Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

For Freedom

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the ocean absolves itself
Of the expectation of land,
Approaching only
In the form of waves
That fill and pleat and fall
With such gradual elegance
As to make of the limit
A sonorous threshold
Whose music echoes back among
The give and strain of memory,
Thus may your heart know the patience
That can draw infinity from limitation.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

- John O'Donohue

The Ghost of Heaven

Sleep to sleep through thirty years of night,
a child herself with child,
for whom we searched

through here, or there, amidst
bones still sleeved and trousered,
a spine picked clean, a paint can,
a skull with hair


Sewn into the hem of memory:
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
God not
of philosophers or scholars. God not of poets.


Night to night:
child walking toward me through burning maize
over the clean bones of those whose flesh
was lifted by zopilotes into heaven.

So that is how we ascend!
In the clawed feet of fallen angels.
To be assembled again
in the work rooms of clouds.


She rose from where they found her lying
not far from a water urn, leaving
herself behind on the ground
where they found her, holding her arms
before her as if she were asleep.

That is how she appears to me: a ghost in heaven.
Carrying her arms in her arms.


Blue smoke from corn cribs, flap of wings.
On the walls of the city streets a plague of initials.


Walking through a fire-lit river
to a burning house: dead Singer
sewing machine and piece of dress.

Outside a cashew tree wept
blackened cashews over lamina.

Outside paper fireflies rose to the stars.


Bring penicillin if you can, surgical tape, a whetstone,
mosquito repellent but not the aerosol kind.
Especially bring a syringe for sucking phlegm,
a knife, wooden sticks, a surgical clamp, and plastic bags.

You will need a bottle of cloud
for anesthesia.

Like the flight of a crane
through colorless dreams.


When a leech opens your flesh it leaves a small volcano.
Always pour turpentine over your hair before going to sleep.


Such experiences as these are forgotten
before memory intrudes.

The girl was found (don’t say this)
with a man’s severed head stuffed
into her where a child would have been.
No one knew who the man was.
Another of the dead.
So they had not, after all,
killed a pregnant girl.
This was a relief to them.


That sound in the brush?
A settling of wind in sorghum.

If they capture you, talk.
Talk. Please yes. You heard me
right the first time.

You will be asked who you are.
Eventually, we are all asked who we are.

All who come
All who come into the world
All who come into the world are sent.
Open your curtain of spirit.


- Carolyn Forché

Autumn Quince

How sad they are,
the promises we never return to.
They stay in our mouths,
roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.
Houses built and unwittingly lived in;
a succession of milk bottles brought to the door
every morning and taken inside.

And which one is real?
The music in the composer's ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself --
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.

- Jane Hirshfield

A Gift

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

- Denise Levertov

Colds and Other Departures

are tagged as any number of states
in the psycho-biological index of disease:
blocked energy
germ invasion
immune mechanisms out of gas
or in high gear
a daisy chain of self evasion
old grief insisting yet upon its due

whatever these theorized tags
those of us aching with fever,
and blowing our flooded nostrils

know illness for what it really is:
an abject altered state
all things lovely and familiar in abeyance
work, gusto, high purpose
bursts of creation
the intricate tangle of sensing and thought --
gone, just plain gone
as life flows on
a ship we can’t see
sailing along in an ocean
far beyond a tabled horizon
cluttered with bottles and tissues
and steaming cups of tea

- Cynthia Poten

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let there be a
season
when holiness is
heard, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker
the computers desist
computing,
and a hush will fall
over the city.


For an instant, in
the stillness,
the chiming of the
celestial spheres will be heard
as earth hangs
poised
in the crystalline
darkness, and then
gracefully
tilts.


Let ehre be a
season
when holiness is
hear, and
the splendor of
living is revealed.


Stunned to stillness
by beauty
we remember who we
are and why we are here.


There are
inexplicable mysteries.


We are not
alone.


In the universe there
moves a Wild One
whose gestures alter
earth's axis
toward
love.


In the immense
darkness
everything spins with
joy.


The cosmos enfolds
us.


We are caught in a
web of stars,
cradled in a swaying
embrace,
rocked by the holy
night,
babes of the
universe.


Let this be the
time
we wake to
life,
like spring wakes, in
the moment
of winter
solstice.


- Rebecca Parker

Thank you, Rebecca Parker, for sharing your insight, and Larry for sharing the poem (twice : ). There is nothing to do in this moment but be still and feel the earth move in two directons.
...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Winter Solstice

Perhaps
for a
moment
the typewriters will
stop clicking,
the wheels stop
rolling,Winter Solstice


Perhaps....

