Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

After the Lecture

for Martin Luther King Jr.


A woman said I was not polite
to the opposition,
that I was harsh
and did not encourage
discourse.

Perhaps if I were Christ,
I could say, "Forgive them
for they know not what they do."
Or the queen, and apologize
for stubbing my executioner's toes.

But only if I knew
the executioners
were mine only.

What courtesy have I the right to give
to them who break the bones,
the souls of my brothers,
my sisters;
deny bread, books
to the hungry,
the children;
medicine, healing
to the sick;
roofs to the homeless;

who spoil the oceans,
lay waste the forests
and the deserts,
violate the land?

Affability on the lips
of outrage
is a sin and blasphemy
I'll not be guilty of.

- Rafael Jesús González


Después del Discurso

a Martin Luther King Jr.

Una mujer me dijo que no fui cortés
con la oposición,
que fui duro
y que no animé
discusión.

Tal vez si fuera Cristo,
pudiera decir - Perdónalos
que no saben lo que hacen. -
O la reina, y disculparme
por haber pisarle el pie a mi verdugo.

Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.

¿Qué cortesía tengo el derecho a darles
a los que quiebran los huesos
y las almas de mis hermanos,
mis hermanas;
les niegan el pan, los libros
a los hambrientos,
a los niños;
la medicina, el sanar
a los enfermos;
techos a los desamparados;

que estropean los mares,
que destruyen los bosques
y los desiertos,
violan la tierra?

Afabilidad en los labios
de la furia justa
es pecado y blasfemia
de la cual no seré culpable.

- Rafael Jesús González

In California: Morning, Evening, Late January
Pale, then enkindled,
light
advancing,
emblazoning
summits of palm and pine,

the dew
lingering,
scripture of
scintillas.

Soon the roar
of mowers
cropping the already short
grass of lawns,

men with long-nozzled
cylinders of pesticide
poking at weeds,

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at moss in cracks of cement,

and louder roar
of helicopters off to spray
vineyards where braceros try
to hold their breath,

and in the distance, bulldozers, excavators,
babel of destructive construction.

Banded by deep
oakshadow, airy
shadow of eucalyptus,

miner’s lettuce,

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tender, untasted,
and other grass, unmown,
luxuriant,
no green more brilliant.

Fragile paradise.

. . . .

At day’s end the whole sky,
vast, unstinting, flooded with transparent
mauve,
tint of wisteria,
cloudless
over the malls, the industrial parks,
the homes with the lights going on,
the homeless arranging their bundles.

. . . .

Who can utter
the poignance of all that is constantly
threatened, invaded, expended

and constantly
nevertheless
persists in beauty,

tranquil as this young moon
just risen and slowly
drinking light
from the vanished sun.

Who can utter
the praise of such generosity
or the shame?
- Denise Levertov

First Steps In Hawkshead Church


My son strode out into the world today,
twenty one steps on the grave of Ann Braithwaite,
her horizontal slab of repose grey beneath
the lifting red socks, her exit from the world
his entrance to the world of walking.


She must have lain beneath and smiled past
the small arms outstretched to the church tower of Hawkshead,
she must have borne him up, her help from the end of life
his beginning, her hands invisible, reaching to his.


He walked through each line explaining her life,
sixty two years by the small lake of Esthwaite,
lichen, green grass, grey walls and the falling
water of ice cold streams, his small place of play
her mingling with the elements she lived with.


A meeting of two waters,
hers a deep pool, solitary in stillness,
his swift, bubbling from rock to rock,
pouring into her silence, a kingfisher
flare in her darkness, promise of light,


Ineffable, unknowable, the touch of his feet
a promise of a world to come, solid on a life well lived.
His look of surprise when the church bell rang, her knowing.
The sound of time, his now, hers then. New rituals
are always played on the graves of those long dead.


- David Whyte

You and I have

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so much love
That it burns
like a fire
In which we bake
A lump of clay
Molded into
A figure of you
And a figure of me.

Then we take
Both of them
And break them
Into pieces.

And mix the pieces
with water.

And mold again
A figure of you
And a figure of me.

I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share
a single quilt
In death
a single bed.

Chinese Love Poem
Translated By Kenneth Rexroth

Touch The Air

Now touch the air softly,

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Step gently, one, two…
I'll love you till roses
Are robin's-egg blue;
I'll love you till gravel
Is eaten for bread,
And lemons are orange,
And lavender's red.

Now touch the air softly,
Swing gently the broom.
I'll love you till windows
Are all of a room;
And the table is laid,
And the table is bare,
And the ceiling reposes
On bottomless air.

