Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Fall

Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

- Edward Hirsch

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

- C.P. Cavafy

(Translation by Edmund Keeley)

I Didn’t Ask For My Parents

It isn’t like you bend
your dainty spirit neck
down from God’s baby-soul-land
and point to a copulating couple
who strike your fancy.

Don’t think it works that way.

You are blind-folded
and shot down through heaven’s tunnel
into life and where you plop
willy-nilly that’s your home.

The Jewish couple may be in the act
at the same time as their Muslim neighbor.

Where you end up
even the cherub who pushed you off
the edge can’t know.

We grow up forgetting
our incidental placements
become fond of whatever
bread and religion we are fed.

Listen,

Who has salvation
when we all claim it?

- Sholeh Wolpé

Love Can’t Wait

“That’s one small step for man;
one giant leap for mankind.”
Take a stand and end the war.

Which war you say?
Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt,
Libya, Syria, Iran?
It’s not the one you see out there:
It’s the one you can’t see in your own heart.

How do I do that? You ask.
Love this breath, your heart,
Find your true being.
Send love to yourself, to your neighbor &
when finally strengthened, you can, to the
very one who you believe irks you.

For the way to peace starts here: it's within.
This is “One giant leap”
human kind-ness.

- Muskie Fields

The Birthday of the World


On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?

How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes, and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.

- Marge Piercy

Having Come This Far


I've been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn't
I was never sure how I would get there

I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets
I've climbed all the summits I need to
and I've eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I'd rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.

- James Broughton

The Conjugation of the Paramecium

This has nothing
to do with
propagating

The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission

(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)

The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing

But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:

The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium

Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged

for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other

This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.

- Muriel Rukeyser

Current Histories

The world you came out of
well to be fair
The World We came out of

is a cartography of abattoirs
everything eats everything
the eye that beholds
is more biome than human
and the greatest myth
we created
when forest spat savannah
but after feathered serpents
became pools of our own
undoing

A longgame revenge pact
extinction on extinction on extinction
back to basic building blocks
Try Again! Try Again! Try Again!
Till some combination of clay
creates a clockwork creature
a symboless golem or rather
Until micro self-organizes
reinvents macro and for a
moment forgets
later
off course
We remember
No

difference
between sense making primates
a carrot a clam a cicada a currant
except in expression

Now show me
The Face
Before and
again After
We were Born.

- Juris Ahn

To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian

Tumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
the racket in
the lugwork probably
rehearsing some
stupid thing I
said or did
some crime or
other the city they
say is a lonely
place until yes
the sound of sweeping
and a woman
yes with a
broom beneath
which you are now
too the canopy
of a fig its
arms pulling the
September sun to it
and she
has a hose too
and so works hard
rinsing and scrubbing
the walk
lest some poor sod
slip on the
silk of a fig
and break his hip
and not probably
reach over to gobble up
the perpetrator
the light catches
the veins in her hands
when I ask about
the tree they
flutter in the air and
she says take
as much as
you can
help me
so I load my
pockets and mouth
and she points
to the step-ladder against
the wall to
mean more but
I was without a
sack so my meager
plunder would have to
suffice and an old woman
whom gravity
was pulling into
the earth loosed one
from a low slung
branch and its eye
wept like hers
which she dabbed
with a kerchief as she
cleaved the fig with
what remained of her
teeth and soon there were
eight or nine
people gathered beneath
the tree looking into
it like a
constellation pointing
do you see it
and I am tall and so
good for these things
and a bald man even
told me so
when I grabbed three
or four for
him reaching into the
giddy throngs of
yellow-jackets sugar
stoned which he only
pointed to smiling and
rubbing his stomach
I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
like there was a baby
in there
it was hot his
head shone while he
offered recipes to the
group using words which
I couldn’t understand and besides
I was a little
tipsy on the dance
of the velvety heart rolling
in my mouth
pulling me down and
down into the
oldest countries of my
body where I ate my first fig
from the hand of a man who escaped his country
by swimming through the night
and maybe
never said more than
five words to me
at once but gave me
figs and a man on his way
to work hops twice
to reach at last his
fig which he smiles at and calls
baby, c’mere baby,
he says and blows a kiss
to the tree which everyone knows
cannot grow this far north
being Mediterranean
and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
of Jordan and Sicily
but no one told the fig tree
or the immigrants
there is a way
the fig tree grows
in groves it wants,
it seems, to hold us,
yes I am anthropomorphizing
goddammit I have twice
in the last thirty seconds
rubbed my sweaty
forearm into someone else’s
sweaty shoulder
gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
on Christian St.
in Philadelphia a city like most
which has murdered its own
people
this is true
we are feeding each other
from a tree
at the corner of Christian and 9th
strangers maybe
never again.

- Ross Gay

October

Light in leaves in wind in sky.
Bright October brings beauty
to dead things
and the wingless learn
to fly.
Berries try to stash the summer
in their skin.
Squirrels bury food
and future forests.
Flowers fall back into all
the abundance that birthed
them and decay
paves the way for life
upon life.
When our dreams fall
we might recall
that forests are fed
by the fallen.
What we call death is only
the birth
of bodies and dreams
without boundaries.
What we call death is only
the discovery
that we belong
to the beauty
that burns in all beings.

- Bernadette Miller

The Last Thing

First there was the blue wing
of a scraggly loud jay tucked
into the shrubs. Then the bluish-
black moth drunkenly tripping
from blade to blade. Then
the quiet that came roaring
in like the R. J. Corman over
Broadway near the RV shop.
These are the last three things
that happened. Not in the universe,
but here, in the basin of my mind,
where I’m always making a list
for you, recording the day’s minor
urchins: silvery dust mote, pistachio
shell, the dog eating a sugar
snap pea. It’s going to rain soon,
close clouds bloated above us,
the air like a net about to release
all the caught fishes, a storm
siren in the distance. I know
you don’t always understand,
but let me point to the first
wet drops landing on the stones,
the noise like fingers drumming
the skin. I can’t help it. I will
never get over making everything
such a big deal.

- Ada Limón

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

- Mary Oliver

Reconsider your broken heart

Turn back and reconsider your broken heart
Reconsider your brokenness
When the vase tumbles from the counter
And breaks beyond repair
You reach for the rose, the iris, the ferns
Pull them from the wreckage of glass
Place them lovingly into a new vase
The flowers reconfigure into a new formation
Perhaps more beautiful than before
Refreshed and rearranged

Flowers that once thrust their roots down into the earth
Gain strength from their arduous
Search for nourishment through hard clay and stones
Plucked from their habitat, resilient
They reach anew to morning rays

You are not your brokenness any more than
the flowers are the broken vase
When life leaves you cracked and scarred
You can become sharp, frayed, rigid
Instead love the disrepair of your heart
Let your roots find nourishment in
Faith and love and trust

When you reach for your desires you must
Break free from beliefs that hold you back
Most importantly the belief that you are broken
In any form
Consider your heart strong or weak,
Open or closed, scarred or beautiful
Cracked or pristine but
Do not consider your heart to be broken
At least not broken beyond use
Break up with your self-imposed ruler
Break your rules
Break your vows
Break open
Break open again
Break everything but your heart


- Sally Churgel

Some Things I Want to Remember Before Burning

Maybe its silly to think of
Venice in those tiny cordial cups
one red one gold like the fire
of one love before it burned out
the old ceramic bowl that sang
when you turned it with your fingers
and the time we fought
over its purchase and purpose
5 skulls in porcelain, differing in heights
each with visions scrawled on their backs
and one with a penis we never used
The House That Holds The Sparrows Nest I heard singing
framed in tonal monotype
but I never saw the bird,
Fly Fly Away painted on a long rectangle
in abstract red pink blue & white
stunned every time over conversation
and how it was won,
a hot orange dish brimmed
with many places I called home
rocks crystals and minerals
from long desert roads and unbroken shores of water,
in the guest room images of a barn, an icy lake
and a molten candle dimly illuminating fruit,
prim apples and the incandescent skin of grapes
each painted with grandmother’s careful hands
her old car parked in faded yellow and rusted
near the periwinkle hydrangea blooming full
all in graphite pencil

These many things of personal history
now a finality of ash,
somehow are rebuilt into time
burnt in the mind and somehow
indelibly, they carry on.

