Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Tashlikh

These are the days of awe -
time of inventory
and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
comes in.
(What have we sown
of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
of justice?)

The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.

When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
with our transgressions
and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.
The days are upon us
to take stock of our hearts.
It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
our teraphim,
our lares.

© Rafael Jesús González 2014



Tashlij

Estos son los días de temor -
tiempo del inventario
y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
en la justicia?)

Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.

Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
con nuestros pecados
y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
Están sobre nosotros los días
para hacer inventario del corazón.
Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
nuestros térafim,
nuestros lares.

© Rafael Jesús González
Sent from Isfahan.

A Message From The Wanderer

Today outside your prison I stand
and rattle my walking stick: Prisoners, listen;
you have relatives outside. And there are
thousands of ways to escape.

Years ago I bent my skill to keep my
cell locked, had chains smuggled to me in pies,
and shouted my plans to jailers;
but always new plans occured to me,
or the new heavy locks bent hinges off,
or some stupid jailer would forget
and leave the keys.

Inside, I dreamed of constellations—
those feeding creatures outlined by stars,
their skeletons a darkness between jewels,
heroes that exist only where they are not.

Thus freedom always came nibbling my thought,
just as—often, in light, on the open hills—
you can pass an antelope and not know
and look back, and then—even before you see—
there is something wrong about the grass.
And then you see.

That’s the way everything in the world is waiting.

Now—these few more words, and then I’m
gone: Tell everyone just to remember
their names, and remind others, later, when we
find each other. Tell the little ones
to cry and then go to sleep, curled up
where they can. And if any of us get lost,
if any of us cannot come all the way—
remember: there will come a time when
all we have said and all we have hoped
will be all right.

There will be that form in the grass.

- William Stafford

Belief In Magic

How could I not?
Have seen a man walk up to a piano
and both survive.
Have turned the exterminator away.
Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine.
Seen rainbows in puddles.
Been recognized by stray dogs.
I believe reality is approximately 65% if.
All rivers are full of sky.
Waterfalls are in the mind.
We all come from slime.
Even alpacas.
I believe we’re surrounded by crystals.
Not just Alexander Vvedensky.
Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in.
Nonetheless.
Nevertheless
I believe there are many kingdoms left.
The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.
A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life
even though
even though this is my second heart.
Because the first failed,
such was its opportunity.
Was cut out in pieces and incinerated.
I asked.
And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart
in a jar.
Strange tangled imp.
Wee sleekit in red brambles.
You know what it feels like to hold
a burning piece of paper, maybe even
trying to read it as the flames get close
to your fingers until all you’re holding
is a curl of ash by its white ear tip
yet the words still hover in the air?
That’s how I feel now.

- Dean Young

Barking

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn’t die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.

- Jim Harrison

Absolution

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

There was an hour when we were loth to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?

- Siegfried Sassoon

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

- W. H. Auden


Sent from Tehran.

Nest

I awaken

To find your head
Loaded with sleep,
Branching my chest.

Feel the streams
Of your breathing
Dream through my heart.

From the new day,
Light glimpses
The nape of your neck.

Tender is the weight
Of your sleeping thought

And all the worlds
That will come back

When you raise your head
And look.

- John O’Donohue

This Is Not To Say


A garden shows the care of hands, but this is not to say those hands have made it grow.

That birds will sing among the trees is not to say that trees will harbor song, and

Too, though drought withers the vine, this is not to say the Sun brings death to life.

That a person like a flower in love may bloom is not to say that love is like a flower, or

When by candlelight two lovers burn, that’s not to say the candle is the fire.

Thoughts may dart and school like minnows, knowing nothing of the sea,

Though this is not to say that water, mute infinity of liquid sparks,

Could not rise into a cloud to rain upon a garden, or shade the gardener’s eye.

This is not to say that thoughts are love or candlelight or song,

This is not to say a garden, or the gardener, is a cloud.


