Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Cast All Your Votes For Dancing

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and works and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions' beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

- Hafiz

The Clod and the Pebble

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

- William Blake

The Altar of This Moment

Place everything you can perceive -
Everything you can
See,
Hear,
Smell,
Taste,
Or touch,
Upon the altar of this moment
And give thanks.

It is over so soon -
This expression,
This single moment of your precious life,
This one heart
pounding itself open
with fear or wild joy,

This one breath rising
in the cold winter air
smoothly and gently
or coughing and sputtering,

Bow, while you can, before
This one taste
Of afternoon tea
Warming its way to your belly,
Or the fragrant orange
exploding its sweet juice
in your grateful mouth.

You have to love
The antics of your mind,
Imagining life should only be sweet.
The bitter makes the sweet; and life is both.
It is whole, like you,
Before you think yourself to pieces.

Place this moment's pain and confusion on the altar, too,
And give special thanks for such grace
That wakes you up from sleeping through your life.
Pain is greatly under-rated as a pointer to Unknowing,
yet greatly over-rated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,
Your eyes meet mine and there is
a single looking.
What is peering from behind our masks?
Can it touch itself across the room?

Place your palms together;
Touch your holy skin.
In another moment it will shed itself.
What will you be then?
What were you before you had two hands?
What are you now?

You cannot capture That
and place It on the altar of this moment.
It is the altar,
And this moment's infinite expressions,
And the Seeing,
And its own devotion to itself.

You are That.

- Dorothy Hunt

Coyotes

Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.

The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

- Mark Jarman

What the Animals Teach Us

that love is dependent on memory,
that life is eternal and therefore criminal,
that thought is an invisible veil that covers our eyes,
that death is only another animal,
that beauty is formed by desperation,
that sex is solely a human problem,
that pets are wild in heaven,
that sounds and smells escape us,
that there are bones in the earth without any marker,
that language refers to too many things,
that music hints at what we heard before we sang,
that the circle is loaded,
that nothing we know by forgetting is sacred,
that humor charges the smallest things,
that the gods are animals without their masks,
that stones tell secrets to the wildest creatures,
that nature is an idea and not a place,
that our bodies have diminished in size and strength,
that our faces are terrible,
that our eyes are double when gazed upon,
that snakes do talk, as well as asses,
that we compose our only audience,
that we are geniuses when we wish to kill,
that we are naked despite our clothes,
that our minds are bodies in another world.

- Chard deNiord

Monkey Mind

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at that girl over there
In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like
To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip
And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts
Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions
And instead of answering she told her mother
Who told the teacher who told my father.
After all these years, I can almost feel his hand
Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision
Then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
And up again in that small arc
To smack his open palm against my butt.
I'm a slow learner
And still sometimes I'm sitting here wondering what my father
Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five,
Plunged down into his easy chair half the night
Listening to Bach cantatas. I know that he's going to die
Because he told my mother and my mother told me.
I didn't cry or cry out or say I'm sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered what
He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

- Steve Orlen

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

- W.S. Merwin

Another Spring

The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

- Kenneth Rexroth

Mule Heart
*
On the days when the rest
have failed you,
let this much be yours --
flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
the two waiting baskets:
one for the lemons and passion,
the other for all you have lost.
Both empty,
it will come to your shoulder,
breathe slowly against your bare arm.
If you offer it hay, it will eat.
Offered nothing,
it will stand as long as you ask.
The little bells of the bridle will hang
beside you quietly,
in the heat and the tree's thin shade.
Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
This too is a gift of the gods,
calm and complete.
*
- Jane Hirschfield

One Day

One day I will
say
the gift I once had has been taken.

The place I have made for myself
belongs to another.
The words I have sung
are being sung by the ones
I would want.

Then I will be ready
for that voice
and the still silence in which it arrives.

And if my faith is good
then we'll meet again
on the road
and we'll be thirsty,
and stop
and laugh
and drink together again

from the deep well of things as they are.

