Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Leah's Daughter

The workshop was just about to get started when somebody noticed
that Leah looked glum & distracted & asked what was wrong,
& Leah told us her daughter had called from Iraq that morning,
hysterical, screaming & weeping. Trained as an army clerk,
she'd been reassigned & was driving sniper patrols around
in a Humvee. The day before, they'd spied two guys
at the side of the road wiring an IED, & behind them, sitting
& playing, were two little kids. Leah said her daughter
kept screaming into the phone that her guys fired round after round
after round till the four were nothing but torn-open bodies
& skulls without faces in puddles of blood & her guys just kept
laughing & shooting & laughing & shooting & "Mom, they
were just little kids! Oh my God," she kept crying. "It's not right!
It just isn't right!" We sat there, all of us, horrified, silent.
Till finally Karen said, "That's awful, Leah!" & after a minute or two,
when no one said anything more, I started taking attendance.
Then we critiqued the first poem: an honest if somewhat
disorganized story of failed love. But of course it was still
on everyone's mind, & someone, I think it was Teri, asked Leah
how old her daughter was & how long before she'd
get to come home. "It's her second deploy," Leah said quietly.
"She'll be twenty in August. She's got four months & six days
to go if her tour isn't extended like last time & if . . . " She stopped
midsentence. No one said anything further. Like everyone
else, I kept my mouth shut, & we moved on to the next poem.


- Steve Kowit

Is this a poem, a prayer, or a list.
Are these arbitrary things. Mercury,


Venus, Earth. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune. Eight. Like spokes


on the wheel of dharma. Nights
of hanukkah, lenses in a fission


weapon. Eight the atomic
number of oxygen. China


knew eight immortals, the Buddha
once preached an eightfold path.


Count the stars, you ask.
No. No, I can't. The gyroscope


of planets, what comes first. Count
the atomic number of hydrogen. How


many oceans are there really.
How many voids comprise the hub


of the dharmachakra, how many plutonium
cores inside the bomb. The one


whose initial impact my grandfather
miscalculated. What is not a planet. Why


do stars contain lithium, die
white dwarfs, in need of lithium.


- Zach Horvitz

Honda Pavarotti




I'm driving on the dark highway
when the opera singer on the radio
opens his great mouth
and the whole car plunges down the canyon of his throat.


So the night becomes an aria of stars and exit signs
as I steer through the galleries
of one dilated Italian syllable
after another. I love the passages in which


the rich flood of the baritone
strains out against the walls of the esophagus,
and I love the pauses
in which I hear the tenor's flesh labor to inhale


enough oxygen to take the next plummet
up into the chasm of the violins.
In part of the song, it sounds as if the singer
is being squeezed by an enormous pair of tongs


while his head and legs keep kicking.
In part of the song, it sounds as if he is
standing in the middle of a coliseum,
swinging a 300-pound lion by the tail,


the empire of gravity
conquered by the empire of aerodynamics,
the citadel of pride in flames
and the citizens of weakness
celebrating their defeat in chorus,


joy and suffering made one at last,
joined in everything a marriage is alleged to be,
though I know the woman he is singing for
is dead in a foreign language on the stage beside him,
though I know his chain mail is made of silver-painted plastic
and his mismanagement of money is legendary,
as I know I have squandered
most of my own life


in a haze of trivial distractions,
and that I will continue to waste it.
But wherever I was going, I don't care anymore,
because no place I could arrive at


is good enough for this, this thing made out of experience
but to which experience will never measure up.
And that dark and soaring fact
is enough to make me renounce the whole world
or fall in love with it forever.


- Tony Hoagland

Spring

Again, the violet bows to the lily

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Again the rose is tearing off her gown!

Again, near the top of the mountain
The anemone’s sweet features appear.

The hyacinth speaks formally to the jasmine,
“Peace be with you.” “And peace to you lad!
Come walk with me in this meadow.”

The narcissus winks at the wisteria,
“Whenever you say.”

And the clove to the willow, “You are the one
I hope for.” The willow replies, “Consider
these chambers of mine yours. Welcome!”

The ringdove comes asking, “Where,
where is the Friend?”

With one note the nightingale
Indicates the rose.

Again, the season of Spring has come
And a spring-source rises under everything,
a moon sliding from the shadows.