I'll love you till Heaven
Rips the stars from his coat,
And the moon rows away in
A glass-bottomed boat;
And Orion steps down
Like a diver below,
And Earth is ablaze,
And Ocean aglow.

So touch the air softly,
and swing the broom high.
We will dust the gray mountains,
And sweep the blue sky;
And I'll love you as long
As the furrow the plow,
As However is Ever,
And Ever is Now.

- William Jay Smith

A Rainy Morning


A young woman in a wheelchair,
wearing a black nylon poncho spattered with rain,
is pushing herself through the morning.
You have seen how pianists
sometimes bend forward to strike the keys,
then lift their hands, draw back to rest,
then lean again to strike just as the chord fades.
Such is the way this woman
strikes at the wheels, then lifts her long white fingers,
letting them float, then bends again to strike
just as the chair slows, as if into a silence.
So expertly she plays the chords
of this difficult music she has mastered,
her wet face beautiful in its concentration,
while the wind turns the pages of rain.


- Ted Kooser

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As I crossed the bridge, a hairy hand came out.
"Stop, pay troll."
I gave him 5 euros. He put it not in his purse but in a jar.
"It's for the poor. They are very hungry," he said.
"This week Africa. Maybe next week your country."
He scratched. "When you get to the other side of the bridge, you get it back."
I looked, saw no one giving back. He saw me looking.

"Not THIS bridge," he said.

- Birrell Walsh

Gratitude to Old Teachers


When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,

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We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?


Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.


- Robert Bly

Greed


My ocean town struggles
to pick up leaves,
offer summer school,
and keep our library open.
Every day now
more men stand
at the railroad station,
waiting to be chosen for work.
Because it’s thought
the Hispanics will work for less
they get picked first,
while the whites and blacks
avoid the terror
in one another’s eyes.
Our handyman, Santos,
who expects only
what his hands earn,
is proud of   his half acre in Guatemala,
where he plans to retire.
His desire to proceed with dignity
is admirable, but he knows
that now no one retires,
everyone works harder.
My father imagined a life
more satisfying than the one
he managed to lead.
He didn’t see himself as uneducated,
thwarted, or bitter,
but soon-to-be rich.
Being rich was his right, he believed.
Happiness, I used to think,
was a necessary illusion.
Now I think it’s just
precious moments of relief,
like dreams of Guatemala.
Sometimes, at night,
in winter, surrounded by
the significant silence
of empty mansions,
which once were cottages,
where people lived their lives,
and now are owned by banks
and the absent rich,
I like to stand at my window,
looking for a tv’s futile flickering,
always surprised to see
instead
the quaint, porous face
of my reflection,
immersed
in its one abundance.


- Philip Schultz

Last Call


1


Tonight
moonglow
from within
softly


like a candled egg


and softly
stars diminish
until incandescence washes


the dark sky


until midnight's
lightslick
its ebb and flow


liquid


the candent universe
rolls
softly


2


Midnight
remonstrance:


there are those
I wish honestly
only to remember


being gone
and only memory


and
there are those
I wish to never remember


desiring
only their presence


lasting as long
as my life
until forever


as
I cannot imagine


living in a world
containing
only their memory


3


And you my friend
whom the gods call
into that other alone


wherever you wake
be it desert or forest
mountain or seaside


find tinder
dry moss and kindling
flint


strike a small fire which
being eternity
will flicker beyond forever


sing
your bright poem
fork your lightning dance


I will find you
sooner than later wherever
you wait in the darkness


We will sing together
delirious and off key
We will tell great lies
to shame the heavens
We will cook with wine
I promise you this


- David Lee

What's Left?


Something like a half-person
left my young husband's body,
and something like the other half
left my ovary. Later,
the new being, complete, slowly
left my body. And a portion of breath
left the air of the delivery room,
entering the little mouth,
and the milk left the breast, and went
into the fat cuffs of the wrists.
Years later, during his cremation,
the liquids left my father's corpse,
and the smoke left the flue. And even
later, my mother's ashes left
my hand, and fell as seethe into the salt
chop. My then husband made
a self, a life, I made beside him
a self, a life, gestation. We grew
strong, in direction. We clarified
in vision, we deepened in our silence and our speaking.
We did not hold still, we moved, we are moving
still-- we made, with each other, a moving
like a kind of music: duet; then solo,
solo. We fulfilled something in each other--
I believed in him, he believed in me, then we
grew, and grew, I grieved him, he grieved me,
I completed with him, he completed with me, we
made whole cloth together, we succeeded,
we perfected what lay between him and me,
I did not deceive him, he did not deceive me,
I did not leave him, he did not leave me,
I freed him, he freed me.


