Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Begin*

Begin anywhere,
the white-haired woman hangs laundry,
wide sheets and delicate blouses.
A line stretches across a burning
horizon of impossible blue. The
Mediterranean, our origins. Or begin

in line in a bank, the same hour
in another bank, in another country
a bomb strapped to a serious young man.*
Flash, obscene white light,
renews again, chaos and creation. This
too, the palette to place hues of time.*

Boredom: a beginning, familiarity,
routine. The gate swings closed. What
is enclosed, ensconced?*
The church bell bongs the hour
an echo of time to come, time
contained, time gone.*

Begin with tools: a hammer,
a hoe. A moment under gathering
clouds, a child, with blistered palms,
turns soil, the earnest immigrant,
on a steep San Francisco roof,
repairs the world, extends, renews

time. Begin by asking: who
am I? Allow sea, sky, bird
chatter *to answer. Ask
again, know there is no
answer but the mirror of the moment,
a window in the heart.*

Begin anywhere to listen, look.
So little within our grasp,
our control, our foolish mammalian
understanding. Begin now:
What is this? Who am I? *
Keep asking.

- Rebecca del Rio
15/10/2013
Sitges

Get Up, Please


The two musicians pour forth their souls abroad

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in such an ecstasy as to charm the audience
like none I've ever seen before, and when
they finish, they rise and hug each other,
and then the tabla player bends down
and touches the feet of the santoor player in an obvious gesture

of respect, but what does it mean? I don't find out
until the next day at the Econolodge in Tifton, GA,
where I stop on my way home after the concert
and ask Mrs. Patel, the owner, if she has ever heard
of these two musicians or knows
anything about the tabla and the santoor and especially the latter,

which looks like the love child of a typewriter
and a hammered dulcimer only with a lot of extra wires
and tuning posts, and she doesn't seem to understand
my questions, though when I ask her about one person touching
the other's feet and then bend down
to show her, she lights up and says, "It means he thinks the other

is a god. My children do this before they go off
to school in the morning, as though to say, 'Mummy,
you are a god to us,'" and I look at her
for a second and then surprise us both when I say, "Oh, Mrs. Patel!"
and burst into tears, because I think,
first, of my own dead parents and then of little Lakshmi and Padma

Patel going off to their classes in Tift County schools,
the one a second-grader who is studying homophones
("I see the sea") and the other of whom is in the fourth
grade, where she must master long division with
its cruel insistence on numbers lined
up under one another with exacting precision and then crawling

toward the page's bottom as you, the divider, subtract
and divide again and again, all the while recording
on the top line an answer that grows increasingly
lengthy as you fret and chew the tip of your pencil
and persevere, though before they grab
their books and lunch boxes and pile onto the bus, they take time

to touch Mrs. Patel's feet and Mr. Patel's as well,
assuming there is such a person. Later my friend
Avni tells me you touch the feet of your elders
to respect the distance they have traveled
and the earth they have touched, and you
say "namaste" not because you take yoga at that little place

on the truck route between the t-shirt store
and the strip club but because it means "I bow
to the light within you," and often the people being
bowed to will stoop down and collect you as if to say
"You too are made of the same light!"
Reader, if your parents are alive, think of them now, of all the gods

whose feet you never touched or touched enough.
And if not your parents, then someone else.
You know someone like this, right? Someone who belongs
to the "mighty dead," as Keats called them.
Don't you wish that person were here now
so you could touch their feet and whisper, "You are my god"?

I can't imagine Keats saying, "You too are made
of the same light," though I can see him saying,
as he did to Fanny Brawne, "I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion-I have
shudder'd at it-I shudder no more-I could
be martyr'd for my Religion-Love is my religion-I could die for that-

I could die for you." My own feet have touched
the earth nearly three times as long as Keats's did,
and I'm hardly the oldest person
I know. So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion--well, I wouldn't die for it. I'd live for it, though.


- David Kirby

Mochi Tzuke


The rice has been washed twice and soaking for two days.
Despite the "no burn" alert
the almond wood fires - lit before dawn -
boil water beneath the steamers:
three stacks of four baskets each
tended and timed under Bob's watchful eye.


Of course it doesn't begin here.
Harvest was two months ago.
The tradition goes back countless generations;
cultivation of rice even farther -
another time, another continent.


"Hot comin' through" Doug yells,
dumping the first load in the hopper.
The ancient GE motor faithfully turns the belt
on the equally venerable Nippon Industries grinder.
I push it through with old taiko sticks
til it emerges like glistening white sausage on the board.


Ed deftly delivers it, still steaming hot,
to the great granite mortar where Mike and Takeo,
at Scott's command, pound
one two one two
with long wood mallets.
Turn and pound, fold and knead
again and again until the master turner judges it finished.


"Board" he calls and a runner
carries it quickly to the hall and the waiting hands
of Cynthia, Kiyono, Surya and fifty others
who deftly pinch, roll and shape it
into perfect round silken cabochons of delight.


