Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Edge of the Wild

It ends and starts with intention, for all beginnings are ends.

Invaluable, it doesn’t count for much, I know, but I try. Hard.

There are ways to repeat this, a chorus of crows, a fluttering of sound.

I might get used to it, after some time, but I’ll often be on edge, pinfooted.

It would look like spying, but see here, what I’ve quietly done.

Love and love and more love: evergreen,

Warm, belly-full; cool, satiated, a wilding of grin, romp and ballad.

If all my fears went driving, all stirrings travelled on,

I’d still be here, finishing things; planted and pruning.

There is no gateway; no golden harp.

I am in need, I am in want, I am in hope.

It isn’t a secret, a sheltered hideaway or a silent hurt.

I am admiring the view now, seeing all that it is full and plenty,

And wanting it for myself, closing the distance of one jealousy to another.

Forever; wild and steaming, rioting and skimming the sky with resilience

I am mostly staring at stars, backlit by moonlight.

Most nights, I wonder, half-handedly curious, yet struck with ebbing

Let me, help me to see the worth, the riches, the flourish under the hibernating.

I am so afraid of being troubled and alone at the end of this world,

At the start of whatever is next.

- Leah Umansky

Two Kinds Of People

We all get our signals
mixed up once in awhile,
moving forward
on the same part
of the sidewalk
as someone
coming toward us,
then stopping
before collision
and engaging in
a little foot-dance.
Sometimes we even
repeat the whole business,
having both decided
to switch to
the same
new path.
Finally, untangled,
we walk on.
Here Is where we see
two kinds of people.
Most look us
in the eye
with a smile,
as if to say,
“Nice dancing with you!”
A few, though,
walk on
with no hint
of recognition
or camaraderie.
It's chilling
to realize
the truth:
"for this person,
I was nothing
but a brief
obstacle to progress."

- Max Reif

El Palatero

His fingers stop ringing the string of small brass bells and he peddles harder and faster as he pulls out of a lazy neighborhood street and onto the avenue of honking horns and screeching tires. Cars speed past this mobile vendor, some a little too close for comfort drawing concerned or vexed glances from harried drivers.

He offers, paletas; frozen fruit bars of coconut, strawberry, tamarind, watermelon. How many can he possibly sell today; enough to feed his family? The back of his shirt is dark with sweat, but one must do what one must to meet his obligations; si no trabajes no comes (if you don’t work, you don’t eat.)

A sparrow who lives this adage pulls a worm from out of a lawn where cats are known to dwell – a risky business indeed. He flies upward into a street tree eyeing the man who peddles the large insulated box on bicycle wheels passing below.

El Paletero relaxes his tempo as he rides onto another neighborhood street and like a maestro he begins working his bells, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and a little extra to spend.

The sparrow bounces branch to branch until he is at his nest then places bits of today’s earnings into anxious little beaks as children line up at the curb hopping with excitement clutching coins in their small hands.

- Armando Garcia-Dávila

Safety Within

While staring at screens
We lose the means
To observe the fact that we make our own scenes

I definitely get
That it makes you upset
Taking in this unnatural density yet

It's not just the teens
Or even the 'tweens
Robots of all ages walk like Zombeings

But don't forget
It's a filter you set
Resist it and it's resistance you'll get

So here's the truth
This world is uncouth
Being in it at times is pulling a tooth

Don't drop gaze to screen-in
It won't give you mean-in
That comes from relations so lift up that chin

And look around
Without defensive frown
You find security, even in this old town

Clogging up visual field
Deep security won't yield
Nor blasting music as an auditory shield

the deal is that we all need some quiet

if not the world can feel like a riot

like a neverending arms race don't try it

it can be hard to feel loved and secure

in a dog-eat-dog world I'm sure

but if you find the courage I tell you it's pure

we were made to love and cooperate

no matter how much the news spreads hate

may you find you true self and a way to feel great.

- Ben Fisher

Listening


Listening to trees.

I asked
if they have been talking to me
all along.

“We’ve been listening,
contentedly,
as you’ve been listening
to others,
to Spirit's voice,
to Grandpa Fire,
to your hilltop Oak.

