Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

For Tom Sharp


Once there was a time when it was necessary
to remove ourselves from nature. Once.
To distinguish, to see within
these selves is the objective. It's second nature


now. This chain-of-being buried
& nearly forgotten. Paved over in sediment
like walled in cities, lessons in childhood,
other experiences qualified or in need of


the missing link. "Man is held highest on Earth
& below the Angels." The intention:
toward God. Then later, toward a controlled state -
technology. The competition is fierce


& it is not. An Angel (many?) who inhabits
the rock suggests you skip its flat surface
on the river. Interfacing the world of eyes,
you pick it up: sentient self awareness


beyond the organs of particularity. Yes, you are
the rock & each plant & animal whose dust
compresses here. A moment of your time.
It is easiest to relate to the air. You fill of it.


& who & what it has been wears your blood
like a coat - becoming it, becoming warm.
You begin to see the choices, how desire determines
the who of you. The chain dissolves into Angels.


You skip the rock across the river, letting go.
We have become both worlds now.


- Bill Vartnaw

This is an astonishing poem-- I would like to see more poems from Mr. Vartnaw. I'm not familiar with his work, but I would like to be.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

For Tom Sharp


Once there was a time when it was necessary
to remove ourselves from nature. Once.
To distinguish, to see within
these selves is the objective. It's second nature


now. This chain-of-being buried
& nearly forgotten. Paved over in sediment
like walled in cities, lessons in childhood,
other experiences qualified or in need of


the missing link. "Man is held highest on Earth
& below the Angels." The intention:
toward God. Then later, toward a controlled state -
technology. The competition is fierce


& it is not. An Angel (many?) who inhabits
the rock suggests you skip its flat surface
on the river. Interfacing the world of eyes,
you pick it up: sentient self awareness


beyond the organs of particularity. Yes, you are
the rock & each plant & animal whose dust
compresses here. A moment of your time.
It is easiest to relate to the air. You fill of it.


& who & what it has been wears your blood
like a coat - becoming it, becoming warm.
You begin to see the choices, how desire determines
the who of you. The chain dissolves into Angels.


You skip the rock across the river, letting go.
We have become both worlds now.


- Bill Vartnaw

---

Song: The Kiss


We were walking through
A department store in Paris,
Escaping the rain,
The sort of French rain
That changes in intensity
If you look at it,
Then changes back if you don't.
You went to lingerie,
And I to electronics,
And then we met again. It was there
That you noticed them, in furnishings,
Relaxing on a couch, his arm
Draped around her shoulder.
She pecked him on the cheek.
He didn't seem to notice.
Practicing for marriage,
You said, a bit too wryly
I thought, then stared at them
With You. He was pompadoured,
Italian, rough and beautiful,
With muscles so prominent
They seemed to be tattooed,
And you must have felt a twinge
Moving up your throat
To your face, for it settled
Into a smile, half adoration,
Half resignation. And she, Italianate,
Shapely as that ivory statue
Pygmalian called "my virgin beauty,"
With hair so long and black
I could almost see myself
Reflected in it, and behind me
You watching me watching
Her small breasts move
Beneath her black t-shirt.
Then on we went, you to where
The silk scarves were,
All the rage that year,
And I to toys to see
What passed for toys those days,
And then we met again,
By the escalator, and out
The revolving doors we went,
Hand in hand, for this was Paris,
Where even the middle-aged
Will behave like young lovers
In the rain, waiting for bad weather
To bring them to their youth again.
And there they were, standing
In the rain that hadn't changed
For an hour. They were kissing,
Their tongues wrestling
In that eternal battle
No one wins or loses.
His hand was on her breast,
Cupping it; her hand on top of his,
As if to keep it there forever
Were a commitment they'd just now taken on.
And you said, laughing,
If you let me kiss him
I'll let you kiss her!
Then we set out again,
Hand in hand, thirty years married,
Across the busy Seine,
And then I was the one laughing,
And you, I thought for a moment
You were crying,
But it was only the rain in Paris,
Relentless and unchanging.
- Steve Orlen

Earth Prayer

O Endless Creator, Force of Life, Seat of the Unconscious, Dharma,
Atman, Ra, Qalb, Dear Center of our Love, Christlight, Yahweh, Allah,
Mawu, Mother of the Universe…

Let us, when swimming with the stream, become the stream…
Let us, when moving with the music, become the music…
Let us, when rocking the wounded, become the suffering..

