Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

I, Coyote, Stilled Wonder


When did I get that bejawed look,
that flashes up out of creeks and pools?
Was it when I fled across
pasture and through woods,
up to ledge, and came out
in the world to let myself think events
back into their right sequence again?
Man glaring into bloody mess on ground,
cow, who has birthed calf, I,
Coyote, actually tasted,
ate of it well past demarcating line
where calf becomes aftermatter.
I think it was then, when I fled
singing, happy, to wood's edge.
I could see Man raise arms,
steady his over-and-under, and squeeze.
I, Coyote, I was there, yes, I saw it all,
even the flock of tiny lead
that went scattering past.
I felt in me all those that hit,
nearly shattered wraith, clinging
to crushed jawbone, invisibly
slickering through trees, from here on
alone, I, Coyote, stilled wonder.


- Galway Kinnell

In My Spare Time


During my long, boring hours of spare time
I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new colored map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.


I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.


- Fadhil al-Azzawi
(translation: Khaled Mattawa)

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

In My Spare Time


During my long, boring hours of spare time
I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.
I draw a new colored map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.


I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.


****- Fadhil al-Azzawi
****(translation: Khaled Mattawa)

---

I would keep the continents and oceans where they are
but ship the $banks$ to Alcatraz and sink the Island after that.*
No credit cards or printed money,
barter only with solid goods, handy work and mind-creations.
I would strew the seeds of magic-*
to enhance our human minds and hearts
to keep all the goodness and more of it to add.
Just keep a tiny bit of mean to balance of it all...
and wars would fade away...

edith

Voices from the Trees


Deep roots
Wide reach


Listen to the whispering wind,
the raging gale.
Feel the quiet in your depths.


Release your seeds into the breeze
You probably won't see
where they land and grow.


Your reaction to inevitable wounds
engenders the face you show the world.


Offer your fruit
to all who need it.


When old, remember the suppleness of youth.
When young, imagine the strength of age.


Grow ever toward flaming passion
as we reach toward the sun.


- Alan Cohen

To A Friend whose Work Has Come To Nothing


Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.


- William Butler Yeats

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

To A Friend whose Work Has Come To Nothing

---

True happiness is of a retired nature,
and an enemy to pomp and noise;
it arises, in the first place,
from enjoyment of one's self,
and in the next
from the friendship
and conversation
of a few selected companions.

Joseph Addison

In the Yuzgir Pass




For Karim Minu

As my eyes followed her,
The dragonfly
Rose and fled.
The preying mantis
Did not reach her.
If he had,
Nothing would remain of her
Save for a colorful pair of wings.

When the foolish hunter
Was sleeping in his hiding-place
In the Yuzgir Pass,
The pretty gazelle,
Under my gaze,
Drank deeply from the spring
And went away
And nothing remained of her
But her recent droppings.

On our return,
I found a goat-bell.
I hung it round my neck
And we ran down the goat trail:
I wanted to be the dragonfly's wings
I wanted to be the gazelle's legs.


- Majid Naficy

The Ordinary Path to the Limitless

The child learning the bird
is not just naming it,
She is for a fleeting moment
escaping the prison of the small,
the self suddenly become vast
in the bird’s wing and the flying
song in the secret branches of a tree.
That song is heard in the ear of a heart
learning a brown bird’s name, for the first time,
a brown bird that is neither outside
nor inside, nor imagined, as it flies off,
as it merges into the familiar
magnificence, that is everywhere
and they are both the size of the sky.


- Judith Stone

Alone among mountains and hills,
coiling like dragons and snakes,
I've come to live.
All day, I know nothing
but joy.
Sometimes, I climb
a solitary peak,
and let loose a howl
that chills
the Universe.

- Khong Lo (?-1119)
Vietnam

The Price of Right


So much grace available, but how we receive it depends on what we can let go of.
- Joi Sharp


Inside the place where we are right, the rain
can never fall. Inside the place where we
are right, the leaves fall yellowed off the trees.
No breeze. No bells. No peaches. We explain.
We judge, contend, defend and claim, maintain
our certainty. And meanwhile, we don't see
the lilacs wilting, grasses browning, bees
without their hives, lost crows, the sunset drained.
But sometimes in this shrinking cage of right
wings in a doubt. A question. Nothing's clear.
And see how soon the crows return, a slight
of breeze, a scent of rain. I'll meet you here,
this open place, exposed, unclosed. How light
comes spilling in as our defenses disappear.


