all to reach for the brass ring of life’s carousel.

And the campesinos, who never knew such a teacher, continue their jog up and down row after row, parcel after parcel, acre after endless acre, making their wage kicking dust into the air, carried by the wind forming tunnels in the sky.

"Save them from this," beckon the men in sweat, and dirt, and juice-soaked shirts.

She smiles and embraces their offspring. "I shall," she guarantees speaking with the measured conviction of the self-assured.

And the campesinos, they smile the smile of hope and wave to La Maestra displaying like trophies their fingers, scarred, and sliced, and bandaged from the errant swing of the hook that divides stem from branch.

"I shall," she vows walking off in a deliberate pace, with her youthful charges in tow.

- Armando Garcia-Davila

Rubai Ninety Two


Take a pear and pare it of its bruises.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...b25587d084.jpg

Old bruised pears are best to eat.
Lean over, let it drip
onto your favorite plate.

The knife is sharp, serrated, and it shines
with tiny pools of juice.
Inside, your teeth ache a trice
of refrigerator cold.

Slice another slice and thank your pal the pear
for living – not to make you live
but just to grow, be swallowed,
disappear,
like you.

Grow, be swallowed,
disappear.

- Bruce Moody

A Buddhist Grace
or What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Somehow I never make it through this prayer:

Potatoes, celery, carrots, onions,
each tenderly coaxed
from soft soil aerated by your hand.
Thank you farmer for your work,
I am connected to you
through this fine stew
unified by its good red burgundy stock.
Thank you vintners and wine makers
for your part in this symphony
conducted with the tang of a bay leaf.

Let’s see—allow me to consider what else
for which to be thankful in my
deep dish of pungent stew—
—ah the succulence of fall-apart beef
nurtured to morseled chunks by your hand,
my cook, my uniter of all components.

Thank you cattle for offering yourselves as sacrifice.
Thank you slaughterhouse workers
wading ankle-deep in blood.
Thank you, those of you with the courage
to impersonally slay.
Thank you to the packers hanging carcasses on hooks.
Thank you for the cutters
who hew beef bodies
as if they were so many grades
and cuts of lumber.
Thank you, all of you, for the intimate part
you play in my meal and my life this day.

- Ed Coletti

Autumn Leaves

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_14-38-31.png

Celebrations of gratitude for
past seasons' fullness;
Last bright colors anticipate
winter's muted solitude.
Brilliant hurrahs on painted sunsets
announce inward turnings,
silent renewals.

Leaves that affirm, remind, invoke --
then let go

and

fall

so new births can begin.


- LynneAnne Forest

You Want it Darker

If you are the dealer
I’m out of the game
If you are the healer
Means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Magnified, sanctified
Be Thy Holy Name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

There’s a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame

They’re lining up the prisoners and
The guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle-class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission
To murder and to maim
You want it darker
Hineni Hineni
I’m ready, my Lord

Magnified, sanctified
Be Thy Holy Name
Vilified, crucified
In the human frame
A million candles burning
For the love that never came
You want it darker
We kill the flame

If you are the dealer
Let me out of the game
If you are the healer
I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory
Mine must be the shame
You want it darker
Hineni Hineni…..this line repeated
I’m ready, my Lord

- Leonard Cohen

Comice pears

https://www.superfreshgrowers.com/si...ero-comice.jpg

ripe to the very edge of ripeness,
are perhaps god’s greatest gift
or so it seems when I slice one
down the middle, quarter it, seed it
and bite into its soft fullness
and savor the sweet juices
some of which always, without fail,
drip past my lips or down my fingers
waiting, then, to be licked
that none of this gift
might go unused.

If this, then, is god made flesh,
who is satan
if not my fear?

- Bill Denham

How does one thank Bill Denham for the 'truth' about Comice pears? Always grateful for these postings Larry. Cecilia

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Comice pears
...

- Bill Denham

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I, Too


I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.


- Langston Hughes

Study of Two Pears

I
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.

II
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.

III
They are not flat surfaces
Having curved outlines.
They are round
tapering toward the top.

IV
In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue.
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.

V
The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges andn greens
Flowering over the skin.

VI
The shadows of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.

- Wallace Stevens

How to Stop Rushing

Sit in an alpine meadow or
by the side of a dying friend

Taste the wind
her letting go breaths

Imagine a glacier scouring the valley
her first inhale

A butterfly alights on your hand:
become a flower, nourishment for it’s life
Her gaze turning toward eternity, finds you:
become a bridge for her passage

You will not rush the butterfly or
your friend’s last glimpses of this life

So: why rush this?