Let us live deep enough till there is only one direction…
and slow enough till there is only the beginning of time…
and loud enough in our hearts till there is no need to speak…

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,
let us see it in everything and everyone,
till we admit to the mystery that when I look deep enough into you,
I find me,
and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart,
you recognize it as your secret, which you thought no one else knew…

O let us embrace that unexpected moment of unity as the atom of God…
Let us have the courage to hold each other when we break and worship what unfolds…

O nameless spirit that is not done with us,
let us love without a net beyond the fear of death
until the speck of peace we guard so well becomes the world…

- Mark Nepo

Remembering the Big Bang


Before everything flew apart, separated,
it all happened at once. Spring ice storms
and summer thunderheads. Dead of winter
Gray ground and mockingbirds high


in the redwoods telling everyone their song
was wonderful, worth stealing. Time was compact,
pressed tight so that birth and death overlapped
and, at any moment, love happened over and over.


Inside there was no outside. The day
your mother threw your brother down
the backstairs isn't separate
From the afternoon, several years


From now, under a cloudless sky,
The Mediterranean folds you into
her turquoise, malachite embrace, returns
you to the dark, salty womb of beginnings.


Death, impersonal—even a daughter's,
love too, passion
on a starless Sonoran night
as the cicadas buzzed,


sleep a restless, burning dream.
Before the Big Bang, everything
Holy and secular,
A story and a history,


told, over and over and at once,
No words, spoken or sung.
No separation,
no one, no other.


- Rebecca del Rio

Exit Signs


Wherever I am I notice exit signs.
(Most seem to be printed in TIMES CAPITAL.)
I particularly like the lighted ones,
even though they can distract you from the movie.
The green ones are the most common,
although there are a fair number of red ones.
Once in a great while
you can see a luminous blue one,
glowing like a sapphire in the dark.
Even printed paper signs taped above a doorway
give me a warm feeling.


I must admit, though, that doors saying
“Emergency Exit Only!” give me pause.
When you open them, all kinds of things happen:
lights flash, bells and sirens go off
and people get very upset.
Sometimes they yell at you or
threaten to eject you from the premises.
I open them anyway.


But my favorite exit sign
is the story of Shakyamuni
who planted himself under the bo tree
vowing to sit until he awakened -
and kept his vow!
That one shines like a beacon
through the darkest night.


- Larry Robinson

Quest For Truth


I see it was always
impossible.
By Grace I knew
You suddenly
in a room one day.

As soon as I stepped
out of that room, I stepped
back into myself


and 42 years later,
I laugh that I ever
donned the visored helmet,
picked up my lance and
mounted my donkey Rosinante


to go out in
this world of whizzing steelt
to try and follow You.


I laugh, and
go on trying.


- Max Reif

Hi Larry,
Thank you for this. I have an exit sign story. Years back I was flying to Phoenix
and had a choice of seats. I thought, is there divine order as to whether it
is my "time to exit", so I can leave it up to destiny? Or-should I choose a seat
near the exit, so I could get out quickly. I don't know if it was a practice then
for the passenger by the sign to help everyone get out. I was not aware of it
if so. I decided to "play it safe" and picked a seat at one of the exits. When
the plane rumbled to a start, the exit sign fell off and landed on my head.
Divine leela for sure.
Sher

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Exit Signs


Wherever I am I notice exit signs.
(Most seem to be printed in TIMES CAPITAL.)
I particularly like the lighted ones,
even though they can distract you from the movie.
The green ones are the most common,
although there are a fair number of red ones.
Once in a great while
you can see a luminous blue one,
glowing like a sapphire in the dark.
Even printed paper signs taped above a doorway
give me a warm feeling.


I must admit, though, that doors saying
“Emergency Exit Only!” give me pause.
When you open them, all kinds of things happen:
lights flash, bells and sirens go off
and people get very upset.
Sometimes they yell at you or
threaten to eject you from the premises.
I open them anyway.


But my favorite exit sign
is the story of Shakyamuni
who planted himself under the bo tree
vowing to sit until he awakened -
and kept his vow!
That one shines like a beacon
through the darkest night.