- Jelaluddin Rumi
( translated by Coleman Barks)

To These Eyes


You only ones
I ever knew
you that have shown me
what I came to see
from the beginning
just as it was leaving
you that showed me the faces
in the realms of summer
the rivers the moments of gardens
all the roads that led here
the smiles of recognition
the silent rooms at nightfall
and have looked through the glasses
my mother was wearing when she died
you that I have never seen
except nowhere in a mirror
please go on showing me
faces you led me to
daylight the bird moment
the leaves of morning
as long as I look
hoping to catch sight
of what has not yet been seen


- W. S. Merwin

A Poem About a Farm


Fruit trees
A hill
White golden grasses
Dogs children roaming
A tractor filled with people
Circling around in circles
Under blue heaven skies
Friends gathered sipping wine
A brick oven baking
Round circles of dough
Butterflies, flowers, music
A sense of peace
Community, spoken words
My friends have a farm
Where souls meet
In nature and love.


- Nancy Long

Easter Morning In Wales


A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
Neglected for years,
The layers of its soil deep and thick.
Trees in the corners with branching arms
And the tangled briars like broken nets.


Sunrise through the misted orchard,
Morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs.
I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
If I am really seeing, or dreaming,
Or simply astonished
Walking toward sunrise
To have stumbled into the garden
Where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.


- David Whyte

Conflict
I’d like to propose a toast…

to dreams
and to the bold
Men and Women
that dare to dream them
to the wild-eyed visionaries
that plant seeds in their
hearts with hopes
to one day see them
come to pass

for prayers
sweeter than papayas
that rise from the
deepest darkest
depths of our cellars
where my heart
is pumping out
prayers like mass

to the foresight
that illuminates our
foreshadows that
whirl in the glass
of our souls
to those robust
farm workers clad
in jeans, flannels
handkerchiefs and hats

for all the Mamas and Papas that
wear their skin like worn leather
who are wrinkled and red like raisins
and whose wrinkles hold stories like wine jugs
and whose woes are ten miles deeper than
any winemaker’s pocket book

this ones for them

for all of the grandmas
and grandpas that look like stucco
whose eyes look like ice wines
with frost outlining their irises
for the crows-feet perched
perfectly on their eye-lids
and their white hair flowing
like broken clouds passing
through windmill slices
for century old spines like gnarly
vines in vineyards for lilac diamonds
to the god-like elders
for our aging wines and
their timeless guidance

this ones for floral notes
sung by the brown folks
for the flower vendor
the one that puts
the rose in rosary
for a gorgeous culture
that rose from dirt so openly
for arms that open like blossoms
for womb-like palms that deliver
the grape from bondage
and carry it from
conception to fruition
and beyond the goblet
for the seed that dreams itself
larger than grapes and transcends
wine, song, couplet and sonnet

to cherry pickers like
rebels with barreled chests
waging war with their wages
who hurl their dreams
like Molotov cocktails
into our amber waves of grain
whose knuckles are
gnarled and strained
for the work of a dreamer
is stainless and honest

for the protagonist, the antithesis, the subplot
and most importantly the conflict

you see
I know copper-skinned
women and men
that work for pennies

I know Mothers that
never feel beaten
machine-like Mothers
that clean hotels by day
sell Avon at night
and work the fields
on the weekends
so this ones for freedom

for children with eyes like plums
whose hair looks like dark chocolate
waterfalls pouring out and catching the sun

for precious sun-flowers
with green thumbs that
have never been embarrassed
of their hardworking parents
that pick pears and pluck asparagus
this ones for the families that get scattered
for work all across the Americas

its ugly
I know a girl that was
held for ransom at birth
just beneath the border
by bad men known
as Coyotes who you
gotta pay to smuggle dreams
into this country

its beyond ugly
its heart crushing

so this ones for the underbelly
for the juggling of children over rivers
for dodging dogs & militias
for sliding dreams passed
the law writers passing
laws higher than the
barb wire their casting
the people they’re pruning
and the hopes they’re smashing

to the Mighty Migrant Worker
may your hands and spine
always nurture the vine
may the cups of all your tomorrows
be filled with the fruits of your labor
and may the dreams you dream of find freedom
in the land of your neighbor

To you
- Jordan Chaney

Tweet Prayer for Poets


Choose rock or sand;
prepare a face to suit
the places where you stand.