- Rosemerry Trommer

You Are Not Christ
New Orleans, Louisiana
For the drowning, yes, there is always panic.
Or peace. Your body behaving finally by instinct
alone. Crossing out wonder. Crossing out
a need to know. You only feel you need to live.
That you deserve it. Even here. Even as your chest
fills with a strange new air, you will not ask
what this means. Like prey caught in the wolf’s teeth,
but you are not the lamb. You are what’s in the lamb
that keeps it kicking. Let it.


- Ricky Laurentiis

There is also this to see:
They will live on, they will increase,
No longer pawns of time.
They will grow like the sweet wild berries
The forest ripens as its treasure.

Then blessed are those who never turned away
And blessed are those who stood quietly in the rain.
Theirs shall be the harvest; for them the fruits.

They will outlast the pomp and power
Of lawmakers, whose meanings will crumble.
When all else is exhausted and bled of purpose,
They will lift their hands,
that have survived.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Pentimenti

"Pentimenti of an earlier position of the
arm may be seen."—Frick Museum


It's not simply
that the top image
wears off or
goes translucent;
things underneath
come back up
having enjoyed the
advantages of rest.
That's the hardest
part to bear, how
the decided–against
fattens one layer down,
free of the tests
applied to final choices.
In this painting,
for instance, see how
a third arm––
long ago repented
by the artist**––
is revealed,
working a flap
into the surface
through which
who knows what
exiled cat or
extra child
might steal.

- Kay Ryan

I never get enough of laughing with you,
that wild humor.


Thirsty and dry, I complain, but everything is made of
water!
Lonely, yet my head leans against your shirt!
My wounded hands, your hands.


Do something drastic.


You say, "Come and sit in the innermost room,
where you'll be safe from the love-thief."


I reply, "But I've tried to be the ringknocker
on your door, so you won't have to
always be letting me in and out."


You say, "No. You stand on the threshold waiting,
and you're here in the inner chamber too.
You're at home in both places."


I love the quietness of such an answer.
Come to this table of quietness.


- Jelelludin Rumi
Ode 2244
Version by Coleman Barks


Hitch up your camel. It is time again for Rumi's Caravan, a magical evening of poetry and music, returns. This event usually sells out. Tickets are $25 and are available at the Rug Gallery in Santa Rosa at 514 B Street, at Many Rivers Books and Tea in Sebastopol at 130 S. Main St. and at brown paper tickets. See the attached flyer for more details.


Where: Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa
When: February 9. Doors open at 6 pm for pre-show wine and appetizers, and the performance begins at 7 pm.
Tea and cake will be served at intermission.

Lavish attire encouraged.

Performers:

Carol Fitzgerald
Claressa Darden Morrow
Doug von Koss
Gwynn O'Gara
Kay Crista
Larry Robinson
Maja Apolonia Rodé
Richard Naegle

Musicians:
Cynthia Albers
Kim Atkinson

Twilight Under Pine Ridge

Earth between two lights,
one just now draining away
from tiny trees on the western shoulder
and one to come,
as the stars begin to open in the field of night.
On every slope great trees are flowering
in beautiful relation and yet
all solitary. In the green darkness
clear voices leave off
and fold inward toward sleep.
The grass
parts.
Lord God slides forward on his belly.


- Robert Mezey

Descant

“We, the people…” he intoned, like a master chorister,
long, lean hands arcing slowly, gracefully,
pointing upward to that place where sparrows,
eyed from on high,
pursue their simple song of happiness and freedom.

“He wants to annihilate us,” whines the weepy Speaker to his obstinate troops,
as if turning from tedious, tiresome talk of guns, butter, and sour statistics
would so disentangle their gnarly grip on the ship of state
that they and it would sink together,
like water-logged wooden weights,
to the dark depths of memory’s vast ocean.

“We, the people…” over and over he calmly calls us back,
back from the brink of life-sapping fear,
back from shallow slogans’ thin air,
back to that place where confidence reins,
like boy sopranos singing above the gloom,
their harmonious descant lifting us skyward
with a vibrant ancient song.

- Bill Dickinson

The Boy Died In My Alley


to Running Boy


The Boy died in my alley
without my Having Known.
Policeman said, next morning,
"Apparently died Alone."