- Larry Robinson

---

A Thousand Little Irritants


The way mail piles up
the way we argue
the way we fail
and keep failing
the way we age
and carry grudges
the way we hurt ourselves
and each other
the way we smell
or others smell
the way we have to wait
the way we have to hurry
the way no one cares
the way we don’t care
the way our government doesn’t understand
the way our understanding doesn’t matter
the way we live or don’t live
the way we die
or will die

and tomorrow
the Sun
like a giant ball of wonder
will bounce up
happy and yellow
inventing each day
like it’s the only thing that matters


- Gary Turchin

An Autumn Sunset
I

Leaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
And, halting higher,
The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,
Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,
That, balked, yet stands at bay.
Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day
In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,
A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine
Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,
And in her hand swings high o’erhead,
Above the waster of war,
The silver torch-light of the evening star
Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.

II

Lagooned in gold,
Seem not those jetty promontories rather
The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,
Uncomforted of morn,
Where old oblivions gather,
The melancholy unconsoling fold
Of all things that go utterly to death
And mix no more, no more
With life’s perpetually awakening breath?
Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,
Over such sailless seas,
To walk with hope’s slain importunities
In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not
All things be there forgot,
Save the sea’s golden barrier and the black
Close-crouching promontories?
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow’s shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and sucked back
Into the primal void,
That should we on the shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?


- Edith Wharton

First Rain


The first day of rain

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should be declared
a natural holiday.


All stops, somehow.
A new season so simply turns.


All is immediate.
The instant of first wet on skin.
Sounds dance and mingle.
Soils, leaves, muddy waters
blend into deeply breathed
fragrances, become a
raw tonic
gone far too long.


We go through the day
cocooned.
A fire perhaps,
and time to enjoy it,
if we are lucky.


There's something Sunday
about the first day of rain,
suspended between
today and
forever.


Memories take us,
deeper than words.
Further back than
recall can bring us.
Leave us off to
wander further beyond thought
to pure feeling,
back to some safety
of somewhere we
seem to have
lost.


Close the shops,
silence the clocks.
It's the first day of rain.


- Scott O'Brien

Making Porridge



Soak dried apricots to expand
and meet the day; toast oats
to drive out the rancid; add
milk for the moisture of life;
a dash of salt for rock-bottom support;
a handful of blueberries― their star-like
openings touching our origins. Peel an
apple for nakedness of soul, and bow
to its core, whose seeds of wisdom
can be tapped as needed.


Bring all these to a slow simmer.
Let them bubble and mingle
well to give of their sweetness.


Sprinkle wheatgerm from their
fields of brown waves; yogurt to foster
bovine patience. Cradle the bowl.
Enjoy its warmth and wafting scents.
Chew carefully to overcome
a lifetime of hurrying.


Choose your own way
and whether it tastes bitter
or sweet, embrace it!
- Raphael Block

"Natural Holliday" That's brilliant!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

First Rain
The first day of rain
should be declared
a natural holiday.

---

This Earth, My Brother


The dawn crack of sounds known
rending our air
shattering our temples toppling
raising earthwards our cathedrals of hope,
in demand of lives offered on those altars
for the cleansing that was done long ago.
Within the airwaves we carry
our hutted entrails; and we pray;
shrieks abandoned by lonely road-sides
as the gunmen’s boots tramp.
I lift up the chalice of hyssop and tears
to touch the lips of the thirsty
sky-wailing in a million spires
of hate and death; we pray
bearing the single hope to shine
burnishing in the destiny of my race
that glinting sword of salvation.
In time my orchestra plays my music
from potted herbs of anemone and nim
pour upon the festering wounds of my race,
to wash forever my absorbent radiance
as we search our granary for new corn.
There was that miracle we hoped for
that salvation we longed for
for which we said many prayers
offered many offerings.

In the seasons of burning feet
of bad harvest and disastrous marriages
there burns upon the glint edge of that sword
the replica of the paschal knife.
The sounds rounded our lonely skies
among the nims the dancers gather their cloths
stretching their new-shorn hides off offered cows
to build themselves new drums.
Sky-wailing from afar the distant tramp
of those feet in rhythm
miming underneath them violence.
Along the roads lined with mimosas
the mangled and manacled are dragged
to the cheers of us all.
We strew flowers at the feet of the conquerors
beg for remission of our sins…

…He will come out of the grave
His clothes thrown around him;
worms shall not have done their work.
His face shall beam the radiance of many suns.
His gait the bearing of a victor,
On his forehead shall shine a thousand stars
he will kneel after the revelation
and die on this same earth.