- Danielle Bryant

The Book of Lies

I’d like to have a word
with you. Could we be alone
for a minute? I have been lying
until now. Do you believe

I believe myself? Do you believe
Yourself when you believe me? Lying
is natural. Forgive me. Could we be alone
forever? Forgive us all. The word

is my enemy. I have never been alone;
bribes, betrayals. I am lying
even now. Can you believe
that? I give you my word.

- James Tate

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

- Galway Kinnell

The Dream Catcher Restaurant
Sault Ste Marie, Michigan


An Elder woman seated across the aisle from us
Having brunch with a girlfriend
Her jacket is draped over a chair

On her jacket are a moose, deer
An eagle flies overhead. On a clear blue lake cries the loon
I am back in the North Lakes, wood region

I hear a faint background of seventies music :
Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, Gordon Lightfoot
Mellisa Manchester, Johnny Cash

Our waitress keeps pouring refills while
My husband is making travel arrangements
On his smart phone

Her jacket calms my racing mind

I think back to waking up an early morning
At our family cabin in Northern Minnesota
Sitting at the dock with a cup of hot chocolate

Reading second-hand, ear-marked, paper backs
While listening to the loons, in the far off distance
After a morning dip

I was a late teen and care-fee then. A dreamer
I'd wonder often about that big world out there of
Infinite possibilities

Will I go to college? What will I study?
Where will I live? Will I get married and have children?
Will I be a drifter?

The road of my childhood was never a straight line
My studies and variety of jobs took me far from the lake
To distant places of no return

I was brave and foolish then, it is a small miracle
I am not dead. I play it safe now
And worry more than I should

What happened to that care-free teen at the lake?

The woman across the aisle
Stood up and put her jacket on
The jacket with the moose, deer, eagle and loon

At the lake
She turned around and gave me a curious smile
And walked away.

- Patricia LeBon Herb

Character, in time



The ancient mountain king

presides quietly in summer sun

and shakes shaggy limbs

in winter winds -

having long forgotten

youthful dreams:


the earnest pursuit of self

in a tidy, upright

but tender spire

aspiring to the sky

before time and the weather

cut here, on his windward side.


A lightning strike;

a cold snap perhaps

and the main shoot died.



But life goes on where it can

becoming a complex and contorted

monument to persistence, resistance

and the slow surrender

to whatever character

becomes in time.



- Carne Lowgren

A Map to the Next World
for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.
For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

- Joy Harjo

Theme for English B


The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you're older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

- Langston Hughes

The Story

Once upon a time the farmer's wife
told it to her children while she scrubbed potatoes.
There were wise ravens in it, and a witch
who flew into such a rage she turned to brass.

The story wandered about the countryside until
adopted by the palace waiting maids
who endowed it with three magic golden rings
and a handsome prince named Felix.

Now it had both strength and style and visited
the household of the jolly merchant
where it was seated by the fire and given
a fat gray goose and a comic chambermaid.

One day alas the story got drunk and fell
in with a crowd of dissolute poets.
They drenched it with moonlight and fever and fed it
words from which it never quite recovered.

Then it was old and haggard and disreputable,
carousing late at night with defrocked scholars
and the swaggering sailors in Rattlebone Alley.
That's where the novelists found it.

- Fred Chappell

won’t you celebrate with me

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

- Lucille Clifton

Were I a Martyr

I want no flowers,
no epoch of union,
no dawn of disunion.
I want no flowers
for I am the loveliest flower.
I want no kisses
if for a true wrist
I must hold some knight –
no epoch of marriage,
no dawn of divorce,
no widow’s fever.
I want no kisses
if, along with love, I become a martyr.
I want no tears
over the coffin or me, a corpse.
I want no cherry tree of sympathy
dragged to the walls of my grave,
no flowers or kisses,
no tears or miseries.
Bring nothing.
Hold nothing.
I die as a homeland without a flag, without a voice.
I am grateful.
I want nothing.
I will accept nothing.

- Kajal Ahmad

(translated from the Kurdish by Darya Ali and Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse )

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

Oration: Half-Moon in Vermont

A horse is shivering flies off its ribs, grazing
Through the stench of a sodden leachfield.

On the broken stairs of a trailer
A laughing fat girl in a T-shirt is pumping
Milk from her swollen breasts, cats
Lapping at the trails. There's a sheen of rhubarb
On her dead fingernail. It's a humid morning.

Tonight, with the moon washing some stars away,
She'll go searching for an old bicycle in the shed;
She'll find his father's treasures:
Jars full of bent nails, a lacquered bass,
And the scythe with spiders
Nesting in the emptiness of the blade
And in the bow of its pine shaft.
Milling junk in the dark,

She'll forget the bicycle, her getaway,
And rescue
A color photograph of an old matinee idol.
Leaving the shed, she'll startle

An owl out on the marsh. By November
It will be nailed through the breast to the barn.

In a year the owl will go on a shelf in the shed
Where in thirty years there will be a music box
Containing a lock of hair, her rosaries,
Her birth certificate,

And an impossibly sheer, salmon-pink scarf. What
I want to know of my government is

Doesn't poverty just fucking break your heart?

- Norman Dubie

Findings

dear god,
I keep finding you in my poems,
don’t I?
I didn’t know I was a believer,
but I keep calling you out
and you keep showing up
like you belong here,
right in the middle of my thoughts,
don’t you?
like you’re at home in my house
even if I’m not in yours;
that makes you a generous god,
if not persistent to the point of obsessive
for not giving up on me
knowing I keep giving up on you
yet calling your names out
as if I had the copyright to them. Oh lord,
and you never once threatened me with an infringement suit
or even complained.
you just sat here,
in the middle of my words,
like you were some regal force of nature
resplendent
glorious
the perfect reference
inexplicable
yet understood on every level
and could rise above even my half-truth invocation of your good name
as if we were partners in this crime,
when it is I who am the criminal
and you, the divine, forgiving law
that is partner in all things
believed or not

- Gary Turchin

The Well of Grief

Those who will not
slip beneath the still surface
on the well of grief,
turning down through its black water
to the place where we cannot breathe
will never know the source
from which we drink the secret water,
cold and pure,
nor find in the darkness, glimmering,
the small round coins thrown by those
who wished for something else.

- David Whyte

Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: The Paterson Silk Strike, 1913


Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
- Walt Whitman


I. The Red Flag


The newspapers said the strikers would hoist
the red flag of anarchy over the silk mills
of Paterson. At the strike meeting, a dyers' helper
from Naples rose as if from the steam of his labor,
lifted up his hand and said here is the red flag:
brightly stained with dye for the silk of bow ties
and scarves, the skin and fingernails boiled away
for six dollars a week in the dye house.


He sat down without another word, sank back
into the fumes, name and face rubbed off
by oblivion's thumb like a Roman coin
from the earth of his birthplace dug up
after a thousand years, as the strikers
shouted the only praise he would ever hear.


II. The River Floods the Avenue


He was the other Valentino, not the romantic sheik
and bullfighter of silent movie palaces who died too young,
but the Valentino standing on his stoop to watch detectives
hired by the company bully strikebreakers onto a trolley
and a chorus of strikers bellowing the banned word scab.
He was not a striker or a scab, but the bullet fired to scatter
the crowd pulled the cork in the wine barrel of Valentino's back.
His body, pale as the wings of a moth, lay beside his big-bellied wife.


Two white-veiled horses pulled the carriage to the cemetery.
Twenty thousand strikers walked behind the hearse, flooding
the avenue like the river that lit up the mills, surging around
the tombstones. Blood for blood, cried Tresca: at this signal,
thousands of hands dropped red carnations and ribbons
into the grave, till the coffin evaporated in a red sea.


III. The Insects in the Soup


Reed was a Harvard man. He wrote for the New York magazines.
Big Bill, the organizer, fixed his good eye on Reed and told him
of the strike. He stood on a tenement porch across from the mill
to escape the rain and listen to the weavers. The bluecoats
told him to move on. The Harvard man asked for a name to go
with the number on the badge, and the cops tried to unscrew
his arms from their sockets. When the judge asked his business,
Reed said: Poet. The judge said: Twenty days in the county jail.


Reed was a Harvard man. He taught the strikers Harvard songs,
the tunes to sing with rebel words at the gates of the mill. The strikers
taught him how to spot the insects in the soup, speaking in tongues
the gospel of One Big Union and the eight-hour day, cramming the jail
till the weary jailers had to unlock the doors. Reed would write:
There's war in Paterson. After it was over, he rode with Pancho Villa.