"You heard a shot?" Policeman said.
Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
I never see the Dead.


The Shot that killed him yes I heard
as I heard the Thousand shots before;
careening tinnily down the nights
across my years and arteries.


Policeman pounded on my door.
"Who is it?" "POLICE!" Policeman yelled.
"A Boy was dying in your alley.
A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
And have you known this Boy before?"


I have known this Boy before.
I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.
I never saw his face at all.
I never saw his futurefall.
But I have known this Boy.


I have always heard him deal with death.
I have always heard the shout, the volley.
I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
And I have killed him ever.


I joined the Wild and killed him
with knowledgeable unknowing.
I saw where he was going.
I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
I did not take him down.


He cried not only "Father!"
but "Mother!
Sister!
Brother."
The cry climbed up the alley.
It went up to the wind.
It hung upon the heaven
for a long
stretch-strain of Moment.


The red floor of my alley
is a special speech to me.


- Gwendolyn Brooks

To Be a Slave of Intensity


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


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


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


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


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


- Kabir
(version by Robert Bly)

Bent to the Earth
They had hit Ruben
with the high beams, had blinded
him so that the van
he was driving, full of Mexicans
going to pick tomatoes,
would have to stop. Ruben spun

the van into an irrigation ditch,
spun the five-year-old me awake
to immigration officers,
their batons already out,
already looking for the soft spots on the body,
to my mother being handcuffed
and dragged to a van, to my father
trying to show them our green cards.

They let us go. But Alvaro
was going back.
So was his brother Fernando.
So was their sister Sonia. Their mother
did not escape,
and so was going back. Their father
was somewhere in the field,
and was free. There were no great truths

revealed to me then. No wisdom
given to me by anyone. I was a child
who had seen what a piece of polished wood
could do to a face, who had seen his father
about to lose the one he loved, who had lost
some friends who would never return,
who, later that morning, bent
to the earth and went to work.


- Blas Manuel De Luna

State Of The Union (2005)


Today the President speaks
of his plan to liberate us all.
The bodhisattvas have a similar plan,
but theirs will take a little longer:
endless lifetimes, in fact.


His, of course, is more urgent
due to the coming Rapture,
when all true believers will be lifted
out of their cars and clothes
and credit card debt.


I, too, pray for the Rapture.
After they’re gone we’ll untangle
the wrecked cars and the broken bodies.
We’ll wash their clothes and give them to the poor.
We’ll write off their debts and open their homes to the
homeless.


Then we’ll get on with rebuilding
our bombed cities and shattered lives,
our schools, our libraries and our poisoned soil.
We’ll clean our rivers, plant rice and bake bread.
We’ll sing and make love and drink red wine.
We’ll raise our children and do the laundry
and argue about much smaller things.


As for me, I want to smell
the just open daphne and go for a walk with Cynthia.
I want to prune the apricot tree
and talk with my neighbor
about the unseasonably delicious foretaste of Spring
this second day of February, 2005.


- Larry Robinson 2/2/05

an orphan & the Dharma do well together
last week the odd couple gave birth to a divine child
old friends don’t recognize me
“how different you look”, they say
on Cold Mountain it is Spring
naked I chase butterflies & moonbeams
mountain outside, mountain inside
all is wholeness dreaming itself alive

- Robert Leverant

The Song of Wandering Aengus




I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.


When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.


Though I am old from wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


- William Butler Yeats

Amo Ergo Sum

Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.

Because I love
The earth upon her astral spindle winds
Her ecstasy-producing dance.

Because I love
Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies,
Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.

Because I love
Wind blows white sails,
The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.

Because I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
The transparent sunlit trees.

Because I love
Larks rise up from the grass
And all the leaves are full of singing birds.

Because I love
The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.

Because I love
The iridescnt shells upon the sand
Takes forms as fine and intricate as thought.

Because I love
There is an invisible way across the sky,
Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
And all the stars travel that path by night.

Because I love
There is a river flowing all night long.

Because I love
All night the river flows into my sleep,
Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,
And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.

- Kathleen Raine

Silence


There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.


The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the floor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.


The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.


The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.


And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all night


like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.


- Billy Collins

Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.
- Czeslaw Milosz
(translated by Robert Hass)

Famous
The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15

There is no stray bullet, sirs.
No bullet like a worried cat
crouching under a bush,
no half-hairless puppy bullet
dodging midnight streets.
The bullet could not be a pecan
plunking the tin roof,
not hardly, no fluff of pollen
on October’s breath,
no humble pebble at our feet.

