Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

May the Elements Endure. Amen.

We walk toward the sound of the ocean,
between these quiet hills, the lupine float in fog:
lavender clouds.

Here each bent stalk of native grass, each calla lily
flowing bridal white down the green aisle of the valley,
each wild silk bloom, and each bird singing against the sea

has taken millions of years to bring to this marriage.

This habitat so sensitive that our salt smell turns the heads of deer,
startles rabbits and holds back a bobcat in soundless watch;
our feet thundering down the packed dirt path, our voices roar over the ocean.

In Marin the wetlands are disappearing as the sun
disappears in this fog that swallows up the hills.
A Great Horned Owl carries night in her dark wings.

The sky is red when we reach the water’s edge,
a man doing Tai Chi is moving in waves,
the silent branches of his body.

We think of the old shipwreck
of the Tennessee
here on Tennessee Beach.
Then head home.
With earth still rising
under a long tide of clumsy feet,

each of our steps now
a prayer:

- Judith Stone

The Morning’s News

The morning’s news drives sleep out of the head
at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
in the agony of the old giving birth to the new
without assurance that the new will be better.
I look at my son, whose eyes are like a young god’s,
they are so open to the world.
I look at my sloping fields now turning
green with the young grass of April. What must I do
to go free? I think I must put on
a deathlier knowledge, and prepare to die
rather than enter into the design of man’s hate.
I will purge my mind of the airy claims
of church and state. I will serve the earth
and not pretend my life could better serve.
Another morning comes with its strange cure.
The earth is news. Though the river floods
and the spring is cold, my heart goes on,
faithful to a mystery in a cloud,
and the summer’s garden continues its descent
through me, toward the ground.

- Wendell Berry

Prayer for a Tenspeed Heart

Let the fire of my body
propel and warm me
and let each darkness
reveal its plenitude.

Let the hills
flatten under my wheels
and let the eloquent curves
yield up their good surprise.

Let my heart be obstinate
when I need to climb
and let my lowliest gears
restrain my spinning down.

Let there be flatland, too,
and into that glittering place
let me stretch with the heart of a lover,
at full speed, blind and intent.

- Barbara Hendryson

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

When I Say Farewell

I have no faith in my works.
I know time's ocean,
its lashing of waves day by day
will erase them.
My faith is in my self.
The whole day I fill my cup and drink
the perpetual nectar of the world.
Every moment's love
has been saved in it.
The weight of pain has not torn
and the dust has not blackened
its art.
I know,
when I go from
the play of this life,
the forests of flower, every season, will witness
I have loved the world.
Only this love is real, gift of my birth.
When I say farewell
this undecaying truth will cancel death.

- Rabindranath Tagore

This Is A Perfect Moment

This is a perfect moment.
It's a perfect moment for many reasons,
but especially because you and I are waking up
from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking, dumb-clucking collusion
with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them,
from whom the painful blessings flow,
we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them,
from whom the awful teachings flow,
we are waking up.

- Rob Brezsny

Describe Your Grief


I am driving a back road 

where there are still farms,

fenced cattle, tobacco barns.



I can’t describe my grief,

unless it’s like marching

into a lost war, folding clothes by numbers,

waiting in rank for breakfast

beneath the steamy electric lights

before dawn, crawling in a cave

that hasn’t been mapped.



I round a curve and see two birds

flapping in the road.

One has been hit 

by a car, and its mate

flutters just above,

wild to inspire 

its fallen partner’s flight.



When Anna was ill,

I would have seen her as the fallen bird,

injured in the road, as I hovered,

watching her struggles,

urging her to fly on broken wings.



But now she is gone,

with our marathon conversations,

her startling questions.



And I don’t know

which of those two birds

I am.

- Tom Hawkins

All Hallow’s Eve, 2001

Above the deep-piled carpet of maple leaves
the madrones are slipping free
of summer’s brown paper wrapping,
eager to show off their new winter coats.

The afternoon rain still drips
from the canopy of oak, fir and pine.
Across the creek a turkey chuckles
as a woodpecker beats a drum.

