Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Man Born To Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?
- Wendell Berry

The Fountain
*
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
To solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
*
The fountain springing out of the rock wall
And you drinking there. And I too
Before your eyes
*
Found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
*
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
Frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,
*
Only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
*
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
*
It is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.

- Denise Levertov

I Cannot Tell You

I do not know
if god us a thing
or a process,
or a being
or a presence.

I cannot tell you
how the world
was constructed,
or when it began
or by whom.

I cannot unravel
the tables of meaning,
the diagrams
and the scales of comparison,
the charts and the long explanations
of everything
that has ever been.

What I know is this:
this moment,
this kiss,
this infinite longing,
endless loving and being loved
by no one
who has a name
in a place
that does not exist.

- Dorothy Walters

Skater

She was all in black but for a yellow pony tail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,
she began to braid a loose path that broadened
into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped
and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs
and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves
lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn
there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,
skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back
at the woman she'd been just an instant before.

- Ted Kooser

I found this piece and wanted to reach out and say thank you. Thank you for your heart-mind - one that would choose such a piece. You have choosen many pieces and this one speaks to me - as it always has - it was lovely to say hello to "it" again.
Thank you for your heart-mind, Larry.
Jo

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

SELF-PORTRAIT

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

- David Whyte

---

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

what to do with your goat in a drowning world

hear the helicopters come over the roof
water's up to my attic windows
and I'm stuck here with my goat
I can see my neighbor in the hole on his roof
he's got two dachsies and a tomcat
just across the rushing river is his sister
she's cradling her baby and a rooster
circling helicopters circling helicopters
will take me but not my goat
will lift me up from muck and flood
but they won't take my neighbor's dogs or cat
or his sister's baby's rooster
helicopters overhead nation to the rescue
take the people damn their friends
I'm not going without my goat
he's not going without his pets
baby won't leave without her rooster
lord oh lord why don't we have an ark
that's the helicopters leaving
that's the nation to the rescue
leaving us here in the dark

- Andrei Codrescu

Men Gardening

Men gardening, knees bent as if
In prayer to something forgotten, trying
To be remembered.

Men gardening, centuries of civilization
Dropping off them like husks, shadows of
Stalks, leaves, laying across them
Like tribal tattoos.

Men gardening, brows muddy
Painted with sweat, soil, swirling designs of
Passion and desire.

Men planting, knees bent in submission
In some remembered act of insemination
Some means of participating in a miracle.

Flowers spring forth from frustration of
Days in offices, from days behind the wheels of cars.
Vegetables growing, plumping from the pain of
Days arguing in court rooms and nights
Pouring over accounts.

Men gardening, knees bent as if in prayer,
For something better, for something different.
Praying for something forgotten
And trying
To be remembered.

- Rebecca del Rio-Ruso

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
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

There I No One But Us

There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
nor a clean hand nor a pure heart
on the face of the earth,
but only us,
a generation comforting ourselves
with the notion that we have come at an awkward time,
that our innocent fathers are all dead
- as if innocence had ever been -
and our children busy and troubled,
and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
having each of us chosen wrongly,
made a false start, failed,
yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures,
and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.

- Annie Dillard

Holy Pools

There is nothing but water in the holy pools,
I know, I have been swimming in them.
All the gods sculpted of wood and ivory
can't say a word.
I know, I have been crying out to them.
The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words.
I looked through their covers one day sideways.
What Kabir talks about is only what he has lived through.
If you have not lived through something,
It is not true.

- Kabir

The Whittled Forest


My father taught himself
to play the violin in
the pantry

with jellies and jams,
the garbage can and a broom. He
scraped the strings with

a stringed bow, the cold
curved wood in the winter tucked
under his chin,

like the arc
of a whittled forest unknown.
It sounded awful.

He was a poor man
job-raising a family, struggling
with daybreak.

He worked at a night job
and practiced half the day on
scales. That is

why we mocked
his effort.

- Jane Mayhall

For Light

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.

In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.

That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.

That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.

When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.

That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.

When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.

When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.

When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.

As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.

And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found word.

- John O'Donohue

It's More Than The Morning

It’s more than the morning we must wake up to
The birds have been singing for hours in our dreams
Let us not be too sleepy to remember the countless blessings
Waiting to unfold in a day remembered with grace

Let us not forget to love
To smile, to breathe the simple truth
That life is precious in all its configurations
Designed to guide us to our awakening

What a paradox that we must sleep to dream
And awaken to fulfill our dreams
What a paradox that we must die to fully live
Give to receive, and empty to fill up again.

