Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Faces at Braga

In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence

While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, "Will you step through?"

And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,

see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
then slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.

Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carvers hand.

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carvers hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.

- David Whyte

(Where Many Rivers Meet)

Given

The trees presenting their offerings,
the rumple of weeds like children
hanging on the neck of the brook,
the host that pours through the city
are not merely here,
not simply stumbled upon,
I have given them to you.

This day, its delights, its troubles,
your whole life, your death,
this moment,
are not happenstance or imposed,
they are what I wear.

What you encounter in this world
is not here of its own accord
or for its own sake,
it is how I give myself to you.

- Steve Garnaas-Holmes

A Timbered Choir

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

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

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

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

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

- Wendell Berry

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

The Monk's Robe

The push
The pull
The black garment must be
Just so.
A fold
A tie
Pulled across his
Strong back
It drapes
It flows
But still can't hide
The man
With a shaved head
And a clean heart
Who knows --
Karma is not the same
As destiny
And everything is
One's self
Who knows --
The body and the mind
Are one
Single thing
Yet if you love somebody
And separate
You will suffer.

- Doug von Koss
Abano Terme, Italy, November 1995
After a lecture by Tokuda Ryotan
Of the International Buddhist Institute of Latin America

Learning from History

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,
Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm.

They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said,
Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm.

I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream,
And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this?

They said, my poets, singers of my song,
We cannot tell, since all we tell you is

But history, we speak but of the dead.
And of the dead they said such history

(Their beards were blazing with the truth of it)
As made of much of me a mystery.

- David Ferry

Snowflakes

Ecclesiastes says “for everything there is a season.”
You say “It’s tax season;
it’s baseball season; it’s allergy season;
I’ve got to season the steak on the barbie;
besides, I don’t have time to change the world.”

Goethe tells us of the genius, power and magic in boldness.
You say “What can I do, anyway?
The foxes are guarding the henhouse;
the juggernaught is out of control;
we’re all just snowflakes in a windstorm.”

The mountain asks “Which snowflake, falling,
will be the one to send down the avalanche
to change this entire landscape?”

- Larry Robinson

The Cure

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney's translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

The Thought Machine

Its little eye stares “On” in its forehead
by its maker’s name. They say it anticipates
its memories and holds “Eureka!” tight
in little wheels so sure that all steel
hardens when incorporated in it.
The only Please it knows is, Be Correct;
but it can tolerate mistakes.

You tell your troubles to it, how your letters
all came back with no acknowledgment
and all you wanted was assurance all was known.
It tugs its collar; its little eye glows on.
You tell about the woman at the corner
ringing the bell to bring Jesus and his weather.
That is long ago.

You tell of the hill that never attracted the deer;
you think it frightened them, a fear place,
where you always had to go to listen—it was
for your town and for the world; it was for…—
and you are back there, listening again:
the little eye goes kind; the forehead
has the noble look that hill had.

And the world whirls into vision; in Tibet
a prayer wheel turns for you; an Eskimo
by such a northern fire lives that you live so,
touching only important things;
you see that all machines belong;
the deer are safe;
a letter has reached home.

- William Stafford

Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a
card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy somethin
they will call you. When they wnat you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

- Wendell Berry

Parowan Canyon

When granite and sandstone begin to blur
and flow, the eye rests on cool white aspen.
Strange, their seeming transparency.
How as in a sudden flash one remembers
a forgotten name, so the recollection. Aspen.
With a breeze in them, their quiet rhythms,
shimmering, quaking. Powder on the palm.
Cool on the cheek. Such delicacy
the brittle wood, limbs snapping
at a grasp, whole trees tumbling in the winds.
Sweet scent on a swollen afternoon.
Autumn, leaves falling one upon another, gold
rains upon a golden earth. How at evening
when the forest darkens, aspen do not.
And a white moon rises and silver stars
point toward the mountain, darkness
holds them so pale.
They stand still, very still.


- David Lee

At a Certain Age

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: "That's me."

- Czeslaw Milosz

Please and Thank You

Gracias, Chacho, short all your life,

barrel-chested chieftan of the grill

on Mendocino Boulevard. Not the one

featuring soupbowl margaritas

and singles karaoke on Friday nights,

where a dog in a dingleball sombrero

urges us inside, ¡andale, arriba!

I mean the one up the block, across

from the Vista Motel, with windows

whitewashed against afternoon sun;

the one I bike to, thirsty in August,

from all the way across town, because

I have two dollars and still no job.