Meanwhile Doug brings batch after batch to the grinder -
one hundred thirty in all.
All day we steam and grind, pound and turn, pinch and shape
while Harrison keeps the wheels oiled
and Sherman watches over us all.


All this to give thanks for another year together,
to ask blessings and bounty on the year to come.
It takes a village to make mochi!


- Larry Robinson

Rock on ! and mochi happy returns of the season to you and yours.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Mochi Tzuke

The rice has been washed twice and soaking for two days.
Despite the "no burn" alert
the almond wood fires - lit before dawn -
boil water beneath the steamers:
three stacks of four baskets each
tended and timed under Bob's watchful eye.....

- Larry Robinson

---

Mochi Tsuki

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...1_11-51-59.png

The starchy smell of rice
fills the chill morning,
as clouds of steam rise
from wooden boxes
stacked over cooking fires.
Sips of hot sake rouse
stiff bones to swing mallets,
pounding sticky rice
to elastic smoothness
for Oshōgatsu, the New Year.

The men’s grunts
of exertion punctuate
the trill of aproned women,
pinching and shaping
still-warm dough into cakes,
steady rhythm of the wooden
mallet's downswing: hit,
turn the dough, slap.

I step to the granite bowl,
feel the mallet's heft,
focus on the beat to keep
from hitting my partner’s
hands, reaching in to turn
the hot mass of rice.

I close my eyes,
breathe in and lift, drop
lift, step into the task,
swing, hup,
swing, hup

for you, Obaachan,
for you, Obaasan,
for you, Mother.


- Jodi Hottel

A Blessing For The New Year


Beannacht

https://www.unlearning101.com/.a/6a0...67bf3bc970c-pi

("Blessing")
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue

Winter in Clarence

There, it was good.
Even shivering in the gray mornings
dressing behind the bedroom door, open
almost to the wall, just enough room for a small boy to stand
before the heat register from the coal furnace in the basement
the icon before which his father
made solitary obeisance every morning.

Did the man, too, shiver in bathrobe and slippers
as he descended to the coldest part of the house, to
twist the damper, open the squealing door
add, then light crumpled newspaper
whet the appetite for anthracite?
Were his labors an offering to Hades, or to Apollo
as he slid the shovel across concrete
sure and deep into the dark bin, as he turned
and slung each load into the blazing iron throat?

Winter after winter
he fed the day’s first meal
to the beast that creaked and groaned
warmed to the work
announced with a roar
we could slide out from under three blankets
endure goose bumps and chattering teeth
dress behind the door.


- Karl Frederick

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Poem

Teacher of reading, of "You will not" and "You shall,"
almighty Grammarian author of Genesis,
whether language holds three forms of the future
as Hebrew does or no future tense at all
like Chinese, may it perform a public service,
offer the protection of the Great Wall,
the hope and sorrow of the Western Wall.

- Stanley Moss

To My Students


You who can read,

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do not take it for granted;
you who cannot,
there are worlds, there are gods
yet to be quickened in your dreams.
The worlds await to form on your tongue,
the gods to tremble in your ears.

These little marks, black as fly-droppings
on the page, and as small,
speak to you - you do not hear.
I cannot tell you the beginning of naming,
only how it changes and magic
sparks and sputters at the base of the skull.
I do not know if there is answer;
perhaps our speaking is enough.
Men have died always alone;
these small blemishes on the page
their final legacy.
Do not lose them,
these the enchanted cinders
of our stars.

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

Longing And Belonging


There is something which longs for me,
Longs to belong to me.
A life which enters with each breath,
Yearning to absorb the splendor
Into my soul.


This lover pursues me, sustains me.
This lover knows that I still cannot see,
And, so, pursues me with smell, and taste, and sound.
Anything, to get my attention,
To wake me up.


To dance with my heart,
Surrounding me with healing arms.


There is something so close to all that I am,
Which sings a love song when I can't sleep.
There are messages in the rain, in the sun.
The moon reflects it's glowing light,
And spins around, saying, "Look at me!
Here I am! And now you can see your way!"


And, of course, I take those steps,
Accepting the rose that appears in my hand,
And hoping the doorbell is going to ring.
While something waits patiently by my side,
Keeping me warm, and knowing the beauty.


- Jon Jackson

Death Poem

https://www.sfzc.org/sp_download/Ste...t_colorbal.jpg

This human body truly is the entire cosmos
Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling
This tender abiding in "my" life
Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
Linking with all pre-phenomena
Flashing to the distant horizon
From "right here now" to "just this"
Now the horizon itself
Drops away -
Bodhi!
Svaha.


- Myogen Steve Stucky
(Steve Stucky, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, died on New Year's Eve. He wrote this poem three days before his death.)