- Jennifer Louden

The Snakes of September


All summer I heard them
rustling in the shrubbery,
outracing me from tier
to tier in my garden,
a whisper among the viburnums,
a signal flashed from the hedgerow,
a shadow pulsing
in the barberry thicket.
Now that the nights are chill
and the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone,
in a torpor of blood
slipped to the nether world
before the sickle frost.
Not so. In the deceptive balm
of noon, as if defiant of the curse
that spoiled another garden,
these two appear on show
through a narrow slit
in the dense green brocade
of a north-country spruce,
dangling head-down, entwined
in a brazen love-knot.
I put out my hand and stroke
the fine, dry grit of their skins.
After all,
we are partners in this land,
co-signers of a covenant.
At my touch the wild
braid of creation
trembles.

- Stanley Kunitz

Refugee

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)

- Brian Bliston

WOW! That's amazing!
:heart:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Refugee

....

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Refugees


Someone else’s little boy
walking immediately behind

I arrive at the final check point
am insistently waved through

I want nothing more in the world
only to simply cross over

Certainly not change to salt
looking back at the child

All I have left to me is
my ability to rationalize

At best for me on the other side
stretch twenty declining years

seventy or eighty for him
But I am not this child’s keeper am I

He has my sympathy: From him I have
the burn of his eyes on my reddening neck

all the more so as I admit to myself
I am not helpless before this determined little kid

Here in the presence of real human suffering
All I have left: clear choice and ability to justify

- Ed Coletti

October Arriving

I only have a measly ant
To think with today.
Others have pictures of saints,
Others have clouds in the sky.

The winter might be at the door,
For he’s all alone
And in a hurry to hide.
Nevertheless, unable to decide

He retraces his steps
Several times and finds himself
On a huge blank wall
That has no window.

Dark masses of trees
Cast their mazes before him,
Only to erase them next
With a sly, sea-surging sound.

- Charles Simic

Tomorrow

Tomorrow
we are
bones and ash,
the roots of weeds
poking through
our skulls.

Today,
simple clothes,
empty mind,
full stomach,
alive, aware,
right here,
right now.

Drunk on music,
who needs wine?

Come on,
Sweetheart,
let’s go dancing
while we’ve still
got feet.

- David Budbill
6/13/1940 - 9/25/2016

L'shonah Tovah


May we learn justice without which there is no peace;
may we learn compassion without which there is no justice.

Que aprendamos justicia sin la cual no hay paz;
que aprendamos compasión sin la cual no hay justicia.



Tashlikh

These are the days of awe -
time of inventory
and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
comes in.
(What have we sown
of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
of justice?)

The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.

When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
with our transgressions
and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.
The days are upon us
to take stock of our hearts.
It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
our teraphim,
our lares.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016
(Arabesques Review, vol. 3 no. 3, 2007; author's copyrights)


Tashlij

Estos son los días de temor -
tiempo del inventario
y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
en la justicia?)

Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.

Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
con nuestros pecados
y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
Están sobre nosotros los días
para hacer inventario del corazón.
Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
nuestros térafim,
nuestros lares.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016

I’m Listening

I'm listening. But I don't know
If what I hear is silence or God.
I'm listening. But I can't tell
If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness
That at the bounds of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.
I only know I walk like someone
Beheld, Beloved and Known.
And because of this
I put into my every movement
Solemnity and Risk.

- Sophia DeMello-Breyner

My Mother’s Pears


Plump, green-gold, Worcester’s pride,

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...6_16-37-35.png

transported through autumn skies
in a box marked Handle With Care

sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,
hand-picked and polished and packed
for deposit at my door,

each in its crinkled nest
with a stub of stem attached
and a single bright leaf like a flag.

A smaller than usual crop,
but still enough to share with me,
as always at harvest time.

Those strangers are my friends
whose kindness blesses the house
my mother built at the edge of town

beyond the last trolley-stop
when the century was young, and she
proposed, for her children’s sake,

to marry again, not knowing how soon
the windows would grow dark
and the velvet drapes come down.

Rubble accumulates in the yard,
workmen are hammering on the roof,
I am standing knee-deep in dirt

with a shovel in my hand.
Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,
her glasses glint in the sun.