Even our longing is a blessing
For it carries the wind across the sea
And stirs the ocean of the soul
Into the creative matrix of wonder.

- Anodea Judith

Having A Poem Arrive


Having a poem arrive

is like coming downstairs

and finding coffee and pancakes made for you

by your daughter who left early.


Having a poem arrive

is like the first clearing breath

of the day on your zafu.


Having a poem arrive

is like seeing tiny green leaves

sprouted from the dry brown husk

of a tree you have been trying to rescue.


Having a poem arrive

is like noticing a sapling, once

tormented by gophers and deer,

finally take its place in the orchard.


True, having poem arrive can be like

a small rock in your hiking boot,

high-laced,

with your arms full.


And it can be like the car alarm

of the city visitor

outside your neighbor’s barn

beyond the forest.


The butterfly

which left

while you took a moment

to get your camera.


But mostly,

it can be like making dinner

with your true love

using nothing but local, fresh surprises.



- Scott O'Brien

For/From Lew

Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't shoot yourself after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
"Yes you did, too" I said—"I can feel it now."
"Yeah" he said,
"There's a basic fear between your world and
mine. I don't know why.
What I came to say was,
teach the children about the cycles.
The life cycles. All other cycles.
That's what it's all about, and it's all forgot."

- Gary Snyder

For A Row Of Laurel Shrubs

They don't want to be your hedge,
Your barrier, your living wall, the no-go
Go-between between your property
And the prying of dogs and strangers. They don't

Want to settle any of your old squabbles
Inside or out of bounds. Their new growth
In three-foot shoots goes thrusting straight
Up in the air each April or goes off

Half-cocked sideways to reconnoiter
Wilder dimensions: the very idea
Of squareness, of staying level seems
Alien to them, and they aren't in the least

Discouraged by being suddenly lopped off
Year after year by clippers or the stuttering
Electric teeth of trimmers hedging their bets
To keep them all in line, all roughly

In order. They don't even
Want to be good-neighborly bushes
(Though under the outer stems and leaves
The thick, thick-headed, soot-blackened

Elderly branches have been dodging
And weaving through so many disastrous springs,
So many whacked-out, contra-
Dictory changes of direction, they've locked

Themselves together for good). Yet each
Original planting, left to itself, would be
No fence, no partition, no crook-jointed
Entanglement, but a tree by now outspread

With all of itself turned upward at every
Inconvenient angle you can imagine,
And look, on the ground, the fallen leaves,
Brown, leathery, as thick as tongues, remain

Almost what they were, tougher than ever,
Slow to molder, to give in, dead slow to feed
The earth with themselves, there at the feet
Of their fathers in the evergreen shade

Of their replacements. Remember, admirers
Long ago would sometimes weave fresh clippings
Into crowns and place them squarely on the heads
Of their most peculiar poets.

- David Wagoner

Let History Be My Judge

We made all possible preparations,
Drew up a list of firms,
Constantly revised our calculations
And allotted the farms,

Issued all the orders expedient
In this kind of case:
Most, as was expected, were obedient,
Though there were murmurs, of course;

Chiefly against our exercising
Our old right to abuse:
Even some sort of attempt at rising,
But these were mere boys.

For never serious misgiving
Occurred to anyone,
Since there could be no question of living
If we did not win.

The generally accepted view teaches
That there was no excuse,
Though in the light of recent researches
Many would find the cause

In a not uncommon form of terror;
Others, still more astute,
Point to possibilities of error
At the very start.

As for ourselves there is left remaining
Our honour at least,
And a reasonable chance of retaining
Our faculties to the last.