- David Whyte

A Felicitous Life

His old age fell on years of abundant harvest.
There were no earthquakes, droughts or floods.
It seemed as if the turning of the seasons gained in constancy,
Stars waxed strong and the sun increased its might.
Even in remote provinces no war was waged.
Generations grew up friendly to fellow men.
The rational nature of man was not a subject of derision.

It was bitter to say farewell to the earth so renewed.
He was envious and ashamed of his doubt,
Content that his lacerated memory would vanish with him.

Two days after his death a hurricane razed the coasts.
Smoke came from volcanoes inactive for a hundred years.
Lava sprawled over forests, vineyards, and towns.
And war began with a battle on the islands.

- Czeslaw Milosz

God Says Yes to Me

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

- Kaylin Haught

American Tune

Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
confused.

Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
bones.

Still, you donít expect to be bright and bon vivant so
far away from home, so far away from home.

And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
don't have a friend who feels at ease.

I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
driven to its knees.

But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
well so long.

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
went wrong.

And I dreamed I was dying.

I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
was flying.

And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
flying.

And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
come on the ship that sailed the moon.

We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
American tune

oh, but it's all right, it's all right, itís all
right, you can't be forever blessed.

Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
to get some rest.

-Paul Simon

THE MORAL INDIGNATION
of Mayor Cory Booker

Nothing like ears falling to the floor
nothing like a South American colonel pontificating
nothing like this
more like a dark and stormy night
more like West Side Story but in Newark, New Jersey
more like a parable of the returning son
the story retold of Sacco and Vanzetti

Four college students lined up against a steel-barbed fence shot execution-style

The mayor recounts this darkest night of his first year
how he curled up on his couch

How this is not the America he believes in
how his friends get sick of hearing him speak of his patriotism
and his dreams of what it means to be an American
how Newark is going to be a destination city, full of parks
he knows there is a God somewhere in charge
and he knows he talks too much when he gets tired
and this has been a most stressful and long week
blood spilt on one more sidewalk
please forgive him for talking too much
for looking as if he is in shell-shock
(his brown-orbed eyes belie an innocence)
for sometimes crying
not hearing—he has these flashes—
a mother’s anguish, brother’s rage
forgive him for all the mistakes he has made
he has tried to learn, lived in Brick Towers, made the police rounds,
brought in youth programs, cleaned up the precinct bathrooms
how he has just come back from yet another shooting
this time a 14-year old opening fire—on a playground—seven wounded

Nothing like ears falling to the floor
but this time a whole nation is listening

- Nancy Cavers Dougherty

America

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
on the four corners of the world

you thought of first but do not
own, or keep like a convenience.

People are your own word, you
invented that locus and term.

Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back

what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.

- Robert Creeley

I Remember Galileo

I remember Galileo describing the mind
as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree,
or jumping into the backseat of a car,
and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
Route 80 between the wheels of a giant truck,
dancing back and forth like a thin leaf,
or a frightened string, for only two seconds living
on the white concrete before he got away,
his life shortened by all that terror, his head
jerking, his yellow teeth ground down to dust.

It was the speed of the squirrel and his lowness to the ground,
his great purpose and the alertness of his dancing,
that showed me the difference between him and paper.
Paper will do in theory, when there is time
to sit back in a metal chair and study shadows;
but for this life I need a squirrel,
his clawed feet spread, his whole soul quivering,
the loud noise shaking him from head to tail.
O philosophical mind, O mind of paper, I need a squirrel
finishing his wild dash across the highway,
rushing up his green ungoverned hillside.

- Gerald Stern

Wooden Boats

I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.

The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.

Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?

Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?
Could we recall what we have known
But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,
And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

- Judy Brown

Cottonwood Trees

The cottonwoods are
flinging themselves outward,
filling the air with spiraling flurries,
covering lawns in deepening drifts.
You could not call this generosity.
Like any being, they
let loose what they have
in order to survive,
in order that their lives might continue
in a new year's growth.
The more seeds they send out
on their lofted journeys
the greater the chance
for their kind to flourish.
There is no hesitation.
No one asks how much
they will give. Without words
they know so clearly
that everything depends
on what we call giving,
that which the world knows only as creation.