- Sharon Olds

Remembering the Big Bang


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


In the redwoods telling everyone their song
Was wonderful, worth stealing. Time was
Compact, pressed tight so that birth and death
Overlapped and, at any moment, love happened over and over.


Inside there was no outside. The day
Your mother threw your brother down
The backstairs isn't separate
From the afternoon, there on a Welsh back road


You, your sister and mother
Laughed beyond reason, parked
beside an ivy-covered wall, turning
Blood red in the Fall.


Together then, those days in a sterile courtroom,
Bored under bright lights, the ice-fringed stream
The hoary mastodon crossed, pursued by ourselves,
Our ancestors, summer Sonoran nights, cicadas buzzing


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


No different from one telling or another,
Spoken or sung.
No one,
No other.


- Rebecca del Rio

Hope Chest

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She never used them, the silver coffee spoons.
They huddled in their cardboard cradles,
cushioned in cotton browned with disuse
and saved for a special occasion.
We found them in her hope chest, after she died,
along with the heavy linen tablecloth,
never unfolded from its sharp creases,
and the peach satin nightgown, slippery as love,
the price tag still dangling from its sleeve.

- Jane L. Mickelson

Much kudos to Jane L. Mickelson for a very very touching poem.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Hope Chest

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She never used them, the silver coffee spoons.
They huddled in their cardboard cradles,
cushioned in cotton browned with disuse
and saved for a special occasion.
We found them in her hope chest, after she died,
along with the heavy linen tablecloth,
never unfolded from its sharp creases,
and the peach satin nightgown, slippery as love,
the price tag still dangling from its sleeve.

- Jane L. Mickelson

---

Ars Poetica


A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.


- Archibald MacLeish

One Good Pork Chop


At dinner (her very good pork chops)

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she says something just the tiniest bit critical of me.
The tiniest bit, too tiny to mention, except
just after I got home she said something else
the tiniest bit critical. This is my wife,
and very rarely is she critical of me,
nor am I of her. We have a non-critical relationship.
We tend to just let things slide,
which often makes me anxious, trained as I was
in a previous marriage to believe that growth
and insight come out of very intense criticism, leading to fighting.
And by fighting I mean everything
from whole days of the "silent treatment" (my specialty),
to entire weekends of operatic screaming (hers).
Our hope was that interpersonal growth and clarity
would emerge from these encounters,
but in truth our fighting just made us tired.
When not fighting we would sit tiredly
in the living room, thinking up complicated strategies
for the next fight.
One time we fought almost nonstop
for an entire week, beginning with a little dig
I made at her expense at a dinner party
on a Friday evening, and evolving,
gathering Jihad-like intensity, followed by
a kind of Wagnerian complexity,
progressing to a period of vengeful, Nordic saga brutality
that had us sobbing, moaning, wailing (at one point
I was on my hands and knees in the hallway,
banging my head on the floor), pausing only to sleep
and go to work, displaying an amazing stamina
born of endless hours of fighting,
insulting each other's spiritual beliefs, sex organs,
parents, grandparents, even pets,
until we were drenched in metaphoric blood, luminous
and holy with hatred, various personal knickknacks smashed,
and the usual plates and dishes
shattered on the floor,
all of which passes before me in a flash
as I chew on a piece of very good pork chop
with this almost entirely non-critical wife,
and I raise the spear
of the tiny, perfectly lethal
critical remark I had been sharpening in my smoky prehistoric cave,
toss it on the fire, and say,
Wow. This is one good pork chop. Which it is.


- George Bilgere

The Smallest Vessel


What is the smallest vessel that can hold a human being?


Certainly it is more than the skin and bones that contain

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the pulsing of the individual life within;
one human cannot forever stand alone and separate.
Even the wise woman who lives in the forest
apart from others
serves as the wise woman for those others.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least one other human being.


But two humans cannot forever stand alone and separate.
They need young ones
to raise and teach,
to help with the daily chores,
and, finally, to take charge
and carry on
as the elders grow old, their bodies dying,
releasing their starlight
and becoming stardust once again.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the family.


But the family cannot forever stand alone and separate.
It needs others to help in the gathering of food,
the building of shelter,
and in caring for those who are sick or hurt,
just as it helps others in their own time of need.
The family needs others to bind together with
in times of catastrophe,
of want, and of war,
as well as to rejoice with
in times of plenty, and of peace.
It needs others to share in the knowledge of Earth’s gifts
and to learn the ways of the wise old ones.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the clan.


