Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

True Night
Sheath of sleep in the black of the bed:
From outside this dream womb
Comes a clatter
Comes a clatter
And finally the mind rises up to a fact
Like a fish to a hook
A raccoon at the kitchen!

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A falling of metal bowls,
the clashing of jars,
the avalanche of plates
I snap alive to the ritual
Rise unsteady, find my feet,
Grab the stick, dash in the dark -
I'm a huge pounding demon
That roars at raccoons -
They whip around the corner,
A scratching sound tells me
they’ve gone up a tree.

I stand at the base
Two young ones that perch on
Two dead stub limbs and
Peer down from both sides of the trunk:

Roar, roar, I roar
you awful raccoons, you wake me
up nights, you ravage
our kitchen

As I stay there then silent
The chill of the air on my nakedness
Starts off the skin
I am all alive to the night.
Bare foot shaping on gravel
Stick in the hand, forever.

Long streak of cloud giving way
To a milky thin light
Back of black pine bough,
The moon is still full,
Hillsides of Pine trees all
Whispering; crickets still cricketting
Faint in cold coves in the dark

I turn and walk back slow
Back the path to the beds
With goosebumps and lose waving hair
In the night of milk-moonlit thin cloud glow
And black rustling pines
I feel like a dandelion head
Gone to seed
About to be blown away
Or a sea anemone open and waving in
cool pearly water.

Fifty years old.
I still spend my time
Screwing nuts down on bolts.

At the shadow pool,
Children are sleeping,
And a lover I've lived with for years,
True night.
One cannot stay too long awake
In this dark

Dusty feet, hair tangling,
I stoop and slip back to the
Sheath, for the sleep I still need,
For the waking that comes
Every day

With the dawn.


- Gary Snyder

Reincarnation


What is reincarnation? A cowboy asked his friend.
It starts, his old pal told him, when your life comes to an end.
They wash your neck and comb your hair and clean your fingernails,
And put you in a padded box away from life’s travails.


The box and you goes in a hole that’s been dug in the ground.

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Reincarnation starts in when you’re planted neath that mound.
Them clods melt down, just like the box, and you who is inside.
And that’s when you begin your transformation ride.


And in a while the grass will grow upon your rendered mound,
Until some day, upon that spot, a lonely flower is found.
And then a horse may wander by and graze upon that flower
That once was you, and now has become your vegetated bower.


Now, the flower that the horse done eat, along with his other feed,
Makes bone and fat and muscle essential to the steed.
But there’s a part that he can’t use and so it passes through.

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And there it lies upon the ground, this thing that once was you.


And if perchance, I should pass by and see this on the ground,
I’ll stop awhile and ponder at this object that I’ve found.
I’ll think about Reincarnation and life and death and such,
And come away concludin’, why, you ain’t changed all that much.


- Wallace McRae (aka Wally McRae)

Thanks for a good laugh, Larry! To hear the old coot perform this poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnGNXoNX0Ag

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
In which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
And at that, the one that will be still the soonest.

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I am the rest between two notes,
Which are somehow always in discord
Because Death's note wants to climb over --
But in the dark interval, reconciled,
They stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Robert Bly)

Duly Noted

Lives are marked in photographs of
Children hugging teddy bears
Catching salamanders
Camping out and chattering

Life consists of change

Old videos attest to shouts
and laughs and splashes
in the pool. The days are warm
but now I have no need to swim

My travel days are tucked away
in picture frames and boxes
gathering dust as the clock
ticks and rearranges

From Babe to child to tall to shrink

The humming birds and wrens
whirr about in the garden
Awareness abounds in smaller sounds
after the children move on

The stage is set anew

As memories fade to sepia
adventures retreat to recall
What was buried to be mined
in the landfill of generations

Time numbers the pages

- Maryann Schacht

A Warning To My Readers


Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.


- Wendell Berry

A Prayer from My Red Heart


O great grandfather, hear us.