IV. The Little Agitator


The cops on horseback charged into the picket line.
The weavers raised their hands across their faces,
hands that knew the loom as their fathers' hands
knew the loom, and the billy clubs broke their fingers.
Hannah was seventeen, the captain of the picket line,
the Joan of Arc of the Silk Strike. The prosecutor called her
a little agitator. Shame, said the judge; if she picketed again,
he would ship her to the State Home for Girls in Trenton.


Hannah left the courthouse to picket the mill. She chased
a strikebreaker down the street, yelling in Yidish the word
for shame. Back in court, she hissed at the judge's sentence
of another striker. Hannah got twenty days in jail for hissing.
She sang all the way to jail. After the strike came the blacklist,
the counter at her husband's candy store, the words for shame.


V. Vivas to Those Who Have Failed


Strikers without shoes lose strikes. Twenty years after the weavers
and dyers' helpers returned hollow-eyed to the loom and the steam,
Mazziotti led the other silk mill workers marching down the avenue
in Paterson, singing the old union songs for five cents more an hour.
Once again the nightsticks cracked cheekbones like teacups.
Mazziotti pressed both hands to his head, squeezing red ribbons
from his scalp. There would be no buffalo nickel for an hour's work
at the mill, for the silk of bow ties and scarves. Skull remembered wood.


The brain thrown against the wall of the skull remembered too:
the Sons of Italy, the Workmen's Circle, Local 152, Industrial
Workers of the World, one-eyed Big Bill and Flynn the Rebel Girl
speaking in tongues to thousands the prophecy of an eight-hour day.
Mazziotti's son would become a doctor, his daughter a poet.
Vivas to those who have failed: for they become the river.


- Martín Espada

After the Fire

What was it like to run
forced from my home forever?
A new life to live in a nightmare
every day tears
hard acceptance and fear
then to find daylight
in all the living so bright
it burns
a rose’s heady sweetness of home
is the same as
the haunting of wildfire smoke

The support from so many
who kept us from falling
we couldn’t have survived without
receiving receiving receiving
help felt like a heart attack
stretching my big pride pushing it aside
breaking open
an already broken heart
grief breathed into my bones of lead
a violence
stuck there in the deep

Was it all a dream?
After
we were refugees
I remember swimming at a hotel in Healdsburg
floating in abundant blue
a cool balm a boon in a strange town
not home
nothing of ours known
but this little box of a room
held us from sinking

drinking helped us drift to lift
the weight of loss to forgetfulness
dizzy we’d fall into bed
welcoming the surrender
we became water

surreal days followed more surreal days
and a searing pain without end.

- Danielle Bryant

donald’s trumpet


donald’s trumpet
blares itself into
the peaceful dawn
shattering the coming light
into shards of shadow

bends the truth of trees
until they
abandon their nature
and wish they were
bushes

birds
leave behind
their co-opted tweets and twitters
and sway dumb
above the dark swamps

children and dogs
turn the other way

the deaf tell us
donald’s trumpet
is making
patriotic
music

- Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg

Falling
In these awe-filled days of fire and flood
We watch and wait and wonder
When that fierce hand
Might reach at last for us.

Those of us not yet touched by calamity
Quake, knowing in our bones
That though we may be spared
This time, time will level us all.

No magic amulets, no prayers,
Good deeds or good looks
Can promise protection
From our terminal condition.

And those who have watched a child
Swept forever from our arms
Or fled the flames that swallowed
Our hopes and our memories
Or hid from the bombs
Or the predator’s gaze
Know that nothing now will ever be the same -

As if anything ever were.
For all of us are falling
Like ashes, like rain,
Like petals or leaves;
But we all are falling together.

And if we knew, in truth,
There was nowhere to land,
Tell me: could we know the difference
Between falling and flying?

- Larry Robinson

Paradise Lost/Regained
(occasioned by Donald Trump’s brief visit to
the ruins of Paradise, CA —November 17, 2018)


Swing thuribles lit with sweet flickering
frankincense and cedar shavings over Paradise
this place where everything aspired to be pleasant
when no thing or place ever truly is all good
Purge us with hyssop and we shall be clean
Bathe us in the rose water used in Arabia to clean the Kaaba
and in Persia to prepare graves for the dead
For evil must be washed away that death have not dominion
where the land will be reclaimed from possession by monsters

Bring forth the tincture of a billion blossoms
The evil creature hath been amongst us
befouling our wounded land
with the stench of offal from its breath
condemning each of us to its lingering presence
our fate far worse if we do nothing to dissipate
the foul choking blackening smoke that
the monster has belched forth and left us
wearily sickening all the more so that he’d been
here amongst us during another time of great sorrow


Gather sage and cedar to smudge the sacred places twice destroyed
first by fire then by sacrilege to the ancients the Mechoopda
of the Maidu people whose spirits reside in the central Sierras
in the watershed area of the Feather and American rivers
as well as in Humbug Valley Maidu meaning Man
will persist watching over this land so rudely visited by fire and evil
Today we chant with them to Creator to restore the trees and native
plants, grasses, animals ... Everything out here is connected to the lives of
our Maidu ancestors whom we protect and by whom we are protected
that such affronts to each and every Mechoopda too shall pass beyond

- Ed Coletti

Open

It is a small step to remember
how life led to this
moment's hesitation.

How the door to the deeper world
opens, letting the body fall at last,
toward the few griefs it can call its own.

Oh yes, I know. Our wings catch fire
in that downward flight
and we come to earth afraid
we can never fly again.

But then we always knew
heaven would be a desperate place.
Everything you desired coming
in one fearful moment
to greet you.

Your full presence only in rest
and the love that asks nothing.
The rest where you lie down
and are no longer found at all.

- David Whyte




"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
- Wendell Berry

Little Thing

You know
I have big dreams
but right now it's the
little things
that shockingly matter
"it's the little things"
my mom and dad always say
just on any old
ordinary day
not even in the face of fire
imagine how much
they would love
the nuthatches today
the tender connections
the glass of water
clean pillow
silent fox

- Amy Elizabeth Robinson

Sequel to the Woman with the Suitcase


October 2017: after the Tubbs fire:
​I had become the woman with the suitcase, not grasping my grandmother’s adventure
​to get out but learning to navigate my own where I could not go back in

the same purple suitcase sits
opened on a wooded floor
twenty-four months later

I found a way back in
carved out a tenuous sense of place
and though flames threaten to annihilate once again
there’s a new sensation inside
not intimidated by Nixle warnings, smoky air
the sounds of air tankers flying overhead

this time I will not be broken by conflagration
I have traveled the familiar road before
I know how to prance like a bedraggled marionette
through the insurance hoops and debris chaos
I know about wattles and how to be patient
I know how to say no, to say not yet, to friends meaning well
I know how to lie low
comfort a pounding heart
be with a screaming amygdala
I know how to be scared

this new house may become cinders
but today I’ve got a compost pile and a piano again
a perky begonia start unfurls mightily
next to the N-95 mask
grass roots communities are
mushrooming through the
backdrop of global fragmentation
soothing embers still sparking within

in the midst of danger I am surprisingly calm
my head is clear
if need be I will start over
and over again
like breath

- sharon bard

Trick or Treat


ring the bell
and don't get caught
there are monsters
in the basement
quiet as a thought

bracketed by the dark
is life's drift and mystery
nothing but noise
a disposable history

as involuntary as a hiccup
the clock endlessly circles
claims further territory
brooks no reversal

amid sunshine and smiles
a need to masquerade
only so many heartbeats
permit this charade

so trick or treat
and here is the clue
tick tock
tock tick

boo

- Les Bernstein

All Hallows

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

- Louise Glück

Crone at the Crossroads


Torchlight flickers
at the cave entrance,
an uneasy dance
between shadow and light
in deep cavernous passageways
usually hidden
behind the veil.

Like an owl perched atop a willow
in the dark of a new moon,
the crone awaits.

Eyes adjusting to interminable darkness,
to ever-changing landscape
all the while peering at the horizon.

Mother and daughter approach.
Woven sprigs of sun-warmed dandelion and lavender
Crown the maiden.
A garland of perpetual youth
encircles one too young
to be Queen of the Underworld.

Hecate guards a threshold that Demeter must not cross,
not now,
not ever.