---

Testimony

(for my daughters)

I want to tell you that the world
is still beautiful.
I tell you that despite
children raped on city streets,
shot down in school rooms,
despite the slow poisons seeping
from old and hidden sins
into our air, soil, water,
despite the thinning film
that encloses our aching world.
Despite my own terror and despair.

I want you to know that spring
is no small thing, that
the tender grasses curling
like a baby's fine hairs around
your fingers are a recurring
miracle. I want to tell you
that the river rocks shine
like God, that the crisp
voices of the orange and gold
October leaves are laughing at death,

I want to remind you to look
beneath the grass, to note
the fragile hieroglyphs
of ant, snail, beetle. I want
you to understand that you
are no more and no less necessary
than the brown recluse, the ruby-
throated hummingbird, the humpback
whale, the profligate mimosa.
I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness",
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

- Rebecca Baggett

If You Knew


What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

- Ellen Bass

Follow Her Down


She treads with slow footfalls,
Deliberate and careful,
Her breath the same.
This is her way.
This is familiar terrain,
The journey repeated.
Always saying farewell.
Always turning away.


Because we deny our mortality
The one who moves between the worlds
Walks for us.
The day will come
When each of us will follow her down.
It is to her that we will go.


Safe journey, then, traveler.
My heart holds you as
I hope your does me -
Willingly,
Willingly.


- Maya Spector
(from The Persephone Cycle)

Christmas


This year
I let Christmas in.


And it occurs to me that
every year
the spirit of Christmas goes wandering
looking for room at the inn
of my heart


turned aside
by the hurry of business
the demands of desires
the walls of grudge, bitterness


but when at last
a door of willingness opens
there comes inside
each year
a newborn spirit


of hope
joy of this life
the courage of kindness
the warm embrace of forgiveness


so powerful,
it draws shepherds,
wise ones, some who hold sway in this world,
even humble animals respond,
look up to the silent chorus
of shimmering angels
among the stars, bending
low, to welcome again this
simple


overwhelming
grace.


- Scott O'Brien

Winter's Cloak
This year I do not want
the dark to leave me.
I need its wrap
of silent stillness,
its cloak
of long lasting embrace.
Too much light
has pulled me away
from the chamber
of gestation.

Let the dawns
come late,
let the sunsets
arrive early,
let the evenings
extend themselves
while I lean into
the abyss of my being.

Let me lie in the cave
of my soul,
for too much light
blinds me,
steals the source
of revelation.

Let me seek solace
in the empty places
of winter's passage,
those vast dark nights
that never fail to shelter me.
- Joyce Rupp

In the Chapel at Monserrat


In this place, a holy place
Not because someone said it was
But because it is, we created
Stories, histories and art to tell us
Why. The stories, the histories,
The art are not needed.
Like ancient ash, they bury
The holy of the holiest.


Here in this chapel, we arrive
After touching the Holy Hand,
The dark, blessed hand that holds
The universe. We descend, enter
A room of relics, where in the quiet
Of not-knowing, a man photographs
His wife, dark as the Mother of God,
Whose night dark hand holds


Everything. She, the wife, smiles shyly,
Too aware of our presence.
She stands at the altar, a blessed place made beautiful
By her self-conscious smile,
Not knowing
That the vision, the visage, the holy
Image is her. Holy for being,
For being here, her face,
The darkness of God's Mother's face.


- Rebecca del Rio

An Old Man's Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him--at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; - and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man - one man - can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

- Robert Frost

how light

the body burns


how light
cannot take
the body


how the body cannot
lay me down
how it cannot rise or rest


how the body
cannot take
the burns


how burns
cannot take
the body


lovers in beds of straw
blessed
with brand or fire


how carefully at first, then hard
they take
what the body gambles

- Thaisa Frank

Mulled Wine

It begins where the smoke
Hits your eyes: smouldering peat,
Mutton stew on a broad iron hook,
Deep snow: how can it ever
Have been summer? Applies wrinkling
And mice in the barley:
With so much to fear, thank the gods
For company! We'll tell our tales,
Remember how we passed the cold
Last year, and last, and those
Who couldn't. The grape leans across
The seasons, clasps the hand of summer's
Dried rind, dreaming the new fruit,
Calling the sun back
World without end amen.
- Mark Green