DEAD ZEN MASTERS
The guru says
Death dies and life lives.
The Roshi says that the horizon drops away.
Who is this seeing thus?
The seen is made by the seer.
Where no thoughts is no dust.
Where no thinking,
No bear scat, no eschatology.

found somewhere within beleif,
the shards of loss, our grief

by Michael Gest

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Death Poem

https://www.sfzc.org/sp_download/Ste...t_colorbal.jpg

This human body truly is the entire cosmos
Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling
This tender abiding in "my" life
Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
Linking with all pre-phenomena
Flashing to the distant horizon
From "right here now" to "just this"
Now the horizon itself
Drops away -
Bodhi!
Svaha.


- Myogen Steve Stucky
(Steve Stucky, the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, died on New Year's Eve. He wrote this poem three days before his death.)

---

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

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in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
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

I've broken through to longing
Now, filled with a grief I have
Felt before, but never like this.
The center leads to love.
Soul opens the creation core.
Hold on to your particular pain.
That too can take you to God.


- Jellaludin Rumi

Spanish Ballad


That barista, Mother,

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with the dark-roast eyes
and the silver nail
through her left eyebrow,


who pulls the handle
of the espresso machine
with such imperial ennui
– Mom, does she not know

that she is killing me?
I have heard she is a pagan
though of noble family born,
related to the Grossmans of Detroit

or the Shaughnesseys of Darien
– but she is finer that that tribe,
with her dragon-tattooed arms
and her skin as smooth and pale

as the end page of a
vampire novella.
She scares me speechless with desire,
but I would give a million

to see her smile
and even more to tell a joke
that would make her actually
choke in laughter

and send the spray
of that eight-ounce energy drink
uncontrollably bursting
from her beautiful nose.


- Tony Hoagland

In This Season of Waiting


Under certain conditions,

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when the moon in the western sky
seems frozen there, for instance

even as the sun is rising in the east,
so that soon two sides of the coin
will be facing each other;

or when the snow
which is a stranger here
fills our trees with its cold flowers;

when the single
bluejay at the feeder
is so still

it could be enameled there,
then the earth becomes an emblem
for whatever we believe.


- Linda Pastan

Future Perfect


Where you were
before you were born,
and where you are
when you're not anymore
might be very close.
Might be the same place,
though neither is
as slippery
as being here but
imagining where
you will have been-
that point
where things land,
are finished, over, and
gone but not yet.


- Lia Purpura

New Year’s Prayer 2014

As I have encountered the Dharma in this life,

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And from time to time been interested in practising it,
I must have accumulated some merit during my past lives.

Throughout this life I have admired, been inspired by,
And, on occasion, had the courage to emulate my master,
So I must have gathered a little more merit.

Though shallow, my trust in the Three Jewels is absolute,
And I am convinced that they alone will not mislead me –
Surely a sign of their unfailing blessings.

From time to time I am moved
By the teachings of the Buddha and his followers,
Which must mean that, at some point, I’ve done something right.

Now and then, when required to make an offering,
I feel ashamed of my own miserliness,
And so the Dharma must have entered my mind to some extent.

As, once in a blue moon,
I catch myself trying to impress others,
My random condemnation of ego must have had some effect.

Although the feeling is rare and short-lived,
I have empathized with those who are destitute,
So, however seldom, I must have some heart.

By the power of all this merit and virtue,
May I not attain enlightenment
Until every other sentient being has reached enlightenment before me.

By the power of the merit of not wanting enlightenment
Ahead of all other suffering beings,
May I not become enlightened
Until everyone else has reached enlightenment before me.


- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Thomas

“What shall I do with the life left to me?”
I didn’t need proof. Any more.
He had blessed me with His gaze.
Many times. Many times he had looked.
Into me. And His look made me
look back into Him. All the others.
All the others put on their clothing.
But I – He gave me
The Immaculate Dispensation. Above
All. Above all.
No job. Just this. Examine it. This Gift.
Doubt. This Immense Gift.
Two Things. Doubt. And
Looking in it. You can erase everything
you think you know about me. And
to help you, I shall remove to Chennai.
In the luxury of a cave on Little Mount
I sit and putter. On the beach, I preach.
I tell them what I do and Who
looked at me and Whose look was A Word.
“Christianity came to India first.”
Too bad. I offered the distillation
of that Look. Too bad about Christianity.
Regret? No. They heard many words.
I heard the One He never spoke.


- Bruce Moody

Moon Path

(To my wife, Betty)

A pearl floating in a cloudless sky,

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NdCQ0HWgw...interlaced.gif

the moon has paved the bay.
It has laid down a path of rippling silver across the water
leading from here to where?
Beyond beyond.

From my window in the hills
I watch an unreal world
toy-sized cars and ships and trains
movement without sound
noisy engines beyond hearing
calm and silent.
Not really.
I know the people who drive the distant freeway
are troubled souls drowning in the daily terror and trivia
as I have for a lifetime.