Hecate turns toward the void.
Familiar with the terrain
Of descent,
she no longer desires light.

She knows to pause.
Her pupils dilate, yielding to Mystery.

Into the folds of her capacious heart
she tucks away memories
Of blossom, of flower, of honey
To offer her young apprentice

when a pomegranate seed
leaves
a bitter taste
in her mouth.

- Brighid FitzGibbon

Dear Mother,

It began with the article about the birds, the 2.9 billion missing North America birds, the 2.9 billion birds that disappeared and no one noticed. The sparrows, black birds, and swallows who didn’t make it, who weren’t ever born, who stopped flying or singing or making their most ingenious nests, who didn’t perch or peck their gentle beaks into moist black earth. It began with the birds. Hadn’t we even commented in June, James and I that they were hardly here? A kind of eerie quiet had descended. But later they came back. The swarms of barn swallows and the huge ravens landing on the gravel one by one. I know it was after hearing about the birds, that afternoon I crashed my bike. Suddenly falling, falling, unable to prevent the catastrophe ahead, unable to find the brakes or make them work, unable to stop the falling. I fell and spun and realized I had already been falling, that we have been falling, all of us, and crows and conifers and ice caps and expectations — falling and falling and I wanted to keep falling. I didn’t want to be here to witness everything falling, missing, bleaching, burning, drying, disappearing, choking, never blooming. I didn’t want to live without the birds or bees and sparkling flies that light the summer nights. I didn’t want to live with hunger that turned us feral or desperation that gave us claws. I wanted to fall and fall into the deepest, darkest ground and be finally still and buried there.

But Mother, you had other plans. The bike landed in grass and dirt and bang, I was ten-years-old, fallen in the road, my knees scraped and bloody. And I realized that even then nature was something foreign and cruel, something that could and would hurt me because everything I had ever known or loved that was grand and powerful and beautiful became foreign and cruel and eventually hurt me. Even then I had already been exiled, or so I felt, forever cast out of the forest. I belonged with the broken, the contaminated, the dead.

Maybe it was the sharp pain in my knee and elbow, or the dirt embedded in my new jacket, maybe it was the shock or the realization that death was preferable to the thick tar of grief coagulated in my chest, or maybe it was just the lonely rattling of the spokes of the bicycle wheel still spinning without me. Whatever it was. It broke. It broke. I heard the howling.

Mother, I am the reason the birds are missing. I am the cause of salmon who cannot spawn and the butterflies unable to take their journey home. I am the coral reef bleached death white and the sea boiling with methane. I am the millions running from lands that have dried, forests that are burning or islands drowned in water.

I didn’t see you, Mother. You were nothing to me. My trauma-made arrogance and ambition drove me to the that cracking pulsing city. Chasing a dream, chasing the prize, the achievement that would finally prove I wasn’t bad or stupid or nothing or wrong. Oh my Mother, what contempt I had for you. What did you have to offer that would give me status in the market place of ideas and achieving? What could your bare trees offer but the staggering aloneness of winter or greenness I could not receive or bear. I reduced you to weather, an inconvenience, something that got in my way, dirty slush that ruined my overpriced city boots with salt. I refused your invitation, scorned your generosity, held suspicion for your love. I ignored all the ways we used and abused you. I pretended to believe the stories of the fathers who said you had to be tamed and controlled — that you were out to get us.

I press my bruised body down on your grassy belly, breathing me in and out. I have missed you, Mother. I have been away so long. I am sorry. I am so sorry.

I am made of dirt and grit and stars and river, skin, bone, leaf, whiskers and claws. I am a part of you, of this, nothing more or less. I am mycelium, petal pistil and stamen. I am branch and hive and trunk and stone. I am what has been here and what is coming. I am energy and I am dust. I am wave and I am wonder. I am an impulse and an order. I am perfumed peonies and the single parasol tree in the African savannah. I am lavender, dandelion, daisy, dahlia, cosmos, chrysanthemum, pansy, bleeding heart and rose. I am all that has been named and unnamed, all that has been gathered and all that has been left alone. I am all your missing creatures, all the sweet birds never born. I am daughter. I am caretaker. I am fierce defender. I am griever. I am bandit. I am baby. I am supplicant. I am here now, Mother. I am yours. I am yours. I am yours.

- Eve Ensler

The Last Hotel Room in Sacramento

This time when the fires came, we drove east
past still-charred hills
and vineyards that escaped the flames,
over the Napa wetlands and through bucolic pastures.
Disaster clung to us despite the miles:
Smoke in our clothes, worry in our words.
Our phones trembled uncontrollably.

In Sacramento we wandered the motel strip like Mary and Joseph,
No Vacancy signs bright as Christmas.
Despondent and worn, we arrive at last at the Motel 6 by the railroad tracks.
Gerald has one room left,
“But I can’t let you have it because the sink is broken.”

We stood tall and pleaded our case
to a man younger than our youngest daughter.
A man whose eyes have not stung from acrid smoke
or seen fear on a neighbor’s face.
A lucky man who will go home tonight and lay his head on his own pillow,
still unaware that sometimes even the shabbiest room
can shine with its own desperate beauty.

- Melissa Kelley

For my Mother


“we die for each other” she said

yes, I answered, it’s so true

over and over and over

my thoughts on this

swirled to a silent music
from some real place inside

a comfort place

where reminders live

that it really is all about love
and forgiveness

and lord knows she and I have had plenty

of ways to practice this

plenty of ways to fail at this


I have been too mixed up

to hear that music much
My regret moves as heart pains

Her regret stirs as growing cancer

There is little to calm the grief

only surrender, only service

But the music is getting louder
And I do think we are both finally succeeding

At life

By dying for each other


- jul bystrova

:heart: "Being is dying by loving." - Meher Baba :heart:

There’s A Package Downstairs

What are you doing up there? There’s a package downstairs, From the White House, it’s true, And it’s for you.
It’s filled with everything you’ve ever wanted, All the love you ever needed,
Every dream of yours come true,
And it’s for you.
There’s a package downstairs,
Where there is no law,
And everyone’s fed by the president’s paw, And it’s for you.
There’s a package downstairs,
Where there are no rules,
And all the kids have burnt down the schools, And it’s for you.
There’s a package downstairs, Where everyone lies,
And the fruit of the truth,
Is covered with flies.
There’s a package downstairs,
Where no one is clean,
And everyone watches a forty-inch screen,
But the drugs that they take makes everyone mean.
There’s a package downstairs, And it’s chock full of money, Where nothing is paid for,
And everything’s funny,
And it’s for you.
There’s a package downstairs,
That’s filled with delights,
But all that’s required is to give up your rights, And it’s for you.
There’s a package downstairs, And all will be well,
If you give up your soul,
And join them in hell.
There’s a package downstairs, That was sent by a fool,
Who lives in a white house... And it’s for you.

- Salvatore Murdocca

Say Yes

The moment I slipped my arms
into the poem of falling leaves
shrugged my shoulders just so
the threads of mystery in the fabric
pulled my body straight

This poem, an old jacket passed down
to my waiting hands
its elbows and cuffs shedding
old language of wonder and hope
was a perfect fit

This poem of crying violins
rusting sunsets, broken hearts
and lavender mornings
wrapped around my aching heart
and said yes, no matter what, yes

The music will sound, your friend will come
the bread will rise and the birds will sing
You are not the first and not the last
Say yes, no matter what, say yes.

- Doug von Koss

A Brave And Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

- Maya Angelou

Beneath the Surface

Beneath the surface
a firefighter reflects,
even cries.
They did it — they didn’t let the fire
spread beyond 101.
They were not going to repeat
what happened two years ago.
They were not going to
let this one kill more people and
burn thousands of homes.
Beneath the surface
even though 77,000 acres burned,
they succeeded.

Beneath the surface
the new CEO of PG&E gets a
2.5 million dollar salary.
What if that money went to
update equipment, poles,
put wires underground?

Beneath the surface we pay our
electric bill by flashlight.

Beneath the surface
no matter how many households
had their electricity shut off
a single jumper on a tower broke
and set off a spark
that seems to have started it all.*

Beneath the surface
I’m exhausted from carrying around
all my valuables in and out of my car
for four days.
Bad air still hurts my lungs,
I had to cancel my class and now
I’m in bed with a cold.
I blew a fuse last night.
Did they turn our power off again?
No, I still see light in the next room,
but how that thought sent panic
through my body.