- Lewis Caraganis

Room For My Father's Ghost


Now is my father
A traveler, like all the bold men
He talked of, endlessly
And with boundless admiration,
Over the supper table,
Or gazing up from his white pillow —
Book on his lap always, until
Even that grew too heavy to hold.

Now is my father free of all binding fevers.
Now is my father
Traveling where there is no road.

Finally, he could not lift a hand
To cover his eyes.
Now he climbs to the eye of the river,
He strides through the Dakotas,
He disappears into the mountains.
And though he looks
Cold and hungry as any man
At the end of a questing season,

He is one of them now.
He cannot be stopped.

Now is my father
Walking in the wind,
Sniffing the deep Pacific
That begins at the end of the world.

Vanished from us utterly,
Now is my father circling the deepest forest —
Then turning in to the last red campfire burning
In the final hills,

Where chieftains, warriors and heroes
Rise and make him welcome,
Recognizing, under the shambles of his body,
A brother who has walked his thousand miles.

- Mary Oliver

Concurrence


Each day's terror, almost

https://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/2...f0638528eb.jpg

a form of boredom-- madmen
at the wheel and
stepping on the gas and
the brakes no good --
and each day one,
sometimes two, morning-glories,
faultless, blue, blue sometimes
flecked with magenta, each
lit from within with
the first sunlight.

- Denise Levertov

Bedecked

Tell me it's wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy
store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.

He's bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star
choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says
sticker earrings look too fake.

Tell me I should teach him it's wrong to love the glitter that a
boy's only a boy who'd love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping
off tracks into the tub.

Then tell me it's fine—really—maybe even a good thing—a boy
who's still got some girl to him,
and I'm right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in
the park.

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means—
this way or that—but for the way facets set off prisms and
prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he's cast rainbows—made every
shining true color.

Now try to tell me—man or woman—your heart was ever once
that brave.

- Virginia Redel

This Ecstasy

It’s not paradise I’m looking for
but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness
among the animals before I started
listening to the news. Call it the hint
I had about the knowledge that would explode.
In the meantime, which is real time
plus the past, you’re swishing your skirt
and speaking French, which is more
than I can take, which I marvel at
like a boy from the most distant seat
in the Kronos Dome, where I am one
of so many now I see the point
of falling off. There’s not enough seats
for us all to attend the eschaton.
This ecstasy that plants beauty
on my tongue, so that if it were
a wing, I’d be flying with the quickness
of a hummingbird and grace of a heron,
is so much mercy in light of the darkness
that comes. Who would say consolation?
Who would say dross? Not that anyone
would blame them. All night I hear
so many echoes in the forest I’m tempted
to look back, to save myself in hindsight,
where all I see is the absence of me.
Where all I hear is your voice,
which couldn’t be more strange.
How to go on walking hand in hand
without our bodies on the path
we made for our feet, talking, talking?

- Chard DeNiord

That Child

That child was dangerous. That just-born
Newly washed and silent baby
Wrapped in deerskin and held warm
Against the side of its mother could understand
The language of birds and animals
Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay
Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining
To the wind on the cliffside, what Bittern had found out
While standing alone in marsh grass. It knew
What the screams of Fox and the whistling of Otter
Were telling the forest. That child knew
The language of Fire
As it gnawed at sticks like Beaver
And what Water said all day and all night
At the creek's mouth. As its small fingers
Closed around Stone, it held what Stone was saying.
It knew what Bear Mother whispered to herself
Under the snow. It could not tell
Anyone what it knew. It would laugh
Or cry out or startle or suddenly stare
At nothing, but had no way
To repeat what it was hearing, what it wanted most
Not to remember. It had no way to know
Why it would fall under a spell
And lie still as if not breathing,
Having grown afraid
Of what it could understand. That child would learn
To sit and crawl and stand and begin
Putting one foot forward and following it
With the other, would learn to put one word
It could barely remember slightly ahead
Of the other and then walk and speak
And finally run and chatter,
And all the Tillamook would know that child
Had forgotten everything and at last could listen
Only to people and was safe now.

