Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

- Alison Luterman

A Song on the End of the World


On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.


On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.


And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

- Czeslaw Milosz
(translated by Anthony Milosz)

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHI9BTpGkp8

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feels
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

- Leonard Cohen

For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot—air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will take you into
yourself and bless you and keep you.
That's the world, and we all live there.

- William Stafford

Drought Break -1979


Ducks skid on October flat water
Small buck, leaps up the blond grass
Never enough water here.
The land splits open like two chapped lips.


Your grandpa died.
He gave you fly fishing
and arrogance
his gin, straight
in the bottom of the jelly jar,
my throat closing around it
for lack of water

Your grandmother’s gone dotty.
She was halfway there,
made for easy conversation
her rapture complete repeating
Enchilada recipes

Forgotten in minutes.
Bake at three fifty.
Now damns burst
Reservoirs spillover
The contents of houses sweep out
to the sea.

Your grandmother’s synapses flood.
The river crests at high tide.

- Zeena Janowsky

The Spirit Work

https://maggieameanderings.com/image..._whirlwind.png

Let us ourselves be still
While the maelstrom builds

Be

At the center of
The powerful storm
A neutral place

Touch Earth and Sky
These are all of you
You are part of them

When the funnel cloud builds
You may look away
Soothe yourself
Fine enough

When the Sudden comes

If you are lifted away
Look down and smile
Imagine each second separately
Each second a life in itself
Full of wonder
Sparkling and clear

Let go

Control

Is Illusion
You have the gift of senses
Celebrate all that you see and hear and taste

In Jubilee
You give up all
To allow life to coalesce
In a new way

Fly away

And wherever the grains and seconds
Reassemble

That is as it will be

Let each particle carry the memory of love

- Anonymous

America: A Prophecy (excerpt)

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.

For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.

- William Blake

Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.

- Joy Harjo

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

- W.H. Auden

It's Never Too Late to Begin

Every human bond,
whether with a person of any species—
that is, an organic living being—
or with something whose life is mysterious and secretly self-defined
such as a mountain or star—

or an image or an idea
or a being outside of time,
a dweller in realms of mind
or an inhabitant of spirit—
a task or place or project,
or an object that occupies a space in time and heart or mind—

every bond has its own

landscape

mythscape

inscape/escape

soulscape

and is a place of possibility to infinity,
including the possibility of ending.

If endings come, retreat to some chosen, known haven,
a healing place where you are known
and never (or rarely and benevolently) judged—
a place where you are loved beyond your own powers to love yourself
or sometimes others—


And in that place of befriending,
whether friendship or flowerscape,
innerscape or dreamscape or meaningplace of work,
or in the floral-colored waves of ocean
or many-mountained forest light and darkness—
enter the beautiful rooms in the house of your soul.

Learn by being there
what peace can be,
what love can come to the quiet heart,
how well your soul can feel in unmolested circumstance and solitude,
and how deeply and fully and eventually, happily,
you can become yourself again,
or perhaps for the first time.

- Alla Renée Bozarth

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world..

- Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
(Stephen Mitchell translation)

Statues
1989

In Prague, or perhaps Budapest,
the heroes have fallen off their horses.
Here lies a general's profile
and here a helmet, there
a ferrous glove still holding the reins.
The horses, so long inert
under the heavy bodies,
are not used to wind and sun,
nor to the tenderness of their flanks
now that the boots are gone,
and their eyes, so long overcast
by bronze or stone, are slow
to take in the gray city,
the heavyset houses. Gradually
they start to move, surprised
by their new lightness. There's a scent
of rain in the air, and something clicks
inside their heads; it has to do
with green, with pasture. They step down
from their pedestals, unsteady as foals
beginning to walk. No one pays attention
to riderless horses walking
through city streets; these are
supernatural times. Near the edge of town,
where the sky expands, they trust themselves
to break into a run
and then drop out of sight
behind a bank of willows
whose streamers promise water

- Lisel Mueller

In the Deepest Deep


In the deepest deep and the darkest dark,
when the lightest light is the smallest spark,
when oppression reigns and repression leads,
when hate drives men in fanatic creeds…
When power is held like precious seeds
and the ground is barren and the waters freeze…

In these darkest times we must find our spark
where the flame burns bright inside our hearts.
In the deepest deep and the darkest dark,
we must light our light with our heart’s own spark.

There are times of day when the sun shines bright,
and there are times of dark in the deepest night
when the souls of men turn away from light
and nature suffers with disease and blight.

When dark forces rule with selfish greed
when MORE! and MORE! are the ego’s creed,
and accumulation is beyond all need
while children‘s cries are left unheeded.

These are times when each awake one must
with passion, heart, and guts and lust,
bring forth their light, bring forth their voice,
bring heart and truth and life and choice.

Let freedom ring from every place!
Let love flow forth – not just a taste,
but glorious in fullness pour –
let passions fly, let voices roar!

Now raise your voice, and raise your hand,
and take a vow, and take a stand
to glorify yourself and others
to love yourself, to love all others
to live awake, with joy and fun,
to use your best imagination --
creating life as you want it to be
to live your life forever free!

We shall not be suppressed again!
The fight for freedom shall not end!
Eternal vigilance shall see
us now, forever, living free!

- Lion Goodman

The Time Has Come


the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice

disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers' ties
with the sword of death

put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom

crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden

how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting

how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am

- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Nader Khalili)

https://www.WaccoBB.net/forums/wacco...5_12-11-28.png

Rumi's Caravan is delighted to announce the acclaimed musicians who will perform with
Rumi's Caravan on Saturday, Feb. 4 in Sebastopol.

MUSICIANS for the 2 pm MATINEE
Eliyahu Sills and Jason Ranjit Parmar will accompany the poets.

MUSICIANS for the 7 pm SHOW
Bruce Hauschildt will provide his "wall of sound" -- gongs, bells, bowls -- to open the evening show and again after intermission.

Donald Ivan Fontowitz and Jason Ranjit Parmar will accompany the poets and Sufi dancer Chelsea Rose.
TICKETS are available and make great gifts. Get yours now ...

• Online: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2720565d
• In Person: at Many Rivers Books and Tea, 130 South Main Street, Sebastopol, (707) 829-8871
• Or call: Sebastopol Center for the Arts (707) 829-4797

Event proceeds benefit the Sebastopol Center for the Arts (www.sebarts.org)
and the Center for Climate Protection (www.climateprotection.org).

LEARN MORE about the Musicians:
www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1056741807769911

LEARN MORE about the EVENT:
www.facebook.com/events/1200887923299084/

We look forward sharing light and love with you at the 17th Annual Celebration.

Once when young . . .

Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candle light
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.
Then I heard it on the
Cabin roof of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds, where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm. Now I
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy — sorrow — parting — meeting —
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles all through the night.