Above the surface
we’ll get past this one.
Friends will help friends
and life will go on.

But beneath the surface
we are living powerless to the wind,
in fear of flames
and always knowing what we will pack
the next time around.

- Sherrie Lovler

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

- Wilfred Owen

Autumn Comes To Healdsburg

Fall arrives, time’s most favored season
at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist so that I no longer need to know who I am
i return to the hills and the great presences
light, heat, clouds, the bull pines
to recover for myself the purity of the falling world to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence
i read the calligraphy of the oaks under
the fading skies, the tall grass bending in the meadow, the last robins— i am a circle reaching
the first place for the first time
in youth among fall leaves i refused
to acknowledge the ancient writing—
that the basket of summer empties, that the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds
and yet among fall leaves
i was overjoyed with the beauty of loss
now i stand on autumn’s wooded knoll that my life too may vanish
that night may fall into the earth’s arms
time is calling her trout from
their playgrounds in the sea
to river mouth, and redemption, and fury
for it is by means of the long delay
that we come to the righteousness of passion.

- Lee Perron

All Souls

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November -
Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
“Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven.”

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited—
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

- May Sarton

All That is Gold Does Not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

- JRR Tolkien

Truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years—
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

- Gwendolyn Brooks

The Dream

I cried a lot today,
in a way I wish we all could cry.
I cried because
I am part of something
that is dangerously
out of control,
something that started so long ago
none of us can remember.

It seems we have come apart, Beloved.
We have named the distance
between us
and so have given it meaning.

We have turned our backs
on one another
and pretend we just can't help it.

We have fallen asleep in the midst
of such incredible beauty
that even the angels
are crying
for the tragedy of our blindness.

Wake up, Beloved, wake up to the soulful
energy that rises within you right now,
this very moment.

Wake up to the dream we all share.

- Rabon Saip

The Wolves

At my gate, I'll always greet you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luI3F8_CgaA

At my door, you’re welcome in
There can be no transgression
As a means to an end
On the wind, the wolves are howling
Open arms are closed in fear
Helping hands are clenched in anger
Broken hearts beyond repair
Everything's so great, can't get better, makes me wanna cry
That I’ll go out howling at the moon tonight

There she stands, so tall and mighty
With her keen and watchful eye
And the heart of a mother
Holding out her guiding light
Well, it's a hard road to travel
Solid rock from end to end
The sun, it rises on her brow
And sets upon the great expanse
Everything's so great, can't get better, makes me wanna cry
That I'll go out howling at the moon tonight

There she stands, so tall and mighty
Her gaze facing the east
At her back, our doors are closing
As we grin and bare our teeth
On the wind the wolves are howling
She cries to draw him near
Well, turn around, turn around my darling
Oh, the wolves are here
Everything's so great, can't get better, makes me wanna cry
That I'll go out howling at the moon tonight
Yeah, I’ll go out howling at the moon tonight

- Mandolin Orange

Walking by Stolen Creek


the meaning of its name forgotten,

the word remembered.

Whatever happened here

is recalled

in another time and it’s remembered

inside the stolen self

that my blood river passes through

in thin and beautiful veins, not gold

but only a mere human heartbeat,

a circle of people

standing, talking, making their plans

as water passes by.

Something, someone is still alive, telling.

They think these are only stories

not what holds the world together

in its balance.



- Linda Hogan

Anasazi

How can we die when we're already
prone to leaving the table mid-meal
like Ancient Ones gone to breathe
elsewhere. Salt sits still, but pepper's gone
rolled off in a rush. We've practiced dying
for a long time: when we skip dance or town,
when we chew. We've rounded out
like dining room walls in a canyon, eaten
through by wind—Sorry we rushed off;
the food wasn't ours. Sorry the grease sits
white on our plates, and the jam that didn't set—
use it as syrup to cover every theory of us.

- Tacey M. Atsitty

As Fall Approaches


As fall approaches.
The distillation of summer’s sun
Overflows like golden syrup
Down the mountainside

Insects suck the last sustenance,
Now turned to molasses
Before inevitable cooling winds interrupt their busyness
And make way for thunder and rain

Colors of autumn burst forth,
Transition visible to the human eye
And always, change, the only constant.

As you gaze around
Pay attention!
Savor these halcyon days
And all those you’re gifted to encounter

Stand still in wonder,
Notice what stirs within
Welcome the coruscation of your senses

Vibrant life will surely reemerge from death’s compost
Now pungent with the rotting of summer flora.
Decay’s elemental richness will infuse
The roots of trees for branches yet to be born

For now, the copper haze of this shortened afternoon
Clutches briefly at the warmth of a sleeveless day
Having lived this long, you know the sudden evening cooling
Waits to enfold you with promise of darkened months

You are a part of the vicissitudes
One season to the next
Within this very moment,
The persistence of change cries out to be known within you.

- Lynn Robinson

Carrying Our Words


We travel carrying our words.
We arrive at the ocean.
With our words we are able to speak
of the sounds of thunderous waves.
We speak of how majestic it is,
of the ocean power that gifts us songs.
We sing of our respect
and call it our relative.

- Ofelia Zepeda
(Translated into English from O’odham by the poet.)



’U’a g T-ñi’okı˘


T-ñi’okı˘ ’att ’an o ’u’akc o hihi
Am ka:ck wui dada.
S-ap ‘am o ’a: mo has ma:s g kiod.
mat ’am ’ed.a betank ’i-gei.
’Am o ’a: mo he’es ’i-ge’ej,
mo hascu wud. i:da gewkdagaj
mac ’ab amjed. behě g ñe’i.
Hemhoa s-ap ‘am o ’a: mac si has elid, mo d. ’i:mig.

- Ofelia Zepeda

José Dominguez, the First Latino in Outer Space

In that very first episode
the transmission is received on the starship Enterprise
that Space Commander Dominguez urgently needs his supplies.
Kirk tells Uhura to assure him
that the peppers are “prime Mexican reds
but he won’t die if he goes a few more days without ’em.”
Calm down Mexican.
You can wait a few more days to get your chile peppers.

In the corner of my eye I see Uhura’s back hand twitch
and though I never see him on the screen
I image José giving Kirk a soplamoco to the face.

But this is the year 2266 and there are Latinos in Outer Space!
We never see them, but they’ve survived with their surnames
and their desire, deep in the farthest interplanetary reaches,
for a little heat to warm the bland food on the starbase at Corinth 4.
As it is on earth so it shall be in heaven.

Ricardo Montalbán will show up 21 episodes later
to play a crazy mutant Indio,
superhuman and supersmart
who survived two centuries
to slap Kirk around and take over his ship.

- Dan Vera

Body of Rags, International Bridge Between the U.S. and Mexico


Is it alive?
—neither a head,
legs nor arms!
...................
... torpid against
the flange of the supporting girder . ?
an inhuman shapelessness,
knees hugged tight up into the belly
Egg-shaped!
—William Carlos Williams, 1950 visit to El Paso, from “Desert Music”

---

Yes, I am a body of rags lying
here on the bridge waiting for

a hot rain to wash me open,
dissolve me off the bridge

because this border is closed.
I rot on the boundary line

and can’t enter Juarez,
pennies thrown at me

when a drunk El Pasoan
returns in the darkness

and sees my shape that
makes him hurry across.

No head, decades ago they threw
it in the river without my screams.

My arms were the first to go
when I couldn’t climb the wall.

I can never leave this bridge.
I live on the pure line that divides

countries and grabs my hunger
from sliding into Mexico with

my outstretched hands.
I still have my knees.

I used to be sold in Juarez and
smuggled into El Paso, the egg

that floated down the Rio Grande
to break hundreds of miles away

before being thrown back.
I stay on the bridge and can’t move.

Do not cross to El Paso without wiping
your shoes of me, one foot on US

concrete, the other scraping away
at my Mexican rags.

When I struggle against the wire fence,
I make sure I salute two flags.

- Ray Gonzalez

The Well


Every Day
We drop our biggest buckets down
On the strongest ropes we have,
Hoist up as much cool and soothing water as we can lift.


We love,
So the water level never falls.


It’s not that we don’t get enough to drink and keep our lives clean.
It’s not that the water is bad.