- David Wagoner

Making A Fist

We forget that we are all dead men conversing wtih dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing


I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.


I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.


But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.


You can stay that way
And even bloom!


Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and works and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter


Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.


Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.


You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.


Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!


O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter


And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.


Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!


- Hafiz

Cultural Evolution


When from his cave, young Mao in his youthful mind
A work to renew old China first designed,
Then he alone interpreted the law,
and from tradtional fountains scorned to draw:
But when to examine every part he came,
Marx and Confucius turned out much the same.


- Carolyn Kizer
1925 - 2014

Democracy


If a tree falls in the forest

https://blogs.mcall.com/.a/6a00d8341...3f64970b-800wi

And no one is there to hear it
Does it make a sound
If a ballot falls in a box
And no one knows
What they are voting for
Does it really count
What happens to a dream deferred
To justice deterred
To life
When it becomes impossible to live it
I don't want to know
Because I want more than a vote
I want to be a participant
See
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
Where hate speech
Doesn't pass for freedom
Where
No one has to turn to crime
To feed their children
If you were to put
A measure on a ballot
I would vote for democracy
I want the same things as anyone
And i want them for everyone
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
Not with over two million
Locked in cages
Or millions more
Pushed into the street
Where as Ferguson shows
You cant even surrender
To police
One nation
Under ghetto birds
And terror copters
Locking down children
At the border
Cutting off
Families
From their water
While cutting lunch programs
To drop bombs on Iraq
I dont want to live like that
I want to live in a free country
A democracy
What happens to a dream deferred
To justice deterred
To life
When it becomes impossible
To live it
If you dont know who you are
You can never know your power
You dont know who you are
But you will soon find out
Let your voice be heard
And may it finally count


- Matt Sedillo

Jesus Incognito


Don’t tell anyone, but I love Jesus.

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I love his big dark Jewish eyes, so full of suffering soul,
like an unemployed poet’s, and his thick sensuous Jewish lips,
and his kinky curly hair, just like mine, uncontrollable despite conditioners,
and the way he always argues with everyone
and will go to hell for love.
He’s just like that Buddhist god Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion,
except his name is easier to pronounce.
When you’re in trouble it’s hard to remember to yell for Avalokiteshvara,
but “Oh Jesus!” arises naturally
every time a crazy driver hot-dogs past me on the freeway.
I know I should say the Shema when I’m about to die,
but will I be able to remember Hebrew at a time like that?
I don’t want to die saying “Oh shit!”
I’d like to leave my body consciously, like a Tibetan lama, sitting in full lotus
with my head turned toward where I’ll reincarnate next.
But let’s be realistic: I probably couldn’t meditate enough to become enlightened
in the however-many years I have left.
Jesus seems easier. All you have to do is love everyone.
Well, seems is the key word here.
Sometimes the more you try
to love people, the more you hate them.
Maybe it would be better to try
not to love people, and then watch the love
force its way out of you like grass through cement.
Anything is better than organized religion.
I don’t like the singing in churches — all those hymns in major keys.
I don’t think religion should sound so triumphant.
It should be humble and aware of the basic incurable pathos of the human condition,
and in a minor key and sung in a mysterious ancient language, like Sanskrit or Hebrew.
Is it OK for me to love Jesus but not be Christian?
I could try to open my heart and give away all my possessions.
It’s not that different from being Buddhist, after all, except for a history
of witch burnings, the Inquisition, the subjugation,
rape, and pillage of indigenous peoples all over the world,
not to mention twenty centuries of vicious antisemitism. That’s a lot to overlook
to get back to a baby born among animals to a Jewish mother, Miryam.
And what about that other Mary, the sexy one? Jesus, I don’t believe you died a virgin.
I think you needed to taste everything human, to inhabit the whole mess:
blood, shit, flies, regret, envy, why-me.
I owe you and all the other bodhisattvas and sages
and newborn babies a debt of thanks
for agreeing to come back and marry yourselves
to our painful predicament again and again —
and I do thank you, bowing to the infinite directions.