But the clan cannot long survive alone.
It needs oxygen to breathe, food to eat,
and waters to quench its thirst.
It needs medicines to heal those who are sick.
It needs insects to pollinate and clean
the forests, savannas, deserts, and prairies.
It needs jaguars, hawks, turtles, sparrows,
trees, flowers, vines,
and all manner of animals and plants
both seen and unseen
to teach the wordless songs of the Infinite.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the whole of the Web of Life.


But the Web of Life cannot long survive alone.
It needs a Mother,
willing to share her flesh:
air,
water,
the makings of soil,
and the mixing together of life-giving elements,
so that the Web of Life might form itself
out of her own body.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least Earth herself.


But Earth cannot long survive alone.
She needs a star to draw light from
to warm her creations,
to cause the the winds to blow,
the clouds to form, and the rains to fall.
She needs a Moon
to steady her
as she dances spinning through the seasons
and to cause her oceans to pulse
with life-giving tides.
She needs planets, comets, asteroids,
to pull and push, and sometimes collide with her
and stir the cauldron of creativity.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the Sun and his children.


But the Sun and his children
cannot have come into being alone.
They need a galaxy of stars,
forming, living, dying, exploding,
creating the elements for life.
They need a billion seeds,
a billion possibilities,
and the death of the Grandmother Star
to bring forth that one precise possibility
that allowed our Sun to be born
and his children to emerge.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the galaxy.


But the galaxy cannot have come into being alone.
It needs forces, particles, and fire,
spinning forth
from the first callings of the Infinite,
forming into billions of colossal galactic clouds
spiraling out into the primordial cosmos.
The smallest vessel that can hold a human being must include
at least the Universe.


But the Universe cannot have come into being alone.
It needs an Unfathomable Mystery,


a time of no time,


a place of no place,


a Beginning of All Beginnings,


so that the Infinite can then call forth the Universe,
and the Universe can then explode into being.


Therefore . . .


The smallest vessel that can hold a human being,
that can hold you yourself—hold all beings—must include
the whole of the Infinite . . .


at the very least.

- David Christopher
(Excerpted from The Holy Universe: www.theholyuniverse.com)

Under The Vulture-Tree


We have all seen them circling pastures,

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have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,
the fences of our own backyards, and have stood
amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.
But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,
every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat
and pull it toward the tree.
The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed
red, ugly as a human heart.
Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time
its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls
wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old
who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.


- David Bottoms

Visitors from Abroad


1


Sometime after I had entered
that time of   life
people prefer to allude to in others
but not in themselves, in the middle of the night
the phone rang. It rang and rang
as though the world needed me,
though really it was the reverse.


I lay in bed, trying to analyze
the ring. It had
my mother’s persistence and my father’s
pained embarrassment.


When I picked it up, the line was dead.
Or was the phone working and the caller dead?
Or was it not the phone, but the door perhaps?


2


My mother and father stood in the cold
on the front steps. My mother stared at me,
a daughter, a fellow female.
You never think of us, she said.


We read your books when they reach heaven.
Hardly a mention of us anymore, hardly a mention of  your sister.
And they pointed to my dead sister, a complete stranger,
tightly wrapped in my mother’s arms.


But for us, she said, you wouldn’t exist.
And your sister — you have your sister’s soul.
After which they vanished, like Mormon missionaries.


3


The street was white again,
all the bushes covered with heavy snow
and the trees glittering, encased with ice.


I lay in the dark, waiting for the night to end.
It seemed the longest night I had ever known,
longer than the night I was born.


I write about you all the time, I said aloud.
Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.


4


Outside the street was silent.
The receiver lay on its side among the tangled sheets,
its peevish throbbing had ceased some hours before.


I left it as it was;
its long cord drifting under the furniture.


I watched the snow falling,
not so much obscuring things
as making them seem larger than they were.


Who would call in the middle of the night?
Trouble calls, despair calls.
Joy is sleeping like a baby.


- Louise Glück

Fishing in the Dark

If all we know is laid to rest tonight

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and time is left to argue with the dead
two promises the morn will offer bright
so, ease to sleep and rest your weary head.

May as the rumpled clouds do steal across
the moon and stars and eye’s incessant stare
a vision come as soft as feet on moss
though you may not know whence it comes, or where.

Hold fast the empty line, but leave it slack
so little silver trout will pass it by
and larger creatures, deep and bold and black
will come to take the lure, and you thereby.

Ah, dreaming then, although no less awake
the past and future forms invite your take.


- Karl Frederick

The Best Poems Cut

The best poems
Cut like the sharpest sword
In the Zen
Master's hand

Arching so swiftly,
Slicing through one's body of emotions,
You don't even feel it
... until

It's laid bare the guts of a life time
Leaving the blood of tears
Flowing passionately into the
Earth of your soul

- David Imur

In the Basement of the Goodwill Store

In musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid,
an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb.


Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back
two mirrors which flash and glance
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.

- Ted Kooser

Pig at the Mexican Orphanage


Either it's all okay or none of it is,
like the lonely black-and-white sow with the bristly face,


her sty filled with rotting corn cobs
and the deep irremediable odor of pigshit


halfway up the hill behind the orphanage.
Past the yard where kids congregate


by swings and slides. Past pens
of bleating goats and the busy hen-house,


I stopped to talk.
Pig you stink and I have no children,


I said. She snorted in acknowledgment
and came close, her wet snout


with its damp, snuffly nostrils like two black tunnels.
Perhaps if I had a grass wand


I could turn her back into a princess
and avert her fate of becoming carnitas or jambon.


Perhaps if I dared to scratch behind her ears.
There are those whose pens


are definite and wooden, and others
whose only cage is the leaden sky


of their own mind.
Look here, in the exact center of my
divided heart where the blood
is always busy, rushing and returning,


where old questions lie
like quartered rotten potatoes


flung on the compost heap
to spring back new again and whole.


Tell me: when they weigh my heart
against the feather of truth


will it crash the scales like a hammer
to the back of a pig's skull


or float straight up to Heaven
like the shrieks of these children


which reach me, faintly, no matter
how high I climb? Bright sparks


from the welder's arc, they know the language
of foot and soccer ball, frijoles y tortillas, just as I know


abandoned may mean alone, desolate, bereft-
or finally free to feel everything.


- Allison Luterman

Anthropology of an American Guy


Since fourteen I’ve had a thing
for girls and anthropology
so don’t go blaming me
for my crazy audio book fling
with Hilary Hamann’s Anthropology
Of An American Girl
or the way her words made my heart twirl
my mind in full bow to her incarnation Evie
who is so full of poetry
that every time she thinks or speaks
she transports me across the line
from novel to poetry;
with no apology let me like Hilary
wax poetic, polemic, and erotic
weaving threads of voice quixotic
voices that capture American character
and rupture the lack of the latter.


Writers like you capture intimacy with rapture
attract spoken word artists and actors
who clamor for a shot to voice the lines
birthed in your signature mindstuff.
The way you dreamed up Jack, Rob, Mark and Rourke
ploughing up the fucked up American male psyche
making such an exquisite fuss over the wreckage
daring to love us guys with such improbable tenderness,
and ample measure of erotic suggestiveness
that we circle your protagonist like Jupiter’s moons.


We are nothing but water all this rock hard masculinity
and you writer are the sea calling us home to spawn
in your quintessential imagination
where we have no choice;
we are nothing but the offspring
of the vivid eye of your mind
and soon you will abandon us nearly entirely,
you’ll fall for someone else, you can’t help it.




You might think of us, your male progeny
like protective whales or killer sharks
abandoned forever to the placenta sea of your afterbirth
but in reality off your pages we will breach
stunning and haunting feminine readers in our reach,
our male plumage daringly distinctive
our character and strength irrepressible
and our flaws fatally attractive.




- Brian McSweeney

First Kiss


August 2nd, First Kiss.

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I found it written on a scrap of paper, in an old file.
Who was she, what year was it? Wanted to throw it away.
What was the anticipation and wonder
I felt at that moment?
Wondering in my head.
Why do I forget the kiss, but am attached
to the piece of paper?
What other scraps are waiting to be discovered?
A mosaic of moments happy and sad,
filling boxes and drawers.
I notice dreamy romantic music has kept me here,
wallowing in an old affair,
I recycle the scrap of my life.


- Brian Martens

Poem presented graphically.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

First Kiss...

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The Moment

To write down all I contain at this moment
I would pour the desert through an hour-glass,
The sea through a water-clock,
Grain by grain and drop by drop
Let in the trackless, measureless, mutable seas and sands.

For earth's days and nights are breaking over me,
The tides and sands are running through me,
And I have only two hands and a heart to hold the desert and the sea.

What can I contain of it? It escapes and eludes me,
The tides wash me away,
The desert shifts under my feet.

- Kathleen Raine

Rain & Rachamim


I love the rain.
Makes me think of rachamim, of the Divine well spring of compassion.

https://creativejewishliving.com/wp-...rt-225x300.jpg

Nothing better than falling asleep to the rain
the quite rumble on the roof
like a cat purring on your lap
the gurgle of the gutters - the sound of all things wet and soggy outside
while we are warm under the covers
inside.