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O great Sky Father, listen to our plea.
We come to You as supplicants,
As mere human beings before the
transcendent vastness of your unfolding Universe.
0 Tunkashila, be our savior.
Lend us thine ear and thy power
To overwhelm those who would overwhelm us.
We are of the earth, Your Earth,
And they would destroy that Earth, our Mother,
As they would destroy us, your loving children.
Save us, Father.
We plead with Thee,
Enter our battle against the Evil Ones.
Smite them with a mere flick
of the little finger of thine hand, O Great One.
But kill them not.
Instead, fill their hearts with love and compassion
And pure knowledge of thy power and might
Extend your Love and Light even to the Destroyers, dear God in Heaven,
Teach them Oneness and Wholeness,
Love and Compassion,
Goodness and Gentleness,
And, yes, Sacred Fear of Your unleashed Might
Whether we die or live, Father, we know
We will be with You in that day of Awe.
A-ho!


- Harvey Arden

Bees


In every instant, two gates.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/i...Do_VDa7LTLkmoA

One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?


- Jane Hirshfield

w o w

The Instructions

The stars are my ancestors.

Yes.
And also everything that is to come.

If you’re any good at things like that –
you know – predictions from birds
and prophecies from the shape of clouds –
well then, tell me why is it that
my weather is the same as it always was
all over the world and ever shall
be, world without end,
no
amen.

Then all you would have to do
is look at the liver-spots on the back of my hand
to settle everything.

All the bookstores are closed
where this knowledge was one day sold.
So stop pestering me for info.
The thumbnail on your own
left hand has it all printed out
plain as candy.

After all, somebody told me to write this down,
and I’m no better than you are…
except, maybe, in the glee,
my dears, my lovelies,
in which I follow the instructions
inside the package.


- Bruce Moody

Conch

Hold a baby to your ear

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As you would a shell.
Sounds of centuries you hear
New centuries foretell.

Who can break a baby's code?
And which is the older -
The listener or his small load?
The held or the holder?

- E.B. White

Credo


I believe in god
who did not create an immutable world
a thing incapable of change
who does not govern according to eternal laws
that remain inviolate
or according to a natural order
of rich and poor
of the expert and the ignorant
of rulers and subjects
I believe in god
who willed conflict in life
and wanted us to change the status quo
though our work
through our politics


I believe in jesus christ
who was right when he
like each of us
just another individual who couldn't beat city hall
worked to change the status quo
and was destroyed
looking at him I see
how our intelligence is crippled
our imagination stifled
our efforts wasted
because we do not live as he did


every day I am afraid
that he died in vain
because he is buried in our churches
because we have betrayed his revolution
in our obedience to authority
and our fear of it
I believe in jesus christ
who rises again and again in our lives
so that we will be free
from prejudice and arrogance
from fear and hate
and carry on his revolution
and make way for his kingdom.


- Dorothee Soelle

Solstice Song

On this midwinter night
let us summon what we’ve lost
with chant, prayer, song, fire,
faith that the nearly forgotten
will open and rise anew
and the world will turn
back toward the light.
Midwinter’s gift is memory
to hold a place for what was and will be again.
Leaves fallen off ancient vines
reveal gnarled fists of twisted branches
that even now push buds into the frosted night.
Low in the December sky
a tenebrous bulge of darkness
cradles the waxing crescent of a buttery moon.
And at the end of the western road
lies the black wet flatness of sand
where the tide ebbed and is now returning
in its endless whispering susurrus.
At this fulcrum of the season
we raise our arms and press fingertips
against the darkness to tip it back.
There are many winters in our pasts
and there is a time to allow our bodies to be tired and cold,
but beneath it all and slowly rising
like Lazarus to walk the warm earth again,
our blood is flowing, our muscles stretch and lengthen,
the pale green leaves encircling our hearts
await their unfolding.
We lean into the dawn,
eager to call the light home
and be young together
once more.


- Elaine Christo Watkins

little tree

https://img2u.info/ckgni/i/g3c21a46e.jpg

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

- e.e.cummings

Credo

I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all, - above, beyond it all, -
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the Light!