“And remember
the log that spoke to you
in Wiricuta
as you placed it
on Grandpa Fire.

“Who you hear
depends upon you,
upon where you are
in your listening.

“Everything,
of course,
has a voice.”

- Trout Black

The Rented Lakes Of My Childhood

I remember the lakes of my Michigan
childhood. Here they are called ponds.
Lakes belonged to summer, two-week
vacations that my father was granted by
Westinghouse when we rented some cabin.

Never mind the dishes with spiderweb
cracks, the crooked aluminum sauce
pans, the crusted black frying pans.
Never mind the mattresses shaped
like the letter V. Old jangling springs.

Moldy bathrooms. Low ceilings
that leaked. The lakes were mysteries
of sand and filmy weeds and minnows
flickering through my fingers. I rowed
into freedom. Alone on the water

that freckled into small ripples,
that raised its hackles in storms,
that lay glassy at twilight reflecting
the sunset then sucking up the dark,
I was unobserved as the quiet doe

coming with her fauns to drink
on the opposite shore. I let the row-
boat drift as the current pleased, lying
faceup like a photographer's plate
the rising moon turned to a ghost.

And though the voices called me
back to the rented space we shared
I was sure I left my real self there—
a tiny black pupil in the immense
eye of a silver pool of silence.

- Marge Piercy

Thank You for Waiting

At this moment in time we'd like to invite
First Class passengers only to board the aircraft.

Thank you for waiting. We now extend our invitation
to Exclusive, Superior, Privilege and Excelsior members,
followed by Triple, Double and Single Platinum members,
followed by Gold and Silver Card members,
followed by Pearl and Coral Club members.
Military personnel in uniform may also board at this time.

Thank you for waiting. We now invite
Bronze Alliance members and passengers enrolled
in our Rare Earth Metals Points and Reward Scheme
to come forward, and thank you for waiting.

Thank you for waiting. Accredited Beautiful People
may now board, plus any gentleman carrying a copy
of this month's Cigar Aficionado magazine, plus subscribers
to our Red Diamond, Black Opal or Blue Garnet promotion.
We also welcome Sapphire, Ruby and Emerald members
at this time, followed by Amethyst, Onyx, Obsidian, Jet,
Topaz, and Quartz members. Priority Lane customers,
Fast Track customers, Chosen Elite customers,
Preferred Access customers, and First Among Equals customers
may also now board.

On production of a valid receipt travelers of elegance and style
wearing designer and/or hand-tailored clothing
to a minimum value of ten thousand U.S. dollars may now board;
passengers in possession of items of jewelry
(including wristwatches) with a retail purchase price
greater than the average annual salary
of a mid-career high school teacher are also welcome to board.
Also welcome at this time are passengers talking loudly
into cellphone headsets about recently completed share deals,
property acquisitions, and aggressive takeovers,
plus hedge fund managers with proven track records
in the undermining of small-to-medium-sized ambitions.
Passengers in classes Loam, Chalk, Marl, and Clay
may also board. Customers who have purchased
our Dignity or Morning Orchid packages
may now collect their sanitized shell suits prior to boarding.

Thank you for waiting.
Mediocre passengers are now invited to board,
followed by passengers lacking business acumen
or genuine leadership potential, followed by people
of little or no consequence, followed by people
operating at a net fiscal loss as people.
Those holding tickets for zones Rust, Mulch, Cardboard,
Puddle, and Sand might now want to begin gathering
their tissues and crumbs prior to embarkation.

Passengers either partially or wholly dependent on welfare
or kindness: please have your travel coupons validated
at the Quarantine Desk.

Sweat, Dust, Shoddy, Scurf, Feces, Chaff, Remnant,
Ash, Pus, Sludge, Clinker, Splinter, and Soot:
all you people are now free to board.