How lucky we are to have a roof over our heads
so that we can enjoy the rain and
so many other things –

Thank you God for the rain and our roofs
our shelter
from the storm.

Let your rachamim fall on all your creatures,
spread over us a shelter of rachamim
of compassion and
- George Gittleman

Rain and Rachamin graphically illustrated.
Lower portion of image is a modification of Susan Danko's art work.

Sometimes The Problem


Sometimes the problem cannot be solved

no matter what.


It sits there like a granite block a mile high
and glares at you
grinning clown-faced at all your efforts
and your clever approaches, whatever.

At your wild ideas
and your desperate desires
and raging rages

Nope, all go to naught. Nothing.

T'will not be moved. No way.

Then you think, what will it matter anyway
give or take a few decades, to anyone, anyhow,
your miserable obsessed affliction?

Might as well let it go.

Only after you've screamed your brains to sleep
and cussed your guts out

comes the unguarded moment when
you give it up to the Universe

released like a hawk long held prisoner

a found freedom in the wind.

Then the good stuff really gets rolling:

incalculable eons of incandescent stardust,
blasted supernovas and black holes

blackholing

and the Gods and the microns
and the neutrons and all twelve dimensions
and the blooming Johnny Jumpups on the back porch
and your Grandchild's smile

had the answer all along

'Natch.

- L.K. Potts

Boddhisattva Vow

https://www.factzoo.com/sites/all/im...woodpecker.jpg

See more about the ivory billed woodpecker here

"I want to come back
as the disabled child
of someone like Vladimir Putin
to awaken his heart of compassion.


"Then I'll be reborn
as a maybe extinct species -
like an ivory billed woodpecker;
I'll fly to Washington
or wherever I want
to bring the good news of our return.


"Or maybe I'll just be
a breath of wind touching
the world with hope and healing."


This is what Sue said.
I say
she hears the cries of the world.
Om Tara tutare ture swaha!


- Larry Robinson

Ikkyu says


Ikkyu says, "Humans are endowed with the stupidity of horses and cattle."
I think Ikkyu is full of shit.
Humans are endowed with a stupidity all their own.
Horses and cattle know what to do.
They do it well.
He is right about poetry as a work out of hell.
We ought to know.
Phenomena experience themselves as themselves.
They don't need poetry.
We are looking at a mystery here.
How do these things have such an obstinancy and yet are dependent on my consciousness?
When I practice fishing with two teenagers
poetry never occurs to me.
But later it does.
I can go over the whole day.
Hooray! That's what being human is all about.
It is just as much a weakness as a strength.
You say a language is (a wild system born with us.)
I agree.
It is wilder than wild.
If we were just wild we wouldn't need language.
Maybe we are beyond wild.
That makes me feel better.


- Doc Dachtler

Luna espejo


Mi amigo me dijo
que más que todo
la luna está hecha de vidrio
por lo cual cuando llena
tanto refleja la luz del sol.
Lo que yo creo es que
la luna es el escorial
de todo espejo roto en la Tierra
por accidente tal vez
o por rabia
cuando preguntándoles
- espejo, espejo en la pared . . . -
no nos agradan sus respuestas.

- Rafael Jesús González 2014



Mirror Moon

My friend told me
that more than anything
the moon is made of glass
for which when full
she reflects so much light of the sun.
What I believe is that
the moon is the dump-heap
of all the mirrors broken on the Earth
by accident perhaps
or through rage
when asking them,
"mirror, mirror on the wall . . ."
their answers do not please us.


- Rafael Jesús González

Let me make this perfectly clear
I have never written anything because it is a poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act.
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
And in the long light,
Breathing.

Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.

In the end there's just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the Wind)

Out there in the night between two trees is the Poem saying;
Do not hate me
Because I peeled the veil from your eyes and tore your world
To shreds, and brought

The darkness down upon your head. Here is a book of tongues,
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! Now I know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.

- Gwendolyn MacEwen

What to do when the answers leave you

To begin with, be still.
For the first few
minutes, do not say
a word about what
you have lost.

Leave your bed and walk the house.
Nod silently to the chipped cups
and the darkened grout;
calmly acknowledge the rug where it frayed,
and the tea-stained,
should’ve-been-washed curtains.

Now carefully bring out
the torn eagerness
of love, laid
too soon at his feet,
and the dried iris at
your own. See it still
infused with color.
Though you want to
sweep it up, cast it out,
don’t. Instead, not its
beauty in death.

Feel the whole room
of your body,
the mind’s cutlery
entrapped in the skull,
its ache to receive news
of life on other planets.

Tell it the answers
proved unfaithful at last,
that you would rather
have real questions any day.
Act as if you believe this.