- Lynn Ungar

The River of Bees

In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blindman followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older

Soon it will be fifteen years

He was old he will have fallen into his eyes

I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live

One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Image of hope
It was offered to me by name

Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say

He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass

I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay

He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water

We are the echo of the future

On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live

- W. S. Merwin

Good People

From the kindness of my parents
I suppose it was that I held
that belief about suffering

imagining that if only
it could come to the attention
of any person with normal
feelings certainly anyone
literate who might have gone

to college they would comprehend
pain when it went on before them
and would do something about it
whenever they saw it happen
in the time of pain the present
they would try to stop the bleeding
for example with their own hands

but it escapes their attention
or there may be reasons for it
the victims under the blankets
the meat counters the maimed children
the animals the animals
staring from the end of the world

- W.S. Merwin

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

- Jane Hirshfield

Waking

Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you now see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you ,
and for you it seems
even then
no cry is louder than yours
and in your own darkness
cries have gone unheard
as long as you can remember.

These are hard paths we tread
but they are green
and lined with leaf mould
and we must love their contours
as we love the body branching
with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.

I know that sometimes
your body is hard like a stone
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
while the voice all around
tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you ‘and you listen strangely caught
as the terrible voice moving closer
halts,
and in the silence
now arriving
whispers

Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.

- David Whyte

Plums Failing Well

So what if plums fall
out of the tree, to lie
squashed and decomposing
on the earth? So what if
the only attention they receive
is from the ants and birds
who find something in them
to feed from still,
all spayed and color changed?
If they could breathe,
do you think they would say
more than so what?
This is good, to live
to the end as something
to get taken. What was
the ripeness for anyhow?
Why should chromosomes blink
and twitch inside the seed,
the pit at the middle, the vast
earth-shaped center of all
of this? So what if we lie
here or there as pith
in the cold night where the owl
hoots at the stirring that will
compute into the dark color
of that calling and the ground
we leak into,
small piece by small piece.

- Linda Gregg

At This Moment

And if I have nothing to say
and all the words inside my brain
are hollowed out, scraped clean, gone,
then let nothingness stream forth
in rows of blazing zeroes.

Let emptiness be the still lake it is
where I coast in my small boat
fishing for the thing I cannot find,
the lake where stones travel
searching lifetimes for the bottom.

Let silence come like animals
in the dark mountain night,
watchful yet unafraid, licking my body
with tenderness the way a mother bear
licks her cubs, less to clean them
than to give them strength.

Let the absent words dissolve
before they're formed
and the fret and strain of pulling
one sentence toward the next
slacken, until all that's left
is something wild and musical,
one note without speech.

- Ethna McKiernan

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The ride you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

- John O'Donohue

The Wheel Revolves

You were a girl of satin and gauze
Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion.
Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu I
Written in his middle age.
Young as I was they touched me.
I never thought in my own middle age
I would have a beautiful young dancer
To wander with me by falling crystal waters,
Among mountains of snow and granite,
Least of all that unlike Po’s girl
She would be my very daughter.

The earth turns towards the sun.
Summer comes to the mountains.
Blue grouse drum in the red fir woods
All the bright long days.
You put blue jay and flicker feathers
In your hair.
Two and two violet green swallows
Play over the lake.
The blue birds have come back
To nest on the little island.
The swallows sip water on the wing
And play at love and dodge and swoop
Just like the swallows that swirl
Under and over the Ponte Vecchio.
Light rain crosses the lake
Hissing faintly. After the rain
There are giant puffballs with tortoise shell backs
At the edge of the meadow.
Snows of a thousand winters
Melt in the sun of one summer.
Wild cyclamen bloom by the stream.
Trout veer in the transparent current.
In the evening marmots bark in the rocks.
The Scorpion curls over the glimmering ice field.
A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets.
Thunder growls far off.
Our campfire is a single light
Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls.
The manifold voices of falling water
Talk all night.
Wrapped in your down bag
Starlight on your cheeks and eyelids
Your breath comes and goes
In a tiny cloud in the frosty night.
Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise.
Ten thousand years revolve without change.
All this will never be again.