The light is passing swiftly now,
passing from the face of this land.
Shadows are lengthening everywhere,
reaching out across our lives.

Should we not, then, dare to love boldly,
more boldly than ever before -
as if the fate of the Earth itself
depended upon our loving?

And still the stars will surely rise,
revealing the Soul’s deep secret:
that the eye can see farther in the dark of night
than ever it could by day.

- Larry Robinson

October Corn

The stalks of corn in my vegetable garden a deep green not long ago have given way to a yellowing of old age. Once straight, tall and virile they now bend over like an old man, and my tomato plants are stressed from the cold night air of late October. The green ones will not grow or ripen. It pains me a little seeing the sweetness of summer fade day by day but it’s all a part of the plan you know; the strength of summer giving way to the aching bones of autumn.

In Petaluma parents find themselves meandering through The Corn Maze as their children run through the stalks or climb onto straw bales then choose a pumpkin to take home.

I remember trick or treating one year when my twin, Fernando and I were little boys; Tony, our big brother, dressed us as pirates I got an eye-patch, Fernando a handkerchief tied around his head. Tony made us wooden swords and had me go shirtless into the night. He said that a real pirate would brave the cold and so I refused to shiver and not allow the chill to penetrate beneath my skin. Our older sisters took us house to house and neighborhood to neighborhood in our frenzied drive for as much candy as we could gather; pirates pilfering booty. Only Christmas surpassed Halloween in fun and getting something good for simply being young. So many years later now, I am occupied by the business of grown-ups.

I read in the newspapers that the last of the apples and grapes are being harvested here at home as the wars continue to take their human toll; money squandered that could be used to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and cure the sick. It saddened me to read that Paul Newman had died. They say he was old and sick though I only knew him to be young, handsome and generous. Someone wrote a poem about his life the next day; glad that poets write about things that matter sometimes.

My grandaunt, Tia Sara, who lived in Mexico, died when I was ten. She was very old and very wrinkled. She always wore dark ankle-length dresses and flesh colored stockings that covered what little you could see of her ankles. Her long silver hair was always braided and pinned tightly against her scalp. She went to bed one night never to rise again. Ma’s cousin, my tia Concha washed Sara’s lifeless body, combed and braided her hair, powdered her face, applied rouge, and stuffed wads of newspaper in her mouth to plump up her cheeks, sunken in by death. The family had a traditional “velorio” for Sara. Laid her out in her living room surrounded by candles as everyone knelt and prayed for her soul. My uncles dug her grave and buried her the next day. She received a proper memorial service even if she was a gossip who constantly doled out advice that was not asked for. My ma and pa, tios, tias and some amigos have passed on; irreplaceable losses. Sad that they are not with me at least they visit once in a while in dreams; I take some comfort knowing that one day I will be with them.

And I love the Day of the Dead, a custom rooted in the ancient Mexico. A way to honor those who have passed to the other world; a way to accept and even poke fun at, instead of fearing death. I suppose that by doing this we prepare ourselves for our own inevitable engagement with him.

We can fear or laugh and even accept him, for in the end we have no choice in the matter; it is all a part of the plan; are we not like stalks of corn in a garden? small tender sprouts in spring, strong and sturdy in summer, frail in autumn, dried and lifeless in winter.

Let us be like the sketches of skeletons who play music, dance and sing; hence replacing fear with a fiesta. Let us celebrate then, for today we are on this side of the great divide honoring those who have passed to the other hoping that one day we will be remembered and respected in the same manner even if we are imperfect. Raise your cups of atole of chocolate caliente raise your pan dulce: here’s to life mis hermanos y hermanas, here’s to death.

- Armando Garcia-Dávila

Night Wind

Outside my windows

the tall trees

darker than the black sky

carry the wind

unbridled by darkness

directly to my closed-eye mind


from a slow roar

like an ocean over treetops

gathering

always potential

moistened by water sounds

drips, gurgling gutters,

restless raw breaking waves

crash down into the towering firs,

bowed and twisting,

again and again releasing the hold

of the rain-washed gale.


the pine smells must yield:

lumber aikido.