Official lies, bleak prophesies.
The soils of Africa are planted with the bones of children.
Mad Arabs have turned their god into a butcher.
The head of Citibank insists he deserves every penny he stole.
Rich and poor, lives driven by the fuel of greed and desperation.
Do they ever catch a glimmer of the moon path
and the great quiet that waits to be found
on the far side of the horrors?

There beyond Mount Tam and the Golden Bridge
the world of stars that bless us with lordly beauty and indifference.
Always there.
Always there, waiting.
The moon. The path. The quiet.

I remember another moon-bright night like this years past.
The old Dodge parked up a dark street in Thousand Oaks,
the best young lovers could do to find seclusion.
You leaned across me in the car to look out the window.
"What a beautiful moon," you said.
I can remember the warm softness of your body pressed against me
and the countless kisses that followed
each, though we did not know it at the time, a pledge that said
"I will stay with you. I will be here at the last."
Were we ever that young?

Did I know at some level of the mind
when I chose you to be my one love
that you would do more to lead me to the path
than any words of wisdom?
Sensitive and innocent, we deserved a better world.
But what we got was a swamp of illusions
where madmen contend for the dross of life.

"Do you know this samsara?" Baker Roshi once asked me, smiling,
as if laughter were the best answer to despair.
You don't escape it. You don't work your way out.
Then what?
You wait.
Until?
Until you realize, "hey, I'm already on the path."
No place to go.
Nothing to do.
Wait.


- Theodore Roszak (1933-2011)

Prayer/Poem

Would it be too much to ask:
Put paper on the roll.
Don’t let the door slam.
Close the window.

Ask and listen.
See people.
Have a care.
Would that be too much to ask?

Would it be too much to ask:
Let the turtle cross.
Give the skunk room.
Look out for the raccoon.

Welcome the bear on the trail.
Offer the wolf a lake.
Leave the glacier in the pass.
Would that be so much to ask?

Would it be too much to ask:
Heal my memory.
Find me fifty hugs.
Make me prehensile feet.

Resurrect my dog.
Bring back John Lennon.
Undo chestnut blight.
Is that so much to ask?

Would it be too much to ask:
Multiply birdsong.
Unfreeze our obsession with leaders.
Keep bees on the flowers.

Supply many orgasms.
Insure sweet fruit.
Decrease greed.
Really, is that so much to ask?

Would it be too much to ask:
Emblazon our feathers with color.
Encourage the playfulness of our young.
Increase our knowledge of languages.

Awaken poetry.
Deify beauty.
Raise up truth.
Is that too much to ask?

Would it be too much to ask:
Stop violence against children.
Preserve the oceans.
Cause hope to flourish.

Steer earth on course.
Prevent us destroying everything.
Teach us to love life.
After all, is that so much to ask?

- Dale Rosenkrantz

Candle Hat


In most self-portraits it is the face that dominates:
Cezanne is a pair of eyes swimming in brushstrokes,
Van Gogh stares out of a halo of swirling darkness,
Rembrant looks relieved as if he were taking a breather
from painting The Blinding of Sampson.

But in this one Goya stands well back from the mirror
and is seen posed in the clutter of his studio
addressing a canvas tilted back on a tall easel.

He appears to be smiling out at us as if he knew
we would be amused by the extraordinary hat on his head
which is fitted around the brim with candle holders,
a device that allowed him to work into the night.

You can only wonder what it would be like
to be wearing such a chandelier on your head
as if you were a walking dining room or concert hall.

But once you see this hat there is no need to read
any biography of Goya or to memorize his dates.

To understand Goya you only have to imagine him
lighting the candles one by one, then placing
the hat on his head, ready for a night of work.

Imagine him surprising his wife with his new invention,
the laughing like a birthday cake when she saw the glow.

Imagine him flickering through the rooms of his house
with all the shadows flying across the walls.

Imagine a lost traveler knocking on his door
one dark night in the hill country of Spain.
"Come in, " he would say, "I was just painting myself,"
as he stood in the doorway holding up the wand of a brush,
illuminated in the blaze of his famous candle hat.
- Billy Collins

here's another HAT for ye, Larry..thanks for the poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zmcg0VOk0

Mark B.

Hokusai Says


Hokusai says Look carefully.

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He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.


He says Look Forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
as long as it's interesting.


He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,


every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.


He says everything is alive -
shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.


He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.


It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.


Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.


He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.


- Roger Keyes

Fugitive


This body, like a caved-in greenhouse,

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no longer craves the sun nor traps the heat.

This body is pungent of loam,
crushed petals, the rot of leaves and roots,
the fading breath of summer.

This body, shape-shifted, is fugitive.

They will seek it in the sun-blasted hothouse.
They will find the broken frame, the shards of glass.
They will finger the shape of absence.

This body burns with the moon,
aflame along the path of beaten silver.

