Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

A Zero-Circle


Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.


Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.


We are too dulleyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we¹ll be lying.


If we say "No, we don¹t see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.


So let us not be sure of anything,
beside ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.


Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."


When we¹ve totally surrendered to that beauty,
we¹ll become a mighty kindness.


- Jelalludin Rumi
Mathnawi IV, 3748-3754
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

A Brave And Startling Truth



We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Maya Angelou

What I Want


What I want is to see your face
In a tree, in the sun coming out,
In the air.
What I want is
To hear the falcon-drum and light again
On your forearm.

You say, "Tell him I'm not here." The sound
Of that brusque dismissal
Becomes what I want.

To see in every palm your elegant silver coin shavings,
To turn with the wheel of the rain,
To fall with the falling bread

Of every experience,

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To swim like a huge fish
In ocean water,

To be Jacob recognizing Joseph.
To be a desert mountain
Instead of a city.

I'm tired of cowards.
I want to live with lions.
With Moses.

Not whining, teary people. I want
The ranting of drunkards.
I want to sing like birds sing,

Not worrying who hears,
Or what they think.
Last night,

A great teacher went from door to door
With a lamp. "He who is not to be found
Is the one I'm looking for."

Beyond wanting, beyond place, inside form,
That one. A flute says, I have no hope
For finding that.

But love plays
And is the music played.
Let that musician
Finish this poem. Shams,
I am a waterbird
Flying into the sun.


- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Coleman Barks)

A conversation with the Moon


You are in your heavens Miz Moon
And I am in my cups.
The Japanese named their Lunar Goddess
"Tsukiyomi-no-mikoto"
("The Great, The Exalted")
And, luminous as you are tonight
Surrounded by a galaxy of stars,
I certainly concur.
Artemis was the handle
For your Exalted-ness,
That Socrates and Homer
Used in prayer.
And in some yesterday,
For that for same purpose.
The Romans renamed you
......"Diana"
That was after
The Big Botta Bang
of course
But before the Pope
was a Catholic,
And before the botta bing
(Blame it on the brandy, Miz Moon )
Will a Moon Goddess
still accept a prayer,
From a punster
For one who really shined.
On this day...,Septemer 9th
in 1940, John Lennon was born
In the midst of bombing raids
on Liverpool
Just to be Hinkled to his end
on my birthday 12/8/1980
Please shine brightly on that boy
Today and or all time
Remember each night, his prayer
"Give Peace A Chance."
Thank you, and good morning.


- Patrick Burns

For Failure

The will of color loves how light spreads
Through its diffusions, making textures subtle,
Clothing a landscape in concealment
For color to keep its mysteries
Hidden from the unready eye.
But the light that comes after rain
Is always fierce and clear,
And illuminates the face of everything
Through the transparency of rain.
Despite the initial darkening,
This is the light that failure casts.
Beholden no more to the promise
Of what dream and work would bring.
It shows where roots have withered
And where the source has gone dry.
The light of failure has no mercy
On the affections of the heart;
It emerges from beyond the personal,
A wiry, forthright light that likes to see crevices
Open in the shell of a controlled life.
Though cruel now, it serves a deeper kindness,
Wise to the larger call of growth.
It invites us to humility
And the painstaking work of acceptance
So that one day we may look back
In recognition and appreciation
At the disappointment we now endure.


- John O’Donohue

synchronicity for me reading this today! sharing further.
♥ ॐ
with a heart & an om, and heck let's throw in a Sun,
for even though the poem is about "failure" and does
not use cosmetics to disguise its cracked, broken landscape,
it yet opens the silver lining...:waccosun:

How Will It Feel To Be Brushed By The Lion's Mane

Hot and fiery, cool and indifferent

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Will it sing me a song of the past
Bring up my ancestors from the unleavened earth

How will it feel to be touched,
Touched by the flame of that lion’s mane
Tawny, golden eyes that see through me,
Find my true selves on the other side.

How will it feel to hear
The lion’s roar
In the early morning
Dew hanging softly on a spider’s web.

How will it feel to come home
To the space between the worlds
Where the rust colored earth
Holds secrets that I still want to know
That I still need to know.

I want to make poems
While thinking of the bread of heaven
And the cup of astonishment.

I want to make poems
That look into the earth
And the heavens and see the unseable.

I want to make poems to thank
Those who have come before
Touched the earth
And made it holy
So that I may walk
And know who I am
Speaking through my ancestors
The voices of those who will speak through my veins.

How will it feel
To be brushed by the lion’s mane?


- Margaret Caminsky-Shapiro
(With appreciation to Dorothy Walters poem, “Seekers”)

You Will Never Be Alone


You will never be alone, you hear so deep
A sound when autumn comes. Yellow
Pulls across the hills and thrums,
Or the silence after lightning before it says
Its names—and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
Apologies. You were aimed from birth:
You will never be alone. Rain
Will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
Long aisles—you never heard so deep a sound,
Moss or rock, and years. You turn your head—
That’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.