- Simon Armitage

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver

The Bad Old Days

The summer of nineteen eighteen
I read The Jungle and The
Research Magnificent. That fall
My father died and my aunt
Took me to Chicago to live.
The first thing I did was to take
A streetcar to the stockyards.
In the winter afternoon,
Gritty and fetid, I walked
Through the filthy snow, through the
Squalid streets, looking shyly
Into the people’s faces,
Those who were home in the daytime.
Debauched and exhausted faces,
Starved and looted brains, faces
Like the faces in the senile
And insane wards of charity
Hospitals. Predatory
Faces of little children.
Then as the soiled twilight darkened,
Under the green gas lamps, and the
Sputtering purple arc lamps,
The faces of the men coming
Home from work, some still alive with
The last pulse of hope or courage,
Some sly and bitter, some smart and
Silly, most of them already
Broken and empty, no life,
Only blinding tiredness, worse
Than any tired animal.
The sour smells of a thousand
Suppers of fried potatoes and
Fried cabbage bled into the street.
I was giddy and sick, and out
Of my misery I felt rising
A terrible anger and out
Of the anger, an absolute vow.
Today the evil is clean
And prosperous, but it is
Everywhere, you don’t have to
Take a streetcar to find it,
And it is the same evil.
And the misery, and the
Anger, and the vow are the same.

- Kenneth Rexroth

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.

- Alison Luterman

Great one. Thanks!

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Invisible Work...

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:heart:

This is one of those poems in which I feel the author was able to seize a moment when the jugular vein pulse of the world he saw "spoke" to him and confessed all...and he dutifully put it all down. One of those moments any writer wants to be able to have EVERY moment!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Bad Old Days

The summer of nineteen eighteen
I read The Jungle and The
Research Magnificent. That fall
My father died and my aunt
Took me to Chicago to live.
The first thing I did was to take
A streetcar to the stockyards.
In the winter afternoon,
Gritty and fetid, I walked
Through the filthy snow, through the
Squalid streets, looking shyly
Into the people’s faces,
Those who were home in the daytime.
Debauched and exhausted faces,
Starved and looted brains, faces
Like the faces in the senile
And insane wards of charity
Hospitals. Predatory
Faces of little children.
Then as the soiled twilight darkened,
Under the green gas lamps, and the
Sputtering purple arc lamps,
The faces of the men coming
Home from work, some still alive with
The last pulse of hope or courage,
Some sly and bitter, some smart and
Silly, most of them already
Broken and empty, no life,
Only blinding tiredness, worse
Than any tired animal.
The sour smells of a thousand
Suppers of fried potatoes and
Fried cabbage bled into the street.
I was giddy and sick, and out
Of my misery I felt rising
A terrible anger and out
Of the anger, an absolute vow.
Today the evil is clean
And prosperous, but it is
Everywhere, you don’t have to
Take a streetcar to find it,
And it is the same evil.
And the misery, and the
Anger, and the vow are the same.

- Kenneth Rexroth

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The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.



- Billy Collins

Photograph of my mother sitting on the steps

My mother who isn't anyone's
just her own intact and yearning
self complete as a birch tree
sits on the tenement steps.

She is awkwardly lovely, her face
pure as a single trill perfectly
prolonged on a violin, yet she
knows the camera sees her

and she arranges her body
like a flower in a vase to be
displayed, admired she hopes.
She longs to be luminous

and visible, to shine in the eyes
of it must be a handsome man,
who will carry her away--and he
will into poverty and an abortion

but not yet. Now she drapes
her best, her only good dress
inherited from her sister who dances
on the stage, around her legs

that she does not like
and leans a little forward
because she does like her breasts.
How she wants love to bathe

her in honeyed light lifting her
up through smoky clouds clamped
on the Pittsburgh slum. Blessed
are we who cannot know

what will come to us,
our upturned faces following
through the sky
the sun of love.

- Marge Piercy

I Come From There

I come from there and I have memories
Born as mortals are, I have a mother
And a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends,
And a prison cell with a cold window.
Mine is the wave, snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own view,
And an extra blade of grass.
Mine is the moon at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of birds,
And the immortal olive tree.
I walked this land before the swords
Turned its living body into a laden table.


I come from there. I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps for her mother.
And I weep to make myself known
To a returning cloud.
I learnt all the words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could break the rule.
I learnt all the words and broke them up
To make a single word: Homeland...