Crisis, stasis, oasis or dust?
Calliope, Erato, look over us.


- David Beckman

Passover


Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .
and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
- Exodus 12: 7 & 13


They thought they were safe
that spring night; when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.


But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.


Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.


- Lynn Ungar

The Garden of Love


I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen;
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.


And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore.


And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.


- William Blake

Letter to Jerusalem

To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret.
Sand turned too quickly to cement and who cares if the builders lose their arms?
The musk of smoldered rats on sticks that trailed their tails through tunnels underground.
Trickster of light, I walk your cobbled alleys all night long and drink your salt.
City of bones, I return to you with dust on my tongue.
Return to your ruined temple, your spirit of revolt.
Return to you, the ache at the center of the world.


- Elana Bell

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,


what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.


In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.


And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX)

Ascension in Silk Pajamas
for Irene Perez



While most decline in their final days
Slack jawed and pallid, holding on,
You will ascend.....
Perhaps in the quiet of the early hours, as dawn teases
the horizon and when least expected.


Not with a struggle, but with the flutter of butterfly wings
Perceptible only to those with the finest-tuned senses.
You will slip out on that last elegant breath, your serenity swelling
Beyond the beautiful body you have inhabited
And the tender hearts encircling you
Past one last glimpse of your purposeful existence
Kissing it tenderly as you fly


Willingly, into the unknown.






- Fran Carbonaro

A Thousand Years of Healing


From whence my hope, I cannot say,
except it grows in the cells of my skin,
in my envelope of mysteries
it hums.
In this sheath so akin to the surface of the earth,
it whispers.
Beneath the wail and dissonance in the world,
hope’s song grows.
Until I know that with this turning
we put a broken age to rest.
We who are alive at such a cusp
now usher in
one thousand years of healing!

Winged ones and four-leggeds,
grasses and mountains and each tree,
all the swimming creatures,
even we, wary two-leggeds
hum, and call, and create the Changing Song.
We remake all our relations.
We convert our minds to the Earth.
In this turning time
we finally learn to chime and blend,
attune our voices; sing the vision
of the Great Magic we move within.
We begin the new habit,
getting up glad
for a thousand years of healing.


- Susa Silvermarie

April Chores


When I take the chilly tools
from the shed's darkness, I come
out to a world made new
by heat and light.


The snake basks and dozes
on a large flat stone.
It reared and scolded me
for raking too close to its hole.


Like a mad red brain
the involute rhubarb leaf
thinks its way up
through loam.


- Jane Kenyon

YES! Thank you, Larry ... this expresses so well the vision that has indeed been growing in the cells of me as well. I have been encouraging people to focus on this new reality growing around us instead of bemoaning the mess we are leaving. This says it perfectly. Blessings ....

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

A Thousand Years of Healing


From whence my hope, I cannot say,
except it grows in the cells of my skin,
in my envelope of mysteries
it hums.
In this sheath so akin to the surface of the earth,
it whispers.
Beneath the wail and dissonance in the world,
hope’s song grows.
Until I know that with this turning
we put a broken age to rest.
We who are alive at such a cusp
now usher in
one thousand years of healing!

Winged ones and four-leggeds,
grasses and mountains and each tree,
all the swimming creatures,
even we, wary two-leggeds
hum, and call, and create the Changing Song.
We remake all our relations.
We convert our minds to the Earth.
In this turning time
we finally learn to chime and blend,
attune our voices; sing the vision
of the Great Magic we move within.
We begin the new habit,
getting up glad
for a thousand years of healing.


- Susa Silvermarie

---

Exercise


First forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible

follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire

forget fire

- W.S. Merwin

Spirit


spirit calls out your name
when lightning flashes
spirit makes a trail


and okay sometimes we catch a glimpse
Yeats' wife begins dictation
on the train outside San Bernardino


years later we listen and
fall inward to
silence


your life is gold within
sun behind clouds
still gives off light


is it too easy to say
life is blessed
and has freedom gone hidden


what is death
except
dark stone in the center of the path


- Jack Crimmins

The Dark Stone


for Jack Crimmins


There in the path, it waits
The dark stone, in the center–
The place we hoped never to arrive.


Life is littered with so many losses,
Dark stones, scattered in the fields and paths,
Betrayals by death, dishonesty, disappointment.