And I pray
That my hills shall be exalted
And he who washes me,
breathes me
shall die.
They led them across the vastness
As they walked they tottered
and rose again. They walked
across the grassland to the edge of the mound
and knelt down in silent prayer;
they rose again led to the mound,
they crouched
like worshippers of Muhammed.
Suddenly they rose again
stretching their hands to the crowd
in wasteful gestures of identity
Boos and shrieks greeted them
as they smiled and waved
as those on a big boat journey.
A sudden silence fell
as the crowd pushed and yelled
into the bright sharp morning of a shooting.

They led them unto the mound
In a game of blindman’s bluff
they tottered to lean on the sandbags
Their backs to the ocean
that will bear them away.
The crackling report of brens
and the falling down;
a shout greeted them
tossing them into the darkness.

and my mountains reel and roll
to the world’s end.


- Kofi Awoonor
(1935-2013)

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,

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I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door --
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor --
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

- Billy Collins

This morning I fell in love with a poem.

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Aimless Love

---

...at last the noble lifter lowered his life-long burden

--for a brief moment of guilt-ridden relief.

as he stretched his pain for the first time ever, he saw that he too had been leaning hard on others

--oh so hard.

humbly he gathered his burden again, it was lighter.

he no longer carried it alone. he never had.

the burden became his gift to the world

-- to all who had carried him for so long.

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Which Are You?

---

One More Time


When willful, we think
that truth moves from
our head to our heart
to our hands.


But bent by life,
it becomes clear that
love moves the other way:
from our hands to our
heart to our head.


Ask the burn survivor
with no hands who dreams
of chopping peppers and
onions on a spring day.


Or the eighty-year-old jazz
man who loses his hands
in a fog. He can feel them
but no longer entice them
to their magic.


Or the thousand-year-old
Buddha with no arms
whose empty eyes will
not stop bowing to the
unseeable center.


Truth flows from us,
or so we think, only
to be thrown back
as a surf of love.


Ask the aging painter
with a brush taped to his
crippled hand—wanting,
needing to praise it all
one more time.


- Mark Nepo

Unvarnished


my mother said
when the morning sky is pink
the circus will come to town

my mother never explained
moon splattered stories
laid out frame by frame
edges smoothed and tucked away

my mother never believed
the hazy terrain of
theories
predictions

diagnoses

my mother trusted
life's murky plot
held in service
of an unvarnished reality

my mother expected
night to fall hard
the circus
to move on

- Les Bernstein

Epitaph
When I die
Give what's left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.

And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I've known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not on your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn't die,
People do.
So, when all that's left of me
Is love,

Give me away.


- Merrit Malloy

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law And endlessly chant complicated sutras. Before doing that, though, they should learn How to read the love letters sent by the wind and rain, the snow and moon.

- Ikkyu

October


The first rain fell early this morning
disappeared into the dry peaks
like quiet tears shed by abandoned gods
who still keep watch, waiting for prayers

The rains will keep falling now
the river will slowly rise, and the silence
Gray winds will sift long psalms of mist
soft fingers searching for prayers


- Cynthia Poten

Eleventh Hour


start over
one giant step
back to square one
the first hop-scotch box
where I balance precariously
on one foot... barely breathing
only this time shyly smiling instead
of biting my lip and twitching my face
it doesn’t matter now if I lose my balance
and fall completely outside the box and never
again follow the rules of a game created by men
strutting on the cutting edge of lust and destruction
today I trade in reason for the willingness to surrender
the sequential and linear for the outbreath of thirty three
whirling dervishes at the center of my soul’s insistent longings
finally knowing I may enter any square at any time (or not)
and finding myself (and you) at the portal of the eleventh
hour which is just a room without walls, floors or ceiling
safely resting in a rapidly expanding limitless space of
requiescence where we find no pushing or pulling of
any kind only a forgiveness and abiding trust in
the unfolding of each moment bubbling into
the next and the next one bursting with a
light of its own which is something like
love and is accompanied by a hum
so deep it can only travel thru all
matter and carries you with it
until you have completely
forgotten your self and
simply ripple out into
circles beyond
any death


- Fran Carbonaro

Fran, you are a wonderful poet. I loved reading this poem, and am sending it on to my daughter/poet. All the best, Bev Riverwood

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Eleventh Hour

start over
one giant step
back to square one
the first hop-scotch box
where I balance precariously
on one foot... barely breathing...

---

Start seeing everything as God
But keep it a secret
Become like a man who is awestruck
and nourished, listening to a golden nightingale
sing in a beautiful foreign language
while God nests invisibly upon its tongue.
Hafiz, who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
wagging its ecstatic tail,
you bend down and whisper in its ear
"Beloved, I am so glad that you are happy to see me,
Beloved, I am so glad, so very glad, that you have come."