- Mahmoud Darwish

Half-and-Half

You can't be, says a Palestinian Christian
on the first feast day after Ramadan.
So, half-and-half and half-and-half.
He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,
chips. If you love Jesus you can't love
anyone else. Says he.

At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,
he's sweeping. The rubbed stones
feel holy. Dusting of powdered sugar
across face, of date-stuffed' mamool.

This morning we lit the slim white candles
which bend over at the waist by noon.
For once the priests weren't fighting
in the church for the best spots to stand.
As a boy, my father listened to them fight.
This is partly why he prays in no language
but his own. Why I press my lips
to every exception.

A woman opens a window -- here and here and here
placing a vase of blue flowers,
on an orange cloth. I follow her.
She is making a soup from what she had left
in the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.
She is leaving nothing out.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Earth Prayer

O Endless Creator, Force of Life, Seat of the Unconscious, Dharma,
Atman, Ra, Qalb, Dear Center of our Love, Christlight, Yahweh, Allah,
Mawu, Mother of the Universe…

Let us, when swimming with the stream, become the stream…
Let us, when moving with the music, become the music…
Let us, when rocking the wounded, become the suffering..

Let us live deep enough till there is only one direction…
and slow enough till there is only the beginning of time…
and loud enough in our hearts till there is no need to speak…

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,
let us see it in everything and everyone,
till we admit to the mystery that when I look deep enough into you,
I find me,
and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart,
you recognize it as your secret, which you thought no one else knew…

O let us embrace that unexpected moment of unity as the atom of God…
Let us have the courage to hold each other when we break and worship what unfolds…

O nameless spirit that is not done with us,
let us love without a net beyond the fear of death
until the speck of peace we guard so well becomes the world…

- Mark Nepo

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

- Richard Brautigan

Written in 1967!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace...

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Remember

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.

- Joy Harjo

New Life


Open the gate less gate
look inside and call your name
welcome whoever answers
leave outside any blame.


Remember, you are never the same
differences make the day, it falls in the grain
it’s all love . . . no shame — no gambit, no fray
no giants or monsters to tame
wear your smile
you’ll like this new game.


Get over the buzz and follow
a continuous natural flow
new weave, tight mesh
new form this exploration
experience all generations
different understanding of equations
the cleansing of aberrations.


Enter . . . join the celebration
relax and hang with trend
it’s a something that goes forever
new life — every cycle
no beginning, no end


- jayro dyer

How She Works
for Donna


She is Persephone with no
Demeter to rescue her. Above
is always winter. Inside the cave
she calls her office,
she is a schizophrenic talking
to the voices that enter her head.
Disembodied voices chatter in her ears,
she chats to the bodiless. Her disembodied
voice climbs into their ears wherever
they might be in their caves
they call offices.


She is hungry for more
than pomegrantes, craves poetry,
oysters and ripe stuffed olives.


At night she dreams
if she sleeps.
She dreams of something she cannot
imagine and so it has no name.
Tight ripe buds push like crowning
babies birthing into bright, electric air.
Thin shoots of palest green
wiggle and thrust through dark, amazed
earth. Because she is blind
she cannot name the colors. There are
so many, no one could name them.


She dreams of Spring.
She dreams of breathing.
She dreams her mother is searching for her.


- Rebecca del Rio

More than the Morning

It’s more than the morning we must wake up to
The birds have been singing for hours in our dreams.
Let us not be too sleepy to remember the countless blessings
Waiting to unfold in a day remembered with Grace.


Let us not forget to love,
To smile, to breathe the simple truth
That all life’s precious configurations
Are designed to guide us to our awakening.


What a paradox that we must sleep to dream
And awaken to fulfill our dreams.
What a paradox that we must die to full live,
Give to receive, and empty to fill up again.


Even our longing is a blessing,
For it carries the wind across the sea;
And stirs the ocean of the soul
Into the creative matrix of wonder.

- Anodea Judith

What Women Are Made Of


We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.

Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;

we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,

sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root

and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar

and lobe. We are hippocampus and exposed nerve

and cornea. Areola, pigment, melanin, and nails.

Varicose. Cellulite. Divining rod. Sinew and tissue,

saliva and silt. We are blood and salt, clay and aquifer.