New Year’s Dawn, 1947


Two morning stars, Venus and Jupiter,
Walk in the pale and liquid light
Above the color of these dawns; and as the tide of light
Rises higher the great planet vanishes
While the nearer still shines. The yellow wave of light
In the east and south reddens, the opaque ocean
Becomes pale purple: Oh the delicate
Earnestness of dawn, the fervor and the pallor.
—Stubbornly I think again: The state is a blackmailer,
Honest or not, with whom we make (within reason)
Our accommodations. There is no valid authority
In church or state, custom, scripture nor creed,
But only in one’s own conscience and the beauty of things.
Doggedly I think again: One’s own conscience is a trick oracle,
Worked by parents and nurse-maids, the pressure of people,
And the delusions of dead prophets: trust it not.
Wash it clean to receive the transhuman beauty: then trust it.
- Robinson Jeffers

Morning Praise


There is nothing more to be said
but still it must be said.
This yellow pen has words it wants to speak
and would cry out
and shake the house down
were it retired and put away.

For, yes, the words that must be said
have already been said.
My masters have said them. But
God did not bid them to be silent
any more than He said to the trees,
“You have made enough leaves.”

No. So I sit here in the swirl of all
my masters’ words. I smile at
the foolish necessity of poems.

But let me tell you, I am alive now,
so it’s my turn to praise God.
The sequoias of my masters live beyond me,
true, but if you look in these woods
and look hard, you will see me too,
the primordial sapling of praise,
a bigger joy than shade can drown.

Why should the morning not be honored then?
I, who have nothing memorized,
not Koran nor scripture, know only this
by heart: to bend my neck back and sing.


- Bruce Moody

The Restaurant


A dimly lit alleyway, noiseless and clean
A few hanging lights and one sign, barely seen
With anticipation we stand at the door
Dressed to the nines, not quite sure what's in store


A table is reserved, it's simple and spare
We're cheerfully welcomed and escorted there
Two slender candles, a single carnation
Intimately suited for food allocation
We take to our seats and then jointly espouse
That ours might well be the best seats in the house


With a sense of tradition, we share the belief
That our evening should start with an aperitif
The bartender's famous for drinks smooth as satin
An old fashioned perhaps? Or a bourbon manhattan?
Before we endeavor to make a selection
The waiter appears and imparts a suggestion
He weaves us a tale of a vintage that's flown
In barrels direct from the Valleé du Rhône
The finest discovered by the sommelier
And he pours a small glass with no further delay
We agree it's divine and without competition
Who cares if it costs more than Harvard's tuition
It's like riding a magic carpet that cruises
On winds from the land of ten thousand masseuses
We order two bottles, since two is more fun
And the having of fun has just barely begun


The menu is made up of several small courses
A dozen at least, and from regional sources
Each taste is designed to improve on the last
Modern art for your mouth, with a nod to the past
The first course is served, then more start to come, steady
Yet leisurely paced so the palette is ready


Nantucket Bay Scallops In Two Preparations
Crudo and served with assorted crustaceans


Summer squash blossoms with veal marrow bones
Endive and watercress, locally grown


Oregon coast razor clams in the shell
Sautéed Foie Gras with fig and chanterelle


Creole inspired spotted sea trout fillets in
A pecan meuniere sauce with chardonnay raisins


Farm-raised suckling pig braised in bourbon molasses
Fed from organically grown native grasses


Provençal bouillabaisse, piled high and teaming
With mussels and langoustine, smoking and steaming


Slow roasted shoulder of blue wildebeest
From Kenyan ranch land that was blessed by a priest


Citrus basil sorbet, castelmagno soufflé,
Pan steamed blue crab from the Chesapeake Bay


Hog island oysters in goose island beer
Caramelized starfruit with melted gruyere


Sweet mixed with sour, then bitter with salt
Each paring sublime, not one place to find fault
The flavors so good that we chirp like canaries
To describe them in full would take twelve dictionaries
And a lake of black ink, and a pen ten feet tall
With which to record the pure joy of it all


And somehow, at some point, without noticing when
The room starts to feel like an opium den
The walls disappear, crystal air fills my lungs
The skies open up, you are speaking in tongues
Angels start dancing round white crystal fountains
That spout liquid gold beneath snowy white mountains
We're flying, propelled by invisible jets
Swinging about, human marionettes


And quick as it came the show draws to a close
Familiar sights start to superimpose
I return to my body and survey the scene
My plate's in my hands, and I'm licking it clean
With my cheeks getting hot, I look over at you
And discover with joy that you're doing it too
We both start to laugh, we fall out of our chairs
Tears roll from our eyes, though we earn some cruel stares


And eventually as we feel more subdued
And it seems like the night is about to conclude
We're struck with amazement by one last surprise
A four decker double wide cheese cart arrives
Hard ones and soft ones and others that smell
Like spoiled eggs soaked in the rivers of hell
Though there's no doubt the flavor is simply divine
Particularly when pared with the right wine
Wedges of gold with the texture of peach
And a little back story provided for each