What happens if we meet that stone with wonder,
Walk to its cruel center, sit in its
Sorrowful presence?


Here, yes here, in the heart of
Fear, disillusion, chaos and
Confusion, peace arrives, a soft surprise.


- Rebecca del Rio

The Scream


It exploded out of
the short, squat woman,
curdling every molecule
in the library parking lot until
the whole little bay became
an emblem of her terror.


She stood silent, and the air
began to clear. Then she
erupted again, shrill syllables
--Aleut? Inuit? Tibetan?—
rolling off her tongue.


She stood on the curb beside
three travel-cases
the taxi driver had set there
before driving away.


Now her curse opened
to pure ululation:
visions of Algerian women,
revolution, apocalypse;
witchcraft.


Though I could not visit
the places where
her sounds had originated,
I knew the translations:
rage, horror. And this


much more: in
those bags
lay all she owned.
And no one
was coming
to take her
home.


- Max Reif

God Says Yes To Me


I asked God if it was OK to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was OK to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don¹t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I¹m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes


- Kaylin Haught

Lutheran Sea

One wave follows another
beneath the heel of the wind;
the spray blows landward,
but lacking salt or iodine
it smells oddly Protestant,
carrying the faintest tang
of wet iron,
well water
sluiced in a bucket
from a cabin you visited once
when you were a boy,
water that numbed the tongue
as if it had dripped
from a seam of ice,
blue and glistening,
in a cave
where nymphs of winter
with red fingers
preened before mirrors of frost,
dead cold sober.

- James Armstrong

Han-shan Is The Cure For Warts


My job was eating me night and day,
my wife threatening to leave, taking
even the stroller and the quilt.
A family of warts blossomed on my thumb
so big I introduced them to tellers and clerks.
Then I bumped into Han-shan in the bookstore,
one hundred poems so small I read them all.
We moved to a new place. My wife
smiles out on sidewalks where children ride.
I work in a room so quiet I can hear my heartbeat.
My warts are gone, no marks, no scars.


- James P. Lenfestey

The Diameter of the Bomb
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.


- Yehuda Amichai

Han Shan


Down in the city
they speed in the streets
Up on the mountain
we walk on the path


Down in the city
they see how fast
something can be done


Up on the mountain
we watch the dogwood blossom


First the christmas balls
then the little birds' mouths
followed by eggs in the nest
how I love that stage,
and that is followed
by campion holding hands
over head
when two petals still hold
and the other two have let go


Just yesterday...
Was it a new speed record?
for the street runners
…. or was it a bomb
that made news.


Selling fear in the city
is so easy.


Up on the mountain
with the dogwood blooming.
we just say:


Is that so?


Why were they running on paved streets?
Where were they going?


Didn't they hear?
It is spring.


- David Bean

For What Binds Us


There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.


And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,


as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --


And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.


- Jane Hirshfield

The Kama Sutra of Kindness: Position Number 3


It's easy to love
through a cold spring
when the poles
of the willows
turn green
pollen falls like
a yellow curtain
and the scent of
Paper Whites
clots
the air
but to love for a lifetime
takes talent
you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else
wake each morning
for 72,000
mornings in
a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out
your arms
and
legs
you have to
find forgiveness
in everything
even ink stains
and broken
cups
you have to be willing to move through
life
together
the way the long
grasses move
in a field
when you careen
blindly toward
the other
side
there's never going to be anything
straight or predictable
about your path
except the
flattening
and the springing
back
you just go on walking for years
hand in hand
waist deep in the weeds
bent slightly forward
like two question
marks
and all the while it
burns
my dear
it burns beautifully above
you
and goes on
burning
like a relentless
sun


- Mary Mackey

We Have A Beautiful Mother


We have a beautiful
Mother
Her hills
Are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
Hills.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her oceans
Are wombs
Her wombs
Oceans.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her teeth
The white stones
At the edge
Of the water
The summer
Grasses
Her plentiful
Hair.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything we know.


- Alice Walker

Love This Miraculous World


Our understandable wish
to preserve the planet
must somehow be
reduced
to the scale of our
competence.
Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere
to the universe
or the planet
or the nation
or the institution
or the profession,
but to the singular
sparrows of the street,
the lilies of the field,
“the least of these
my brethren.”
Love this
miraculous world
that we did not make,
that is a gift to us.


- Wendell Berry