When my sisters appear on the scene,
gangly and softly tittering,
she waves them back into the house

to fetch us pails of water,
and they skip out of our sight
in their matching middy blouses.

I summon up all my strength
to set the pear tree in the ground,
unwinding its burlap shroud.

It is taller than I. “Make room
for the roots!” my mother cries,
“Dig the hole deeper.”

- Stanley Kunitz

One Source of Bad Information

There's a boy in you about three
years old who hasn't learned a thing for thirty
Thousand years. Sometime it's a girl.

This child had to make up its mind
How to save you from death. He said things like:
``Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.''

You live with this child, but you don't know it.
You're in the office, yes, but live with this boy
At night. He's uninformed, but he does want

To save your life. And he has. Because of this boy
You survived a lot. He's got six big ideas.
Five don't work. Right now he’s repeating them to you.

- Robert Bly

Heart Work

Monday. Bronze sunlight
on the worn gray rug
in the dining room where Viva sits
playing her recorder. Pain-ripened sunlight
I nearly wrote, like the huge
vine-ripened tomato
my friend brought yesterday
from her garden, to add to our salad:
meaning what comes
in its time to its own
end, then breaks
off easily, needing no more
from summer.
The notes
of some medieval dance
spill gracefully from the stream
of Viva's breath. Something
that had been stopped
is beginning to move: a leaf
driven against rock
by a current
frees itself, finds its way again
through moving water. The angle of light
is low, but still it fills
this space we're in. What interrupts me
is sometimes an abundance. My sorrow too,
which grew large through summer
feels to me this morning
as though if I touched it
where the thick dark stem
is joined to the root, it would release itself
whole, it would be something I could use.

- Anita Barrows

Poem In October

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rookies
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.

My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.

A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.

Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.

It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels

And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.

And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.

- Dylan Thomas

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

I Will Love the Twenty-first Century
Dinner was getting cold. The guests, hoping for quick,
Impersonal, random encounters of the usual sort, were sprawled
In the bedrooms. The potatoes were hard, the beans soft, the meat—
There was no meat. The winter sun had turned the elms and houses
yellow;
Deer were moving down the road like refugees; and in the driveway,
cats
Were warming themselves on the hood of a car. Then a man turned
And said to me: “Although I love the past, the dark of it,
The weight of it teaching us nothing, the loss of it, the all
Of it asking for nothing, I will love the twenty-first century more,
For in it I see someone in bathrobe and slippers, brown-eyed and poor,
Walking through snow without leaving so much as a footprint behind.”
“Oh,” I said, putting my hat on, “Oh.”

- Mark Strand

The Poet's Task

Whoever isn't listening to the sea this Friday morning,
whoever is trapped inside some
house, office, factory---or mistress
or street corner or coal mine or solitary confinement:
to that person I make my way and without speaking or nodding come up and spring open the cage; and something begins to hum, faint but insistent; a great snapped-off clap of thunder harnesses itself to the weight of the planet and the foam; the hoarse rivers of the ocean rise up, a star shimmers and trills in its rose window, and the sea stumbles, falls, and continues on its way.

Then, with destiny as my pilot,
I will listen and listen harder to keep alive
in my memory the sea's outcry.
I must feel the impact of solid water
and save it in a cup outside of time
so that wherever anyone may be imprisoned,
wherever anyone is made to suffer in the dying year,
I will be there, whispering in the ceaseless tides.
I will drift through open windows,
and, hearing me, eyes will glance upward
saying, How can we get to the ocean?
And, without answering, I will pass on
the collapse of foam and liquid sand,
the salty kiss of withdrawal,
the gray keening of birds on the shore.
And so, through me, freedom and the sea
will bring solace to the downcast heart.

- Pablo Neruda
(translated from the Spanish by Alfred Corn)

Pity The Nation
(After Khalil Gibran)

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose
sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully
as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by
torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but
its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation--oh, pity the people who allow
their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti



"the path to heaven
doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
It’s in the imagination
with which you perceive
this world,
and the gestures
with which you honor it.”

- Mary Oliver

Memorial Day

In Afghanistan, we pour water
On the stones to keep memories
Alive. So many stories,
So many stones
An army of children
Are employed, keeping
Vigil from Bibi Jawaher's grave.
Bibi, twenty-seven years dead,
Gives them a home, gathering
Place to watch as mourners
Come to remember.