We are breath and flame and stratosphere. Palimpsest

and bibelot and cloisonné fine lines. Marigold, hydrangea,

and dimple. Nightlight, satellite, and stubble. We are

pinnacle, plummet, dark circles, and dark matter.

A constellation of freckles and specters and miracles

and lashes. Both bent and erect, we are all give

and give back. We are volta and girder. Make an incision

in our nectary and Painted Ladies sail forth, riding the back

of a warm wind, plumed with love and things like love.

Crack us down to the marrow, and you may find us full

of cicada husks and sand dollars and salted maple taffy

weary of welding together our daydreams. All sweet tea,

razor blades, carbon, and patchwork quilts of Good God!

and Lord have mercy! Our hands remember how to turn

the earth before we do. Our intestinal fortitude? Cumulonimbus

streaked with saffron light. Our foundation? Not in our limbs

or hips; this comes first as an amen, a hallelujah, a suckling,

swaddled psalm sung at the cosmos’s breast. You want to

know what women are made of? Open wide and find out.


- Bianca Lynne Springs

"swaddled psalm sung at the cosmos's breast"....some wordsmith!

Hmm To Time


Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.


And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.


Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.


Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.


- Ursula K. Le Guin

“Never Apologize, Never Explain"


On the contrary, always apologize and explain,
in the terror-white veracity, down to the essence bone,
tenaciously follow the long road. Be
capable and Voltairean, discreet of form and substance, tell it
like it is, don't gloss over
in silent splendor.


Give the unattractive facts. But they won't be
that insipid (arrears of heavenly bodies).
And if you have to polish up
the contemptible gaff, give it all you've got—seriously,
don't swindle and pretend the sky
didn't fall in.


But dole out the mathematics, saviors of the gut.
Inching without propaganda the longhand
of dream. Even insult the host who
just wanted to play the game. Apologize in sample color,
if you loved something, say it. If kept
under your hat,


let the fallacies represent you.
From whatever Acropolis of stress, bat with
that genuine non-expurgation, the angel of bottomless pits.
Versatility and science; right the wrongs you know,
and do it with wholeheartedness. In fundamentals
so brash, or like a glass


of water.


- Jane Mayhall

Counting on Sunday

He didn't have his
Heart in his sermon.
If he did, it didn't
Show up in any enthusiasm
In his voice.
And I didn't have
My restless soul
In church.
If I did, I wouldn't
Have counted
The 823 bricks
On the wall.
Outside one
Of the 48
Window panes
Behind the 16
White shutters
That helped shade
The sunlight
Off the 11 crosses,
2brass, 4 on cloth,
1 on a plaque that's nailed
To the rail that leads
To the wooden one
That's carved on the altar
Just left of the
Wooden one that holds
The page numbers
That face
The one in concrete
On the baptismal font
That stands beside
The organist
Who is married
To the preacher who
Has a silver one
Hanging around his neck
As he speaks to
10 women, 8 men
And 4 children
Who sit in
21pews
That hold 161
Hymn books
Under 78 electric candles
That shine on
5 doorknobs
And 2 flags
That stand
Over 11 eyeglasses,
7 necklaces,
2 flower arrangements,
1 hair bow,
1 bow tie,
1 silver barrette,
And a sermon
In a pear tree.

- Margaret Vaughn
(poet laureate of Tennessee)

Singularity


(after Stephen Hawking)
Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?
so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money —
nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone
pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.
For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;
would that we could wake up to what we were
— when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not
at all — nothing
before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.
Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?
No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with
is is is is is
All everything home

- Marie Howe

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

- Jane Hirshfield

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper


At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
Then the glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open lawbook
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.