- Chiang Chieh, 1300 C. E.
(translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

A Lover’s Quarrel

There are some to whom a place means nothing,
for whom the lazy zeroes
a goshawk carves across the sky
are nothing,
for whom a home is something one can buy.
I have long wanted to say,
just once before I die,
I am home.
When I remember the sound of my true country,
I hear winds
high up in the evergreens, the soft snore
of surf, far off, on a wintry day,
the half-garbled song of finches
darting off through alder
on a summer day.
Lust does not
fatigue the soul, I say. This wind,
these ever- green trees, this little bird of the spirit—
this is the shape, the place of my desire. I’m free
as a fish or a stone.
—
Don’t tell me about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to me
about eternal California summer.
It’s enough to have
a few days naked
among three hundred kinds of rain.
In its little plastic pot on the high sill,
the African violet
grows away from the place
the sun last was, its fuzzy leaves
leaning out in little curtsies.
It, too, has had enough
of the sun. I love the sound of a storm
without thunder, the way winds
slow, trees darken, heavy clouds
rumbling so softly
you must close your eyes to listen:
then the blotch, blotch
of big drops plunketing through the leaves.
—
It is difficult,
this being a stranger on earth.
Why, I’ve seen pilgrims come
and tear away at blackberry vines
with everything that’s in them, I’ve seen them
heap their anger
up against a tree
and curse these swollen skies.
What’s this? —a mountain beaver
no bigger than a newborn mouse
curled in my palm,
an osprey curling over tide pools and lifting
toward the trees, a wind at dusk
hollow in the hollows of the eves,
a wind over waves
cooling sand crabs washed up along the beach.
Each thing, closely seen,
appears more strange
than before: the shape of my desire
is huge, vague,
full of many things
commingling—
dying bees among the dying flowers;
winter rain and the smoke it brings.
If it fills me with longing,
it is only because
we are like the rain, falling,
falling through our own most secret being,
through a world of not-knowing.
—
At the end of the day,
I come, finally,
to myself, I return to the strange sounds of a man
who wants to speak
with stones, with the hard crust of earth.
But nothing listens.
When the sea hammers the sea wall,
I’m dumb.
When the nighthawks bleat at dusk, I’m drunk
on the sadness of their songs.
When the moon is so close
you can almost reach it through the trees,
I’m frozen, I’m blind,
or I’m gone.
Fish, bird, stone, there’s something
I can’t know, but know the same:
I hear the rain inside me
only to look up
into a bitter sun.
What do we listen to, what do we think
we hear? The sound
of sea walls crumbling,
a little bird with hunger in its song:
You should have known! You should have known!
—
Like any Nootka rose,
I know there are some
for whom a place is nothing. Like the wild rose,
like the tide and the day,
we come, go, or stay
according to a whim.
It is enough, perhaps,
to say, We live here.
And let it go at that.
This wind lets go
of everything it touches.
I long to hold the wind.
I’d kiss a fish
and love a stone
and marry this winter rain
if I could persuade this battered earth
to let me make it home.

- Robert Greenway

The Vocation

Lit with strange carpentry magic — 
they build time-shares in her head. They carve
names deep in wood, erect beams of metal to hold up
the invincible defense of a bad history. They mourn
what’s subjective. They are shutters closed.
Sometimes I imagine such men in flip-flops
with fat towels draped over confident shoulders.
I imagine they all live in Texas, and find
South Padre too hot, and then I imagine them blaming
diversity for everything. Here, in the middle of grief,
we pout to the rhythm of their sentences.
Suns hiss in their dreams. Soon such critics will meet
daily for prayers. The Pharisees identify the guilty woman.
They are gathering sticks for a witch burning. Curandera
lit with the fire of sighs, casts spells, burns sage,
sweats in a lodge, her own prayers flaming.

- Sheryl Luna

A Lower Center of Gravity


And so
when something wanted is denied,
and life disappoints,
and we are determined
not to be overthrown
and yet again we are -
what do we do?


For myself,
I’m occupied
now
in finding
a lower center
of gravity.


- Scott O'Brien

The New Colossus

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Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


- Emma Lazarus
New York City, 1883
(Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)

Learning

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

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

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

- William Stafford

Alt Right News Feed


for months now
snuggled under warm covers
getting ready to start the day
I check newsfeeds
on the iPhone

and lately
I’ve discovered a new source
Alternative and Right

I turn off the iPhone
snuggle back in the covers
wait
listen
feel for a source
appearing from somewhere beyond
reassuring me
you are okay
reminding me
this too shall pass
encouraging me
it is okay to not know
let fear flow through you
imploring me
expand your tolerance
be open
grow your compassion
care for the plants
care for those you love
who are so distraught

I get out of bed
breath and belly calmer
less toxic almost grateful
a sense of resolve

this news has much to offer
it feeds me

- Sharon Bard

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
mean something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying
leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

- Warsan Shire

Another Long Walk


Given enough time,
there is always another long walk,
another proof of civilization's lie,
and all must prepare to run,
for no matter where you are born,
the sky can crack and drown you in fire.

The prophet said it would be fire
licking at our heels next time
and it is anyone’s bad luck to be born
where death comes cloaked as a walk
that goes on and on, until lives run
out of breath, stumble, and lie

in barren fields with nothing to lie
between them and scorching fire.
There is nothing to do, but to run
as fast as you can, to outdistance time
and this nightmare of a walk
where death is borne

on wings of silver and hope dies, unborn,
among hobbled prints that lie
in mute witness to another long walk
that crushes hearts into red grit of fire
and strangles cries of rage that time
after time, someone must pack up a life and run

to nowhere. This walk, too, shall run
its course, new stars will be born
to light up the heavens and, in time,
history will write, not quite truth, not quite lies,
of who and why and how all became fire.
Some will say there never was a walk

of death, that all people are free to walk
a thousand miles of blackened earth, to run
a marathon of fear, while fire
power presides as midwife to newborn
cries of war. Dark clouds gather and lie
low over fallow fields, where time

has run out. On distant horizon, fire is born,
from smoldering ash left to lie untended.
The time has come for another long walk.

- Patrice Warrender

Autopsy
Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
I dreamed that my passport was made of bone—
That it was a canoe carved out of stone.
“But I can’t swim,” I said. “I will drown
If I can’t make the shore. I’ll die alone
In the salt. No, my body will be found
With millions of bodies, all of them brown.”
I dreamed that my passport was a book of prayers,
Unanswered by the gods, but written down
By fact checkers in suits. “There are some errors
In your papers,” they said. Then took me downstairs
To a room with fingernails on the floor.
I dreamed that my passport was my keyware,
But soldiers had set fire to the doors,
To all doors—a conflagration of doors.
I dreamed that my passport was my priest:
“Sherman, will you battle the carnivores
Or will you turn and abandon the weak?
Will you be shelter? Or will you concede?”
Last night, I dreamed that my passport was alive
When it entered the ICU. It breathed, it breathed,
Then it sighed and closed its eyes. It did not survive.
- Sherman Alexie

Quit eating all that heavy food before bed.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Autopsy
Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
...

---

We Are Alive. We Are for Everything
After Otto Piene

How does beginning go how does
remembering without forgetting go
in front of me in the snow a man
his back lonesome somber
how does beginning go not remembering
flashes of light that showed him images when he
was a boy quick and blinding see the shadows
in the light how does not-remembering go
listen to the hissing see the light
and Germany’s lightness
how bright Germany is like soot
like images quick and blinding how does
beginning go smell the snow
it’s new it fell in the night
in the dark gets forgotten
in images quick listen to the snow
it lies light like linen
something’s burning a hissing somber
like images at night on walls listen
to the hissing smell the smell of burning
look at the soot on a white background.

- Daniela Danz
(Translated from the German by Monica Cassel)

Protest

To sin by silence, when we should protest,

https://www.WaccoBB.net/forums/wacco...6_09-20-40.png

Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticize oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.


- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919)

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently


is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*,
a voice is *saying* it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the sound
of that voice is the sound of *your* voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word "barn"
that the writer wrote
but the "barn" you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And "barn" is only a noun- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.


- Thomas Lux
(12/10/46 - 2/5/17)

How to Stop the Old Conversation

Go out on a winter’s day
and take the winding boardwalk that snugs up against
white sands and the slender grasses of Asilomar beach.

See the power of the Pacific surf, waves breaking,
then building, almost too close to shore today,
so even the wooden planks solidly placed seem to sway as you walk.

Smell your growing weariness —
a sudden rainfall and you’ve left the umbrella in the car,
a slight glance at the man and his dog passing and your toe catches a rock,
a request to snap a picture and your memory goes back fifteen years,
then twenty, then thirty, until you land on what seemed like solid ground,

only to find all the promises broken now.

Set the timer for thirty minutes to walk out, then return, in consideration
for the long drive home and the coming storm and your mind,
which sometimes forgets where the car is parked and where you started.

Return to the lodge, search for dry socks and the water bottle,
queue the book-on-tape, watch bridesmaids in orange hurry in from the rain,
then wonder why a young couple rushing past has missed the wedding.

Invite your own particular aloneness to sit in the seat beside you,
its breath alive with heartbreak and fury and sweet regret,
and as you drive away let the soft words of a new conversation
slide in through the open window —

just listen.

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg

On Immigration

After being humiliated one continues the manuscript of identity.
Activities, diseases, doldrums, the crony affair after the situation,
the one where one faces how one is the undertaste,
how one isn’t the neighbor, the piebaker, a white folk. How one isn't a gorgeous
dream wrapped up in tireless affection, primped for wider screens.
So there one grew, in the coffee sickness, the dictionary browsing
in a fury for the word entitlement to spill—

After convulsing with rage, one continues in the aftermath
of no friends on Tuesdays or shouting fiercely when nothing sobered
to the eleventh hour and the tide shrunk to its sense of privacy where it
had nothing to do with shores or moons, and humiliation sat on its lover's
knee, greeting the eccentric rich and the hourglass with such force
the rage enameled like fine paint to a sheen of deep blue.
Restless in the way that stirs the crowd to its feet to claim the encounter
for the intentions of personal gain without the empire, without the
embarrassment of shaking one’s head, of resting it underneath the ground,
to live sanctioned in the migrancy with an ugly plate for the economy but working ever
so hard. So unplanned, so beyond what one did before the lack of dignity sang an opera.
And organized all the ideas, before rage shot a bird that had once watched effortlessly all the comings and goings.

- Prageeta Sharma

Our Turn


Everything comes to me
Now in tatters, ripped
Un-wholly, and unholy.
When I reach for You
You are air, everywhere
And empty.

We are bleeding
Bleeding out terrors
Torn, drawn, quartered
Questioning why
Us, why now?


This fight—for
Freedom, Justice
Just now, like air
Everywhere,
Nothing new, an old,
An ancient fight.

An expression in Spanish:
"Nos toca a nosotros."
Taken literally,
It touches us,
Like a tap on the shoulder
Or a truncheon

It means "it's our turn,"
Our turn now.

- Rebecca del Rio

The Sacred Life

There comes a time
when you want to run.
Run as far away as you can.

Run from your life.
Run from the task
that is so large
it cannot be done.

But your feet don’t move.

And slowly
life opens up
and help appears.
Not in the form you expect
but in secrets
and winding roads
and gateways into
the world you long for
but don’t know how to reach.

And the task
doesn’t get easier
but life gets more beautiful
with a richness
you couldn’t imagine
and a warmth
you had never felt

As you directly face
the immensity
of what you are
called to do.

- Sherrie Lovler

Earth, You Have Returned to Me

Can you imagine waking up
every morning on a different planet,
each with its own gravity?

Slogging, wobbling,
wavering. Atilt
and out-of-sync
with all that moves
and doesn’t.

Through years of trial
and mostly error
did I study this unsteady way — 

changing pills, adjusting the dosage,
never settling.

A long time we were separate,
O Earth,
but now you have returned to me.

- Elaine Equi

At around age 50, I ended up "back" in my home town for a couple years. Recognizing I had to "take my life" in the positive way, ie claim it, I began taking small positive steps. Practically as long as I was there, though, the feeling continued that my feet were not touching the ground! I'm still not as grounded as I'd like, but at least I can feel myself walking on it, can now celebrate with the author:
A long time we were separate,
O Earth,
but now you have returned to me.

Dear lady at the Desk of Hotel Saint Antoine Rue de Faubourg, Paris France

You mistakenly assumed I was complaining when I arrived
too early to check into my room. “Monsieur,” you said, “I cannot
work miracles.”

How can I be so angry at such a small slight?

With hours to squander
before I take possession of my room,
I curse you under my breath and
board the train to Giverny
where Monet lived and painted water lilies.

Well, merci Madame, I’ve since returned
to New York, imagine me sitting on a bench
not far from where I live. Time shifts wreck havoc
with my equilibrium and I’m a bit down in the dumps.

In front of me I see five species of animal:
Dogs on leashes—which I’ll ignore since they lack free will to roam,
sparrows,
starlings,
squirrels and
pigeons.
A holy array of spritely hunter-gatherers nibbling
at food or else just messing
around in their own private space—separate
from one another.

I sigh, and suddenly these creatures assemble at my feet,
a mosaic of squirrel fur and bird feathers,
a harmonious tableau. Why are they here?
No peanuts, worms or breadcrumbs in my pockets, and for sure,
I am no Francis of Assisi.

Madame, let us explore the concept of miracles.
Is this congregation of small animals bonding
for my benefit alone? No, it’s merely my job to be astonished.

What?
I’ve failed to account for the universe human before me
Old people with walkers, death in their eyes,
nannies shoving strollers,
greenmarket shoppers schlepping canvas totes,
tattooed denizens in undershirts and straw bowlers,
workers carting trash.

I look, squint and gazes a second time,
we never see the same scene
or think the same thought twice.

What am I neglecting to notice as I think this thought?

Ah, Monet, poor man going blind at Giverny,
sky and pond a haze,
plants and water coalescing,
a palate of colors bleeding into a scene
without borders. Nothing permanent.
The ecology at Giverny is not the same
as the lawn near the bench where I sit in Manhattan.

Madame, thanks for booting me out of the hotel.

- Barry Denny

Listening to the Koln Concert


After we had loved each other intently,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...cert_Cover.jpg

we heard notes tumbling together,
in late winter, and we heard ice
falling from the ends of twigs.

The notes abandon so much as they move.
They are the food not eaten, the comfort
not taken, the lies not spoken.
The music is my attention to you.

And when the music came again,
later in the day, I saw tears in you r eyes.
I saw you turn your face away
so that the others would not see.

When men and women come together,
how much they have to abandon! Wrens
make their nests of fancy threads
and string ends, animals

abandon all their money each year.
What is that men and women leave?
Harder then wrens' doing, they have
to abandon their longing for the perfect.

The inner nest not made by instinct
will never be quite round,
and each has to enter the nest
made by the other imperfect bird.