This body reclaims its larger self upon the map of the sky.

Releasing its scant purchase, this body
finds its satisfaction in smaller and smaller wonders.


- Susan Lamont

Orion by the agate sea


by the drive where the old dogwood tree
stands with raucous birds in her hair
and spider fairies sail into the wind


Orion in your backdrop of solid crows
where the moon climbs through plums
and shimmering scales of robins sleep
waiting for the sun's slick tongue -


the rip of darkness, the opening of its veins,
the pulse of dreams rustling like straw-
you witness everything - a woman's body -
delineated by wind and silk moving smoke,


a lone man in a yellow window
counting dreams,
the ways that sunlight falls.


- Katherine Hastings
(Katherine Hastings is Sonoma County's Poet Laureate)

Stories


Let me think of the way that story goes
About the king of time and his long robes.
The world is breathless for good storytelling.
Always words find their way out of us
And our mouths shape them firm and forever.
Sometimes songs come into us flowing from streams
Towards places sounds have never been.
Always other voices are speaking through us.
Stories wander the royal road of dreams
With their silent language. Words arrive
The way the shaman came, the first teller,
Then came the prophets and their retelling.
Many sounds faded, forgotten or ripened to return

Again when synchronicity could acquire its sense of timing.

Words find their warmth in the moist mouth of revelation.
These stories cross the far horizons and in time find each other.
That occurrence is a gift as written records tell the tales
On stone, on leaf, parchment and on the page of living memory.
Stories are our eternal bread. They reveal the divine passwords
At the gates that open to the center of our lives.


- Richard Meyers

After Finding the Body


The report always says, "the body
was found by a hiker…a fisherman…a camper in the back country, gathering firewood."
Stops there, cuts


to family, an official speaking in regretful, solemn sentences.


The victim's face smiles from a wedding photo, a passport, a family video—twirling on a backyard swing.


The hiker, fisherman, or camper who abandoned routine life,
Returns to an altered world, staggering
with the weight of unexpected death.
The body forever carried in a heart.


- Rebecca del Rio

I Went into the Maverick Bar


I went into the Maverick Bar

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Gary Synder

In Farmington, New Mexico.
And drank double shots of bourbon
backed with beer.
My long hair was tucked up under a cap
I’d left the earring in the car.


Two cowboys did horseplay
by the pool tables,
A waitress asked us
where are you from?
a country-and-western band began to play
“We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskokie”
And with the next song,
a couple began to dance.


They held each other like in High School dances
in the fifties;
I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.


We left—onto the freeway shoulders—
under the tough old stars—
In the shadow of bluffs
I came back to myself,
To the real work, to
“What is to be done.”


- Gary Snyder

To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the Year


(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,
like furry mittens,
like childhood crouching under tables)
The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black
outside our window: clattering cans, the whir
of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ...
I see them in my warm imagination
the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
heaving the huge cans and running
(running!) to the next house on the street.


My vestiges of muscle stir
uneasily in their percale cocoon:
what moves those men out there, what
drives them running to the next house and the next?
Halfway back to dream, I speculate:
The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old
Bloomington a cleaner place
to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”
Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,
let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes
on truck thirteen!”
Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,
another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’
three kids through Princeton?”
Or something else?
Terror?


A half hour later, dawn comes edging over
Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like
a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,
and over that the black-and-blue of night
still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave
their silhouettes against the red, and through
the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk
of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,
like windup toys, tossing little cans—
and running.


All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,
and all day, people fussing at their desks,
at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison
tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all
things that are Caesar’s.


O garbage men,
the New Year greets you like the Old;
after this first run you too may rest
in beds like great warm aproned laps
and know that people everywhere have faith:
putting from them all things of this world,
they confidently bide your second coming.


- Phillip Appleman

The clock struck

The clock struck twelve times. . .and it was a spade
knocked twelve times against the earth.

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. . .”It’s my turn!” I cried. . .The silence
answered me: Do not be afraid.
You will never see the last drop fall
that now is trembling in the water clock.


You will still sleep many hours
here on the beach,
and one clear morning you will find
your boat tied to another shore.



- Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)

Discontinuous Poems

The frightful reality of things

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Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
of mine.
- Alberto Caeiro
(Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa, 1888 - 1935. Translated By Edouard Roditi)

Rough Metaphors

Someone said, "There is no dervish, or if there is a dervish,
that dervish is not there."


Look at a candle flame in the bright noon sunlight
if you put cotton next to it, the cotton will burn,
but its light has become completely mixed
with the sun.


That candlelight you can't find is what's left of a dervish.


If you sprinkle one ounce of vinegar over
two hundred tons of sugar,
no one will ever taste the vinegar.


A deer faints in the paws of a lion. The deer becomes
another glazed expression on the face of the lion.


These are rough metaphors for what happens to the lover.


There's no one more openly irreverent than a lover. He, or she,
jumps up on the scale opposite eternity
and claims to balance it.