- Kenneth Rexroth

The Well Rising

The well rising without sound,
the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field—

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer—

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples. I place my feet
with care in such a world.

- William Stafford

Milk from Chickens

The day my son declared with hammerhead certainty
that milk comes from chickens was the day
I yanked him out of the city
and drove west to farm and prairie land.

Like a nail pried from hard wood, he complained
from the back seat, missing electronic games and TV.
Near the South Dakota border, he saluted
a McDonald’s as we flew by.

I wanted my boy to take a turn lifting
barb wire to slip into open fields
keeping an eye out for the crazy bull.
I wanted him to hold a bottle for a lamb,

to feel the fierceness of animal hunger,
the suck of an animal mouth.
I wanted him to sleep in darkness encoded
with urgent messages of fireflies,

to see the bright planets in alignment overhead,
to stand on the graves of his grandparents,
dead so many years before he was born,
and to trace the names etched on granite pillows,

hard as the last sleep.
How else to plant in him the long root of plains grass,
help him reach water in drought and
know who his mother is?

- Margaret Hasse

Compassion

Have compassion for everyone you meet
Even if they don't want it.

What seems conceit, bad manners,
Or cynicism is always a sign
Of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.

You do not know what wars are going on
Down there where the spirit meets the bone.

- Miller Williams

In Praise of the Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And hold our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

- John O'Donohue

Atavism

1.
Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open.


2.
Something is being told in the woods: aisles of
shadow lead away; a branch waves;
a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its
path. A withheld presence almost
speaks, but then retreats, rustles
a patch of brush. You can feel
the centuries ripple generations
of wandering, discovering, being lost
and found, eating, dying, being born.
A walk through the forest strokes your fur,
the fur you no longer have. And your gaze
down a forest aisle is a strange, long
plunge, dark eyes looking for home.
For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers
wider than your mind, away out over everything.

- William Stafford

Panning

Have you ever wondered
why,
just when it seems
that things are flying
out of your control,
you're headed to the edge,
the waters calm
and you come back to center?

Or
why,
just when your life
is feeling steady, balanced,
on an even course,
everything suddenly shifts,
slides and sloshes to the side?

Maybe god is panning for gold,
looking for the bright bits
among the dross.
Do you really want
to keep them hidden
any longer?

- Larry Robinson

Reception

They were sitting at their tables on the lawn
when suddenly I saw them all
in a line approaching a door that opened
on a field that was also a lawn.
I was in awe of the guests, the way
they sat in the shadow of the door
and sipped their drinks, the way
they laughed and cried. I watched
a Cessna fade into the sky
as something that was there for a while
in the form of pure idea, as something
that would burn one day like a straw,
but hummed for now in lieu of prayer
then disappeared into a cloud.
I saw the endless line of happy guests
move along, move along,
forgetting everything as they passed
beneath a high dark beam
into a field that was also a void.

- Chard DeNiord

Your Panning is a nice bit of the gold, thanks

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Panning

Have you ever wondered
why,
just when it seems
that things are flying
out of your control,
you're headed to the edge,
the waters calm
and you come back to center?

Or
why,
just when your life
is feeling steady, balanced,
on an even course,
everything suddenly shifts,
slides and sloshes to the side?

Maybe god is panning for gold,
looking for the bright bits
among the dross.
Do you really want
to keep them hidden
any longer?

- Larry Robinson

---

Green-Striped Melons

They lie
under stars in a field.
They lie under rain in a field.
Under sun.