A mother dreams
Her son dying in suicidal flames
A lost love, temporary agony
Assuaged by permanent solution.
Mother's agony indefinite, daily
She pays the boys to water
The stone.

Here the daily dead
Mingle with War's harvest.
The jeweler's mother
Receives daily ministrations,
Her stone bathed
As one might bathe a baby,
Delicate, loving touch
From a boy whose attentions
Buys bread for his family.


Bibi's name disappeared,
Merged into the stone
Is known by fingers
Reading as though by Braille.
Water that remains
In the boys' buckets
Honors her, gratitude remembers her
If only by name, daily.
If she sinned, surely
The stone's frequent ablution
Has made her a saint.

"Death is easy here,"
The stone mason says.
He used to construct
Fireplaces, sculpt monuments,
Money was easy once.
It flowed from foreign coffers
But like their soldiers,
Little stayed behind.
The mason fortunate and flexible
Lives by carving portraits
Of the dead.

The market thrived, alive
Today the cemetery, home
To more and more
Is the City's center.
Every day here is
Day of the Dead, Memorial Day
Every day families picnic
Children play.
Every day the Dead live
Lives surrounded by loved ones.

- Rebecca del Rio

This Little Orchid

This little orchid
with its five dark oval leaves hasn’t bloomed
in years, but once

a week I soak the whole pot the way Cindy told me
she does her orchids, and so it lives.
This morning, in a kind of dreamy trance, I lift it

out above the sink, then pour the water over it
in a wavering ribbon I can see right through.
How does thought come? Out of its absence

I’m suddenly in mind of Aleppo. This water
would be a miracle there, the last wells bombed,
the aid convoys blown up before they unload.

Here’s this little orchid with its tender green roots
like worms humped up and reaching for air
above the bark, glistening wet, my hands

curved around the pot the way they might
around the seed of a baby unborn. I’d tell it to go back,
tell it the world is not a safe place, not there –

bloody in the rubble, thirsty and covered with dust.
Later, unpinning a sheet from the line, I press my face
to the smell of sun and autumn oak trees, the sheet

huge for my queen bed, white as a clean
bandage, and here they are again, the children,
their lives with me like ghosts or rue.

- ​Elizabeth Carothers Herron

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

This Little Orchid

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Grief

begin with the pain
of the grass
that bore the weight
of adam,
his broken rib mending
into eve,
imagine
the original bleeding,
adam
moaning
and the lamentation of grass.
from that garden,
through fields of lost
and found, to now, to here,
to grief for the upright
animal, to grief for the
horizontal world.
pause then for the human
animal in its coat
of many colors.
pause
for
the myth of america.
pause for the myth
of america.
and pause for the girl
with twelve fingers
who never learned to cry enough
for anything that mattered,
not enough for the fear,
not enough for the loss,
not enough for the history,
not enough
for the disregarded planet.
not enough for the grass.
then end in the garden of regret
with time’s bell tolling grief
and pain,
grief for the grass
that is older than adam,
grief for what is born
human,
grief for what is not.

- Lucille Clifton

Testament



And now to the Abyss I pass
Of that Unfathomable Grass...

1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.

2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.



- Wendell Berry

Reading the first three sections of this poem I fall in love, again, more deeply, with Wendell Berry. I'm so grateful for his skillful reflections and I wince hoping it's not his passing which led Larry to publish this selection. Then reading the 4th section I wonder why, again, Wendell Berry neglects to name or praise the female(s), the feminine?

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Testament...

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I take umbrage to your potboiler predilection phonemes.

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Posted in reply to the post by BManna:

Reading the first three sections of this poem I fall in love, again, more deeply, with Wendell Berry. I'm so grateful for his skillful reflections and I wince hoping it's not his passing which led Larry to publish this selection. Then reading the 4th section I wonder why, again, Wendell Berry neglects to name or praise the female(s), the feminine?

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Landscape

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

- Mary Oliver

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

- Wendell Berry

Thank you Larry!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Blue Robe

How joyful to be together, alone
as when we first were joined
in our little house by the river
long ago, except that now we know
each other, as we did not then;
and now instead of two stories fumbling
to meet, we belong to one story
that the two, joining, made. And now
we touch each other with the tenderness
of mortals, who know themselves:
how joyful to feel the heart quake
at the sight of a grandmother,
old friend in the morning light,
beautiful in her blue robe!