It is knowing about the existence of the deeper liquid:
Most, pure, clear, mysterious.
Dark, actually, it is so rarely seen (though it is not rare itself).


I want THAT.
It can only be retrieved by the many,
And only when you drink together
Does it change all of you,
Sending you down the swiftest rivers
To the sea
That is connected
To all seas.


- BSue Stephenson

November

From the sky in the form of snow
comes the great forgiveness.
Rain grown soft, the flakes descend
and rest; they nestle close, each one
arrived, welcomed and then at home.


If the sky lets go some day and I'm
requested for such volunteering
toward so clean a message, I’ll come.
The world goes on and while friends touch down
beside me, I too will come.


- William Stafford

Gratitude Goulash


Take down your biggest pot,
bigger than you think you need.
Slice, dice or cut into manageable pieces
the desiccated remains
of all your life's
calamitous events.


Look around for missed ingredients.
Add clean water, local honey and vinegar.
Bring this mess to a rolling boil then
simmer on a back burner for several days.


When your kitchen smells good,
Ask a close friend to come over.
Get out two old bowls,
they need not match.
Just before serving add a dollop of success
and a smidgen of failure.
Then be very liberal with paprika.


Solemnly bless the goulash,
and take a few bites…
Laugh together, forgive yourself,
then gratefully
go out to eat.


- Doug von Koss

Earth Your Dancing Place


Beneath heaven's vault
remember always walking
through halls of cloud
down aisles of sunlight
or through high hedges
of the green rain
walk in the world
highheeled with swirl of cape
hand at the swordhilt
of your pride
Keep a tall throat
Remain aghast at life


Enter each day
as upon a stage
lighted and waiting
for your step
Crave upward as flame
have keenness in the nostril
Give your eyes
to agony or rapture


Train your hands
as birds to be
brooding or nimble
Move your body
as the horses
sweeping on slender hooves
over crag and prairie
with fleeing manes
and aloofness of their limbs


Take earth for your own large room
and the floor of the earth
carpeted with sunlight
and hung round with silver wind
for your dancing place

- May Swenson

Grace


Thanks and blessing be
to the Sun and the Earth
for this bread and this wine,----
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
---------------this food;
thanks be and blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks and blessing to them
who share it
-----(and also the absent and the dead.)
Thanks and blessing to them who bring it
--------(may they not want),
to them who plant and tend it,
harvest and gather it
--------(may they not want);
thanks and blessing to them who work
--------and blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
------sours the wine
----------and robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance and strength
for our dance and the work of justice, of peace.

- Rafael Jesús González-



Gracias


Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
-----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
----------------este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
--------(que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
-------(que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
-------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
-----hace agrio el vino
-----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
--------por la justicia y la paz.

- Rafael Jesús González

Thanksgiving

The feast of life
asks nothing of us
but our death,


our final giving back
for all the death
that feeds us

It’s only what we ask
of ourselves that makes
this day holy

only what we praise -
how brightly
the parsley gleams

only what we bless -
the hands, so many hands
that brought abundance

to our laden tables,
our warm nests of instinct
and care

only what we give -
to the hungry, the
desperate, the homeless

as winter scents
rich with coming rain
bask in the waning light

and resins nipped awake
by wind’s cold teeth
ride the quickened air

only what we revere –
as Sun hums another close
to Earth’s turning

and pulsing multitudes
of leaf and grass
shift into silence


- Cynthia Poten

Giving Thanks At The Turning Of The Seasons


At times I’ve imagined that there lived a little
man, a gnome, that having awakened from his
quarterly nap, rubbed his eyes, and from his
underground hollow festooned with oak
leaves and prayer grottos, tugged upon a rope
that shifted a huge gear and so transformed
the bewildering heat of Indian summers into
crisp fall mornings where persimmon trees
started dropping their orange leaves as they
offered us the perfect gift of their seasonal fruit.


Then I remembered the earth’s tilt, and the
predictable gambit of light and dark and our
planet’s precise distance from the star at the
center of our galaxy that sustains humans,
the curious fruits of this corner of the cosmos.
And I reflected upon the scientists revealing
these machinations and remembered that,
somehow, even those sober physicists with
skinny black ties, knew that the whirling of
moons and seasons and galaxies were a part
of some great ongoing feast, and that this
turning should be called the Milky Way.


And that gnome living under this hallowed
earth is the gatekeeper who, like us, lives
between the bewildering questions of this
world and the open arms of a great loving
mother who feeds so many, but not all of
us. So this prayer of thanksgiving comes
with a caveat.


- Bruce Silverman

Van Gogh at sunset


After the first rain storm of the season,

three days of record setting,

moderate to heavy rain,

accompanied by

a fierce north west wind,

I walked into our backyard

as the sun was sinking low

in the western sky, around five o’clock,

the giant white oak which filled

the crystalline, cloudless, azure sky,

the oak whose deep green leaves,

just weeks before had been silhouetted

against the white, smoke-filled sky

of the Eagle Creek fire,

had morphed into a Van Gogh pallet

of yellows, gold, burnt sienna and browns,

so astonishing, so breathtaking

I stood in stunned silence,

absorbing its beauty,

knowing beyond a single doubt

how precious this gift of life,

how important to steward

our small, shrinking,

beautiful planet.

- Bill Denham

In the Art Gallery After the 2017 Fires

Inside the gallery bright color is everywhere
as a medicine of happiness or as
a uniquely distilled garden.

Outside evening streetlights start
to come on. Safe in here
we remember together the fierce
walls of fire that can, and have
taken so much, from friends.

Not like the golden flowers of light,
in the twilight streets, warm like stars,
but closer, like tiny camp fires
warming nearby hands and hearts
warming the darkness and
making it friendly and soft as velvet.

A knowing fortune teller thinks it best
to let this moment be. Next winter’s
flooding will come soon enough, and
make a lake of these streets. Children
in kayaks will float by like water lilies.
This gallery and all its gardens of color
will be exiled in rising water.


- Judith Stone

Dusting


Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things.


For algae spores
and fungus spores,
bonded by vital
mutual genetic cooperation,
spreading their
inseparable lives
from equator to pole.


My hand, my arm,
make sweeping circles.
Dust climbs the ladder of light.
For this infernal, endless chore,
for these eternal seeds of rain:
Thank you. For dust.


- Marilyn Nelson

I Live in Town Now


We heard
the rains were coming.


Around midnight a slow drizzle
and that wonderful new-rain smell,
and then, by 3,
a steady, hard rain,
continuous,
a deluge.


We lay in bed listening.


Silvia worried
about the sump-pump screen
in the driveway,
and we were up,
rain jackets,
hats and boots,
flashlights in our mouths.


I turned the power off,
Silvia held the corners
of the hardware cloth,
I lifted the two sections of grate,
leaned them against the house.


It was pouring.
We were getting wet.


Silvia cleaned the screen
with the hose.


I rolled the right arm of my jacket
as far up as I could,
reached down into the sump,
and swung the pump out.


Cold water ran past my shoulder
into my underarm
and down onto my chest.


I pulled twigs, leaves
and a crush of privet berries
from the intake,
and reached back down into
the sump.


I pulled more leaves from the water.
A dozen screen scoops
of silt below that.


Rain running under my jacket.


I swung the pump
back into place.


Silvia held the corners
of the cloth,
while I refitted the heavy grates.


We swept the nearby concrete
clear of leaves, berries, and dirt.


We were soaked.


I remembered the years
I’d lived at Slide,
and before that
below Windmill Pasture:
a flashlight or a head-lamp,
patrolling all night
with a long pole
and a McLeod,
following the rain’s
unequivocal demand:
keep the culverts clear,
or you’ll get a washout.


And one long afternoon
standing waist deep in
a redwood water tank,
completely drenched by rain,
reaching again and again
into the cold water
to fix a clogged valve.


Finally done,
Boissesvain
and I looked at each other
with huge grins,
and agreed that this work,
uncomfortable to the bone,
doing what has to be done,
and getting it done,
was somehow
the best.


I live in town now.


Silvia and I smiled
as we turned from the driveway
and climbed the back stairs
into our home.


- Trout Black

Alina Candeleria



I.
I thought it was an incantation, her name,
the way she said it in the singsong voice of a proud 5 year old.
alinaramondiazamorosacalenderia


Or a jingle, the way her lips pursed
perfectly in a subtle smile, vowels accentuated.