- William Stafford

Bats in the Belfry


Bats are the least of the beasts
that may inhabit the belfry.
Sometimes the touch of the full moon
on the ropes are enough
to stir the clappers
& set the bells to clanging
spreading panic among the denizens
made of our phobias & frights.
The bats flit & the other beasts
crawl, skitter, scamper about.
Blame the moon who cannot help
touching all in her light
including the ropes that bind us.

- Rafael Jesús González


Murciélagos en el campanario


Murciélagos son los menores de las bestias
que puedan habitar el campanario.
A veces el toque de la luna llena
en las sogas basta
para agitar los badajos
y poner las campanas a clamar
difundiendo pánico entre los residentes
compuestos de nuestras fobias y sustos.
Los murciélagos vuelan y los otros bichos
se arrastran, saltan, huyen.
Culpa a la luna que no pueda
no tocar todo bajo su luz
inclusive los lasos que nos atan.

© Rafael Jesús González 2014

Very little has happened

they tell me I was born
I don’t remember
parents gone
children grown
a grandchild
red sandstone
hard granite

from 30,000 feet
in this airplane
the clouds below
are white

- trout black

Rumi's Moon


After words flutter about
followed by proclamations of “Ahhh!!!”
I step down off the back porch
into the mystery of evening

I stand on the bare dirt
making out moonglow
just over the roofline
there she is in her glory
for the last full moon of summer

And over there
the old church’s cathedral spire
is fully lit like a rocket on the launching pad
aiming for an unknown destination
that has already been reached in moonlight

The moon says:
There is nowhere to go
that cannot be found here
the journey and the destination
are one and the same

So, enjoy the fluttering
followed by “Ahhh!!!”
and savor the dark drive home


- Marshal McKitrick

For The Children

The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light


- Gary Snyder

September


September first comes round in my cold knees.
In voices from the next room, and the body
radiant from a shower.

September comes with the tinnitus of country silence,
the blue bay that keeps things still.

The uselessness of success in spiritual practice
seems lasting. But that’s such a weak account
of the even weaker failure of weakness.

For the fact is if I can’t offer half an hour
to the One who gave me life…
if I can’t listen for even half an hour for Him…
if I can’t offer the One a half hour of gratitude for that…
then immodesty has no limit.

You hear what I am saying, I know.
I am not someone who so treasures his every mood
that he must thrust each precious slice into you,
and I don’t feel bad at all here. I feel good.
Because I know you’re listening.
Maybe.

May Be. The mediation, the message, is:
the embryo of glee.

In September it starts to stir.
Before the end – just watch it –
it wants to be born,
once more.


- Bruce Moody

The Kookaburras

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.


- Mary Oliver

Mending the Cloth
For my ailing father, WWII Veteran and POW/MIA for nine months, and
his fallen Humpin’ Honey B-29 crew, lost 12-7-44.

Through the slits of sun shining on the backroads,
I imagine my father's fallen crew sewing
him back together when he crosses over.

Nine men, each with silk from the parachutes
they never had time to open, taking the tiniest
of stitches to mend his torn cloth.

In return, my father gives back the singular
heartbeats he has carried for them
these past sixty-eight years.

Finally free of the weight
of each man's final moments, my father soars
back to his hometown, to his mother and father and sisters,

to the wife and daughters who knew
a duty-bound man with unresolved grief
and the guilt of having survived.

Sometimes the most generous contracts we make
carry the heaviest burdens. It takes
years until the debt is repaid,
each side to the other.

Sometimes we never know the reason
so many had to suffer. We can only know
what the heavens reveal

on a solitary afternoon when peace drops in
alone and unannounced
like a silver needle
falling from the sky.


- Jackie Hallerberg

Mirrors At 4 AM

You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.

The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity

Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.

- Charles Simic

Sent from my iPad

End Of Summer

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

- Stanley Kunitz

Sent from God knows where.

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

Larry, this poem just made me smile
it speaks of those, so blind and deaf,
who think their lives worthwhile
yet their kids go bad to steal a verse
to fill that awful void.
Oh, they're the ones who pay the price
for the beauty of a painted word.


"Why is it so difficult for them to see
that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial."

[QUOTE=Larry Robinson;183539]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....

Nocturne

Last night in bed
I mouthed a prayer
of my own composition.

It sounded offhand, it was carelessly
addressed, it twisted my meaning
entirely, it left an ache,
I didn’t know what I was doing.

So I took down my yellowed copy
of French With Pictures
by the late literary critic I.A. Richards
and I put my petition
into soft French words.

I.A. Richards believed that irony
was the language of redemption.
He wrote and lectured famously on this,
but his masterpiece was French With Pictures.
“The chapeau is on the table.”
“The man with the beard stands before the window.”
“She comes from a village by the sea.”

There is no improving the old traditions.
They are already mortal, partial, and wrong.
The woman at the table by the window
puts her head into her hands.
“Into your hands,” she said.

- Sara Miller

Sent from Yazd.

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

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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