- Edwin Arlington Robinson

https://www.nightbeforechristmas.biz.../poem02_sm.jpg

Credo


Creo que si ... I believe
it will rain
tomorrow ... I believe
the son of a bitch


is going into the river ...
I believe All men are
created equal—By your
leave a leafy

shelter over the exposed
person—I’m a
believer creature
of habit but without

out there a void of
pattern older
older the broken
pieces no longer

salvageable bits
but incommensurate
chips yet must
get it back together.

In God we
trust emptiness privilege
will not not perish
perish from this earth—


In particular echo
of inside pushes
at edges all these years
collapse in slow motion.

The will to believe,
the will to be good,
the will to want
a way out—

Humanness, like
you, man. Us—pun
for once beyond reflective
mirror of brightening prospect?

I believe what it was
was a hope it could be
somehow what it was
and would so continue.

A plank to walk out on,
fair enough. Jump! said the pirate.
Believe me if all
those endearing young charms ...


Here, as opposed to there,
even in confusions there seems
still a comfort,
still a faith.

I’d as lief
not leave, not
go away, not
not believe.

I believe in belief ...
All said, whatever I can think of
comes from there,
goes there.

As it gets now impossible
to say, it’s your hand
I hold to, still
your hand.

-*Robert Creeley

my eyes rephrased lines 21 - 24 and I read

In God we trust emptiness
privilege will not not perish
perish from this earth—

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Credo

...
In God we
trust emptiness privilege
will not not perish
perish from this earth—

...

-*Robert Creeley

---

The Fear of Change

If you and I were woken suddenly

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By the drums of revolution in the street -
Or suppose the door shot open, and there stood
Upright and singing a young bullfighter

With a skin of rough wine, offering to each of us
Death, sex, hope - or even just an
Earthquake making the trees thrash, the roofs tumble
Calling us loudly to consider God -

Let us admit with no shame whatever,
We are not that kind of people;
We have learnt to weigh each word like an ounce
of butter;
Our talent is for anger and monotony -

Therefore we will survive the singers,
The fighters, the so-called lovers - we will bury them
Regretfully, and spend a whole wet Sunday
Arguing whether the corpses were dressed in black or red.


* * *- James Keir Baxter*
(29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
*
The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.

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Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself wholeheartedly.
The self-critical jackal doesn’t exist.
The locust**alligator**trichina***horsefly
****live as they live and are glad of it.
The killer whale’s heart weighs one hundred kilos
****but in other respects is light.
There is nothing more animal-like
Than a clear conscience
On this third planet
From the sun.
*************
-*Wislawa Szymborska

Begin*

Begin anywhere,
the white-haired woman hangs laundry,
wide sheets and delicate blouses.
A line stretches across a burning
horizon of impossible blue. The
Mediterranean, our origins. Or begin

in line in a bank, the same hour
in another bank, in another country
a bomb strapped to a serious young man.*
Flash, obscene white light,
renews again, chaos and creation. This
too, the palette to place hues of time.*

Boredom: a beginning, familiarity,
routine. The gate swings closed. What
is enclosed, ensconced?*
The church bell bongs the hour
an echo of time to come, time
contained, time gone.*

Begin with tools: a hammer,
a hoe. A moment under gathering
clouds, a child, with blistered palms,
turns soil, the earnest immigrant,
on a steep San Francisco roof,
repairs the world, extends, renews

time. Begin by asking: who
am I? Allow sea, sky, bird
chatter *to answer. Ask
again, know there is no
answer but the mirror of the moment,
a window in the heart.*

Begin anywhere to listen, look.
So little within our grasp,
our control, our foolish mammalian
understanding. Begin now:
What is this? Who am I? *
Keep asking.