And no one more secretly reverent.


A grammar lesson: "The lover died."
"Lover" is subject and agent, but that can't be!
The lover is defunct.


Only grammatically is the dervish-lover a doer.


In reality, with he or she so overcome,
so dissolved into love,
all qualities of doingness
disappear.


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Version by Coleman Barks)

Turn! Turn! Turn!

To everything - turn, turn, turn

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There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

To everything - turn, turn, turn

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There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late!

- Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

The Singer & His Banjo
for Pete Seeger




How can I keep from singing?
he asked hefting his banjo,
machine he claimed
surrounded hate
and forced it to surrender.
We sang with him
that we would overcome
(someday),
asked where
had all the flowers gone,
& as we marched imagined
all sorts of things
to do if we had a hammer.

Gone the way of flowers now,
the old comrade leaves us
to our singing, our marching
with our little hammers
to bring down citadels of injustice,
our teaspoons to weight and make
the see-saw of power teeter
our way, overcome the demons
and armies of cold angels,
and keep despair at bay.




- Rafael Jesús González

Becoming A Redwood


Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds
start up again. The crickets, the invisible
toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.
First one, then another, until innumerable
they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,
fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers
snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone
can bear to be a stone, the pain
the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,
rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall
and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time
to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,
and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt
these hills and packs of feral dogs.
But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,
moving more slowly than the crippled stars,
part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,
part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows
there is no silence but when danger comes.


- Dana Gioia

Mexican Jenny

1. Girls like me come from alleys from dirt floors from cold kitchens from one thin blanket. Girls like me come from fists from passing strangers from wandering fathers from mothers with one heel hooked on the bar stool. Girls like me come from drought from war. 2. When I was a child in Acapulco I worked for a rich family sweeping their kitchen washing their dishes. One day, after a few nips, the cook, who was my mother's friend, had said, Come, work for me in the big house. I stood on a wooden box washed dishes stamped with indigo trees and flowers, with birds like none I'd seen. I stood elbow deep in dirty water, dreamed of far places without greasy pans nor the boss's wandering hands. 3. The boss's wife had a red silk shawl embroidered with many-colored swallows. She draped it like a flag on the back of her chair. It had come on a ship from Manila, from that land of ship builders and sailors, of travelers who, years before, brought Chinese porcelain and silk to Acapulco. Every time I walked by I fingered its edges and felt like I was dipping my fingers into the tide. After I'd found the fault lines in one cup too many, when I'd daydreamed one dish too many to pieces, the cook ran me off, but not before I'd pinched that shawl, wrapped it around my waist under my dirty skirt. Running home the silk rubbed my legs, a river current.

- Barbara Brinson Curiel

Keats


When Keats, at last beyond the curtain
of love’s distraction, lay dying in his room
on the Piazza di Spagna, the melody of the Bernini
Fountain “filling him like flowers,”
he held his breath like a coin, looked out
into the moonlight and thought he saw snow.
He did not suppose it was fever or the body’s
weakness turning the mind. He thought, “England!”
and there he was, secretly, for the rest
of his improvidently short life: up to his neck
in sleigh bells and the impossibly English cries
of street vendors, perfect
and affectionate as his soul.
For days the snow and statuary sang him so far
beyond regret that if now you walk rancorless
and alone there, in the piazza, the white shadow
of his last words to Severn, “Don’t be frightened,”
may enter you.


- Christopher Howell

Hi there -

I am a student of Jennifer Welwood's and this is actually her poem, not "Joyce Wellwood". Can you please change the attribution so it reads "Jennifer Welwood", format the poem correctly to match this formatting and create a link here: https://jenniferwelwood.com/poetry/the-dakini-speaks/

Thank you in advance, much appreciated.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Dakini Speaks

My friends,...
- Joyce Wellwood

---

On Hearing a Poem Recited, Not Read*

The poem flew at me
Little darts, pricking my skin
piercing my belly, my arms, my eyes
Flew at me on swift, black wings
trailing a smoky blur past my ears
Flew all around me
furious, then curiously quiet

No words sounded like words
read from a page
They had been lifted
the night before, years before
Flipped up, one by one
letter by letter let fall
on the tongue and dissolved
like melting snowflakes trickling down
through the heart, into the belly
to the toes, the fingertips
Pulled back through the blood
through the brain
down into the back of the throat
into the cheeks and spit out
Little darts of words
big wings of words
charging the air all around me
There were no words, only language
Tongue moved by muscle and blood

The poem entered me and exited
leaving little points of pain and light
soft feathery strokes on my skin and hair
Leaving me empty of words

- Christine Walker


*For those of you who appreciate hearing poems recited, not read, you will love tonight's Poetry Out Loud event at Santa Rosa's Glaser Center. Students from 11 high schools will compete in poetry recitation to see who will represent Sonoma County at the state level. This free event begins at 7:00 PM and is an absolute delight.