- Hafiz

Ghost Road Song


for my father, 11/19/1927 – 6/27/2009


I need a song.
I need a song like a river, cool and dark and wet,
like a battered old oak; gnarled bark,
bitter acorns,
a song like a dragonfly:
shimmer - hover - swerve -
like embers, too hot to touch.


I need a song like my father’s hands:
scarred, callused, blunt,
a song like a wheel,
like June rain, seep of solstice,
tang of waking earth.


I need a song like a seed:
a hard and shiny promise,
a song like ashes:
gritty, fine, scattered;
a song like abalone, tough as stone,
smooth as a ripple at the edge of the bay.


I need a song so soft, it won’t sting my wounds,
so true, no anger can blunt it,
so deep, no one can mine it.


I need a song with a heart wrapped in barbed wire.


I need a song that sheds no tears,
I need a song that sobs.
I need a song that skates along the edge of black ice,
howls with coyotes,
a song with a good set of lungs,
a song that won’t give out, give up,
give in, give way:
I need a song with guts.


I need a song like lightning, just one blaze of insight.


I need a song like a hurricane,
spiraled winds of chaos,
a snake-charming song,
a bullshit-busting song,
a shut-up-and-listen-to-the-Creator song.
I need a song that rears its head up like a granite peak
and greets the eastern sky.


I need a song small enough to fit in my pocket,
big enough to wrap around
the wide shoulders of my grief,
a song with a melody like thunder,
chords that won’t get lost,
rhythm that can’t steal away.
I need a song that forgives me my lack of voice.


I need a song that forgives my lack of forgiveness.


I need a song so right
that the first note splinters me like crystal,
spits the shards out into the universe
like sleek seedlings of stars; yes,
that’s the song
I need,


the song to accompany you
on your first steps
along the Milky Way,
that song with ragged edges,
a worn-out sun;
the song that lets a burnt red rim
slip away into the Pacific,
leaves my throat
healed at last.


- Deborah Miranda

What The Dog Perhaps Hears


If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.


- Lisel Mueller

Night Heralds


There are beatings in life so bad – I don’t know –
beatings as from God’s hatred – as if
the depths of everything we ever put up with
jammed in the soul! – I don’t know –

Not many – but they exist…. trenches cut
into the fiercest face and the strongest back.
They are the horses of Attila,
night heralds sent us by Death,

mad crazes of the Savior of the soul
away from a loving faith Fate damned,
bloody blows – rifle cracks –
like bread that burns hot from the oven.

And Man – poor poor Man! He turns his eyes –
as when someone for attention behind one claps hands –
he turns his crazy eyes, and everything alive
clogs like a bog of guilt in that glare.

There are blows in life so hard – I don’t know –

- César Vallejo
(From Los Heraldos Negros
Translated by Bruce Moody)

Mother Lode

in a dream I discovered jewels
buried deep in magma
glistening through rock and mud
colored and shimmering
pulsing like stars

the magma became flesh
the jewels our shared minerals and molecules
collective struggles under murky loads
pulsing like heartbeats

it won’t work to mine them out with picks and pulleys
or frack them with blasts of chemicals
or slice them with lasers and scalpels
they belong where they are embedded embodied
inside safe waiting

waiting soft stillness
settling to reveal sparkles
unfurling furiously from the deep
our essence
our future

have you discovered them yet?

in a dream I discovered jewels
buried deep in magma
glistening through rock and mud
colored and shimmering
pulsing like stars

the magma became flesh
the jewels our shared minerals and molecules
collective struggles under murky loads
pulsing like heartbeats

it won’t work to mine them out with picks and pulleys
or frack them with blasts of chemicals
or slice them with lasers and scalpels
they belong where they are embedded embodied
inside safe waiting

waiting soft stillness
settling to reveal sparkles
unfurling furiously from the deep
our essence
our future

have you discovered them yet?