- Robert Bly

Morning Report On My Immigrant Clothing

Awakened wearing old and faded
Calvin Klein sleepwear Made in Kenya
After the shower dried my made in the USA body
with a Martha Stewart towel Made in India, where else
Warmed by my East Coast L.L. Bean bathrobe from El Salvador
I made my coffee with beans gathered from God knows where

Pulling on clothes, still curious and not surprised, my
striped Perry Ellis boxers were Made in China and jeez
my iconic American Carhardt Jeans started in Nicaragua

And what’s more American than a T-shirt? Not my
Made in Peru pepper green “T” from Territory Ahead
And who knows where my socks started, maybe Bangalore
My shabby running shoes let into the country by Adidas,
probably began jogging in Northern India

So I’m almost ready and grab my hat. Now wait for it
My trouble making, eye catching, brilliant red,
Human Rights Campaign hat
emblazoned “Make America Gay Again”
was made in the USA

If they send my clothes back with the immigrants
at least I won’t be totally naked

- Doug von Koss

Whatever You Do

Whatever you do,
don’t waste your time
struggling with issues
about “faith” and
whether “the Other” is real
or not.

Do not worry about
your own existence -
whether you are palpable
or just a mirage
floating in a mirror.

When the worthies
begin debating such things inside
the temple,
do not bow and listen.
Run outside,
rattle the windows,
storm the doors,
let the music of light
come in.

Better still,
turn them out
into the sun,
point their solemn faces
toward the trees
blooming in fall’s
swelling luminosity,
let them see how
brilliant

a leaf
falling gracefully
into its new in carnation,
how majestic the limbs
in their bright emerging configurations.

- Dorothy Walters

It Is I Who Must Begin

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try --
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-- to live in harmony
with the "voice of Being," as I
understand it within myself
-- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

- Vaclav Havel

Ask Much, The Voice Suggested

Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.
Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse
tied to its tree while the strange noise
passes over its ears.
I who in extremity had always wanted less,
even of eating, of sleeping.
Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.
"Want more" --
a cure for longing I had not thought of.
But that is how it is with wells.
Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.
The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:
a cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.

- Jane Hirshfield

Unwritten Note

The news is on everyone’s lips
like flies gathering on excrement:
President Roosevelt has ordered

our removal. Will we be
taken from our homes like vermin?
I know it must be a misunderstanding,

gossip spread in these
harsh times. I choke
on acrid laughter.

It is not possible.
After all, I served
my chosen country in the Army,

in the Great War. So I go to see
my longtime friend and sheriff
of Monterey County.

Is is no joke, Hideo. You’ll have to go.
He can’t look me in the eyes.
When he finds my body hung

in this rented room, with
my certificate of honorary citizenship
expressing honor and respect

for your loyal and splendid
service to the country,
he will understand why

I could not allow
this noble country to tarnish
its honor, or mine.

- Jodi Hottel


Today, February 19, is the 75th anniversary of the day that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of whom were citizens.

love not fear

Particles fly like shrapnel out there
looking for trace — just in case
bonding makes form
invisible glue — our maker

ideas are torn
shreds disappear
something new springs
and the experiment continues

and . . .
that’s all there is!
but within that, we exist

a wonderful blend
we like to be called
emotions swell
but please, no fluffing the spell

past and future are spent
there’s never an end
ride the circles
honor love not fear

- jayro dyer

A Sleep of Prisoners

The human heart can go the lengths of God,
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere.
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size,
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake
But will you wake for pity's sake?

- Christopher Fry

Love Song


I hear other names for You – The Inviolable One,
God, Allah, Wakantanka, Higher Power,
The Ineffable. But why bother,
when You call to me by no name at all and I come.

Neither of us have a word for each other
save Us.
And even that is nobody’s business but Ours.

So let’s forget such partitions as names
and discuss this April day within,
which captures birds in flight
and all their eggs and songs
in one straight deed of liberation.

The mighty have fallen around this peace.
But let’s not get into that, when every moment
is roses, and the scent You gives off tastes
in my nose like Now.
Like Forever. Like Now.

All I want from You is nothing.
Peace is a dance, after all.
Peace moves. Peace laughs.
And Peace’s discussion is boughs of trees,
light, carriages, actors at their bent,
bravery in and out of action,
for after all, what, what, what
in this world is possibly not roses?

- Bruce Moody

Little Boy

for Donald Trump

When you speak, I hear
the child in you demand:

Make me a golden crown
Bring me a spotless mirror
Tell me I an the smartest
richest, most powerful
king ever. You like me
––don’t you? Don’t You?
Answer me.

What is the story

https://www.WaccoBB.net/forums/wacco...3_11-55-38.png

of the sorrow I hear behind
the wall of your bravado?
Did no one welcome your birth?
Did no one notice the
miracle of you?

In your man’s body, you are
a boy-child who fears
he will fail, who was not seen
or heard, whose gifts were
greeted with disdain.

I hold in my arms
the newborn you once were.
I want you to be cherished,
not for being the wealthiest,
cleverest winner,
but for the wholly human
you were created to become.

- Clare Morris

This is terrific; just what we need! A great service! Someone has finally said it just right!
A fellow has been urging me to "pray for the President," and I did, experimentally...but not for the success of his ego! For what you enumerate in your last lines! YES! :heart:

Villanelle for Our Time


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

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

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

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

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

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

- Frank Scott

A great poem. I was introduced to it by Leonard Cohen on his fantastic CD Dear Heather.

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, - John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

- Robert Creeley

Creeley was my neighbor in Bolinas in the early '70's. A GREAT American poet!

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, - John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

- Robert Creeley

---

Heritage

The ram came last
And Abraham did not know that he
Came in answer to the boy’s request
His first strength at the time of the waning day.

The old man raised his head.
When he saw that he was not dreaming
And the angel stood –
With the knife falling from its hand.

The child, freed of his bonds
Saw his father’s back.

Yitzhak, it is said, was not offered as a sacrifice.
He lived a very long time,
Seeing the good, until the light of his eyes dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his descendents.
They were born
With a knife in their heart.


- Haim Guri

The Wings of Love



I will row my boat on Muckross Lake when the grey of the dove

Comes down at the end of the day; and a quiet like prayer

Grows soft in your eyes, and among your fluttering hair

The red of the sun is mixed with the red of your cheek.

I will row you, O boat of my heart! Till our mouths have forgotten to speak

In the silence of love, broken only by trout that spring

And are gone, like a fairy’s finger that casts a ring

With the luck of the world for the hand that can hold it fast.

I will rest my on my oars, my eyes on your eyes, till our thoughts have passed

From the lake and the sky and the rings of the jumping fish;

Till our ears are filled from the reeds with a sudden swish

And a sound like the beating of flails in the time of corn.

We shall hold our breath while a wonderful thing is born

From the songs that were chanted by bards in the days gone by;

For a wild white swan shall be leaving the lake for the sky,

With the curve of her neck stretched out in a silver spear.

Oh! When the creak of her wings shall have brought her near,

We shall hear again a swish, and a beating of flails,

And a creaking of oars, and a sound like wind in sails,

As the mate of her heart shall follow her into the air.