- Kate Willens

A "real" question,

Could the line:
Instead, not its
beauty in death.

be:

Instead, note its
beauty in death.
?

Reminder


Yesterday, after days of rain,

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the magnolia in full bloom,
open without reservation,
to the soft sweep of afternoon
sunlight,
stopped me in my tracks
and cleansed me with laughter.

Today I drag dark clouds
again around with me
like a moldy sweater,
and off the porch the
magnolia
again communicates
With the soft rain, ready
To let go of every
precious petal
when necessary.

Tomorrow there maybe
no magnolia,
or no me to witness it.
And this recognition
inflates a sadness in
my chest, a tight balloon,
filled with deep gratitude
and joy.
When I exhale
everything is
suddenly
available.
- Barry Vesser

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

Of What’s Left To Come


Contemplate the days,
Not the ones past,
But those yet to come.


How many remain?
On this earth
In this body
Underneath this sky?

What we deny
Diminishes us


As Death will come
Why not
Embrace death now
As a wise old friend

Let Death
Strip you of your pretense
Awaken your humanity
Humble you in its mystery

Why wait?
Allow Death’s inevitability
To arouse your secret longing for life
And move you to courageous acts of living

What do you have to lose?
But the partial death
you call life


Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate
All that we love will die


Dear Friend,
Please
Come closer
Help me to love this life
While I still can


- Forest Fein

Thank you, Larry.

Life Light

Life. a flame, a flicker,
a slow-burning ember,
a blazing fire,
precious in every form.
You.
Me.
We are.
Open to your self
like a flower to the sun
before fading days come
and life is done.
This moment is...
gone,
now new.
Feel, hear, see, smell life,
It will be over some day.
What did you come to say?
Be it, share it
through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.

©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian


It will be over some day. What did you come to say? Be it, share it through every cell
that shimmers with life light, divine.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Of What’s Left To Come


Contemplate the days,
Not the ones past,
But those yet to come.


How many remain?
On this earth
In this body
Underneath this sky?
...

---

The Cornerstone


Imagine the tale a mute stone speaks:
I stood strong at a corner
And on my shoulders a temple upbore.
Sighings and singings of love filled my days
And fed me the strength to stand
Under the weight of that heavy house
The home of him who holds the world in his hand.
Deep in the womb of night when Wyrd brushed by,
I listened oft to ancient tales told by monks
And written on scrolls with marks that spoke.
Thus in the day and in the night I was never alone,
But my goodly thanes, the men of God,
Comforted and upheld me with their praisings and tellings.
And then the Dark Doomer, Woeful Wyrd,
Struck in the night when the waves were wild
And the wind came cold, covering the world in gloom.
Striders of the Deep, the Deadly Danes,
Under the shield of the wailing wind,
Strode up the path and pillaged my temple.
Raging and foaming they felled my last thane,
Made my roof ashes, and now I uphold only silence.
Amid rank weeds I lie in the rubble
Waiting for that which can never return.
I remember the tales of the scrolls and good priests,
Stopped up as dust and scattered as ashes—
And wish I could tell them;
But I am a stone
And silent forever.


- Ed Thompson

Field Trip

You let me out, Lord.
I thank you for that.


Only for an afternoon
but you took me on a field trip to Paradise.


Long ago, you set a path for me
which I have followed faithfully.


The path became a rut,
then a trench and then a ditch.


The ditch became a chasm,
which has now become a canyon.


You held me there like the pupa inside a cocoon
until my eyes had adjusted to a new light.


You lead me to a Ridge overlooking the valley
and showed me the possibilities below.


There in a theater of oaks and grasses
you caused me to unfold my new reality.


The air around was spiced and cool
but your face impersonated a blazing sun.


The others took shelter in the shade of trees
and you tried to bring in a cooling wind.


Still my energy melted away like a once proud candle
or yesterday's ice cream pie.


You want me to speak to all assembled
the words of poetry you allowed me to write.


But before I could finish
I faltered, I failed.


You brought me here to show me
what I can no longer physically do?


Now I see the extent of your cruelty.
Then you said to me, "Open your other eyes and


see the one who stands beside you and loves you most
and steps forward to finish speaking the verse you wrote."


Thank God, Lord, you brought me to this field to see
my Paradise.