So don’t gentle it, please.

We live among stray thoughts,
tasks abandoned midstream.
Our fickle hearts are fat
with stray devotions, we feel at home
among bits and pieces,
all the wandering ways of words.

But this bullet had no innocence, did not
wish anyone well, you can’t tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
of life, should not be granted immunity
by soft saying—friendly fire, straying death-eye,
why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?

Mohammed, Mohammed, deserves the truth.
This bullet had no secret happy hopes,
it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
under the bridge.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Cave
(for Werner Herzog)

300 century-ago paintings
six times aged over any after.
Happy 32,000^th year since
artists first conceived art as I do
while the dormant years bore no
handmade eyes, soul or elevation
until other tastes beholding them
transformed at once to wings.

Handprints of red dot
crooked finger
white horse
bison with eight legs
signifying movement,
likewise a rhino’s
many tusks, and
a spinal column.

Glacial time
sunny cold
calcite skull bones of ibis
and bits of golden eagles
carried here by bears who
later scratched the walls white,
hyenas watching noisily.

Paleolithic odors
imagined and real
of cave dwellers
envisioned and everywhere,
small boy with wolf,
white calcite,
eyes upon us, while

The hotel next door
to the art gallery
where my own paintings hang
in Glen Ellen, California
congruently is named
“Chauvet.”


- Ed Coletti

Sweet Darkness


When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.


When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.


There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.


You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.


Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.


Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness


to learn


anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive


is too small for you.


- David Whyte

Abandoned Farmhouse
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.


- Ted Kooser

In the Absence of Kindness


In the absence of kindness
Take one deep breath
And then let it go
Into the heat of confusion
Or an echoless emptiness
Where it may be swallowed up
Like a dove in a black hole
Listen as it coos gently in the dark


The next breath may disorient you
That’s a good sign
Go ahead
Lose your way
Your point
Your imitation
Of someone you don’t even
Recognize now

You’ve made a U-turn
And like a boomerang
Being struck by lightning
Random acts of kindness
Now seem as natural
As being breathed into Self
That One who has forgiven
Any part of the whole that
Might have believed
You were not enough


- Fran Carbonaro

OCCUPY SUGARLOAF
- a California State Park


As I hike the path that crosses
a sun-blanched meadow, meander
under oak shadow on the hillside trail,

I spot them, beginning to take over:
whip of slim snake, fin-flick of steelhead
black-tailed deer, encroaching grass.

Silence occupies the air.

Then the ravens' croaks,
the turkeys' glee. There's only
one more day

till the state locks the gate
to cars, campers, horses—
and those who know

no boundaries take hold:
quail, hawk, lizard
rain, sun, wind, seed.
- Jodi Hottel

Leaning In


Sometimes, in the middle of a crowded store on a Saturday
afternoon, my husband will rest his hand
on my neck, or on the soft flesh belted at my waist,
and pull me to him. I understand


his question: Why are we so fortunate
when all around us, friends are falling prey
to divorce and illness? It seems intemperate
to celebrate in a more conspicuous way


so we just stand there, leaning in
to one another, until that moment
of sheer blessedness dissolves and our skin,
which has been touching, cools and relents,


settling back into our separate skeletons
as we head toward Housewares to resume our errands.


- Sue Ellen Thompson

Footnote from the Brink

2/14/2013, Valentines Day

Black sky,
lots of glittering white stars,
brings back a memory.
I'm not moving,
but staying still,
still want to participate,
get involved.

Color coming into it,
reds and greens,
blinking yellow background
warning me,
get on to something else,
stay active with the thoughts of dying.

Din in background,
going off and on,
very important.
Activity,
just being,
the act of dying.

State of being,
the act of dying not affecting it.
Wonder what part, what part of what?
It is a situation that is getting confusing.
Why am I doing it?
I'm not curious about dying.
I just want to do it.
I am not afraid.

The din is leaving me,
evaporating.
I sleep.
I wake up,
not unhappy to wake up.
I accept it all.

Another day is coming on,
travel and family are still basic passions,
and dying is well taken care of,
coming around the bend.

Where did the words come from?

My friends are mostly gone,
and I'm going off to love music, jazz, opera,
and to hear Gregory's voice,
to see him.