- Rebecca del Rio
15/10/2013
Sitges

Get Up, Please


The two musicians pour forth their souls abroad

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in such an ecstasy as to charm the audience
like none I've ever seen before, and when
they finish, they rise and hug each other,
and then the tabla player bends down
and touches the feet of the santoor player in an obvious gesture

of respect, but what does it mean? I don't find out
until the next day at the Econolodge in Tifton, GA,
where I stop on my way home after the concert
and ask Mrs. Patel, the owner, if she has ever heard
of these two musicians or knows
anything about the tabla and the santoor and especially the latter,

which looks like the love child of a typewriter
and a hammered dulcimer only with a lot of extra wires
and tuning posts, and she doesn't seem to understand
my questions, though when I ask her about one person touching
the other's feet and then bend down
to show her, she lights up and says, "It means he thinks the other

is a god. My children do this before they go off
to school in the morning, as though to say, 'Mummy,
you are a god to us,'" and I look at her
for a second and then surprise us both when I say, "Oh, Mrs. Patel!"
and burst into tears, because I think,
first, of my own dead parents and then of little Lakshmi and Padma

Patel going off to their classes in Tift County schools,
the one a second-grader who is studying homophones
("I see the sea") and the other of whom is in the fourth
grade, where she must master long division with
its cruel insistence on numbers lined
up under one another with exacting precision and then crawling

toward the page's bottom as you, the divider, subtract
and divide again and again, all the while recording
on the top line an answer that grows increasingly
lengthy as you fret and chew the tip of your pencil
and persevere, though before they grab
their books and lunch boxes and pile onto the bus, they take time

to touch Mrs. Patel's feet and Mr. Patel's as well,
assuming there is such a person. Later my friend
Avni tells me you touch the feet of your elders
to respect the distance they have traveled
and the earth they have touched, and you
say "namaste" not because you take yoga at that little place

on the truck route between the t-shirt store
and the strip club but because it means "I bow
to the light within you," and often the people being
bowed to will stoop down and collect you as if to say
"You too are made of the same light!"
Reader, if your parents are alive, think of them now, of all the gods

whose feet you never touched or touched enough.
And if not your parents, then someone else.
You know someone like this, right? Someone who belongs
to the "mighty dead," as Keats called them.
Don't you wish that person were here now
so you could touch their feet and whisper, "You are my god"?

I can't imagine Keats saying, "You too are made
of the same light," though I can see him saying,
as he did to Fanny Brawne, "I have been astonished
that Men could die Martyrs for religion-I have
shudder'd at it-I shudder no more-I could
be martyr'd for my Religion-Love is my religion-I could die for that-

I could die for you." My own feet have touched
the earth nearly three times as long as Keats's did,
and I'm hardly the oldest person
I know. So let this poem brush across the feet of anyone
who reads it. Poetry is
my religion--well, I wouldn't die for it. I'd live for it, though.


- David Kirby

Mochi Tzuke


The rice has been washed twice and soaking for two days.
Despite the "no burn" alert
the almond wood fires - lit before dawn -
boil water beneath the steamers:
three stacks of four baskets each
tended and timed under Bob's watchful eye.


Of course it doesn't begin here.
Harvest was two months ago.
The tradition goes back countless generations;
cultivation of rice even farther -
another time, another continent.


"Hot comin' through" Doug yells,
dumping the first load in the hopper.
The ancient GE motor faithfully turns the belt
on the equally venerable Nippon Industries grinder.
I push it through with old taiko sticks
til it emerges like glistening white sausage on the board.


Ed deftly delivers it, still steaming hot,
to the great granite mortar where Mike and Takeo,
at Scott's command, pound
one two one two
with long wood mallets.
Turn and pound, fold and knead
again and again until the master turner judges it finished.


"Board" he calls and a runner
carries it quickly to the hall and the waiting hands
of Cynthia, Kiyono, Surya and fifty others
who deftly pinch, roll and shape it
into perfect round silken cabochons of delight.


Meanwhile Doug brings batch after batch to the grinder -
one hundred thirty in all.
All day we steam and grind, pound and turn, pinch and shape
while Harrison keeps the wheels oiled
and Sherman watches over us all.


All this to give thanks for another year together,
to ask blessings and bounty on the year to come.
It takes a village to make mochi!