O wings of my soul! We shall think of Angus and Caer

And Etain and Midir, that were changed into wild white swans

To fly round the ring of the heavens, through the dusks and the dawns,

Unseen by all but true lovers, till judgment day

Because they had loved for love only. O love! I will say,

For a woman and man with eternity ringing them round

And the heavens above and below them, a poor thing it is to be bound

To four low walls that will spill like a pedlar’s pack,

And a quilt that will run into holes, and a churn that will dry and crack

Oh! better than these, a dream in the night, or our heart’s mute prayer

That O’Donaghue, the enchanted man, should pass between water and air

And say, I will change them each into a wild white swan,

Like the lovers Angus and Midir, and their beloved ones, Caer and Etain

Because they have loved for love only, and have searched through the shadows of things

For the Heart of all hearts, though the fire of love, and the wine of love, and the wings.



- James H. Cousins

The Lights Are On Everywhere

The Emperor must not be told night is coming.
His armies are chasing shadows,
Arresting whip-poor-wills and hermit thrushes
And setting towns and villages on fire.

In the capital, they go around confiscating
Clocks and watches, burning heretics
And painting the sunrise above the rooftops
So we can wish each other good morning.

The rooster brought in chains is crowing.
The flowers in the garden have been forced to stay open,
And still yet dark stains spread over the palace floors
Which no amount of scrubbing will wipe away.

- Charles Simic

In the Face of Splendor


Take your grief seriously
Become the ash urn
For the vanishing wilderness
Despair for the Dolphins
Make your own salt water
for the disappearing marshes.
The silent Earth is listening.
Be called to outrageous acts of despair

And then,
every now and again,
In the face of splendor,

Turn towards it.

- Kristy Hellum

What The Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

- Marie Howe

Message In A Bottle

I am like the poem
you passed over in
the anthology, then
later discovered
was a jewel.

Hidden in plain sight
I am holding something
sacred inside
like a message in a bottle
still waiting to wash ashore

- Kay Crista

"hidden in plain sight" is all the loved ones around us who we take for granted.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Message In A Bottle

I am like the poem
you passed over in
the anthology, then
later discovered
was a jewel.

Hidden in plain sight
I am holding something
sacred inside
like a message in a bottle
still waiting to wash ashore

- Kay Crista

---

Recipe for Peace

Bare your feet, roll up your sleeves,
oil the immigrant’s bowl.
Open the doors and windows of your house,
invite in the neighbors, invite in strangers off the street.
Roll out the dough, add the spices for a good live, cardamom and soul, cumin and tears.
Store in sesame and sorrow, a dash of salt
pink as new hope.
Rub marjoram and thyme, lemon grass and holy basil on your fingers and pat the dough.
Bless the table, bless the bread,
bless your hands and feet,
bless the neighbors and strangers
off the street.
Bake the bread for a century or more
on a moderate heat
under the olive trees in your backyard
or on the sun-filled stones of Syria,
in the white rocks of Beirut
or behind the walls of Jerusalem.
In the mountains of Afghanistan
and in the skyscrapers of New York
feast with all the migrant tongues
until your mouth understand
the taste of many different homes
and your belly is full so you fall asleep
cradled in the skirts of the world
curled in the lap of peace.

- Devreaux Baker

In Impossible Darkness

Do you know how

https://www.WaccoBB.net/forums/wacco...5_12-56-10.png

the caterpillar
turns?

Do you remember
what happens
inside a cocoon?

You liquefy.

There in the thick black
of your self-spun womb,
void as the moon before waxing,

you melt

(as Christ did
for three days
in the tomb)

conceiving
in impossible darkness
the sheer
inevitability
of wings.

- Kim Rosen

Daffodil

If she could speak

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as she drives her bloom

to open, would she tell us of
the roots beneath her,

who were digging alone all winter
in frozen soil, sending out

moaning tendrils reaching into
the unknown, each one

sensing in dreams what’s needed
by the big one, who’s working

at the surface, chatting and dividing
in maternal bliss, her big bulb bumping into

what is already known?
Would she tell of each

tough rope of root muscling below
to find water, sucking and storing,

offending gophers, outwitting moles?

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I doubt it. The bloom knows

her source, but she doesn’t speak
its language. Her voice celebrates

the silk of longer warmer days,
announces, in her yellow voice, It is time

to heave away
the heavy coat of winter,

worn out now, and way too small.
She clamps her neck to her fierce

rigid stem, who whispers into her throat
his message from below: Dear, our time is ending.

It means nothing. We will begin.
Begin to let go.


- Mary McMillan

Her Roots


A strong wind
wrenched the great Madrone
from her hold in the hillside,
and when she fell
her roots,
hanging in mid-air,
gave us handholds
to lean on and safely swing
through her body
and back onto the trail.

- Trout Black

To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

- Marge Piercy

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.

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I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

- Maya Angelou

The River

I will tell you what I know in my blood
the river does not vanish into night,
but is still there, flowing through dark
to a place that lies beyond: brighter,
greener hills than we can dream of.

Listen! You can hear the river’s song
as it flows over leaf and stone,
in the clear full music of hearts.

Those who love enough soon learn to walk
in rain and remain dry.

- Bill Herrick

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

- Langston Hughes

Great poem!

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Mother to Son

...
- Langston Hughes

---

Meeting Light


Through the windshield, light gleaming
on the fields, the light green willow leaves
running along the creeks
seem brighter set
against the just beginning greening hills

dotted with oaks, cows, sheep,
small clumps of shy-hoofed deer
chomp in well-manured pastures
as I, too, stand richly fed.

Vultures overhead wing soundless circles,
a perched hawk, red-tailed, its haunting call withdrawn,
spies smaller prey;
black wings beat gusts, and clatter
onto walnut limbs to caw and cackle.

I loom with the hunter, quail
with its prey, prattle with companions
until our souls are full-flush-fleshed.

By Walker Creek, a thousand white woolen
eyes crown coyote brush,
dried fennel stalks drop silent seed
among these wild ones I flourish and breathe
under sun-fog-rain sway.

Coiling bends sound the broadening bay
whose undulating light ripples peep between,
lending ease and space
against the pine-clad ridges
as gusting sun plays upon my skin into my depths.

Sprawled on the verge, a car-killed deer
awaits its airborne team with sharpened smell
to pick it clean. All seeps, sings and bounds in me.
Is it the light or the light
that I am leaving?

On boughed knees rest old trees sinking
into softened sod, the turn of seasons watch.
Their path is slowly set, while mine is filled
with urgency to laud and praise, give back
one speck, one jot
of all you pour into my marrowed bones.

- Raphael Block

Morning Poem


Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

- Mary Oliver

Coupon

Friends,
In lieu of a poem
I have written you a
—COUPON—
You may clip it out,
or not,
slip it in your wallet,
or not.
It isn’t redeemable for tangible goods
&/or services of any sort
(unless a Goods &/or Service Provider
should decide to honor it of their own accord,
it’s always possible…)
But for my making:
This coupon is yours to redeem
from yourself,
to give yourself a break
today, any day,
to make yourself a deal,
any deal:
a two-for-one,
A three-for-a-dollar,
a get-out-of-your-own-jail-for-free card,
a take-a-day-off-from-self-doubt-&-self-loathing voucher,
an hour-free-of-despair zone,
whatever deal you want to make with yourself,
whatever you think may be too much to ask of yourself,
but a little something off the price—
10%? 50%? 1000%?—
may help swing the deal,
Then go ahead, redeem this coupon,
swing yourself a deal,
give yourself a break.
What are you waiting for?

(Coupon expires only when you do.)