I will push open the door and walk

my bike into the merciful cool,

up to the counter where I lay

my limp dinero down

and ask your brotherfor the special,

con pollo y frijoles negros.

And if instead of a Coca-Cola

I fill and refill a plastic cup

with ice water while I wait,

because every nickel counts,

there is no problem with that.


No problem, even though

this sweaty, heat-pink gabacho

will never be poor, and knows

nothing of the last dollar;

even though my independence,

my desperation, is voluntary,

like a second language

I am ashamed to speak here.


I will lay down whatever

baggage I carry, and when

the food arrives, I won't know

why I am hungry, only that I am.

At the table I will feast, in bliss,

on a flour tortilla enormous with rice

and chicken and black beans, food

enough to live on. It doesn't matter

what makes us hungry, Chacho,

only that there is hunger, that there

is food, and that for now

I am a guest in your home

and I will eat what you feed me.

- Yosha Bourgea

Shopping
for my mother

Now that you are gone
I know what you have made me

shrewd hands feeling tomatoes
looking for flaws
pinching them till they hurt
(you never know what they try to sell you)
you never know until you feel them)

and your careful scanning eyes
on the tilted
gossipy
horizon

looking for the thing that is wrong
in hems, coats, facial tics
(you can't imagine what some of them do
you never know what some of them are hiding)

your world is bright and round
it has oranges, melons, flowers
and small repeatable scandals
like the neighbor, Mrs. Grey, who
beat her children on their bare behinds
in plain sight
and the drama teacher, Mrs. Rice, who
ran over a child and kept saying,
as they took her away,
all I will ever see is that little blond head

the voice that broke my ears
the arms that never held me

never mind that

it's your hands,
after all,
and your small, inquisitive eyes,

that take me shopping.

- Thaisa Frank

Better looking at a river



I think what interests in a river is

persistence in change,

something always about to have been

curving toward you.



Also trout.



I like the glimpse.

Or watching their shadows slide

sidling over gravel,

flukes and fins responding

but upstream head held motionless

by trouty practice or craft.



And it's nice to swallow river,

trickle down a different curve.

Also trout – cooked

since it's never too early to begin

where transformation is concerned



though I've come to see that

river watches keep no time

and early seems not far from late.



What interests in a river at first

is that thing of sneaking up on beauty, how it hurts,

then the one about time and death,

then the long cool drink,

then the trout.



I walk richer from a river

collecting lots of interest there.

And better looking, too, I think,

for it becomes me.

- David Oates

Where the World is One

My smallest grandson does not understand yet what big means.
Those chickens are big, and he is going so close.
Oh the imagination is a dreadful thing.
My neighbors’ grandson was pecked by a rooster.
Flew at him for no reason

That rooster was big! Tore open the back of the boy’s head,
He went to the hospital for so many stitches.
His father went for the shotgun and killed that rooster dead.

This story looms now like a storm cloud.

I have taken you to buy eggs with me,
And we were invited to wander
As long as we like, out toward the hen house.
All that clucking rocks you like a lullaby.
You run on your little legs that still wobble,
You love the indescribable crowing of the roosters.
All the chickens running free in the yard, all those
Silky reds and shiny blacks, the streaks of gold
Holding light, combs as crimson as blood.
Some hens scratching their beaks on the ground,
as if sharpening a razor on a strap of leather,
back and forth they twist those beaks.
You go too close, too close in your curiosity.

They flap their wings and strut,
While I try to look really big, arms out
As if they were mountain lions. You are so happy

And oblivious, living in that innocent space we soon
pass out of. Where there is no mortal wound.
It is a place like the Book of Revelation promises
Where there are no more tears and sighing,
And all fears are gone, burned away in a lake of fire

That burns away all but that connection we are still searching for.
I hear you laughing with delight. You are in the garden

I have left, and angels, we are told, protect
that garden with a flaming sword.
I can look back through you, but cannot go back,
and there is this terrible grief
that you will have to leave.
and join us here East of Eden.

- Judith Stone

Well, this reminded me of the family story (I was too young to remember) about when one of my parents' roosters pecked me in the butt; my dad didn't take the time to get a gun--he just ran out and wrung the rooster's neck. Don't imagine that he got very poetic about it, either.