- Alison Luterman

If my life is a mythological tale

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then my art is all around me waiting to be formed
my freedom is demanding that I keep my eyes open
my demons are protective dragons swirling in my home
and my choices are doorways into potential realms...
a sliding door moment with each breath
what will I choose next?

if there is no tomorrow, so let me fly forth in this moment
for there is not art born of a moderate soul

what if I spoke my truth
what if I raged against the way things are
not accepting them like a good girl
would I be too much for you then?

how wild is too wild?
how free is too free?

I long to be wild as the wild horses
thundering and biting
racing under an untamed moon

I long to be on fire with flames song
torching my tongue
my lips split open

I long to stand on the wildest mountain
with my arms flung wide
fingers prying the heavens

I long to run through woods in the rain
dive into the rivers and
be born in Her oceans again

I am naked as I write this
I stand in the cold truth of my flesh
Curves and scars and sacred breath
I trace my ribs my belly my neck
Coming home to myself

Her mark...
Her mark is upon my skin
The broken open and the opening
Light is slowly trickling in
And a secret longing dares to begin
I tremble with immortal yearnings

- Suzanne Sterling

Seawater Stiffens Cloth


Seawater stiffens cloth long after it’s dried.
As pain after it’s ended stays in the body:
A woman moves her hands oddly
because her grandfather passed through
a place he never spoke of. Making
instead the old jokes with angled fingers.
Call one thing another’s name long enough,
it will answer. Call pain seawater, tree, it will answer.
Call it a tree whose shape of   branches happened.
Call what branching happened a man
whose job it was to break fingers or lose his own.
Call fingers angled like branches what peel and cut apples,
to give to a girl who eats them in silence, looking.
Call her afterward tree, call her seawater angled by silence.


- Jane Hirshfield

A Poem A Day

I got another poem today
Just like everyday
A miracle on the internet
Sometimes I read them
Sometimes I'm too busy
Yet they still come
A poem a day

The sender doesn't know
If I read them or not
Its his Yoga
He says it keeps him focused
A poem a day

Some of them are beautiful
Sometimes I scratch my head
What was the writer thinkin'
Some touch me deeply
Some I don't understand
Doesn't matter what I think though
They keep comin'
A poem a day

Today's poem
Cracked me open
Like a vase of water
Dropped and shattered
Its all about Jesus
Buddha
Sages who came to heal
Down home wisdom
Elegant and eloquent
Mind engaged then
Dragged straight to the heart
Sobbing at my computer desk
Tears on the keyboard
With a poem a day

My dog
With the compassion
Of all those sages
Wags her tail at my tears
Puts her nose on my knee
Looks soulfully up at me
With loving brown eyes
Is the dog a poem

The cat also
Comes and jumps up
Rubbing his head on my leg
Is the cat a poem too

Maybe the dog is Jesus
Always loving

And the cat is Buddha
Always reaching up

Just for me

A poem a day

- David McNair

Thank you Larry, for your poem each day.
It enlightens my soul in so many ways.

A poem a day can fill this bowl
It gives the mind a structured goal.

Way better than Sudoku or a crossword each day
It fills the soul in many a divergent way.

Like the astrology forecast of Mr. Rob Brezsney
One can bounce these new ideas across this vast, open sea.

Or for Hemmingway whose typed pages that were never trashed
With his previous words now published indeed he had cashed.

I’ll be glad with reading a poem each day
So I can write something new in some other way.

Words of poetry here don’t always have to rhyme,
But what better use of one’s mind is there with all this free time?