- Gary Turchin

The Lilies



Hunting them, a man must sweat, bear
the whine of a mosquito in his ear,
grow thirsty, tired, despair perhaps
of ever finding them, walk a long way.
He must give himself over to chance,
for they live beyond prediction.
He must give himself over to patience,
for they live beyond will. He must be led
along the hill as by a prayer.
If he finds them anywhere, he will find
a few, paired on their stalks,
at ease in the air as souls in bliss.
I found them here at first without hunting,
by grace, as all beauties are first found.
I have hunted and not found them here.
Found, unfound, they breathe their light
into the mind, year after year.

- Wendell Berry

A Daily Joy to be Alive

No matter how serene things
may be in my life,
how well things are going,
my body and soul
are two cliff peaks
from which a dream of who I can be
falls, and I must learn
to fly again each day,
or die.

Death draws respect
and fear from the living.
Death offers
no false starts. It is not
a referee with a pop-gun
at the startling
of a hundred yard dash.

I do not live to retrieve
or multiply what my father lost
or gained.

I continually find myself in the ruins
of new beginnings,
uncoiling the rope of my life
to descend ever deeper into unknown abysses,
tying my heart into a knot
round a tree or boulder,
to insure I have something that will hold me,
that will not let me fall.

My heart has many thorn-studded slits of flame
springing from the red candle jars.
My dreams flicker and twist
on the altar of this earth,
light wrestling with darkness,
light radiating into darkness,
to widen my day blue,
and all that is wax melts
in the flame-

I can see treetops!


- Jimmy Santiago Baca

thank you so much Larry, I could feel the twists of the ropes in my own heart as you expressed so eloquently.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

A Daily Joy to be Alive
...

---

A City’s Death By Fire


After that hot gospeller has levelled all but the churched sky,
I wrote the tale by tallow of a city's death by fire;
Under a candle's eye, that smoked in tears, I
Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire.
All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales
Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.
By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why
Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?
In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;
To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath
Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails,
Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.


- Derek Walcott
(1/23/1930-3/17/2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/b...iterature.html

The Transfer of Allegiances

a bodhisattva poem


We’ve become like hungry ghosts
cowering inside this dark age.
May all the fortresses
that we’ve built
finally fall away.
Look!
There!
The Lords of Materialism
are busily working out their plan;
they spout their speeches of division
to make us beholden to fear again.
They make us drunk
as if on a drug
and say: “Ignore what is happening.
Go back to being numb!”
The men of my country
seem so afraid
of everything these days –
their fellow man,
and even women.
It’s like they’ve all become crazed!
But at every direction,
and in every realm,
the Vajra Bodies are spinning again.
Spinning
and spinning
spinning awake inside our cells.
We have what we need
to work with this mind
and transform any living hells.
When the branches and vines of ego
are mindfully and thoroughly pruned,
the Great Reality of Being appears
to which we become attuned.
And the Great Shining Flower that you are
is no longer choked
and finally blooms.

- Frank Owen

Spirit of Place: The Great Blue Heron

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Out of their loneliness for each other
two reeds, or maybe two shadows, lurch
forward and become suddenly a life
lifted from dawn or the rain. It is
the wilderness come back again, a lagoon
with our city reflected in its eye.
We live by faith in such presences.


It is a test for us, that thin
but real, undulating figure that promises,
“If you keep faith I will exist
at the edge, where your vision joins
the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,
feet that go down in the mud where the truth is.”


- William Stafford

O sweet spontaneous earth

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the doting

fingers of
prurient philosophies pinched
and poked

thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy
knees squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring

- e. e. cummings

Then Is All Love? It Is, It Is!

Then is all Love? It is. It is!
Pure Gravity is Love, it loves to seize our feet,
It snatches souls and slows the pulse that, fleet,
Churns life throughout our blood.
Mass calls each neighborhood.
Thus Earth loves us and tugs our cuffs
And roughs our hair and keeps us here
Most dear to all its Mass.
While up above, or far below, depending on how you class and see it,
The Sun says Love, and Earth replies: So be it.
And, hurled about the Universe, transfixed
By Sun’s pure Love, our Earth strolls mixed
With other worlds that in the sling
Of Gravity are freed but kept to, circling, sing
Those songs of amity that Sun insists we make
In cyclings of round-abouting give and take.
As with the Sun and Earth, and Earth to us,
So heart to blood and blood to skin;
The merest atom, molecule or germ knows love within,
Each of the next, and clings to keep.
In soul of merest worm asleep
A kindling whisper burns as bright as Fire above,
To Man, to blood, to Earth’s grim bulk, to Sun,
To Suns beyond our Sun,
To microscopic blink, electric spark beyond that blink,
In Titan push or subterranean shove,
God says one single word that binds us each to all:
Love. Now, listen: Love. And once more listen: Love.
And, echoed:
Love.

- Ray Bradbury (1981)

Here with Sonoma County earth.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

O sweet spontaneous earth
...

---

River

in the dark forest rivers roar,
cutting canyons through the trees.
jagged conifer cliffs soar
& fall to soft willow knees.
obstacles of log & stone
slow the water’s downward dash,
swirling pools where eggs are sown
& baby salmon glint & flash.

under the willows a curving shore
eats soft ripples from the breeze.
boatmen cunningly explore
quiet eddies at their ease.
a heron balances alone,
ignores a turtle’s sudden splash.
she hunts beyond the shallow zone
where baby salmon glint & flash.

such loveliness grew long before
the centuries of human squeeze.
now we struggle to restore
pristine rivers such as these.
where the firs and willows have grown
lovely, thick, tangled & brash,
cool, clear waters purl and drone
so baby salmon glint & flash.

the willows playfully adore
the solemn beauty eagle sees.
where water sings a godly tone
the baby salmon glint & flash.

- Sandy Eastoak

The Low Road

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter,
ten thousand, power and your own paper,
a hundred thousand, your own media,
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

- Marge Piercy

What Is Bounty Without A Beggar

What is bounty without a beggar? Generosity without a guest?
Be beggar and guest; for beauty is seeking a mirror, water is crying for a thirsty man.
Hopelessness and need are tasteful bezel for that ruby.
Your poverty is a Burak;* don't be a coffin riding on other men's shoulders.
Thank God you hadn't the means or you may have been a Pharaoh.
The prayer of Moses was, "Lord, I am in need of Thee!"
The Way of Moses is all hopelessness and need and it is the only way to God.
From when you were an infant, when has hopelessness ever failed you?
Joseph's path leads into the pit; don't flee across the chessboard of this world, for it is His game and we are checkmate! checkmate!
Hunger makes stale bread more delicious than halvah.
Your spiritual discomfort is spiritual indigestion; seek hunger and passion and need!
A mouse is a nibbler. God gave him mind in proportion to his needs.
Without need God gives nothing.
How will you impress God? You are a hundred thousand dinars in His debt!
A beggar shows his blindness and palsy,
he does not say, "Give me bread, O, people! I am a rich man with granaries and palaces!"
Bring a hundred sacks of gold and God will say, "Bring the heart."
And if you bring a dead heart carried like a coffin on your shoulder,
God will say, "O, cheat! Is this a graveyard? Bring the live heart! Bring the live heart!"
If you haven't any knowledge and opinions,
have good opinions about God. This is the way.
If you can only crawl, crawl to Him.
If you can not pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical, agnostic prayer; for God in His mercy accepts bad coin.
If you have a hundred doubts of God,
make them into ninety doubts. This is the way.
O, Seeker! Though you have broken your vows a hundred times,
come again! Come again!
For God has said, “Though you are on high or in the pit consider me, for I am the Way."

- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated By Daniel Liebert)

Senior Discount

I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.

So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.

I’ll wait at register two in my green sweater
with threadbare elbows, smiling
because you’ve forgotten the bag of day-old pastries.

The cashier will tell me a joke about barbers as I wait.
He repeats the first line three times
but the only word I understand is barber.

Over the years we’ve caught inklings
of our shrinking frames and hunched spines.

You’re a little confused
looking for me at the wrong register with a bag
of almost-stale croissants clenched in your hand.

The first time I held your hand it felt enormous in my own.
Sasquatch, I teased you, a million years ago.

Over here, I yell, but not in a mad way.

We’re laughing.
You have a bright yellow pin on your coat that says, Shalom!

Senior Discount, you say.
But the cashier already knows us.
We’re everyone’s favorite customers.

- Ali Liebegott

The Stones

I owned a slope full of stones.
Like buried pianos they lay in the ground,
shards of old sea-ledges, stumbling blocks
where the earth caught and kept them
dark, an old music mute in them
that my head keeps now I have dug them out.
I broke them where they slugged in their dark
cells, and lifted them up in pieces.
As I piled them in the light
I began their music. I heard their old lime
rouse in breath of song that has not left me.
I gave pain and weariness to their bearing out.
What bond have I made with the earth,
having worn myself against it? It is a fatal singing
I have carried with me out of that day.
The stones have given me music
that figures for me their holes in the earth
and their long lying in the dark.
They have taught me the weariness that loves the ground,
and I must prepare a fitting silence.

- Wendell Berry

How Fascism Will Come

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
- attributed to Sinclair Lewis


When fascism comes, it will greet us with a smile. It will get down on its knees to pray. It will praise Main Street and Wall Street. It will cheer for the home team. It will clap from the bleachers when the uninsured are left to die on the street. It will rally on the Washington Mall. It will raise monuments to its heroes and weep for them and place bouquets at their stone feet and trace with their fingers the names engraved on the granite wall and go on sending soldiers to die in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. It will send doves to pluck out the eyes of its enemies, having no hawks to spare.

When fascism comes, it will sit down for tea with the governor of Texas. It will pee in the mosques from California to Tennessee, chanting, "Wake up America, the enemy is here." It will sing the anthems of corporatization, privatization, demonization, monopolization. It will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio. It'll have talking points and a Facebook page and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. It won't bother to read. It will shred all its books. It will lambast the teachers and outlaw the unions.

When fascism comes, it will look good. It will have big hair, pressed suits, lapel pins. It will control all the channels. It will ride in on Swift Boats. It will sit on the Supreme Court. It will court us with fear. It will woo us with hope. When fascism comes, it will sell shares of itself on the stock market. It will get rich, then it will get obscenely rich, then it will stop paying taxes. It will leave us in the dust. It will kick our ass. It won't have to break a sweat to fool us twice. It will be too big to fail.

When fascism comes to America, it will enter on the winds of our silence and indifference and complacency. And on that day, one hundred thousand poets will gather. In book stores and libraries, bars and cafes, in their houses and apartments, in schools and on street corners, they will gather. In Albania, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Macedonia, Malawi, Qatar, crying, laughing, screaming. They will wrap the sad music of humanity in bits of word cloth and hang them, like prayers, on the tree of life.



- Terry Ehret

Animal Rescue

To say nothing of all the moths and wasps
I’ve been opening windows for;

the sheep headlocked in the wire
of a fence,

the newt in the slippery inch
of a dog-bowl of rain,

the spider coming off and off
its wall of death in the kitchen sink

and the bat flopping the living-room floor
in a straight-jacket of dust, cobweb and hair.

---

I have angled your skulls
impossibly free,

poured you out into colour-matched weeds
at the edge of the pond,

offered you into a wineglass and out
to the forest of herbs

and taken you into my own
unravelling hands and worked you loose

in this borrowed house; let you go
on the slopes by the buzzard tree.

Now, who’s coming for me?



- Antony Dunn

Her Roots


A strong wind
wrenched the great Madrone
from her hold in the hillside,
and when she fell
her roots,
hanging in mid-air,
gave us handholds
to lean on and safely swing
through her body
and back onto the trail.

- Trout Black

Covered In Birds

for Bill Horvitz 1947 to 2017

Once our hands were small flightless birds
longing only for the recession of gravity, the wings
of angels. Pressed together, though they did not rise
or raise us up as flapping might, in prayer
they gave off light.

Once I dreamed the two long melancholy notes
of the song sparrow, and sang them back
and dreamed of flight, my plumes open
to sweep the moon that rose above dark hills
a great distance inhabited by sadness

I dreamed the birds, all the birds.
I dreamed crow, those missives of night, those
morning stars erased, whose message remained
a mystery held in the shimmer of feathers in sun
so black they became pure light.

Raptor, too, could seem the source.
Golden Eagle, a peach-white river of flight across fog,
a struck match igniting air. Hawk
was the highest leaf on the tree
and by night became fire.

I dreamed rising and rising from the marsh reeds,
an iridescence shedding water without thought.
I dreamed the heron’s mincing. I dreamed the birds

and saw a gust of gulls that became the horizon –
rising and rising without what we know as thought.
I heard a lullaby and wondered
that the little seed-eater had given Brahms his first notes.

I dreamed mocking bird sang to nourish the flowers
with longing, opening and arising from solitude until
they blossomed into pure joy.

Once I dreamed the birds, all the birds, showed me how
their up carries the weight of light. Opening and rising,
I saw a puff of smoke out over the fields, a crucible
of starlings, open sky, the churn and fall and tumble,
their swoop of flight clear as script I could almost decipher.

I dreamed of all the birds, and vultures came
flying before the scythe of the sun, hard copper
beaks, brown feathers prayer flags fluttering
over my bones.

Rising and arising below clouds whose weight
they alone know, I dreamed the birds,
all the birds I could not name came down,
calling me by the name I had forgotten.

The birds, all the birds came down
and carried me away. In their flight
I read the indecipherable script of the gods.
Peace it said, and as I knew it, the word vanished
in their turning against the wind.


[Composite poem by 9 Sonoma County poets

Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Katherine Hastings
Mike Tuggle
Maya Khosla
Phyllis Meshelum
Jodi Hottel
Greg Mahrer
Larry Robinson
Terry Ehret

CALL FOR ENTRIES: The History of Sonoma County
A Poetry Contest for Adults and Youth
Deadline for entry May 1, 2017

SCA announces a poetry contest, entitled "The History of Sonoma County" which invites local writers to submit poems about the history of Sonoma County. Poems selected from this contest will be displayed at Sebastopol Center for the Arts and winners will be invited to attend and read their winning poem at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts on June 10. The contest juror is Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Iris Jamahl Dunkle. Dunkle is the author of two poetry collections, Gold Passage (2013) and There's a Ghost in this Machine of Air (2015).