- Scott O'Brien

Mirror

A deep sadness stirs in me; a stabbing pain almost.
Fall; ghosts of the dead of war, of age, of disease
Are calling. I can hear my Mother’s voice
Telling me some odd phrasing of hers
While I wash dishes - how to be
Present to whatever comes
Without losing one’s sense of humor,
Humor the greater part of valor.

Plainly, my Mother speaks; she comes always
At this fall time, some other times of distress or just
On occasion for companionship.

I hope to know what the Dalai Lama feels
When he claims to practice the state of dying
Each day. I imagine he is now used to that
And passing over will not come as a shock.

An El Dia de los Muertos film exists,
A banquet table, a large Spanish family
Seated round it, feasting,
A mirror at the end of the table.
Ancestors share the feast through the mirror,
The other-worldly family smiling and warm,
Passes food back and forth through the mirror
And so the Fall is welcomed in.

- Connie Madden

The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

- Mark Strand

Hope

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird—
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

- Emily Dickinson

Your posting of "Hope", one of Emily Dickinson's most popular poems, has inspired me to share the double dactyl I wrote about her some time ago. For those who don't know about them, double dactyls, sometimes called "higgledy-piggledies", are a fun, eight-line form of light verse which can only be written about people with double-dactylic names (i.e., six-syllable names accented on the first and fourth syllables, such as "Emily Dickinson").



EPILOGUE

Higgledy-piggledy
Emily Dickinson,
honored today as a
poet of note,
dared to express herself
uncustomarily,
‘til her conclusion, and
that’s all she wrote.

Boddhisattva Vow

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

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

"Or maybe I'll just be
a breath of wind touching
the world with hope and healing,
leaving no trace."

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

- Larry Robinson

Paul Robeson

That time
we all heard it,
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other's
harvest:
that we are each other's
business:
we are each other's
magnitude and bond.


- Gwendolyn Brooks

EGRET



My center

Is a big and white

Snowy egret

Standing still in clear slow water.



Its nothingness is not empty



And because of it



Everything else is manifest



And insignificant.



- Sue Stephenson

Photography Lesson, Pt. Reyes

My father teaches me landscape
here, where the land itself can not decide
to which age it raises its stiff thumb.

I have a decision to make--
a few names to throw in the ocean.

We walk up the bare beach--
We look through a machine--
He says don’t forget
you are looking through a machine.

Your emotions will ruin it.

The hills beyond are almost bald--
a lone raven marks in an arc their curve
then lands still in a nest of waves.

Ravens, he says, will never appear in pairs.

I push the shutter down
let the machine realize
what I have learned,
as something scares the bird to flight.

Why must stories overlap? I ask
but my father is already walking,
the machine ticking faster
than waves can count.

- Iris Dunkle

Logos

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

- Mary Oliver

The Reckoning

All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.

We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.

What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.

- Theodore Roethke

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-
Rember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living.
Throughthe 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 into some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and fell new-cherisned, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

- May Sarton

Codicil

That man,
who accepted the stolen TV with a wink,
will run into a burning mobile home
next spring
to rescue an old woman.

The woman in the Volvo,
weaving in traffic
while furtively talking on her cell phone,
peels 20 pounds of potatoes each Friday evening
to take home fries to the shelter
every Saturday morning.

And even I,
who was so rude to the clerk this morning,
have been known
to bring flowers
to the bereaved.



-Ellen Skagerberg

Now and then

That's not me now
riding no hands
on a tree-lined road
nor sauntering Market Street
in my dress blues
nor climbing on top of you
on a rented bed
nor turning in my essay
at the end of the term
nor taking the baby's picture
on a Christmas morning
nor skinny dipping with you
on a Sierra lake
nor running out of money
and eating macaroni and cheese
nor telling the truth
that night of betrayal
nor reading a poem
at my mother's funeral
nor standing before the judge
to clean the slate,
nor being awarded some few honors,
rather I was all of those boys and men
in the journey of years
losing and finding my way,
but I am now none of them
at the same time all of them,
this man I have become,
this man I am now.