- Martin Espada

The Tree of Knowledge


The hastily assembled angel saw
One thing was like another thing and that
Thing like another everything depend-
ed on how high it was the place you saw


Things from and he had seen the Earth from where
A human couldn’t see the Earth and could-
n’t tell most human things apart and though
He hadn’t ever really understood


His job he knew it had to do with seeing
And what he saw was everything would come
Together at the same time everything
Would fall apart and that was humans thinking


The world was meant for them and other things
Were accidental or were decora-
tions meant for them and therefore purposeful
That humans thought that God had told them so


And what the hastily assembled angel
Thought was that probably God had said the same thing
To every living thing on Earth and on-
ly stopped when one said Really back but then


Again the hastily assembled angel
Couldn’t tell human things apart and maybe
That Really mattered what would he have heard
Holy or maybe Folly or maybe Kill me


- Shane McCrae

Old Timer's Day


When the tall puffy
figure wearing number
nine starts
late for the fly ball,
laboring forward
like a lame truckhorse
startled by a gartersnake,
this old fellow
whose body we remember
as sleek and nervous
as a filly's,


and barely catches it
in his glove's
tip, we rise
and applaud weeping:
On a green field
we observe the ruin
of even the bravest
body, as Odysseus
wept to glimpse
among shades the shadow
of Achilles.





- Donald Hall

Cello


When a dead tree falls in a forest
it often falls into the arms
of a living tree. The dead,
thus embraced, rasp in wind,
slowly carving a niche
in the living branch, sheering away
the rough outer flesh, revealing
the pinkish, yellowish, feverish
inner bark. For years
the dead tree rubs its fallen body
against the living, building
its dead music, making its raw mark,
wearing the tough bough down,
moaning in wind, the deep
rosined bow sound of the living
shouldering the dead.


- Dorianne Laux

Destruction

First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through
a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through
the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then
he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.

He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated
coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans
fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers
stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,
paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.

He rips the Green Tara
poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills
the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes
a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and
drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu
and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching
a woman bathing.

Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,
Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and
Women's Sports into the oozing water bed mess.

He goes down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going
for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.
Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash
of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium
and aspirin.

- Joanne Kyger

Drummers


Unbeknownst to biblical scholars, behind the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, stood drummers. Now bear with this outrageous claim for a moment and consider the notion that

Drummers draw vertical lines of protection around all who walk the earth and stand upon its spinning firmament, acting as human surrogates for the hands of deities. That

Drummers can’t be understood by critics but require shaman and priests to comprehend the workings of rhythm and sound. That

Drummers, with Orphic metaphor, call the sun to rise and conduct late afternoon shadows toward evening’s obsidian crypts. That

Drummers, with weathered hands dance their dream-drumming riffs on mud, clay pots, tree trunks and goatskins. That

Drummers guide the sacred breathing itself and the coursing of blood through our veins for this sprint of a lifetime. That

Drummers lurk behind trees and spark the cosmic movin’ and
groovin,’ rockin’ and a reelin,’ injecting sparks into human clay

so friends and lovers will play and pray, sanctified with the wine
and bread of Rumba, Jazz, Samba, and Salsa, Flamenco,

Fandango and the sensuous Tango, reminding us that we swing in
a universe that pulses, gyrates, beats and palpitates the yearning

heart with the one vibration: be it final ending or primal start.

- Bruce Silverman

The Buttonhook


President Roosevelt, touring Ellis Island
in 1906, watched the people from steerage
line up for their six-second physical.

Might not, he wondered aloud, the ungloved handling
of aliens who were ill infect the healthy?
Yet for years more it was done. I imagine

my grandmother, a girl in that Great Hall's
polyglot, reverberating vault
more terrible than church, dazed by the stars

and stripes in the vast banner up in front
where the blessed ones had passed through. Then she did too,
to a room like a little chapel, where her mother

might take Communion. A man in a blue cap
and a blue uniform—a doctor? a policeman?
(Papa would have known, but he had sailed

all alone before them and was waiting
now in New York; yet wasn't this New York?)—
a man in a blue cap reached for her mother.

Without a word (didn't he speak Italian?)
he stuck one finger into her mother's eye,
then turned its lid up with a buttonhook,

the long, curved thing for doing up your boots
when buttons were too many or too small.
You couldn't be American if you were blind

or going to be blind. That much she understood.
She'd go to school, she'd learn to read and write
and teach her parents. The eye man reached to touch

her own face next; she figured she was ready.
She felt big, like that woman in the sea
holding up not a buttonhook but a torch.