Leaving is enough.
I can't feel sad,
what's happening is inevitable.
My time is your time.

I'm feeling incompetent,
unlikely to hold it together.
I did the best I could under the circumstances.

The circumstances of what?
Everything is interesting,
every little piece of evidence,
and I am not afraid.

I want to head into the unknown,
with my forehead first,
no hair to cover my eyes.
I want to go open, unadorned, plain and bare.
I see part light, part dark,
the light is ahead of me,
and dark on either side of me.

I'm traveling through the light and the dark.
And I am not afraid.


- Maxine Collin Williams
(Maxine died last week after 95 years on the planet)

ascension


for Jonathan Glass

the geometry
of distance annoys
is unfilled

countless shapes fly about
collide
change form
careen in other directions

when motion stops
what does the space contain?

do we require an answer?

it feels dangerous
uncertain
without movement

images and memories
slowly approach
are here
then gone

hands held
candles lit
chaotic feelings
rise and fall
within love
and loss

life's
ragged outline
becomes more clear
we must go on

so must you.


- Richard Retecki

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -


- Emily Dickinson

Dear Human:


You've got it all wrong.
You didn't come here to master unconditional love.
This is where you came from and where you'll return.


You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of . . . messing up.
Often.


You didn't come here to be perfect; you already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.
And rising again into remembering.
But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.
Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.
It doesn't require modifiers.
It doesn't require the condition of perfection.


It only asks you to show up.


And do your best.


That you stay present and feel fully.


That you shine and fly and laugh and cry
and hurt and heal and fall and get back up
and play and work and live and die as YOU.


It's enough.


It's plenty.


- Courtney A. Walsh

It Is March


It is March and black dust falls out of the books
Soon I will be gone
The tall spirit who lodged here has
Left already
On the avenues the colorless thread lies under
Old prices


When you look back there is always the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write


The bitterness is still rising in the old mines
The fist is coming out of the egg
The thermometers out of the mouths of the corpses


At a certain height
The tails of the kites for a moment are
Covered with footsteps


Whatever I have to do has not yet begun


- W. S. Merwin

The World Was Old When We Got Here


we could see that, easy. Paint and birch
bark curling, dried up wells and leaky
faucets, weeping willows and bent windmills
shrieking in the breeze. Driven outside, we swung
our legs from the seats of rusted tractors tangled
in dead branches, crept into abandoned
houses graffitied by trees. We wove sticks
with bale twine to make shelters, fished
the hood of a car from the river
for a roof, used bricks from the crumbled
cookhouse for a makeshift wall.


Inheriting ruins,
we made ruins.


Blue jeans in the wash still came out dirty. The breath
of grown-ups fermented with things unsaid. Someday
we'd understand "farm crisis," foreclosure, FDIC. We'd see
people driving Cadillacs, rest our faces on the plush
white carpet of our own remodeled homes, remember
clover by the chicken pen, how each spring we rolled
in it, each spring it was new.


- Kara McKeever

In Praise of Worry


Think of it and it won't happen,
I've often thought. Too unlikely
to imagine the accident-you
in the car in the rain-then receive
the call. Too uncanny,
too much like a book.


In life, almost no one
recognizes what's important
when it's beginning-the comical bully
on his way to power, the shy boy
next door loading his gun, or the baby
in the barn, only the animals watching.


Then a few travelers arrive in the night.


Later, we can see the shape of the story,
or make one up, if we have to.


So you're driving home in a terrible storm.
Rain lashes the windshield, great trees
are collapsing, but you're safe
because the scene I'm picturing


won't happen if I think of it first.
That's what I keep telling myself
until the storm is over-
challenging the order of things
to show its hand, betting it won't.


- Lawrence Raab

Silence


I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities -
We cannot speak.




A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg,
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.


There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.


There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" -
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.


And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.


- Edgar Lee Masters

To Daffodils


Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

https://www.flower-gardening-made-ea...sus-suzy-1.jpg

You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.


We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.