The entry deadline is Monday, May 1, 2017. Youth, teens and adults are invited to submit their work and may submit up to three entries per contestant. The fee for adults is $8 for members of the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, $10 for non-members, and $5 for youth entries age 18 and under. For complete contest guidelines visit History of Sonoma County Poetry Contest or visit the Center's website at www.sebarts.org or email a request to [email protected],


Sebastopol Center for the Arts presents
The History of Sonoma County
A Poetry Contest for Adults and Youth
Guidelines
Deadline for Entry: May 1, 2017

Awards:
· One juror will select the winning entries.
· Three Winners will be selected in each of the following categories: Youth (K-5), Junior High (6-8), High School (9-12), Adult
· Winners will read their poems at a reception June 10, 7:30pm,
· Winning entries will be displayed at SCA
· First place winners in all categories will each be awarded a $50 prize, Second place winners will receive a $25 prize and Third place winner will receive a $15 prize.
· Winning entries may be published in SCA's "QuARTerly" and on the website.

Entry Guidelines:
· Entries are online only to be uploaded at: History of Sonoma County Poetry Contest (or https://form.jotformpro.com/70865922357970)
· All entries must be original, unpublished, and not previously exhibited or read at SCA.
· All entries must be submitted in a font no smaller than 12 pt. Times New Roman (or equivalent).
· Each entry must be submitted in a Word Doc or PDF file, on a single 8½ x 11" page, with margins no less than 1 inch around.
· Writers may submit a maximum of 3 entries.
· Writers must submit two copies of each entry, one blind copy (without any author identification for judging), and a second copy identifying the author and city of residency for display. Each entry must be named as follows:lastname.firstname.1namedcopy and lastname.firstname.noname (for the copy without a name.) For example:
o Smith.Amy.1name and Smith.Amy.1noname
o Smith.Amy.2name and Smith.Amy.2noname
o Smith.Amy.3name and Smith.Amy.3noname
· Due to volume considerations, a literary panel may prescreen entries.

Deadlines & Fees:
Entries must be submitted online by May 1, 2017.
Sebastopol Center for the Arts members: $8 per entry (membership is $40 annually).
Non-members: $10 per entry.
Youth age 18 and under $5 per entry.
· Winners will be notified by May 25.

For more information, email [email protected] or 707-829-4797 or visit www.sebarts.org

The Things That Return

I've been down this road a time or two. I've seen the green
grass and the rabbits running and the deer
coming down from the hills to eat the last of the garden's harvest.
I've trained my eyes to catch the gold of sunset,
the silver moon rising, (the silver moon) rising over dry grass
the dry grasses and the leaves that swirl in gusts of surprise
when the tired stars open their eyes wide and dream in 4/4 time.
I've seen the frost slip in without so much as a peep
and leave us wondering where the warm days have fled,
where the warm nights have hunkered down beneath the earth.
Beneath the earth to wait out another winter.
I have closed my eyes and wondered too where the days have gone,
how the days and the nights and the stars of my dreams have blinked out
and left me standing here before that night as black
as the waiting shadow of death - inscrutable as my lover's eyes
the day he said he needed to leave because it was just too hard.
I've waited thinking everything comes around, everything
revolves like the sun and the moon and the tiny round seeds
of the dandelion that rise each spring in my morning garden.
But some things go and never come back.
My darling children's rooms stand empty still.
Empty of them and their yarn tied braids and their lithe
moon spirit bodies shining in their beds at midnight.
And no turnings of the moon's bright face smiling through
veiled windows bring back the tiny fingers and toes,
the endless songs of honeyed childhood soprano.
My love has not returned, not come round through the eternal
revolving door of love's spring scent blossoming pink on cherry boughs.
The things that return it seems are the truths that ring round our cabin doors
ring round our frost-pained windows with each new season of life.
Not the personal grasping for yesterday's love that lies darkening
the fallen leaf, but fresh new petals, a different shade of rose,
a silver hand opening that leads fall toward winter -
that sometimes startles with its clarity as the crisp cold descends,
as the bright leaves flee before it toward their dark beds.

- Diane LaRae Bodach

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass

Babi Yar

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

“They come!”

“No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”

“They break the door!”

“No, river ice is breaking…”

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!

- Yevgeny Yevtushenko - 7/18/32 - 4/1/17

(Translated by Benjamin Okopnik)

Moss Carpet, Sky Blanket


Here we are again, fellow traveler.
Here.
Again.
You.
Me.

Have the memories started for you yet?

Here we are again, fellow traveler
in yet another troubled time.
Another troubled time.

Hearts are burdened.
Families are being broken.
Bonds of trust have been dissolved
all with the quick-flick
of jet-black ink
on rough-feeling paper
that has never known empathy.

Here we are again, fellow traveler.
The curriculum is now set.
The School of Soft Attention is now taking students.

Grandmothers of the Buffalo Nation
are out there crying and bleeding in the snow again.
The latest 'Great White Father' doesn't remember,
and hasn't really
let the full history
settle into his bones.

Here we are again, fellow traveler.
Mothers of the Desert
are out there fighting
to protect their young
along some unknown fence line.

And you and me...
students of the School of Soft Attention...

...we're the witnesses
that have to see
because our hearts can't not
and our minds
are of The Way,
and this is our way
not to turn away
from what’s really happening.

- Robert Rich

You are cordially invited to join us this coming Sunday afternoon from 2:00 to 4:00 at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts in a celebration of National Poetry Month. Your friends and neighbors will be sharing their favorite poems. Admission is free.

Prayer For April

As April begins
"April is a generous month", she said
‘’Generous rain, light singing birds’’.
Even a mean heart acknowledges the bond
Linking grass to clouds,
Linking what we know of here
To the blue tingling world of beyond,
I’ve seen mean hearts turn generous
So why should I limit myself to being
Only what I think I know,
When I might dream of another me?
The year is taking shape.
So am I.
I think I’ll go for a stroll with hope.
When I walk through the April light I see
A gentle twig is more durable
Than a stubborn tree.

- Brendan Kennelly

Cargo

You enter life a ship laden with meaning, purpose and
gifts
sent to be delivered to a hungry world,
and as much as the world needs your cargo,
you need to give it away.

Everything depends on this.
But the world forgets its needs,
and you forget your mission, and
the ancestral maps used to guide you
have become faded scrawls on the parchment of dead
Pharaohs.

The cargo weighs you heavy the longer it is held.
Spoilage becomes a risk.
The ship sputters from port to port and at each you
ask:
"Is this the way?"
But the way cannot be found without knowing the cargo,
and the cargo cannot be known without recognizing
there is a way.

It is simply this:
You have gifts.
The world needs your gifts.
You must deliver them.
The world may not know it is starving,
but the hungry know,
and they will find you
when you discover your cargo
and start to give it away.

- Greg Kimura
(1956-2017)

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.



- Siegfried Sassoon

Spring Again

Again the violet rises from the underground,
the rose from Hades grows.

What rocked their lives into life
also shoved the mountains into skies,
forged the wind that chiseled them,
deepened already deep seas.

God of the underworld, Pluto of the gold –
let me pay for the privilege of life,
let me bow in gratitude
for eternal Time into which I came
and through whose beaded curtain pass.

Thank you for the torture of the roots
that made this spring of letters
flower on this page like iris, like ixia,
like eyes that write the air and see.

- Bruce Moody

Celebration
Brilliant, this day—a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green—
whether it's ferns or lichen or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes—
greener than ever before.
And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for blessing,
a festive rite, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.
- Denise Levertov