- Donald Morris

On the first morning of the world
God gave himself a gift —
an anonymous gift
called wakefulness.
He didn't ask
for anything.
He didn't ask for it.
Like all gifts it was terrible.
Imagine the burden of stars.
Imagine
the burden of mountains,
the burden of hearts.
Imagine a birthday
on which none of your friends
or distant relatives or parents
were present,
a birthday on which everyone
else was present
including the dead
(or only the dead!) —
imagine now
the burden of other times
you carry.
They have showered you with gifts
and left all the cake
on your plate.
They left early,
too soon —
so soon.
How could you make out a particular face
from this general sea of faces?
How could you write one thank-you note?
At night the shame would be vast.


- Zachary Horvitz

Once Only


almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full

moon

in the center of the sky.


- Gary Snyder
Sappa Creek near Singapore
March 1958

The Love of Morning


It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .


God has saved the world one more day

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even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;


but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.


- Denise Levertov

The Time Will Come


The time will come when
I know
it’s the last time.


The sun will shine or not
and I will know
that tomorrow for me
is only now.


How will I be, I wonder,
with that knowing?


Will it be so very sad that
I cannot let it in and
will I scream inside while
drinking coffee from my favorite cup?


Or will I just let it happen?
Let the moments pass as they do
(as they must)
All while talking about how
Your hair looks in the sunlight
Thinking about the laundry
Waiting to be done at home.


- Cynthi Stefenoni

The Day Will Come
And the day will come when you hit the switch, but the room will remain dark.

Your computer will not hum, your monitor will not glow, and you will have no flashing games to play.
The gas pump will remain silent, and you will be forced to walk.

If you don’t know how to start a fire, you will be cold.

If you are wealthy, you will be greatly inconvenienced.

If you live under a bridge, you will not notice the difference.

- Armando Garcia

Waters Of March lyrics


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's feeling alone
It's the weight of your load


It's a sliver of glass,
It's life, it's the sun,
It's night, it's death,
It's a knife, it's a gun


A flower that blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush


The mystery of life
The steps in the hall
The sound of the wind
And the waterfall


It's the moon floating free,
It's the curve of the slope,
It's an ant, it's a bee,
It's a reason for hope


And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the promise of spring,
It's the joy in your heart


É o pé, é o chão, [The foot, the ground,]
é a marcha estradeira [The flesh and the bone,]
Passarinho na mão, [The beat of the road,]
pedra de atiradeira [A slingshot's stone]


É uma ave no céu, [A fish, a flash,]
é uma ave no chão [A silvery glow,]
É um regato, é uma fonte, [A fight, a bet,]
é um pedaço de pão [The range of a bow]


É o fundo do poço, [The bed of the well,]
é o fim do caminho [The end of the line,]
No rosto o desgosto, [The dismay in the face,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


A spear, a spike,
A stake, a nail,
It's a drip, It's a drop,
It's the end of the tale


A dew on the leaf
In the morning light
The shot of a gun
In the dead of the night


A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's the will to survive
It's a jolt, it's a jump


A blueprint of a house,
A body in bed,
The car stuck in the mud,
It's the mud, it's the mud


A fish, a flash
A wish, a wink
It's a hawk, it's a dove
It's the promise of spring


And the river bank sings
Of the waters of March,
It's the end of despair
It's the joy in your heart


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


É uma cobra, é um pau, [A snake, a stick,]
é João, é José [It is John, it is Joe,]
É um espinho na mão, [It's a thorn in your hand]
é um corte no pé [and a cut in your toe]


São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]


A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
The stump of a tree,
It's a frog, it's a toad


A sigh of breath,
A walk, a run,
A life, a death,
A ray in the sun


And the riverbank sings
Of the waters of march
It's the promise of life,
It's the joy in your heart


São as águas de março [And the riverbank talks]
fechando o verão [Of the waters of March,]
É a promessa de vida [It's the promise of life]
no teu coração [It's the joy in your heart]


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


É pau, é pedra, [A stick, a stone,]
é o fim do caminho [It's the end of the road,]
É um resto de toco, [It's the rest of a stump,]
é um pouco sozinho [It's a little alone]


- Antonio Carlos Jobim

" ... you put the load right on me." ~ Robbie Robertson



"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it." ~ Lena Horne

Why Regret?


Didn't you like the way the ants help
the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
from the estuary all the way up the river,
the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
Webster's New International, perhaps having just
eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
split open and the mayfly struggled free
and flew and perched and then its own back
broke open and the imago, the true adult,
somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
alimentary canal come to a stop,
a day or hour left to find the desired one?
Or when Casanova took up the platter
of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
out the window, telling his startled companion,
"The perfected lover does not eat."
Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
what seemed your own inner blazonry
flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
hinged beings, and then their offspring,
and then their offspring's offspring, could
navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
who fell in this same migration a year ago?
Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
to wake in the night and find ourselves
holding hands in our sleep?


- Galway Kinnell