- Robert Herrick

The Generations


We watch the young, rising early, determined,
going out to dig into the horizons their elders
heralded: the images and tokens of worship, the
paradises and unfenced boundaries prepared
before them that now must be seen through
their own eyes. There's no going back. There's
hope they will grow into the possibilities we were.
We want and often wait for and gravely expect
our children to fulfill our plotted desires. Often we
are blind or indifferent to their desires. More and
more we merge with the lives and deaths contained
in the time through which we passed.
Let us watch out for the winter's clouds we see as
loss, the withering of hope into judgement that can
come with age. Why trust in the whisperings of regret
when our precious days are ripening with the measure
of honest enthusiasms that, at last, we have earned?
The generation that follows, we pray, will not be burdened
with our history of distortions; they may be free of the
lament that recalls a world once better than it is. How
clear it is that those other worlds are here! We who were
children just a dream ago can offer the light that lets us
love in them their journey. Understanding this, we can
come to more respect our own.

- Rich Meyers

Two Giant Fat People


God
And I have become
Like two giant fat people
Living in a
Tiny boat.
We
Keep
Bumping into each other and
Laughing.


- Hafiz
(from The Gift - Translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

Difficulties


Friend, please tell me what I can do about this mud world
I keep spinning out of myself!


I gave up expensive clothes, and bought a robe
But I noticed one day the cloth was well-woven.


So I bought some burlap, but I still
Throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.


I stopped being a sexual elephant,
And now I discover that I"m angry a lot.


I finally gave up anger, and now I notice
That I am greedy all day.


I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
And now I am proud of myself.


When the mind wants to break its link with the world
It still holds on to one thing.


Kabir says: Listen, my friend,
There are very few that find the path!!


- Kabir
(translation by Robert Bly)

Passage Through The Center


It’s like swimming across a river
with our eyes closed, this passage
through the center of our life.
Sometimes we have to navigate
from the inside out -
when the stars hide their light
when we cannot see the bank
on the other side, when the hounds
of our past bark on the shoreline
braying their mournful song at our leaving.

It is a stillness like the heart of the fire
that guides—the voice of some angel of mercy
who has been sending us missives
since our birth. And when we look over
our shoulder - once, twice -
it is the fierce tiger of truth who howls,
You cannot go back, that place is gone now.

And for a moment, we freeze in the river
sure we will drown, forgetting which way
is up and down, forward and back,
as the roar of the tumbling current
pours through us with all the questions
that have refused to leave us alone,
with visions of the many roads
bursting into flames behind us.

And then something remembers itself,
lifts our shoulders above the swirling cauldron
of in between and we simply let go
of making our way, we let go of decisions,
and the tangled paradoxes flow on through
the river’s body, drawing us to the edge
of this new world that calls us to our knees
to give thanks for this fertile soil
seeded with dreams,
thirsty for our arrival.

- Laura Weaver

Point Reyes—wild oats in the wind
for JQ

As if it were the holy spirit
engulfing me,
as if I even knew
the nature of such a thing,
as if I might even be able to tell you
the mystery of a moment that pushed me
to the very edge of . . . of . . . something,
calling loudly without words for me to simply open up—all the way . . .

We stood together in silence,
in the midst of things,
on the headlands, high above the surf,
a dusty trail beneath our feet
crisscrossed from time to time
by slow moving, shinny black beetles,
while stationery, high above our heads
a hawk lay just beneath the cold gray blanket
that covered everything on this tiny slip of land
sliding northward, sliding always northward.
And everywhere it was wind—
the air moved, ruffled clothes and tousled hair,
made soft staccato pops and flutters in our ears
that almost hid from them
an exquisite, near silent song.

Had we not seen the wild oats dancing,
delicately dangling their tiny, hull-covered seeds,
atop straight golden stalks,
that bent down in the wind,
as if to say, namaste, to everything,
lightly touching one another, then,
like bows and strings—
had we not seen them dancing so,
we would have missed their music,
their heavenly music,
the intricacy of which,
the joy of which
went well beyond
what human hand
could make
or these human words
describe.

Oh, the wind and the song of the wild oats!


- Bill Denham

Ark

The mountain sleeps,
awaiting the arrival
of the next storm,
unmoved as only a mountain can be

Unlike the rest of us
anxiously eyeing
the hidden pearl of the sun
tucked away in the
dank oyster flesh
of the cloud

Or others of us,
heads down grazing into a wind
heavy with water and information
we do not want

Or still others
gathering kindling
that might float away from us
and save someone else

All of us occupied
with our useless preparations,
like Noah, who meant well
but should have left well enough alone
and slept and dreamed
he was a mountain.


- Greg Hayes

The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver sweaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

- Sharon Olds

Jesus Christ! ;-)