- W. H. Auden

Mennonites

We keep our quilts in closets and do not dance.
We hoe thistles along fence rows for fear
we may not be perfect as our Heavenly Father.
We clean up his disasters. No one has to
call; we just show up in the wake of tornadoes
with hammers, after floods with buckets.
Like Jesus, the servant, we wash each other's feet
twice a year and eat the Lord's Supper,
afraid of sins hidden so deep in our organs
they could damn us unawares,
swallowing this bread, his body, this juice.
Growing up, we love the engravings in Martyrs Mirror:
men drowned like cats in burlap sacks,
the Catholic inquisitors,
the woman who handed a pear to her son,
her tongue screwed to the roof of her mouth
to keep her from singing hymns while she burned.
We love Catherine the Great and the rich tracts
she gave us in the Ukraine, bright green winter wheat,
the Cossacks who torched it, and Stalin,
who starved our cousins while wheat rotted
in granaries. We must love our enemies.
We must forgive as our sins are forgiven,
our great-uncle tells us, showing the chain
and ball in a cage whittled from one block of wood
while he was in prison for refusing to shoulder
a gun. He shows the clipping from 1916:
Mennonites are German milksops, too yellow to fight.
We love those Nazi soldiers who, like Moses,
led the last cattle cars rocking out of the Ukraine,
crammed with our parents - children then -
learning the names of Kansas, Saskatchewan, Paraguay.
This is why we cannot leave the beliefs
or what else would we be? why we eat
'til we're drunk on shoofly and moon pies and borscht.
We do not drink; we sing. Unaccompanied on Sundays,
those hymns in four parts, our voices lift with such force
that we lift, as chaff lifts toward God.

- Julia Kasdorf

Beginners
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
—we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

- Denise Levertov

The Way It Is

There is a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
But you don't ever let go of the thread.

- William Stafford

On Another's Sorrow

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear --

And not sit beside the next,
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
Oh no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give his joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not year.

Oh He gives to us his joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled an gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

- William Blake

Sekhmet, the Lion-headed Goddess of War

He was the sort of man
who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That's not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where I was born
or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond,
where the hot conical tombs, that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,
hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
and bones, the wooden boats
in which the dead sail endlessly
in no direction.

What did you expect from gods
with animal heads?
Though come to think of it
the ones made later, who were fully human
were not such good news either.
Favour me and give me riches,
destroy my enemies.
That seems to be the gist.
Oh yes: And save me from death.
In return we're given blood
and bread, flowers and prayer,
and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of this
I missed. But if it's selfless
love you're looking for,
you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck

- Margaret Atwood
and caress you into darkness and paradise.

Fall Song
*
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
*
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
*
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
*
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
*
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
*
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
*
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
*
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
*
- Mary Oliver

Autumn Sky

In my great grandmother's time,
All one needed was a broom
To get to see places
And give the geese a chase in the sky.

•

The stars know everything,
So we try to read their minds.
As distant as they are,
We choose to whisper in their presence.

•

Oh Cynthia,
Take a clock that has lost its hands
For a ride.
Get me a room at Hotel Eternity
Where Time likes to stop now and then.

•

Come, lovers of dark corners,
The sky says,
And sit in one of my dark corners.
There are tasty little zeroes
In the peanut dish tonight.

- Charles Simic

I Saw Myself

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a

bell does

- Lew Welch

A Dream of Trees

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world's artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.

I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

- Mary Oliver

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

- Richard Wilbur

Boarder Crossing

As the day cools
he waits his turn,
checking the grip tape
on his deck.

Then suddenly he’s up:
with a kick, he’s in motion,
dropping down into
the smooth, open bowl.

His lithe young limbs
sway with the curve
of the concrete,
ollying on the return.

A one eighty, then
a quick kickflip.
For one eternal moment
he is gravity-free.

We hold our breaths:
maybe this time
Icarus will stay aloft
carrying our dreams.

Then, with a sigh,
we see him land.
He is human,
after all.

- Larry Robinson

Laguna Skategarden
Grand Opening

The Laguna Skategarden, Sebastopol’s newest park, will be
dedicated at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 27, 2008. The
Laguna Skategarden includes a state-of-the art 15,000 sq ft
skate park featuring a beginner bowl, a street course, a
rocket bowl, and an advanced deep-pool bowl. The park also
includes community garden plots, a playground-type climb-
ing rock, a beautiful shade arbor, park benches, picnic ta-
bles, drinking fountain, and a public restroom.



The Laguna Skategarden is located at
6700 Laguna Park Way, between
Morris Street and Flynn Street in the
City of Sebastopol.

See you there!
City of Sebastopol
Sebastopol: Local flavor. Global vision.
City Hall
7120 Bodega Avenue
Sebastopol, California 95472

Phone: 707-823-1153
Fax: 707-823-1135


For more information: Planning Department 823-6167
City of Sebastopol
Date: 09/27/08
Time: 11:00 a.m.—5:00 p.m.

Everything

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don't go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daises and everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

- Mary Oliver