©2014Tim Gega

Your Bubbling Enthusiasm
Greets me and meets me,
Infuses me and enthuses me,
Imbues me and seduces me,
Excites me and delights me,
Smiles on me and shines on me,
Frees me and increases me,
Reflects me and protects me,
Pleases me and releases me,
Amazes me and encourages me.
Your Bubbling Enthusiasm completes me.

©2010Tim Gega

The Farm OnThe Great Plains

A telephone line goes cold;
birds tread it wherever it goes.
A farm back of a great plain
tugs an end of the line.

I call that farm every year,
ringing it, listening, still;
no one is home at the farm,
the line gives only a hum.

Some year I will ring the line
on a night at last the right one,
and with an eye tapered for braille
from the phone on the wall

I will see the tenant who waits—
the last one left at the place;
through the dark my braille eye
will lovingly touch his face.

“Hello, is Mother at home?”
No one is home today.
“But Father—he should be there.”
No one—no one is here.

“But you—are you the one . . . ?”
Then the line will be gone
because both ends will be home:
no space, no birds, no farm.

My self will be the plain,
wise as winter is gray,
pure as cold posts go
pacing toward what I know.

- William Stafford

Beggar's Song

Here’s a seed. Food
for a week. Cow skull
in the pasture; back room
where the brain was:
spacious hut for me.

Small then, and smaller.
My desire’s to stay alive
and be no larger
than a sliver
lodged in my own heart.

And if the heart’s a rock
I’ll whack it with this tin
cup and eat the sparks,
always screaming, always
screaming for more.

- Gregory Orr

Old Bones


Out there walking round, looking out for food,
a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack
plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,
barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—
carry some—look for some,
go for a hungry dream.
Deer bone, Dall sheep,
bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—
how we all prevailed.


- Gary Snyder

Flaws


Of the dead ones
it’s the flaws we remember most
and may the most cherish
that part of life they couldn’t ever get right
pain never stopped running riot along those nerves

something irreplaceable is gone forever
the breath knows more than the voice will say
grief is our first glimpse of eternity

still— young Psyche defiant in her love
walks tall and naked out of adolescence
into the forest of eventuality
the forest with the understory of thorns
hands bound with vines behind her back
at every turn she’s redder in the neck and chest
bleeding toward her Calvary

Woodland Artemis gestures with her chin to muse Erato—
Folly is the true wisdom of youth,
the will to exist.


- Lee Perron

Trust

The Precipice It doesn't matter when they appear, these thresholds, these footpaths that again and again end, drop in to a chasm. We shift out of a phase that lingered too long on a broken horizon.

We resist the fall with all our being, holding on like tenacious weeds to the cliff where meaning faltered, slipping from the place we made for it.

Now life's change waits like a stepchild at the doorstep of the house where it may belong. As it gets darker you are afraid of the next step's blind touch.

What can you now rely upon? Nothing to do about the encroaching fact of gravity, a hint of vertigo, anonymity.

The precipice is the resistance to the next moment, its unveiling, its miracle. Nothing to do but wait for a visualization, a vague shape of a memory that provides a theory of where you stand at this moment.

No other way but to perhaps study the light inside you.Abide in it as threshold, as prayer or as somebody who thinks about you as God.

Abide in that courage that arrives as trust.

- Rich Meyers

I Won't Come

I won't come
I wob't go
I won't live
I won't die

I'll keep uttering
The name
And lose myself
In it

I'm bowl
And I'm platter
I’m man
And I'm woman

I'm grapefruit
And I'm sweet lime
I'm Hindu
And I'm Muslim

I'm fish
And I'm net
I'm fisherman
And I’m time

I'm nothing
Says Kabir
I'm not among the living
Or the dead

- Kabir
(Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra)

Growing Old

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The luster of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
—Yes, but not this alone.

Is it to feel our strength—
Not our bloom only, but our strength—decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more loosely strung?