- Sharon Bard

Abstraction / Mandala / Morning LIght


the single stone
at the foot of the mountain
the hole in the sky
where the day goes
the hole in the earth
where the breath goes
the wholeness of being
where the psyche moves
toward

you get the quiet
the solitude

awake and yes

alone

what joy
there is
though
in quiet
some kind of freedom and not a disaster at all

a gift of silence
a gift of motion
a gift of lean words and times and belly

move around the fire
into words

morning light
sun out there
somewhere soon

broken is the shadow side
of together
broken is the shadow side
of home
broken is the winter within


- Jack Crimmins

Here Today

Here today
Gone tomorrow

A grey hair
Falls onto a white page

Me reading
The sign & the symbol

Not many days left
In my personal calendar


- Robert Leverant

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890)

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Abstraction / Mandala / Morning LIght


the single stone
at the foot of the mountain
the hole in the sky
where the day goes
the hole in the earth
where the breath goes
the wholeness of being
where the psyche moves
toward

you get the quiet
the solitude

awake and yes

alone

what joy
there is
though
in quiet
some kind of freedom and not a disaster at all

a gift of silence
a gift of motion
a gift of lean words and times and belly

move around the fire
into words

morning light
sun out there
somewhere soon

broken is the shadow side
of together
broken is the shadow side
of home
broken is the winter within


- Jack Crimmins

---

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer


I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the

bridegroom

had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing ever day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.


- Wendell Berry

In Love

In violent flight
from tree to feed
her whole body
a heartbeat
an armor of feathers
with one fine eye
fierce she comes again
to flower.

- Danielle Bryant

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
For hope must not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end

Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.

This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.

Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.

Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.

- Wendell Berry

Prairie Restoration Project


The Midwest is a huge flat kitchen table I am sitting at,
drinking rusty water, looking at a huge flat field
out the window. The field’s the actual
size of loneliness, emptied of people.
With my looking, I try to gather
its birds picking at some seeded thing, its combed
pattern of plow-strokes, its gravel on a road
dividing field from field, to pull them all in close
against the way looking at it feels
like a dispersal. As if to feel how each
bit of gravel could be back
with its mountain again or deep in the ground,
or at least to understand how it isn’t, & won’t be
in this life, I roll the fragments
between thumb and forefinger, every
jagged edge and ridge, each smooth lip,
scallop, curve, non-descript
pebbles upon pebbles of it. Where have you been. Loneliness
whose sheep I gather from pasture,
herding them now into a very small pen. Always, one
is missing, or I lost count, counted wrong, never knew
how many we started off with. When is it
that the singular became
this countless many, as if a thing bearing
no name to begin with
had shattered. What’s that called, at the beginning—
whatever grew in the field or grazed there.
How we blink and chew and find ourselves
cubicle-hunched, tightened under humming fluorescents,
shrinking down in rented mud. Dutifully visiting
the raised square of dirt someone called garden, poking it
with little heart, having signed the shitty contract
for the dim apartment where the appliances
only half-work, and each passing night
breaks their backs even further. I counted wrong.
I remember what a mountain was
was dry macaroni glued to a sheet of paper
in a kitchen in the later part of the last century. I picked
the pieces off each by each in boredom or nervousness;
they ticked dryly against the side of a paper cup.
How many fields like this there are ahead of us, blue
with the absence of tallgrass.
I am sitting at the table, and what do I know of sheep.
- Ari Banias

Traveling Through Cultures of Eyes


I passed through a city where I was seen.
A city of living in the eyes,
a city of presence.
where to look carefully is a developed art,
a slow, thoughtful practice.

There is the good solid warmth of the white-coated waiter
as he brings each course of dishes and heavy white napkins.
Belen’s youth smiles her delight into our eyes.
Alcira tells the story from Bergman’s last film and our eyes
well up in a long look of recognized grief.
Otilia’s eyes pierce mine with her passionate concern,
What is happening to my friend’s child?
The grandmother putting on her white scarf at Plaza de Mayo,
where the mothers of the disappeared have kept meeting for thirty years,
returns my honoring look with a long tender sweet smile,
so familiar I remember my grandmother’s eyes.
Alicia’s eyes catapult a stream of aliveness.
Her eyes suspend time, holding me locked into the dance.
The man with his white shirtsleeves rolled up,
who murmurs gently in English as we dance
meets my eyes with anticipation without intrusion,
in this city where the dance of eyes always precedes the dance.

The journey home is to pass through cultures of eyes.
In D.C., the eyes bore holes in the polished floors,
or ricochet across faces as fast as the clicking heels.
Back in Maine, eyes glance by with a comfortable vagueness.

The loss is stunning.

Just let me find the eyes of the graying curly haired man
who passed by in the Barrancas de Belgrano,
looking with a slow focused intelligence,
without a thread of seduction, just a look of consideration,
a breath of mature presence passing by.
I could live my life with a man who looked at me that way.