Mike, thank you for this very important correction! Knowing the truth of where the creativity came from led me on a curious journey to Jennifer Welwood's work, which I otherwise wouldn't have had the privilege of seeing. Getting one name wrong is one thing, but getting both wrong are a huge, serious and unintened error probably made in haste.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Mike Patterson:

Hi there -

I am a student of Jennifer Welwood's and this is actually her poem, not "Joyce Wellwood". Can you please change the attribution so it reads "Jennifer Welwood", format the poem correctly to match this formatting and create a link here: https://jenniferwelwood.com/poetry/the-dakini-speaks/

Thank you in advance, much appreciated.

---

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_14-57-51.png

I encourage Wacco members to take a look at Jennifer's website, especially her writing about her work with a couple who were relating to each other from "conditioned" identities, and the outcome of working with them. I noticed that her upcoming March retreat is already full. This says a lot in a world where many people are hard pressed to fill a workshop, even when offering a sliding scale, or a discount for early registration. She does neither, and the price for the 5 days starts in the range of $900-$1000.

This leads me to believe she may have a valuable mentor or coach. I don't know for sure. But it seems that her work is valued by many. I'm glad that Larry made a mistake in her name, and that Mike corrected it, otherwise I wouldn't have known about her at all. Thanks to both of you!

https://www.jenniferwelwood.com/

The Waking


I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

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I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
- Theodore Roethke

What is the Deep Listening

What is the deep listening?

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Sama is a greeting from the secret ones inside the heart - a letter
The branches of your intelligence grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.
The body reaches a peace.

Rooster sound comes reminding you of your love of dawn
The reed flute and the singer's lips
The knack of how spirit breathes into us
becomes as simple and ordinary as eating and drinking.

The dead rise with the pleasure of listenting.
If someone cannot hear a trumpet melody,
sprinkle dirt on his head and delare him dead.

Listen and feel the beauty of your separation
the unsayable absence
There is a moon inside every human being
Learn to be companions with it.
Give more of your life to this listening.

As brightness is to time,
so you are to the one who talks to the deep ear in your chest

I should sell my tongue
and buy a thousand ears when that one steps near and begins to speak

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears
when that one steps near.


- Jelalludin Rumi
(translated by Coleman Barks)

Watching


Clouds, of course, are the greatest
things in the world: cumulus, cirrus,
nimbus, you name it. How they
arrive out of nowhere it seems, coast


across the sky's scrim, some thin and
wispy as milkweed seed, some
seemingly stuffed with down, great
pillows for God's huge and heavy head.


These are, of course, the benevolent ones.
Even at night we know they are passing
silently above us as if some kindly
neighbor has come out in the cold to pull


the comforter up to our chin. Of course,
there are the grays, carriers of uncertainty:
holding perhaps rain or sleet, snow or hail,
or not a drop of anything at all. We can


never know. Then, of course, the dark and
bleak lugging a foreboding storm, clouds
that send us under cover, into resigned and
listless listening to the chaos on the roof,


the slash across the car's front window,
wipers all but useless against the tipping
of some cosmic water barrel. But then again,
of course, no matter what the cause, what


the effect we just might see in any cloud--
eerie dark, marshmallow white, erasure
gray-an old man's hat, a Conestoga wagon,
face of Aunt Louise, a smiling hippopotamus.
- Jack Ridl

And for West County residents, the poem won't be complete without this stanza:

Then there are the malevolent ones,
delivering Fukushima's radiant kiss,
and factory-fresh chemical rain or snow,
as spreading chemtrails cross out the sky.
:satire:

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Watching

Clouds, of course, are the greatest
things in the world: cumulus, cirrus,
nimbus, you name it. How they
arrive out of nowhere it seems, coast


across the sky's scrim, some thin and
wispy as milkweed seed, some
seemingly stuffed with down, great
pillows for God's huge and heavy head.


These are, of course, the benevolent ones.
Even at night we know they are passing
silently above us as if some kindly
neighbor has come out in the cold to pull


the comforter up to our chin. Of course,
there are the grays, carriers of uncertainty:
holding perhaps rain or sleet, snow or hail,
or not a drop of anything at all. We can


never know. Then, of course, the dark and
bleak lugging a foreboding storm, clouds
that send us under cover, into resigned and
listless listening to the chaos on the roof,


the slash across the car's front window,
wipers all but useless against the tipping
of some cosmic water barrel. But then again,
of course, no matter what the cause, what


the effect we just might see in any cloud--
eerie dark, marshmallow white, erasure
gray-an old man's hat, a Conestoga wagon,
face of Aunt Louise, a smiling hippopotamus.
- Jack Ridl

---

ARTICLES OF FAITH




Faith is a priceless treasure which some would invest in money and power, seeking private gain. Others of us invest in a vision of a world which may yet come to be: a world of justice, peace and beauty. We place our faith in life itself.