Yes, this, and more; but not
Ah, ’tis not what in youth we dreamed ’twould be!
’Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow,
A golden day’s decline.

’Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are no more.

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young;
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain.

It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion—none.

It is—last stage of all—
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

- Matthew Arnold

The Secret Joy of Growing Old

The secret joy of growing old:
The new perspectives that unfold.
No longer needed every day;
No expectations come your way.
The years of toil are finally gone,
With generations moving on.
We always did as we were told,
Without a thought to growing old.

What does a formless future hold?
Is there a joy in growing old?
It's time to let your mind expand,
To hold life's wonder in your hand,
To sweep the floor and make the bed,
Be sure the animals are fed;
To watch a sunrise, smell the air,
Feel life revolving everywhere;
To water plants and pet the cat,
And taste the magic in all that.
So does a Paradise unfold:
The secret joy in growing old.

3-20-14
I like this better, Larry. smiles ....

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Growing Old

What is it to grow old?
...

---

Voyeurs
—after the short documentary Vultures of Tibet by Russell O. Bush

We watch others
watch a Sky Burial
in the flapping winds of Tibet.

The vultures arrive
from the stony peaks
piecemeal at first
then as sky avalanche
a tumble of
boiling birds tearing
into flesh.

The curious pay a fee
to local officials
make a short climb
for the best angle
snap shots of the vultures
the human body.

We watch each other watch

audience
filmmakers
tourists
camera lenses
monks
vultures

their hard copper beaks
brown feathers fluttering
like prayer flags.


- Jodi Hottel

Dream On


Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.
They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease.
and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing.
These same people stroll into a church
as if that were a natural part of life.
Investing money is second nature to them.
They contribute to political campaigns
that have absolutely no poetry in them
and promise none for the future.
They sit around the dinner table at night
and pretend as though nothing is missing.
Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall
and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing.
The family dog howls all night,
lonely and starving for more poetry in his life.
Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial.
Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations,
croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets,
their cocktails on the balcony, dog races,
and all that kissing and hugging, and don't
forget the good deeds, the charity work,
nursing the baby squirrels all through the night,
filling the birdfeeders all winter,
helping the stranger change her tire.
Still, there's that disagreeable exhalation
from decaying matter, subtle but everpresent.
They walk around erect like champions.
They are smooth-spoken and witty.
When alone, rare occasion, they stare
into the mirror for hours, bewildered.
There was something they meant to say, but didn't:
"And if we put the statue of the rhinoceros
next to the tweezers, and walk around the room three times,
learn to yodel, shave our heads, call
our ancestors back from the dead--"
poetrywise it's still a bust, bankrupt.
You haven't scribbled a syllable of it.
You're a nowhere man misfiring
the very essence of your life, flustering
nothing from nothing and back again.
The hereafter may not last all that long.
Radiant childhood sweetheart,
secret code of everlasting joy and sorrow,
fanciful pen strokes beneath the eyelids:
all day, all night meditation, knot of hope,
kernel of desire, pure ordinariness of life
seeking, through poetry, a benediction
or a bed to lie down on, to connect, reveal,
explore, to imbue meaning on the day's extravagant labor.
And yet it's cruel to expect too much.
It's a rare species of bird
that refuses to be categorized.
Its song is barely audible.
It is like a dragonfly in a dream--
here, then there, then here again,
low-flying amber-wing darting upward
then out of sight.
And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.


- James Tate

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Dream On


Some people go their whole lives
without ever writing a single poem.
Extraordinary people who don't hesitate
to cut somebody's heart or skull open.

And the dream has a pain in its heart
the wonders of which are manifold,
or so the story is told.


- James Tate

---

:heart::heart::heart:

Came up with this one yesterday afternoon:

Poetics 101

Behind every poem there lives a true life story.
Some words are laced with anguish and pain
while others are illuminated with magnificent glories.

Some Poems fall under the Ex Malus Gratis Theory
Where something good is later discovered
in something that was once thought dreary.