But today, it is enough to put on my foul weather gear
and head out into this spring pelting rain
wide eyed, watching everything with my strong gaze.


The black crow walking intently on the brilliant new green.
My beloved oak pregnant with legions of budding leaves.
My bay stoked into storm silvered eruptions.
The roiling ocean of sky
hurtles over my wide open eyes,
receiving all of this.
And every detail of this spring storm
looks right back at me,
straight into my eyes, steady,
and unflinching.

- Elizabeth Garber

I will be traveling and mostly out of internet range so this is the last poem I will be posting for the next three weeks. Many blessings to us all.
Larry


Earth Dweller


It was all the clods at once become
precious; it was the barn, and the shed,
and the windmill, my hands, the crack
Arlie made in the ax handle: oh, let me stay
here humbly, forgotten, to rejoice in it all;
let the sun casually rise and set.
If I have not found the right place,
teach me; for, somewhere inside, the clods are
vaulted mansions, lines through the barn sing
for the saints forever, the shed and windmill
rear so glorious the sun shudders like a gong.

Now I know why people worship, carry around
magic emblems, wake up talking dreams
they teach to their children: the world speaks.
The world speaks everything to us.
It is our only friend.

- William Stafford

A Brief For The Defense


Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.


- Jack Gilbert

welcome back, Larry; what an auspicious reemergence. we (at least my part of 'we') missed you. I trust that you are well, rested, and happy to be back.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

A Brief For The Defense
...

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Homage to a Yoga Mat

I am the yogi, you are the mat
however long I've been gone, however I arrive
you are there to meet me

you don't expect perfection

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...6_12-17-36.png

you don't judge my form or habits
you ask only that I show up

you are the arms that refuse no embrace
you accept salty beads of sweat and tears
dropping warm from a fevered brow

wherever I've been in this battered world
however armored I am, you take me in
such is your power to heal me

each day I practice
I vow to peel back the stories
that can get congested around my heart

you need only that I lean into my pain
you ask nothing but my simple breath
and the heart of a spiritual pilgrim

ready to be tenderized and rejoined
into your ocean of compassion
for all beings great and small

- andrew zarrillo

Sailing to Byzantium


I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
--Those dying generations--at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.


III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.


IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form a Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords or ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

- William Butler Yeats

Advice


Someone dancing inside us
has learned only a few steps:
the "Do-Your-Work" in 4/4 time,
the "What-Do-You-Expect" Waltz.
He hasn't noticed yet the woman
standing away from the lamp.
the one with black eyes
who knows the rumba.
and strange steps in jumpy rhythms
from the mountains of Bulgaria.
If they dance together,
something unexpected will happen;
if they don't, the next world
will be a lot like this one.


- Bill Holm

The Real Work


What I would say in one sentence is that, for Americans, the real work is becoming native to North America. The real work is becoming native in your heart, coming to understand we really live here, that this is really the continent we're on and that our loyalties are here, to these mountains and rivers, to these plant zones, to these creatures. The real work involves developing a loyalty that goes back before the formation of any nation state, back billions of years and thousands of years into the future. The real work is accepting citizenship in the continent itself.


- Gary Snyder

Kristallnaght


The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. Father, he heard the voice of his son, you must
Go on. Zindel took the hand of his son and climbed out of
The trench. With his wife, a son and daughter on his side
They continued the march. But the SS guards did not stop
The savage whipping of the deportees. Blood was flowing
On all sides.


The Grynszpan family were Polish Jews from Hanover.
When the Nazis came to power they became outcasts.
In October 1938 they were expelled from Germany
And deported to Poland in a group of 12,000 Jews.
They were taken by train to the frontier town Neubenschen
And from there on foot to the German-Polish border.
When they reached the border heavy rain started to fall.


The Nazis confiscated their money. They had no food to eat.
Polish officers arrived and began to inspect their papers.
They admitted the refugees with Polish passports,
Housing them in military stables. Old, sick and children
Were herded together in most inhuman conditions.


One of the first things that Zindel did in Poland was to send
A postcard to his seventeen year old son Hirsch in Paris.
When Hirsch Grynszpan read the family’s tribulations
He became furious. His heart was filled with rage and hatred
And he decided to avenge their sufferings. On the morning
Of November 7, Hirsch entered a gunsmith’s shop on rue
Faubourg Saint-Martin and purchased a 6.35 calibre pistol
With a box of 25 bullets, for 235 Francs.