Sara

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Where the World is One

My smallest grandson does not understand yet what big means.
Those chickens are big, and he is going so close.
Oh the imagination is a dreadful thing.
My neighbors’ grandson was pecked by a rooster.
Flew at him for no reason

That rooster was big! Tore open the back of the boy’s head,
He went to the hospital for so many stitches.
His father went for the shotgun and killed that rooster dead.

This story looms now like a storm cloud.

I have taken you to buy eggs with me,
And we were invited to wander
As long as we like, out toward the hen house.
All that clucking rocks you like a lullaby.
You run on your little legs that still wobble,
You love the indescribable crowing of the roosters.
All the chickens running free in the yard, all those
Silky reds and shiny blacks, the streaks of gold
Holding light, combs as crimson as blood.
Some hens scratching their beaks on the ground,
as if sharpening a razor on a strap of leather,
back and forth they twist those beaks.
You go too close, too close in your curiosity.

They flap their wings and strut,
While I try to look really big, arms out
As if they were mountain lions. You are so happy

And oblivious, living in that innocent space we soon
pass out of. Where there is no mortal wound.
It is a place like the Book of Revelation promises
Where there are no more tears and sighing,
And all fears are gone, burned away in a lake of fire

That burns away all but that connection we are still searching for.
I hear you laughing with delight. You are in the garden

I have left, and angels, we are told, protect
that garden with a flaming sword.
I can look back through you, but cannot go back,
and there is this terrible grief
that you will have to leave.
and join us here East of Eden.

- Judith Stone

---

October

O hushed*October*morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed*October*morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day.
At*noon*release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with*frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost -
For the grape' sake along the wall.*

- Robert*Frost

October Arriving

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

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

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

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

-*Charles Simic

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

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

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

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

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

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

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

- Larry Robinson

Samhain
(The Celtic Halloween)

In the season leaves should love,
since it gives them leave to move
through the wind, towards the ground
they were watching while they hung,
legend says there is a seam
stitching darkness like a name.

Now when dying grasses veil
earth from the sky in one last pale
wave, as autumn dies to bring
winter back, and then the spring,
we who die ourselves can peel
back another kind of veil

that hangs among us like thick smoke.
Tonight at last I feel it shake.
I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor.

I move my hand and feel a touch
move with me, and when I brush
my own mind across another,
I am with my mother's mother.
Sure as footsteps in my waiting
self, I find her, and she brings

arms that carry answers for me,
intimate, a waiting bounty.
"Carry me." She leaves this trail
through a shudder of the veil,
and leaves, like amber where she stays,
a gift for her perpetual gaze.

- Annie Finch

All Souls
A few of us—Hillary Clinton, Vlad Dracula,
Oprah Winfrey, and Trotsky—peer through
the kitchen window at a raccoon perched
outside on a picnic table where it picks

over chips, veggies, olives, and a chunk of pâte.
Behind us others crowd the hallway, many more
dance in the living room. Trotsky fusses with the bloody
screwdriver puttied to her forehead.

Hillary Clinton, whose voice is the rumble
of a bowling ball, whose hands are hairy
to the third knuckle, lifts his rubber chin to announce,
“What a perfect mask it has!” While the Count

whistling through his plastic fangs says, “Oh,
and a nose like a chef.” Then one by one
the other masks join in: “Tail of a gambler,”
“a swashbuckler’s hips,” “feet of a cat burglar.”

Trotsky scratches herself beneath her skirt
and Hillary, whose lederhosen are so tight they form a codpiece,
wraps his legs around Trotsky’s leg and humps like a dog.
Dracula and Oprah, the married hosts, hold hands

and then let go. Meanwhile the raccoon squats on
the gherkins, extracts pimentos from olives, and sniffs
abandoned cups of beer. A ghoul in the living room
turns the music up and the house becomes a drum.

The windows buzz. “Who do you love? Who do you love?”
the singer sings. Our feathered arms, our stockinged legs.
The intricate paws, the filleting tongue.
We love what we are; we love what we’ve become.

- Michael Collier

Haunted Houses

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hope

Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.

You cannot enter. But you're sure it's there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.

Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Occupy

Let all the heroes come
Let all the spirits and ancestors join us now

When the veil is thin

Let William Blake and Oscar Wilde

lead an army

of starving Irish peasants

to take back their land

from the English Lords who stole it.