- Mary Jo Salter

Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change


Roselva says the only thing that doesn’t change
is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow.


Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.


Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.


Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.


The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

The Impeded Stream

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work.

And that when we no longer know
which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled
is not employed.
The impeded stream
is the one that sings.

- Wendell Berry

William Rain is a nature photographer living in Boulder, Co.
This photo goes nicely with the poem and the poem goes nicely with William.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Impeded Stream...

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Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

- Edwin Arlington Robinson

Why Are the Lilacs Still Here When Everyone’s Gone?

A writing class of grandmothers, Jewish Community Center
Winter wind rattling windows
Julia, pen in hand, hungry to tell her story

Auschwitz-Birkenau: one teenager in a long line of Jews
Julia’s mother and little sister kicked to one side
She the other
It was Himmler you know, she says
Numbly watching her mother and sister vanish
The sound of marching boots

Julia huddled, nameless days by the barracks door
What are you doing there?
Asked a compatriot
Waiting for my mother and sister
The woman pointed to smoke trailing into the sky
What do you think that is?

A fellow villager forced raw potato into her mouth
Staunching the reverse flow of her life
Day after day women toiling in stink and mud
Shovels and claws, endlessly moving stones
—the strength of labor matched only by the paucity of potato—
Days, weeks, a month out on the sodden field
Julia a sack of bones and stones

One day a square of sunlight appeared in the mud
Against endless clanging of metal against stone
As long as I keep looking at that patch of light, thought Julia
I will survive

And she did

All we need:
One patch of sunlight

- Margo Perin

For C.

After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges where,
A slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare,
She looks up toward the window where he waits,
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.

On such grand scale do lovers say good-bye—
Even this other pair whose high romance
Had only the duration of a dance,
And who, now taking leave with stricken eye,
See each in each a whole new life forgone.
For them, above the darkling clubhouse lawn,

Bright Perseids flash and crumble; while for these
Who part now on the dock, weighed down by grief
And baggage, yet with something like relief,
It takes three thousand miles of knitting seas
To cancel out their crossing, and unmake
The amorous rough and tumble of their wake.

We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse
And bittersweet regrets, and cannot share
The frequent vistas of their large despair,
Where love and all are swept to nothingness;
Still, there’s a certain scope in that long love
Which constant spirits are the keepers of,

And which, though taken to be tame and staid,
Is a wild sostenuto of the heart,
A passion joined to courtesy and art
Which has the quality of something made,
Like a good fiddle, like the rose’s scent,
Like a rose window or the firmament.

- Richard Wilbur

Going Back to Bed

Up early, trying to muffle
the sounds of small tasks,
grinding, pouring, riffling
through yesterday's attacks

or market slump, then changing
my mind—what matter the rush
to the waiting room or the ring
of some later dubious excuse?—

having decided to return to bed
and finding you curled in the sheet,
a dream fluttering your eyelids,
still unfallen, still asleep,

I thought of the old pilgrim
when, among the fixed stars
in paradise, he sees Adam
suddenly, the first man, there

in a flame that hides his body,
and when it moves to speak,
what is inside seems not free,
not happy, but huge and weak,

like an animal in a sack.
Who had captured him?
What did he want to say?
I lay down beside you again,

not knowing if I'd stay,
not knowing where I’d been.

- J.D. McClatchey

When Someone Deeply Listens


When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you,
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

- John Fox

It Is Up To Us

I can feel violence coming toward me
The Tsunami that Ruth Ozeki said
Brought Japan closer to us,
And maybe North Korea and Niger.
Can you hear the continuing wars:
The hurricanes of guns, in Syria and
At Concerts, Night Clubs, schools, movies,
Political rallies and even churches?
The old bombs still breaking over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the memories
Of Manzanar and Heart Mountain, the
Trail of Tears, the avalanche at Orlando,
Of bloodshed that keeps coming?