Then he took a ride on the Metro to the Solferino stop
And walked to the German Embassy at 78 rue de Lille.
Hirsch told the receptionist that he has some documents with him.
He was received by Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary.
When the German diplomat closed the door Hirsch pulled out
The gun. “You are a filthy Kraut”, he said, “and in the name of
12,000 persecuted Jews here is the document”. He fired five
Bullets from point blank range at vom Rath. The diplomat died
Two days later of his wounds.


The assassination came as a godsend thing for the Nazis.
Hitler denounced it as part of a global Jewish conspiracy
Against Germany. It became a pretext for the well-orchestrated
Pogrom of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.
During the night of November 9-10, 1938, in every place
Throughout the Third Reich, Storm Troops attacked Jews
And Jewish institutions.


Hitler’s henchmen burnt down or destroyed in Germany
Nearly two hundred synagogues. They burst into Jewish houses,
Broke the glass of Jewish businesses and beat up Jews wherever
They found them. About ninety people were murdered
And thousands of others were wounded in the street violence.
The Nazis also arrested thirty thousand Jews and sent them
To concentration camps in Buchenwald, Dachau,
And Sachsenhausen. And on top of all this, the Reich
Cynically imposed a billion mark penalty
On the Jewish Community to pay for the damages.


In Berlin hundreds of truncheon swinging storm troops
Led the mob in smashing up the glass plate windows
Of Jewish stores. In the Jewish neighbourhoods of German
Cities the Nazis lit bonfires. They threw on them to burn
Torah scrolls, prayer books and whole libraries. Thousands
Of Germans joined the Storm Troops in the atrocities.
But many resented the pogrom. People watched in horror
The roundup; they cried silently behind their curtains.


On a third floor balcony in Leipzig
Storm Troops shattered a balustrade and pushed
An upright oak wood piano over the edge. It plunged like
A black wingless dragon and fell helplessly to the street.
It crashed on the pavement with a shocking clamour.
Its wooden casing had split. The strings stripped bare
Stood in the middle of the wreckage as an orphan harp
Screaming with a heartbreaking outcry.


- Paul Hartal

Lest we forget . . .

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Kristallnaght

The SS guard hit Zindel Grynszpan on the head and he fell
Into a ditch. . .

---

As the horrid 20th century recedes, let us affirm with all the passion of our hearts and spirits, a world born from its ashes, in which such things are impossible, ANYWHERE. ♥

In Praise of Earth


We kept on dancing last summer though the dancing had been called subversive.
We weren't alone at the end of this particular world and knew
it wouldn't be the last world, though wars
had broken out on all sides.
We kept on dancing and with us were the insects who had gathered at the grounds
in the grasses and the trees. And with us were the stars and
a few lone planets who had been friends
with the earth for generations.
With us were the spirits who wished to honor this beloved earth in any beautiful
manner. And with us at dawn was the Sun who took the lead
and then we broke for camp, for stickball
and breakfast.
We all needed praise made of the heart's tattoo as it inspired our feet or wings,
someone to admire us despite our tendency to war, to terrible
stumbles. So does the red cliff who is the heart
broken to the sky.
So do the stones who were the first to speak when we arrived. So does the flaming
mountain who harbors the guardian spirits who refuse to abandon
us. And this Earth keeps faithfully to her journey, carrying us
around the Sun,
All of us in our rags and riches, our rages and promises, small talk and suffering.
As we go to the store to buy our food and forget to plant, sing so
that we will be nourished in turn. As we walk out
into the dawn,
With our lists of desires that her gifts will fulfill, as she turns our tears
into rivers of sweet water, we spiral between dusking and
dawn, wake up and sleep in this lush palace of creation,
rooted by blood, dreams, and history.
We are linked by leaf, fin, and root. When we climb through the sky to each
new day our thoughts are clouds shifting weather within us.
When we step out of our minds into ceremonial language we are humbled and amazed,
at the sacrifice. Those who forget become the people of stone who guard
the entrance to remembering. And the Earth keeps up her
dancing and she is neither perfect nor exactly in time.
She is one of us.
And she loves the dance for what it is. So does the Sun who calls the Earth
beloved. And praises her with light.

- Joy Harjo

In Praise of the Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And hold our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

- John O'Donohue

Singing Images of Fire


A hand moves, and the fire's whirling takes different
shapes.
. . . all things change when we do.
The first word, Ah, blossomed into all others.
Each of them is true.


- Kukei
(translated by Jane Hirshfield)