There are picket fence metaphors
and allegories and euphemisms galore
As some are dying to get in on this floor
while others would kill to get out of the door.

Some poets do it with rhymes
while others merely reflect on nostalgic times.
It’s as old as time these lexicons of rhymes
to bear ourselves in versed poetic lines.

Each one of us has a story to share
exposing our raw souls if we can dare.
Every poem becomes one hallmark
if you say it gently or create a spark.

Poetic journaling can help at times
untwist the logics in one’s own mind.
Not every script can be sublime
or written into such a comedy divine.

At times we wish our words would flow
to each and every average Jane and John Doe.
Unfurl that flag of emotion now
and share your pain and show us how.

Our words sometimes may be many
as the journey goes up a steep hill.
But when the past dies out in us
One hopes their poetry never will.

So master those words and you can’t go wrong
and maybe some day we will all sing your song.
Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me
was nothing more than a sailor’s immortal epiphany.

This life is short and some take it for granted.
These poems are our voices and need to be ranted.
Silence is banal and who needs more of that?
Just find your own voice then punch a hole in your hat.

©2014Tim Gega

I always enjoy poems about poetry. My contribution...

Faking Poems

Only the really shrewd can tell.
I'm moaning in meter,
under white sheets of paper,
Turning some trickery
In pseudonymph style.
My well-crafted climax,
and creative writhing
are pulling the wool over
somebody’s sighs.


With my cunningly-acted
passionate breathing of metaphors,
arousal of muse,
I've been faking poems again
for some inarticulate love.

© Chris Dec 1990

Love it, Chris
Some days it's true, but they tend to lead to better lines at other times too...

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Chris Dec:

I always enjoy poems about poetry. My contribution...

Faking Poems

Only the really shrewd can tell.
I'm moaning in meter,
under white sheets of paper,
Turning some trickery
In pseudonymph style.
My well-crafted climax,
and creative writhing
are pulling the wool over
somebody’s sighs.


With my cunningly-acted
passionate breathing of metaphors,
arousal of muse,
I've been faking poems again
for some inarticulate love.

© Chris Dec 1990

---

I've got one also

I need a new poem

not like the last one
something fresh
unpublished
something with a tinge of god
or trees
or mint crushed by a footstep

it doesn't have to be fancy
or slick
it just has to say what I mean
clearly
more of less

i need a new poem today
whatever is says
I'll accept
enjoy and move on
the poem need not speak
the deep meanings
or the cliches of the century

it only needs to speak its words
its sounds
it's meanings and innuendoes
what ever
they are
where ever they come from
from a void
or from a deep well
a mountaintop
the dirty gutter of a city
a glacier
just so the words
say something
say what needs to be said

i need a poem today

Richard Nichols

Shifting The Sun

When your father dies, say the Irish,
you lose your umbrella against bad weather.
May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Welsh,
you sink a foot deeper into the earth.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Canadians,
you run out of excuses. May you inherit
his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the French,
you become your own father.
May you stand up in his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Indians,
he comes back as the thunder.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Russians,
he takes your childhood with him.
May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the English,
you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.
May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.
When your father dies, say the Armenians,
your sun shifts forever.
And you walk in his light.

- Diana Der-Hovanessian

I like it, Richard.
With all the neurons firing here today I feel like the earth is spinning just a bit faster today...

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." ~ WH Auden

And mine:

The Alchemy of Age

When we look with soft eyes,
the physical form becomes translucent with age.
Bodies, veils to spirit worlds, wear thin.
Life’s chafing smoothes hard edges and steeled egos.
Opalescent colors show through transparency.
Without youthful resistance feelings flow,
bless with cleansing springs.
Sorrow, when released,
purifies the heart,
reveals sweetness of being.
Anger owned becomes ardor
that can be ridden as a tiger
through rain forests of divine desire.
Self-examined elders eclipse
psyches’ erroneous beliefs,
transmute experience into wisdom,
emerge as alchemists of soul.