I can feel the aftermath of that cruel approach,
Can’t you? A firestorm of torches,
And hooded men disguised with crosses,
in white ritual robes, and unrhymed chants.
It has already come for black youth in Hoodies,
And brown and white youth, and babies at school.
It has endangered species and oceans, is choking
Local streams, setting fires, sending floods,
Earthquakes, even Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and
Elijah can’t stop! All the Prophets with insomnia
Are wide awake now. And God, in her weakness,
Has not slept since before the Holocaust, and still
Turns over agitated, again, and strangled,
Again, in clouds of insidious invisible
And tasteless gas. A toxic cancer cocktail!
If you live that long! The Seraphim
are coughing and gagging, weeping
for all the Gods, seeing
from their watchtowers in the heavens:
It is surely and destructively coming.
Asthma, autism, anti-Semitism and Alzheimer’s,
Palestinian, Arab and English mouths, foam rabid
With death, towards us, and towards our children.
Unless we stop it. Unless we stop it
With compassion for every living thing.
And even for the slowly accumulating rocks!
It will keep advancing. It will keep on coming.

- Judith Stone

When Horror Becomes Mundane


The mystery is not that evil exists (undeniable)
or that evil men will seek power (inevitable)
but that good people give it to them.

We trade our fears and niggling insecurities
for the magic ring of simple certainties
that we think will bring us power,

but when we are seduced into giving up
our moral clarity, we become the crucible
where our soul is not the precious metal

but the fuel
in service to dark alchemies
that make horror unremarkable.

- Paul Asbury Seaman

Freedom's Plow

When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.
A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!
With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom.
Down into the earth went the plow
In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.
Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it’s the U.S.A.
A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--
ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS--
AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently too for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
BETTER TO DIE FREE
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.
With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.
America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land."
America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don’t be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don’t be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!
A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

- Langston Hughes

Father and Son


I needed you to be a god.
to rescue me
from yourself.
I needed you to be larger
than a glass of scotch.
to leap out from the depression.
to look me in the eye
and see me.


Instead you were not a god.
You loved me in a human way.
Stumbled and slurred your words of apology.
And my adolescence was cast adrift.


We grew apart.
You in deeper withdrawal.
Me in increasing bitterness.
‘Till all we had was
“How’s the weather?” and the next cute grandchild story.


Over time, my life arced back towards you
just as you body wore out.
Finally, it was your return to childhood
that brought me to adulthood.


You left too soon
or I arrived too late.


Sometimes the final goodbye
Contains every hello that did not happen.


- Jose Enciso

Louie Lies


Louie lives by lying. He must always lie
all day long, and thus he craves fellowship.
He lies about the sunrise: "It was golden,
a great ball of fire clearing the rooftops,
sending the mockingbirds into wild screeches
as they scurried deeper into the branches
of the Atlas cedar." Actually the day
began slowly as the winter overcast
burned off above the treetops. The phone rings.
It's Louie. He's found a huge diamond ring
buried in his sock drawer. He has no idea
how it got there. "When I turn it toward
the light it gives off blue and yellow rays
like nothing ever seen. Would you like it?"
He'll be over within the hour. I make coffee,
turn on the classical music station
to hear Bach's Chaconne for the hundredth time.
When the bell rings it's Louie with a copy
of The Watchtower, his forehead beaded
with sweat, his eyes huge, his jeans sagging
under the weight of his new belly. Nothing
is said about the ring. Instead he tells me
about the women he met on his way over.
"One was from Prague, raven-haired,
pale as a ghost, six feet tall, right out of Poe.
The other spoke English, had been brought up
to believe she was Hemingway's daughter.
She chain-smoked Chesterfields. Both found God
in the Brooklyn Yellow Pages under
'Perishable Items.'" "Awake!" they'd cried
in chorus. Here he'd thought he was awake.
"Maybe I'll convert," he says, swirling his coffee.
He's tried Orthodox Judaism, Zen,
psychoanalysis, downhill racing,
organic farming, LSD. He shakes his head,
his wild black curls flashing in the noon light,
refuses more coffee, and rises to leave.
He has a lesson with his Latin teacher,
a young refugee from the Vatican
who wants to bear his child. The door closes
behind him, and the final notes of the Bach
scrape over and over. The record is stuck,
the DJ with the fake Irish accent is out
to lunch or drunk. I open The New York Times.


- Phillip Levine