- Larry Robinson

Rock on ! and mochi happy returns of the season to you and yours.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Mochi Tzuke

The rice has been washed twice and soaking for two days.
Despite the "no burn" alert
the almond wood fires - lit before dawn -
boil water beneath the steamers:
three stacks of four baskets each
tended and timed under Bob's watchful eye.....

- Larry Robinson

---

Mochi Tsuki

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The starchy smell of rice
fills the chill morning,
as clouds of steam rise
from wooden boxes
stacked over cooking fires.
Sips of hot sake rouse
stiff bones to swing mallets,
pounding sticky rice
to elastic smoothness
for Oshōgatsu, the New Year.

The men’s grunts
of exertion punctuate
the trill of aproned women,
pinching and shaping
still-warm dough into cakes,
steady rhythm of the wooden
mallet's downswing: hit,
turn the dough, slap.

I step to the granite bowl,
feel the mallet's heft,
focus on the beat to keep
from hitting my partner’s
hands, reaching in to turn
the hot mass of rice.

I close my eyes,
breathe in and lift, drop
lift, step into the task,
swing, hup,
swing, hup

for you, Obaachan,
for you, Obaasan,
for you, Mother.


- Jodi Hottel

A Blessing For The New Year


Beannacht

https://www.unlearning101.com/.a/6a0...67bf3bc970c-pi

("Blessing")
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue

Winter in Clarence

There, it was good.
Even shivering in the gray mornings
dressing behind the bedroom door, open
almost to the wall, just enough room for a small boy to stand
before the heat register from the coal furnace in the basement
the icon before which his father
made solitary obeisance every morning.

Did the man, too, shiver in bathrobe and slippers
as he descended to the coldest part of the house, to
twist the damper, open the squealing door
add, then light crumpled newspaper
whet the appetite for anthracite?
Were his labors an offering to Hades, or to Apollo
as he slid the shovel across concrete
sure and deep into the dark bin, as he turned
and slung each load into the blazing iron throat?

Winter after winter
he fed the day’s first meal
to the beast that creaked and groaned
warmed to the work
announced with a roar
we could slide out from under three blankets
endure goose bumps and chattering teeth
dress behind the door.


- Karl Frederick

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Poem

Teacher of reading, of "You will not" and "You shall,"
almighty Grammarian author of Genesis,
whether language holds three forms of the future
as Hebrew does or no future tense at all
like Chinese, may it perform a public service,
offer the protection of the Great Wall,
the hope and sorrow of the Western Wall.

- Stanley Moss

To My Students


You who can read,

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do not take it for granted;
you who cannot,
there are worlds, there are gods
yet to be quickened in your dreams.
The worlds await to form on your tongue,
the gods to tremble in your ears.

These little marks, black as fly-droppings
on the page, and as small,
speak to you - you do not hear.
I cannot tell you the beginning of naming,
only how it changes and magic
sparks and sputters at the base of the skull.
I do not know if there is answer;
perhaps our speaking is enough.
Men have died always alone;
these small blemishes on the page
their final legacy.
Do not lose them,
these the enchanted cinders
of our stars.

- Rafael Jesus Gonzalez

Longing And Belonging


There is something which longs for me,
Longs to belong to me.
A life which enters with each breath,
Yearning to absorb the splendor
Into my soul.


This lover pursues me, sustains me.
This lover knows that I still cannot see,
And, so, pursues me with smell, and taste, and sound.
Anything, to get my attention,
To wake me up.


To dance with my heart,
Surrounding me with healing arms.


There is something so close to all that I am,
Which sings a love song when I can't sleep.
There are messages in the rain, in the sun.
The moon reflects it's glowing light,
And spins around, saying, "Look at me!
Here I am! And now you can see your way!"


And, of course, I take those steps,
Accepting the rose that appears in my hand,
And hoping the doorbell is going to ring.
While something waits patiently by my side,
Keeping me warm, and knowing the beauty.


- Jon Jackson