©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian

Into October


These must be the colors of returning
the leaves darkened now but staying on
into the bronzed morning among the seed heads
and the dry stems and the umbers of October
the secret season that appears on its own
a recognition without sound
long after the day when I stood in its light
out on the parched barrens beside a spring
all but hidden in a tangle of eglantine
and picked the bright berries made of that summer


- W.S. Merwin

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by gardenmaniac:

"A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." ~ WH Auden

---

Gardenmaniac, your quote inspired me to come up with this little ditty yesterday.
Namaste

My Word Playground

The Dictionary is like crossing the Monkey Bars.
The Thesaurus is like going down the waterslide with ease.
The Swing is my imagination, flying fast and high or low and slow.
The Green Grass is my lush carpet where I can rest or dream all day.
And, the Tree of Knowledge sits in the center of it all.
It’s fun to play here alone, but it’s also fun to have playmates too.
My Time spent at the Word Playground is like a vacation paradise.

©2014 Tim Gega

Oatmeal


I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat
it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had
enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John
Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something
from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the
"Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad
a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about
the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal
alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words
lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there
is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started
on it, and two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their
clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering
furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously
gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh
to join me.


- Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)


To hear the poet read this poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xv8EY2vWJg

Sometimes the Dead

Sometimes the dead
drop in for a visit;
Unannounced,
they brush past me
on the front step
as I juggle groceries and keys.

Having no need
for doors locked or open,
they make themselves at home,
kick off their shoes, rest
their bones
on couch and creaking rocker.

While I put away
eggs and bread and cheese,
they thumb through yesterday’s
newspaper, old New Yorkers, dusty
books of poetry, arguing idly
over the TV remote.


Sometimes the dead
settle into the back seat;
while I drive
they lean out open windows,
letting the wind blow through them.

When it rains
they press pale cheeks
to cool glass, watching
ghostly reflections of light
on wet pavement.

Sometimes I think
they fiddle with the radio
when I’m not looking.


Why else would tears
spring to my eyes
at a song that was never ours?
Why else would I cry
at a certain turn in the road,
where spreading arms of valley oaks
reach out in empty embrace?

Sometimes I doubt,
but if the dead do not stop by,
why do I put down my fork,
the food in my mouth suddenly
ashes and dust?


Why, then, do I wrap myself
in blankets at night,
warding off the dull chill
of a room that is at once empty
and too full to bear?

- Lisa Shulman

The Hunkering


In October the red leaves going brown heap and
scatter
over hayfield and dirt road, over garden and circular
driveway,
and rise in a curl of wind disheveled as
schoolchildren
at recess, school just starting and summer done,
winter’s
white quiet beginning in ice on the windshield, in
hard frost
that only blue asters survive, and in the long houses
that once
more tighten themselves for darkness and
hunker down.
- Donald Hall

Let Evening Come


Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

- Jane Kenyon

The Fall Almost Nobody Sees


Everybody’s gone away.
They think there’s nothing left to see.
The garish colors’ flashy show is over.
Now those of us who stay
hunker down in sweet silence,
blessed emptiness among
red-orange shadblow
purple-red blueberry
copper-brown beech
gold tamarack, a few
remaining pale yellow
popple leaves,
sedge and fern in shades
from beige to darkening red
to brown to almost black,
and all this in front of, below,
among blue-green spruce and fir
and white pine,
all of it under gray skies,
chill air, all of us waiting
in the somber dank and rain,
waiting here in quiet, chill
November,
waiting for the snow.
- David Budbill

You are quick to call me Brother,
In your made up Brotherhood.
But you don't know that I know,
What you wish you understood.

For you are not my Brother,
I know when I am down.
You're just an acquaintance,
Nowhere to be found.

-Michael Anthony-

The Peace of Wild Things


When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


- Wendell Berry