- Wendell Berry

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South

In the cold, clear winter air
of Andalusia, I walked
a trail up through pig grass
toward a distant abandoned
farmhouse. No one could live here,
I said aloud, the land is baked clay,
the long summers are withering.
Yet someone did. The one wall
left intact bore the handprint
of a child, the fingers splayed
out to form half a message
in the lost language of childhood.
It said, “You won’t find me!”
Then the wind woke from its nesting
in the weeds and the tall grass
to blow the childish words away.
Almost noon, the distant sun
rode straight above us like a god
aware of everything and like
a god utterly silent. What
could ever grow from this ground
to feed anyone? And who bore
the mysterious child who spoke
in riddles? If we climbed
the hill’s crest we’d find
a higher hill and then another
hill until we reached an ocean
or gave up and turned back
to where the land descends step
by slow step to bring us exactly
here, where we began, stunned
by raw sunlight yet in the dark.

- Philip Levine

At The Workplace

Today, I vow to regard my co-workers serenely, with
Loving-kindness and without judgment.
This one, who appears not to bathe and has a pungent odor,
That one, who leads the e-mail clique trash-talking the rest of us,
Are merely creatures caught in dukkha, or suffering.
May they one day be made whole and not so messed up,
Or at least be transferred to another department.

- Jenny Allen



“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
- Wendell Berry

Vodadahue Mountain

When I feel tall I tell myself
that when the time comes I will know
as the elephant knows as the puma knows
and I will go
to Vodadahue Mountain
by the deep green inlet
by the deep green gorge
and in steady pain I will climb the basalt tower
and on the last ice step before the summit
unmarked by everything but air
I will be still for a long moment
and then let the white mouth of the snowcloud eat me
and there will be only this silence
and the trees at the foot will begin to feed
and I will have paid back all that I have owed
and there will be only this silence.

- Paul Kingsnorth

My Mother’s Pears

Plump, green-gold, Worcester’s pride,
transported through autumn skies
in a box marked Handle With Care

sleep eighteen Bartlett pears,
hand-picked and polished and packed
for deposit at my door,

each in its crinkled nest
with a stub of stem attached
and a single bright leaf like a flag.

A smaller than usual crop,
but still enough to share with me,
as always at harvest time.

Those strangers are my friends
whose kindness blesses the house
my mother built at the edge of town

beyond the last trolley-stop
when the century was young, and she
proposed, for her children’s sake,

to marry again, not knowing how soon
the windows would grow dark
and the velvet drapes come down.

Rubble accumulates in the yard,
workmen are hammering on the roof,
I am standing knee-deep in dirt

with a shovel in my hand.
Mother has wrapped a kerchief round her head,
her glasses glint in the sun.

When my sisters appear on the scene,
gangly and softly tittering,
she waves them back into the house

to fetch us pails of water,
and they skip out of our sight
in their matching middy blouses.

I summon up all my strength
to set the pear tree in the ground,
unwinding its burlap shroud.

It is taller than I. “Make room
for the roots!” my mother cries,
“Dig the hole deeper.”

- Stanley Kunitz

Mountain Water

On the way down from Mt Ranier, on a tour bus we stop
for a birds eye view of Narada Falls. I walk
to the edge of a stream sloping
toward the falls.

I remember Narada as a prince in Indian mythology. Exactly who?
Oh yeah, a musician and storyteller who saw Vishnu only once
in this lifetime— an inspiration for prayer and mantra
the lad would compose along the path.

It’s autumn and I want to feel the chill of water against my skin
so I place a foot on a rock and prepare to kneel and drop
my hands into the shimmering stream. Damn I see
a sign which stops me cold:

Rocks are slippery
Current is strong
If you fall you may
Be battered to death

Stepping away to save my ass I ponder Narada: would he have danced
across boulders if there were a poem in the movement
or if it were a way to bathe Vishnu
with soft tears of devotion?

What I’m getting at is you can look at the artist as hero facing death
in every act of creation, in each song and sand painting, but have
no sense of how he treats his dog, brews his coffee, or even
whether or not he prefers an electric tooth brush.

Still we want to be artists,
want to be heroes,
step on slippery rocks,
save the world.

- Barry Denny

You Were Made For This
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Our Great Hope

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.

Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.


Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Author of the best seller Women Who Run with the Wolves

Advice to Water

Seep in at foundation cracks and out
at gutters and drains. Ram up against
dams and laugh at drywall. Observe
with pleasure how you adjust to one-inch
pipes, faucets and crystal goblets. Bear

the indignity of being poured over your
cousin, crushed ice, and forced to share
a glass with distilled spirits; it makes many
people happy. Condone frogs. Know that along
with earth, wind and fire you are the frequent

embodiment of myth and hope. Accept this
graciously. As our damage to the planet catches
up with us, teach us to respect and conserve you,
love and revere you – something we’ve failed
at, badly. Accept being sucked skyward,

warehoused in dark clouds and pitched down
without notice. Forgive those who call this
“bad weather” -- perhaps too late, we know
that it’s anything but. Look after us, if you’ve
a mind to. Not that we deserve it.

- David Beckman

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

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

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

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

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...1_15-08-33.png

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

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

- Larry Robinson

Wonderful, Larry! The perfect poem for today!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

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Appearances

It lay on cement that wet winter Sunday
red-shafted flicker’s wings spread wide, beak black
pointing to the sky.

Did it fly into its own reflection seen in nearby
windows, into the unreal that looked so true? -
the mirror: invisible pane.

We too can mistake reflection for truth.
any mirror could kill us if we hit it head on.

One day a finch flew into my house.
A glass prison for the bird.

It flew again and again into clear pane until
it gave up for a moment, perched on a
curly willow branch in a pot, grew still.

I raised its entry window, letting a breeze
flow in. The finch felt fresh air’s call to be free.
It flew out at last into the truth of what was.

- Clare Morris

All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

- Louise Glück

All Souls

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November—å
Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited—
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

- May Sarton

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare
hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a
vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer,
its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and
heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come
nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, "My dear bird, we are
wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for
you." But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering
away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten
by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and
those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what and enskyment;
what a life
after death.

- Robinson Jeffers

Nor the word once spoken be un-spoken.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

All Souls

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?...

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Yes, I saw this vulture above the Bill Kortum trail outside of Bodega Bay and I made a date with her.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Vulture

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Vulture

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For me, I associate the Vulture with Christ Consciousness. The awakening.

Celestial burial is practiced in Tibet, since the country has little wood for funeral pyres or cremation, and rocky soil that makes grave digging impractical. A specially trained holy man/professional body handler takes the body high up to the top of a flattened plateau, and dismembers the deceased, feeding meat to the vultures, who take it higher towards heaven, consume the flesh so it never again touches the lowly ground. He even grinds the bones into a softer pudding, which the birds relish, so that nothing of the human body remains on earth.

The family are present to experience the ritual, but are at some distance so they don't witness up close the hacking up of their loved one. They just wait for it to be done, and are solemn in prayer. Although westerners might be put off by such a practice, with thoughts of Tony Soprano and whacking, it really is a clean, beautiful end and is environmentally perfect. Where we would be without the glorious vulture is anyone's guess... but with just the past month's deer road kill alone, we would be drowning in the stench of decay. Also, they say a vulture can sense death, so if you are still alive and a vulture is showing interest, you might want to get a checkup.

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Posted in reply to the post by Timothy Gega:

For me, I associate the Vulture with Christ Consciousness. The awakening.

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Posted in reply to the post by Chris Dec:

Celestial burial is practiced in Tibet, ...

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It's a beautiful ritual Chris Dec. The Vulture is a majestic creature. Like the Crow it sends signs between both worlds. We have to interpret them.

For many years I've said that I want to live long enough for Sky Burial to become legal here (again).

While I appreciate the Tibetan form (well portrayed in the stunning movie Himalaya), for my own body I'd prefer the plains Indians form. Put you up on a platform and let the vultures eat at their leisure.

Here are lyrics from a vulture song I wrote after a respectful encounter:


vultures

a baker's dozen vultures in a tree--
o what a beautiful sight to see!
i spoke to them & they heard me
paying my respects so gratefully:

i thank you for the work you give,
cleaning up the dead that we may live.
i thank you for the way you fly,
giving my heart the wings to try.

i joined my hands & bowed in love
as they watched keenly from above.
i sprinkled sage & walked along,
in turn they offered me this song:

we who eat you when you die
carry you with us when we fly
we who eat you when you die
carry you with us when we fly,
carry you with us when we fly.

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Posted in reply to the post by Chris Dec:

Celestial burial is practiced in Tibet,...

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Wow, that's beautiful Sandoak. I thought I was the only person to appreciate the Vulture. It's great to hear from others who feel the same way.