The rest of the meal is a glorified blur
The details of which I am mostly unsure
It appears that dessert involves further elation
But I'm lost in a state of entranced mastication
And as we float home I cannot understand it
Was this real or a dream? Just the way the chef planned it?
Is there some other answer for what came to pass?
Did they slip us hard drugs? Was the room filled with gas?
We may never know, and maybe that's best
And there's no single theory that I could suggest
For now I'm consumed with one earthly concern
And it's counting the days until we may return


- Max Spector

The Pond in a Bowl, Five Poems


1) In old age I'm back to childhood pleasures.
A bowl in the ground - Just add water- it's a pool!
Throughout the night frogs croaked til it dawned
as they did when I fished as a child at Feng-k'ou.


2) Who says you can't make a pond out of a bowl?
The lotus sprig I planted not long ago has already grown full size.
Don't forget, if it rains stop in for a visit.
Together we'll listen to raindrops splash on all the green leaves.


3) Come morning, the water brightens as if by magic.
One moment alive with thousands of bugs too small to have names,
Next moment they're gone, leaving no trace,
Only the small fish, this way and that, swim in formations.


4) Does the bowl in the garden mock nature
when night after night green frogs gather to prove it's a pool?
If you choose to come and keep me company need you fill
the dark with noise and endless squabble like husband and wife?


5) Say the bright pond mirrors the sky, both blue.
If I pour water, the pond brims.
Let night deepen --the moon go---
how many stars shine back from the water!


- Han Yu, (768-824)
(translator unknown)

From Underneath

A giant sea turtle saved the life of a 52 year-old woman lost at sea
for two days after a shipwreck in the Southern Phillipines. She rode on the turtle's back.
–Syracuse Post-Standard



When her arms were no longer

strong enough to tread water

it came up beneath her, hard
and immense, and she thought

this is how death comes,

something large between your legs

and then the plunge.

She dived off instinctively,

but it got beneath her again

and when she realized what it was
she soiled herself, held on.

God would have sent something winged,

she thought. This came from beneath,

a piece of hell that killed a turtle

on the way and took its shape.

How many hours passed?

She didn't know, but it was night

and the waves were higher.

The thing swam easily in the dark.


She swooned into sleep.

When she woke in the morning,

the sea calm, her strange raft

still moving. She noticed the elaborate

pattern of its shell, map-like,

the leathery neck and head

as if she'd come up behind

an old longshoreman
in a hard-backed chair.

She wanted and was afraid to touch

the head – one finger
just above the eyes –

the way she would touch her cat

and make it hers.
The more it swam a steady course

the more she spoke to it

the jibberish of the lost.

And then the laughter

located at the bottom
of oneself, unstoppable.

The call went from sailor to sailor

on the fishing boat: A woman

riding an "oil drum"

off the starboard side.

But the turtle was already swimming

toward the prow

with its hysterical, foreign cargo

and when it came up alongside

it stopped
until she could be hoisted off.

Then it circled three times

and went down.

The woman was beyond all language,

the captain reported:

the crew was afraid of her

for a long, long time.


- Stephen Dunn

Acid


In Jakarata
among the venders
of flowers and soft drinks
I saw a child
with a hideous mouth,
begging,
and I knew the wound was made
for a way to stay alive.
What he gave me
from the brown coin
of his face
was a look of cunning.
I carry it
like a bead of acid
to remember how,
once in a while,
you can creep out of your own life
and become someone else--
an explosion
in that nest of wires
we call the imagination.
I will never see him
again, I suppose.
But what of this rag,
this shadow
flung like a boy's body
into the walls
of my mind, bleeding
their sour taste--
insult and anger
the great movers?


- Mary Oliver

TURTLE DREAM

Why can't a turtle fly? Really!
Like it did last night.

Flying and gliding above
the crowed ballroom floor
we swooped over the startled dancers
far below as they pointed up
with their jeweled fingers
to my flying turtle
with it's glistening
cloisonné carapace.

Clinging to his geometric back
the shell grew hot
as we moved lower,
gliding in slow tilting circles
to the marbled inlaid floor.

Calmly and deliberate
he blew out his turtle breath
turtle breath of sea green clouds
smelling of burning sage.

It was so easy then
to roll off his glowing back
and walk gracefully in the mist
just above the dancers
now sleeping quietly
in the seaweed
and the grass.

- Doug von Koss

I remember being so perplexed the first time I heard the phrase "turtle power."

That is NOT a sexy totem animal.