All the great writers join minds

Tolstoy, Marx, Jung, and Camus

Come marching through my sleeping neighborhood

Jonathan Swift come with Seamus Heaney

Join Richard Wright at the White House

And take off our President’s mask

Abe Lincoln sit Bill O’Reilly on your knee

Tell him to spend his time reading

The Complete Works of Frederick Douglas

Who also might have a few words for

Barack Obama whose own ancestors

are out of their minds in rage

over his collusion with Wall Street

Let Aragorn awaken the Dead

Let the Ents and Trees march on the Banks,

The Pentagon, the Trump Towers,

Rupert Murdoch’s empire, the Wells Fargo building

Housing Sheriff Joe Arpolo.

Tear the foundations of greed down to the earth.

Let Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Che Guevara

Take Mr. Arpolo into the desert

Leave him naked and waterless

With Leslie Silko’s Almanac of the Dead

To show him how perverse he is.

Awaken Ronald Reagan for breakfast with

Brian Wilson and the ghosts your Contras

And Death Squads murdered in Latin America.

All are invited, Adoph, Joseph, Mao,

All the Kings, Queens of old Europe

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

Benjamin Franklin—Come Occupy

Break bread with Abraham, Martin, John,

And Bobby along with the hundreds of millions

Murdered, lynched, tortured people of color

In this land of the free and home of the brave.

Give the spirit of Osama a snare drum and permanent

Spot in the eardrum of George Bush

Come you Holocaust spirits to Israel

Bring sweets for Rachel Cory and the

Tortured Palestinians she fought for.

Come Pythagoras, Athena, Hermes, and Homer

Come initiates of the mystery schools

Lead the children out from our dead schools

Occupy the schools of America

Come Druids, Arthur, Merlin

Take the boys and young men

Into the forests, teach them to hunt

And protect the trees, the water, the land

Come Artemis, Joan of Arc, Rachel Carson

Lead the girls to the forest too

Occupy their hearts, souls, minds

Give them back their bodies for themselves

Gandhi, Buddha, Genghis Khan, Hannibal

Rumi, Mohammed, Hafiz, Patton

Occupy the gangs of lost young men

Hold the space for their pain and rage to erupt.

It’s all comin down, the veil is thin

Come William Butler Yeats

Now is the time when the center can no longer hold

Come all you spirits and ancestors

Pour through the cracks

Of this very fucked up world.

Occupy, occupy, occupy.

- Brian McSweeney

Florence in September


In my younger days I walked
the streets of Florence as if I belonged
here. I was familiar at the Uffizi,
had a place at the bar at the foot of
Ponte Vecchio. Younger men on
scooters would wave to me, women
would go out of their way to give me
a smile, knowing I was soaking in their
beauty, loving that someone was.

Returning to my old haunts
I came upon a completely different
world. Young, dark haired boys
in sunglasses, standing
on street corners begging for
attention. Older, sad looking men
hanging at Santa Croce in hopes
of being noticed one last time.

The tourists still flock to see this
treasure trove as they have
for centuries -- David in his splendor,
the works of Michelangelo. The
boys of the Pitti Palace will
fade as summer heat in October.

- Stefan Merken

missed connection


I'm with a friend.
and excuse myself
“I'll only be a moment”
step outside—
cellphone call—
from the plumber
or another friend
my back is turned
solely for an instant
or maybe two

as Life glides by



the sparrow and
the tree shiver
the dog's high-pitched
yelp sails over
“what! I can't hear you!”
the redwood fence
and roof eaves shudder
the very foundations
gasp at
Her magnificence.

- Raphael Block


A KISS OF FALL & MORE

Join us for a joyous evening with Bhavani's and Ananda's music set to the sounds of Raphael's words. Judith Tucker Bhavani plays guitar, keyboard, percussion and harmonium, and Michael Ananda Coffman effortlessly dazzles on a variety of transverse and Native flutes.

Raphael Block is the author of Songs from a Small Universe, and is seeking publication for his second poetry book, Spangling Darkness. You can listen to his work at www.raphaelblock.com

Many Rivers Books & Tea, 130 South Main, Sebastopol
Friday, November 11th at 7:30 pm


For more info go to www.manyriversbooks.com or tel: (707) 829-8871.

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields
to see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest labor—
all that grows is the slow
intransigent intensity of need.
I have sown my seed on soil
guaranteed by poverty to fail.
But I don’t complain—except
to passersby who ask me why
I work such barren earth.
They would not understand me
if I stooped to lift a rock
and hold it like a child, or laughed,
or told them it is their poverty
I labor to relieve. For them,
I complain. A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Each day I go into the fields.

- W. D. Ehrhart

We Who Prayed and Wept

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

- Wendell Berry