She waits in the salon while mother gets her hair cut.
Shows me her leopard print vinyl coat with bubble gum pink polyester lining.
Crosses her ankles, feet in ballet slippers.
Hair, a cape down her back. Quizzical brown eyes.
alinaramondiazamorosacalenderia


II.
Alina tells me her brother, Hector is in 4th grade and he’s 16.
Her father, Ernesto is 16 too. Alina says,“They are very old.”
She tells me a story.


Once upon a time there was a little girl named Alina. Her mother, Silvia, is having her hair cut so Alina has to wait in the salon. Her mother cooks. Her father builds fences. Her brother eats pizza and tacos.


I ask her to draw a picture.
Square lines create a house.
Windows radiate light.
Stick figure of Alina waving.
Figure of Hector eating a taco.


III.
But the house is sinking.
Glass on the ground.
Broken door.
Tacos are burning.
Stick figures disappear.


IV.
Will Alina know about the deep rivers
and that her mother had to learn to swim
right then and there, never falter?
Clothes on her back like skin.
Father in detention camp on floor cold as fear.
Alina Ramon Diaz Amorosa Calenderia




- Pamela Stone Singer

Enemies


If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,


how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then


is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go


free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not


think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.


- Wendell Berry

Bearing Witness


Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of stars. On the edge
of the 6th mass extinction, with species
vanishing before our eyes, we’d be a people
gone mad, if we did not grieve.

This unmet grief,
an elder tells me, is the root
of the root of the collective illness
that got us here. His people
stay current with their grief—
they see their tears as medicine—
and grief a kind of generous willingness
to simply see, to look loss in the eye,
to hold tenderly what is precious,
to let the rains of the heart fall.

In this way, they do not pass this weight on
in invisible mailbags for the next generation
to carry. In this way, the grief doesn’t build
and build like sets of waves, until,
at some point down the line—
it simply becomes an unbearable ocean.

We are so hungry when we are fleeing
our grief, when we are doing all
we can to distract ourselves
from the crushing heft of the unread
letters of our ancestors.
Hear us, they call. Hear us.

In my dreams, the elephants stampede
in herds, trumpeting, shaking the earth.
It is a kind of grand finale, a last parade
of their exquisite beauty. See us, they say.
We may not pass this way again.

What if our grief, given as a sacred offering,
is a blessing not a curse?
What if our grief, not hidden away in corners,
becomes a kind of communion where we shine?
What if our grief becomes a liberation song
that returns us to our innocence?
What if our fierce hearts
could simply bear witness?

- Laura Weaver

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

- Walt Whitman

Speaking Tree


I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.
- Sandra Cisneros


Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—

I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.

- Joy Harjo

Writing To Iraq


It would
take them
no trouble
to approve
your next
hour
by seconds
and minutes


with a
rag tied
over
your eyes


The next
morning
could be
put into
a rubber
hose


and used
to beat
you


When you
march
in the streets
together


when you
ask them
to give
you back
your country


And then
many
are shot /
killed
and wounded
around you


They tell you
there is
still time
to turn back
into history


But instead you
keep moving


And the streets
under your
sky
continue to
gather


to swell
with even
more voices


All pain
can be
doubled


But you
see a way
to welcome
another future
into your
hands


And that
keeps you moving forward




- Beau Beausoleil

Possibilties


I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.


- Wisława Szymborska

Everything Has a Deep Dream

I’ve spent many years learning
how to fix life, only to discover
at the end of the day
that life is not broken.

There is a hidden seed of great wholeness
in everyone and everything.
We serve life best
when we water it and befriend it.
When we listen before we act.

In befriending life,
we do not make things happen
according to our own design.
We uncover something that is already happening
in us and around us and
create conditions that enable it.

Everything is moving toward its place of wholeness,
always struggling against odds.

Everything has a deep dream of itself and its fulfillment.

- Rachel Naomi Remen

Blessings for the Tomb, the Womb, the Cocoon
(the Liminal Spaces, all)


May you surrender to the sacred gravity of your grief and loss

May you give honor and homage to that which has fallen away

May you integrate the wisdoms of your passage

May you feel the tender burden of your own life in your arms

May you treat yourself with exquisite kindness and patience

May you find peace in your cocoon . . . acceptance and surrender

May you be transformed by your own darkness and rise renewed


- Kay Crista

Beautiful, Kay! Like a personal checklist!
Every line remains alive!
A real service to a reader!
:heart:

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Blessings for the Tomb, the Womb, the Cocoon
(the Liminal Spaces, all)


May you surrender to the sacred gravity of your grief and loss

May you give honor and homage to that which has fallen away

May you integrate the wisdoms of your passage

May you feel the tender burden of your own life in your arms

May you treat yourself with exquisite kindness and patience

May you find peace in your cocoon . . . acceptance and surrender

May you be transformed by your own darkness and rise renewed


- Kay Crista

---

How to Break a Curse


Lemon balm is for forgiveness.
Pull up from the root, steep
in boiling water. Add locusts’ wings,
salt, the dried bones of hummingbirds.
Drink when you feel ready.
Drink even if you do not.


Pepper seeds are for courage.
Sprinkle them on your tongue.
Sprinkle in the doorway and along
the windowsill. Mix pepper and water
to a thick paste. Spackle the cracks
in the concrete, anoint the part
in your hair. You need as much
courage as you can get.


Water is for healing.
Leave a jar open beneath the full moon.
Let it rest. Water your plants.
Wash your face. Drink.


The sharpened blade is for memory.
Metal lives long, never grows weary
of our comings and goings. Wrap this blade
in newspaper. Keep beneath your bed.
Be patient, daughter.
Be patient.


- Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné

What Flies


Time flies when we’re having fun
and when we’re not it crawls.


Flies – get stuck in the honey
and honey distracts
just about everyone
but my honey
distracts me the most
hm, hm, hmm, the delight
of that sweetness
and the explosion in my brain.


Later I’ll deal with the pain
but while time ticks
I get so involved in my addictions
there are no predictions
of when I’ll stop
or when I’ll succumb
to the realities that I
have broken the rules
and Now it’s time for the dues.


So I must pay while the days
tick away – and sunsets come
and moonlights smile
watching us revel in this life
we want to keep forever
but forever is always here
for there is no tomorrow
remember? All we have is Now.


Boy does Now fly – and how
when waves form
and cats meow
and lions roar
and the streams gurgle
and humans cry and pray
and laugh and wonder what’s next.


And the only thing that’s next
is Now – flying in our face.


- Jayro Dyer

One Child



Born lucky born lost
born touched born tossed
born brown born bite
- one child’s meek
another child’s might


Born wail born wall
born fly born fall
born fierce born fright
- one child’s strong
another child’s slight


Born loved born late
born howl born hate
born want born white
- one child’s privilege
another child’s plight


Born gone born gifted
born lack born lifted
born noose born night
-one child’s freedom
another child’s fight


Born calm born cage
born rigged born rage
born boy born blight
- one child’s wrong
another child’s right


Born girl born good
born shackle born should
born black born bright
- one child’s loss
another child’s light


Born fraught born freed
born glory born greed
born neglect born need
- One child’s plead
we better take heed


I say
One child’s plead
- everyone’s need


I say
One child’s plead
we better take heed.




- Kristy Hellum

American Tune


Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.

Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.

Still, you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.

But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.

And I dreamed I was dying.

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.

And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.

And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune

oh, but it’s all right, it's all right, it's all
right, you can't be forever blessed.

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.

- Paul Simon

Twas the Night before Yuletide

Twas the night before Yuletide and all through the glen
Not a creature was stirring, not a fox, not a hen.
A mantle of snow shone brightly that night
As it lay on the ground, reflecting moonlight.


The faeries were nestled all snug in their trees,
Unmindful of flurries and a chilly north breeze.
The elves and the gnomes were down in their burrows,
Sleeping like babes in their soft earthen furrows.


When low! The earth moved with a thunderous quake,
Causing chairs to fall over and dishes to break.
The Little Folk scrambled to get on their feet
Then raced to the river where they usually meet.


“What happened?” they wondered, they questioned, they probed,
As they shivered in night clothes, some bare-armed, some robed.
“What caused the earth’s shudder? What caused her to shiver?”
They all spoke at once as they stood by the river.


Then what to their wondering eyes should appear
But a shining gold light in the shape of a sphere.
It blinked and it twinkled, it winked like an eye,
Then it flew straight up and was lost in the sky.