I now have a different perspective...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

TURTLE DREAM

Why can't a turtle fly? Really!
Like it did last night.

- Doug von Koss

---

To World War Two


Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafe's.
It was a time of general confusion
Of being a body hurled at a wall.
I didn't do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.
I stood while the typhoon splashed us into morning.
It felt unusual
Even if for a good cause
To be part of a destructive force
With my rifle in my hands
And in my head
My serial number
The entire object of my existence
To eliminate Japanese soldiers
By killing them
With a rifle or with a grenade
And then, many years after that,
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think about these things
From a great distance
If I survived
I was "paying my debt
To society" a paid
Killer. It wasn't
like anything I'd done
Before, on the paved
Streets of Cincinatti
Or on the ballroom floor
At Mr. Vathe's dancing class
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith
Have thought of me
If instead of asking her to dance
I had put my BAR to my shoulder
And shot her in the face
I thought about her in my foxhole--
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night
We take precautions but it is night and it is you.
The typhoon continues and so do you.
"I can't be killed--because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write
it."
I thought--even crazier thought, or just as crazy--
"If I'm killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny
When it's reported" (I imagined it would be reported!)
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach on
Leyte
Was "The surf comes in like masochistic lions."
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping me alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,
"You won't believe this, but some day you may wish
You were footloose and twenty on Leyte again." I have never wanted
To be on Leyte again,
With you, whispering into my ear,
"Go on and win me! Tomorrow you might not be alive,
So do it today!" How could anyone win you?
You were too much for me, though I
Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me
You'd use me, and then forget. How else
Did I think you'd behave?
I'm glad you ended. I'm glad I didn't die. Or lose my mind.
As machines make ice
We made dead enemy soldiers, in
Dark jungle alleys, with weapons in our hands
That produced fire and kept going straight through
I was carrying one,
I who had gone about for years as a child
Praying God don't let there be another war
Or if there is, don't let me be in it. Well, I was in you.
All you cared about was existing and being won.
You died of a bomb blast in Nagasaki, and there were parades.
- Kenneth Koch

Why I Voted the Socialist Ticket


I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.

Man is a curious brute—he pets his fancies—
Fighting mankind, to win sweet luxury.
So he will be, though law be clear as crystal,
Tho’ all men plan to live in harmony.

Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
- Vachel Lindsay

Toward Bethlehem
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats

Yes, I know.
This is the time
of the second coming.
The great beast lurking,
the savage heart
beating once again.

Somewhere in the desert, yes,
that blank and pitiless stare.
The haunches moving.
The stealthy advance.

Shall we watch in horror and dismay?
Do we turn away
or witness in silence and despair?.

The vision falters,
the image fades again.
That distant struggle
in the clouds of dust--
is this the specter
we ourselves have made,
created from our inner dreamscape
of grasping and desire?
Are we ourselves
the approaching shape
of darkness drawing near?

- Dorothy Walters

Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal


After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,

I heard the announcement:

If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any

Arabic,

Please come to the gate immediately.


Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own

gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,

Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor,

wailing loudly.

Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her.

What is her

Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four

hours late and she

Did this.


I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.

Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway,

min fadlick,

Sho bit se-wee?



The minute she heard any words she knew -- however

poorly used -

She stopped crying.



She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.

She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical

treatment the

Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get

there, just late,



Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.

We called her son and I spoke with him in English.

I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on

the plane and

Would ride next to her -- southwest.



She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just

for the fun of it.



Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while

in Arabic and

Found out of course they had ten shared friends.



Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call

some Palestinian

Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took

up about 2 hours.



She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her

life. Answering

Questions.



She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies --

little powdered

Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts --

out of her bag --

And was offering them to all the women at the gate.



To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It

was like a

Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler

from California,

The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered

with the same

Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better

cookies.



And then the airline broke out the free beverages from

huge coolers --

Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our

flight, one African

American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving

us all apple juice

And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar

too.



And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were

holding hands --

Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some

medicinal thing,



With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling

tradition. Always

Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.



And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones

and thought,

This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.



Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of

confusion stopped

-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.



They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other

women too.

This can still happen anywhere.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

Winter Solitude


Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.






When The Winter Chrysanthemums Go


When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there's nothing to write about
but radishes.


- Matsuo Basho

Practice

Not the high mountain monastery
I had hoped for, the real
face of my spiritual practice
is this:
the sweat that pearls on my cheek
when I tell you the truth, my silent
cry in the night when I think
I’m alone, the trembling
in my own hand as I reach out
through the years of overcoming
to touch what I had hoped
I would never need again.


- Kim Rosen