We Believe


Life is infinitely creative, resourceful, reliable and ultimately good.


Human beings are an expression of that life force and, as such, are creative, resourceful, reliable and fundamentally good.


All life is inextricably connected - what happens to any of us happens to all of us.


Evil exists as a potential in all human beings and it derives from the illusion that we are separate from each other and from the fountain of life.


Evil cannot be vanquished by force of arms or by fear. It can only be conquered by love.


In the power of love and direct non-violent action to
transform institutions, social systems and the human heart.


The arc of human history moves toward democracy, justice and an appreciation for our wondrous multiplicity of expression.


It is the right of all people to enjoy life, liberty and the security of person; to be treated equally under the law; to enjoy freedom of thought, conscience and religion; to free expression and association; to have free access to clean water and air.


It is possible for all human beings to be free from economic want and poverty and to live with dignity.


Peace among and within nations is only possible when these rights are assured to everyone.


The most fundamental responsibility of government is to ensure the health and well-being of the land and of all its inhabitants.


Individual rights must be balanced with responsibility for the well-being of the community.


The success and survival of our civilization and, possibly, that of the human race are in increasing jeopardy because of our commitment to an unsustainable pattern of resource consumption, particularly our dependence upon fossil fuels.


While our planet’s physical resources are finite, the resources of love and imagination are without end.


It is indeed possible to create a society which lives sustainably and harmoniously within the parameters of our planetary life support systems.


We have a responsibility to live in such a way that we do not diminish the opportunity for future generations to enjoy the same quality of life which we enjoy.


A human birth is a precious gift that is accompanied by a responsibility to act with generosity, sensitivity and compassion for all living beings.


In doing our best to leave a better world for our children.


All people, individually and collectively, are capable of learning from their mistakes.


Life inherently includes suffering, but we have a responsibility as members of the human family to do what we can to ease that suffering and to structure our social institutions in such a way as to minimize unnecessary suffering due to poverty, disease, war, injustice and environmental degradation.


Joy is also an inherent feature of life and it is possible to participate joyfully in the suffering of the world.


Each and every life has inherent value and is worthy of respect.


In poetry, art, music, dancing and the spirit of play.


In the power of truth.


At the heart of all things is an ineffable mystery worthy of awe and wonder.


It is this faith which informs, guides and sustains our work in the world.


- Larry Robinson

On The Bank


He was sitting by the river, among reeds

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that peasants had been scything for their thatch.
And it was quiet there, and in his soul
it was quieter and stiller still.
He kicked off his boots and put
his feet into the water, and the water
began talking to him, not knowing
he didn’t know its language.
He had thought that water is deaf-mute,
that the home of sleepy fish is without words,
that blue dragonflies hover over the water
and catch mosquitoes or horseflies,
that you wash if you want to wash, and drink
if you want to drink, and that’s all there is
to water. But in all truth
the water’s language was a wonder,
a story of some kind about some thing,
some unchanging thing that seemed
like starlight, like the swift flash of mica,
like a divination of disaster.
And in it was something from childhood,
from not being used to counting life in years,
from what is nameless
and comes at night before you dream,
from the terrible, vegetable
sense of self
of your first season.


That’s how the water was that day,
and its speech was without rhyme or reason.


- Arseny Tarkovsky
(translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler)

The Lesson Of Poverty




Last night my teacher taught me the lesson of poverty,
having nothing and wanting nothing.


I am a naked man standing inside a mine of rubies,
clothed in red silk.
I absorb the shining and now I see the ocean,
billions of simultaneous motions
moving in me.
A circle of lovely, quiet people
becomes the ring on my finger.


The the wind and the thunder of rain on the way.
I have such a teacher.


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Version by Coleman Barks)

The Word


We ride up softly to the hidden

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oval in the woods, a plateau rimmed
with wavy stands of gray birch and white pine,
my horse thinking his thoughts, happy
in the October dapple, and I thinking
mine-and-his, which is my prerogative,


both of us just in time to see a big doe
loft up over the four-foot fence, her white scut
catching the sun and then releasing it,
soundlessly clapping our reveries shut.
The pine grove shudders as she passes.
The red squirrels thrill, announcing her departure.


Come back! I want to call to her,
we mean you no harm. Come back and show us
who stand pinned in stopped time to the track
how you can go from a standing start
up and over. We on our side, pulses racing,
are synchronized with you racing heart.


I want to tell her, Watch me
mornings when I fill the cylinders
with sunflower seeds, see how the chickadees
and lesser redbreasted nuthatches crowd
onto my arm, permitting me briefly
to stand in for a tree,


and how the vixen in the bottom meadow
I ride across allows me under cover
of horse scent to observe the education
of her kits, how they dive for the burrow
on command, how they re-emerge at another
word she uses, a word I am searching for.


- Maxine Kumin
(1925-2014)