Before they could murmur, before they could bustle,
There emerged from the crowd, with a swish and a rustle,
A stately old crone with her hand on a cane,
Resplendent in green with a flowing white mane.


As she passed by them the old crone’s perfume,
Smelling of meadows and flowers abloom,
Made each of the fey folk think of the spring
When the earth wakes from slumber and the birds start to sing.


“My name is Gaia,” the old crone proclaimed
in a voice that at once was both wild and tamed,
“I’ve come to remind you, for you seem to forget,
that Yule is the time of re-birth, and yet…”


“I see no hearth fires, hear no music, no bells,
The air isn’t filled with rich fragrant smells
Of baking and roasting, and simmering stews,
Of cider that’s mulled or other hot brews.”


“There aren’t any children at play in the snow,
Or houses lit up by candles’ glow.
Have you forgotten, my children, the fun
Of celebrating the rebirth of the sun?”


She looked at the fey folk, her eyes going round,
As they shuffled their feet and stared at the ground.
Then she smiled the smile that brings light to the day,
“Come, my children,” she said, “Let’s play.”


They gathered the mistletoe, gathered the holly,
Threw off the drab and drew on the jolly.
They lit a big bonfire, and they danced and they sang.
They brought out the bells and clapped when they rang.


They strung lights on the trees, and bows, oh so merry,
In colors of cranberry, bayberry, cherry.
They built giant snowmen and adorned them with hats,
Then surrounded them with snow birds, and snow cats and bats.


Then just before dawn, at the end of their fest,
Before they went homeward to seek out their rest,
The fey folk they gathered ‘round their favorite oak tree
And welcomed the sun ‘neath the tree’s finery.


They were just reaching home when it suddenly came,
The gold light returned like an arrow-shot flame.
It lit on the tree top where they could see from afar
The golden-like sphere turned into a star.


The old crone just smiled at the beautiful sight,
“Happy Yuletide, my children,” she whispered. “Good night.”


- C.C Wiliford

Thanks again, Larry. It's definitely one of the greats.
Roland

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

American Tune


Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.

Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.

Still, you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.

But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.

And I dreamed I was dying.

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.

And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.

And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune

oh, but it’s all right, it's all right, it's all
right, you can't be forever blessed.

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.

- Paul Simon

---

Christmas in Tucson


The Exchange

Her long black and white
hair running down her
shoulders, like a creek
with all its mysteries.
Brown eyes, kind
like a bear waking
to a new morning.
She wore a crisp white
shirt with blue jeans
and pretty light tan
cowboy boots.
You could not miss
her silver and turquoise
belt buckle with an
engraved claw, which
was an invitation to see
the fine craftsmanship
of the Tohono O'odham
and Navajo Indians,
inside a small trading post
store called The Coyote
on a dusty desolate road
not far outside of town
in the month of December.
Behind a glass counter
displayed were red clay pots
on small colorful weavings
along with friendship
baskets and hand crafted
artifacts. I was surprised
to find sweetgrass in the
region and traded with the
elder woman green frog
skin for it. In exchange she
handed me the braid with
some coins. She noticed
my Ojibwa beaded earrings.
There was really nothing
more to say. She gave
me thoughts for a life time.
I lit the sweetgrass on
Christmas day.

- Ziibinkokwe, Turtle Clan (Patricia LeBon Herb)

A Christmas Carol


Away in a manger
or a crack house
or under a bridge
or in a bombed-out village
or a refugee camp
or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
some Mary is giving birth.


Even as you read this
a child is being born.


What if one of these were the promised one,
the beacon of hope,
the seed of a new light
in a dark time?


What if they all were?
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?


- Larry Robinson

Christmas Bells

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...5_10-45-35.png

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

- Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

In a lighter vein:

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 and Macrina Wiederkehr

The Need That Can Only Be Met


You’ve probably heard, as have I,
That humans are essentially religious.
That deep in our souls, if not in our minds,
We find communion with things divine.


You’ve probably felt, as have I,
An essential longing, an open heart,
A want and need which, they say,
Can only be met by perfect divine love.


And you’ve probably been told, as have I,
This somehow proves that God exists.
That we are his or her created children.
And that the universe itself loves us.


I’ve no problem that our souls are religious,
Most especially when I play my guitar.
I am perfectly convinced this yearning exists,
And it needs, in fact, a perfect divine love.


But, my friends, this is the human condition.
Our predicament. We have this perfect need
That can only be met by such a love.
When, in fact, no such love exists at all.


And this is why, and I mean this,
There is no opting out. It comes down to us!
It’s up to us to live love and caring,
To refuse hate, to stand against cruelty.


It’s all human nature, after all.
The Holocaust was not an aberration.
But neither is love and beauty.
Where do you stand, my friend?


We must create the We.
We must stay open to our pain.
We must create our bold community.
Not perfect. Not divine. Together.


Because it’s true, so very much the case.
You can have faith in this.
It can and will only come from us.
We have a need that can only be met.


- Jon Jackson

The Pompoms of St. Moritz


One of our dogs ate the piles I swept,
another loved popcorn so much
I left the lid off so fluffy kernels
flew to her rummage on the floor.


I don’t ski.
My trick knee steers me off rocky slopes
to sprung floors, yoga mats and tatami.
I love sparkle and quiet,
qualities of snow,
the blurry edges of dream.


Today I hooked a rubber band to
a necklace so the chrysocolla beads,
colors of the river she swam daily,
hang over my heart and I feel my friend.
I’m a better woman with her close.


Penelope—her name means thread—and I
cross the snow glittering in the dark,
laughing so hard the pompoms on our hats
explode and the strands scatter to ice and stars.


I go a long way to feel the dead.
I do without, or see it fresh. Harder
alone. When someone tromps through the blizzard
with a stretcher, I stop begging childhood Jesus,
clasp my arms around their neck—her neck—
and pin my heart to theirs.


- Gwynn O'Gara

Yes. God is a 'we'...not a he, she, it, or what. And I have the proof. Look for me at the Farmers Mrkt on Sundays down by the gazebo. Writers on the Loose. I got it writ down.
Michael
[email protected]

i believe

in myself
light rain
sudden storms
the moon
polenta and sausage
good sex
red sunsets
a perfect martini
the stars
true love
Monet's garden
cracked crab
long baths
soft jazz
a walk on the beach
and root beer floats

i believe
in quiet mornings
the ocean
slow dancing
the back of a man's neck
Fred Astaire tapping across the screen
the magic of the Sacramento delta
stone angels in Italian cemeteries
growing your own tomatoes
Paul Newman's eyes
That writing poetry is telling the truth
doing crafts is in my blood
ironing is therapy
kissing is an art
and dusting is a waste of time

- Geri Digiorno

I LOVE the specificity of your poem! Yes! It's in the concrete things we love, that we are saved! :heart:

AND: I wrote a whole poem about Paul Newman's eyes (etc), after he died, and it was in the NY TIMES (ok, the Letters section, but it got a lot of notice there) and was one of Larry's poem-a-day picks! Ta-daaa! Here it is! :wink:


PAUL NEWMAN

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...9_13-29-41.png

If Paul Newman is dead,
then where now are the rest of us
whose mid-world lives were quickened by
that vital glance and pulse?


How can the sun
go on rising,
when every morning it came
out of those blue eyes?


Eternal youth has succumbed:
All men are mortal, after all,
and the streams that refresh the living realms
must now go searching for a new darling.

:waccosun:

Monet Refuses the Operation


Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.


- Lisel Mueller

Beautifully expressed~ and a wonderful picture of him.

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by REALnothings:

I LOVE the specificity of your poem! Yes! It's in the concrete things we love, that we are saved! :heart:

AND: I wrote a whole poem about Paul Newman's eyes (etc), after he died, and it was in the NY TIMES (ok, the Letters section, but it got a lot of notice there) and was one of Larry's poem-a-day picks! Ta-daaa! Here it is! :wink:


PAUL NEWMAN

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...9_13-29-41.png

If Paul Newman is dead,
then where now are the rest of us
whose mid-world lives were quickened by
that vital glance and pulse?


How can the sun
go on rising,
when every morning it came
out of those blue eyes?


Eternal youth has succumbed:
All men are mortal, after all,
and the streams that refresh the living realms
must now go searching for a new darling.

:waccosun:

---