- Doug Stout

On the Han Shan Path
****
The trail to Cold Mountain is faint

the banks of Cold Stream are a jungle

birds constantly chatter away

I hear no sound of people

gusts of wind lash my face

flurries of snow bury my body

day after day no sun

year after year no spring

- Han Shan

What Kind of Times Are These

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

- Adrienne Rich

The November Angels

Late dazzle
of yellow
flooding
the simplified woods,
spare chipping away
of the afternoon-stone
by a small brown finch—
there is little
for them to do,
and so their gossip is
idle, modest:
low-growing,
tiny-white-flowered.

Below,
the Earth-pelt
dapples and flows
with slow bees
that spin
the thick, deep jute
of the gold time’s going,
the pollen’s
traceless retreat;
kingfishers
enter their kingdom,
their blue crowns on fire,
and feast on
the still-wealthy world.

A single, cold blossom
tumbles, fledged
from the sky’s white branch.
And the angels
look on,
observing what falls:
all of it falls.

Their hands hold
no blessings,
no word
for those who walk
in the tall black pines,
who do not
feel themselves falling—
the ones who believe
the loved companion
will hold them forever,
the ones who cross through
alone and ask for no sign.

The afternoon
lengthens, steepens,
flares out—
no matter for them.
It is assenting
that makes them angels,
neither increased
nor decreased
by the clamorous heart:
their only work
to shine back,
however the passing brightness
hurts their eyes.

- Jane Hirshfield

Shoveling Snow With Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.
Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?
Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.
Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

- Billy Collins

You Can’t Have Everything

but you can have a tongued velvet kiss beneath tall cedars and oaks flushed with new leaves. You can have a graze of caress up your thigh, the soft brush of summer on honeyed skin. You can have muscles sleek with love and bliss in the buttery sun of morning. You can have birds singing in tree canopies, squirrels that leap, vibrant lobelia and petunias. You can have the smell of lavender and lemon thyme crushed between your fingers. You can have a window seat with pillows and books of poetry.

There are always your dreams of the writer’s studio that overlooks the ocean and delicious words to fill cracks chiseled by disappointment. You can’t clean the house with a twitch of your nose and will it to stay pristine, but you can have pineapple chunks of sunshine through your windows, bowls of rosy peaches, nectarines, ripe tomatoes. You can have a doe and two spotted fawns, a fox and her mate, blue jays, hummingbirds and coveys of quail.

You can’t make parents live forever, though for now, you can have the touch of love in your mother’s voice, the stories of your father’s triumphs that improve each year. You can’t force your sister to stop using meth, but you can send her love through sieved holes of darkness. You can’t rescue loved ones from their unhappiness, but you can wipe away their tears and remind them to drink in the fragrant beauty of earth and sky.

You can’t stop the effects of aging, but you can view heart-soaring mauves and blues of Eastern Sierras that sweep from desert expanse, camp beneath Mammoth pines. You can thrill with an intake of breath at the sight of a massive bear. The mind’s song may wind notes of want, yet you can sing gratitude for moments full of grace.

- Sher Christian

©2004 Star Kissed Shadows, Divining Poetry, (book) and Sweet Tongue (CD) (www.lusciouspoetry.typepad.com)

Thanksgiving

I have been trying to read
the script cut in these hills—
a language carved in the shimmer of stubble
and the solid lines of soil, spoken
in the thud of apples falling
and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak
as they gather in the fallen grain,
the blackbirds sing it
over their shoulders in parting,
and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript
where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue
I believe it might sound like a lullaby,
or the simplest grace at table.
Across the gathering stillness
simply this: "For all that we have received,
dear God, make us truly grateful."

- Lynn Ungar

Outside


The least little sound sets the coyotes walking,

walking the edge of our comfortable earth.

We look inward, but all of them

are looking toward us as they walk the earth.



We need to let animals loose in our houses,

the wolf to escape with a pan in his teeth,

and streams of animals toward the horizon

racing with something silent in each mouth.



For all we have taken into our keeping

and polished with our hands belongs to a truth

greater than ours, in the animals' keeping.

Coyotes are circling around our truth.


- William Stafford