Some people
are like this as well—
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.

An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.

- Jane Hirshfield

Glad

In the glory of the gloaming-green soccer
field her team, the Gladiators, is losing

ten to zip. She never loses interest in
the roughhouse one-on-one that comes

every half a minute. She sticks her leg
in danger and comes out the other side running.

Later a clump of opponents on the street is chant-
ing, WE WON, WE WON, WE . . . She stands up

on the convertible seat holding to the wind-
shield. WE LOST, WE LOST BIGTIME, TEN TO

NOTHING, WE LOST, WE LOST. Fist pumping
air. The other team quiet, abashed, chastened.

Good losers don't laugh last; they laugh
continuously, all the way home so glad.

- Coleman Barks

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

O Taste and See

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

- Denise Levertov

One Spark

One spark can ignite a wild and raging fire
falling onto dried tinder, too long apart from wetness.

Spark turns to ember
ember to flame
flame to fire
fire to ignition, initiation,
immolation, or illumination.

Another spark with self-same potential
lands on hardened ground or moisture-laden soil
and simply glows out, as if never burned.

There is no fairness to this system.
It happens, or it doesn’t, depending
on a million factors of circumstance and environment,
history and fate.

Every spark contains the power
and potential to burn down the world
or illuminate a new one.


- Lion Goodman

An Oregon Message

When we first moved here, pulled
the trees in around us, curled
our backs to the wind, no one
had ever hit the moon—no one.
Now our trees are safer than the stars,
and only other people's neglect
is our precious and abiding shell,
pierced by meteors, radar, and the telephone.

From our snug place we shout
religiously for attention, in order to hide:
only silence or evasion will bring
dangerous notice, the hovering hawk
of the state, or the sudden quiet stare
and fatal estimate of an alerted neighbor.

This message we smuggle out in
its plain cover, to be opened
quietly: Friends everywhere—
we are alive! Those moon rockets
have missed millions of secret
places! Best wishes.

Burn this.

- William Stafford

Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street—
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

- Stanley Kunitz

Talking Back to God
For P.V.J.

This time, you tricked us all—
Ashes to ashes, jade stones of sorrow.
We swallow until we sink
into the small rooms of our grief.

The script said you’d leave the hospital
(you’d beaten the odds so many times before).
That you, even small as a swallow,
would rise in a whir of wings.
That you would talk back to God—
Tell him he better call on somebody else.

Instead, you made a grand exit
drawing the curtains on our surprise
and stepped out of your frail body
a Russian doll—becoming
a phoenix blazing bright
with love and redemption.

Wherever you are, we ask one last request:
Open the curtains of our surprise—speak back to us—
breathe back the fire into our hearts
until the wooden walls of our grief
burn to cinders.

- Iris Dunkle

At Great Pond

the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,*
and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore
a white bird is standing
like a white candle ---
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation ---*
while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.
Later, I will consider
what I have seen ---
what it could signify ---
what words of adoration I might
make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk ---
I will sit in my chair ---
I will look back*
into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,*
so peacefully,
I am almost the lily ---
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of night.

- Mary Oliver

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun—
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

- Joseph Stroud

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

- Mark Strand

Everything

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don't go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves, I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass.I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the wold;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

- Mary Oliver

Full Moon

Full moon,
pull this poem
like the tide
from my heart.

Full moon,
send your magic
from beyond
to heal
my ill mother.

Full moon,
hold this holiday
in your timeless keep,
there to revisit
always with joy.

Full moon,
follow my daughters,
keep them safe
as they journey
their night.

Full moon,
delight my love,
call your cousin,
thin silver arc,

Full moon,
bring on my age
with the soft glow
of the orchard
filling with silent
shadows of deer.

- Scott O'Brien

Communion

If I'm you, or you me—
Interpenetrating God—
enlarge our intimacy.

You who are animus
and blood—
who make me dust

from this table
blown into grass,
invisible—

Is it you—or I—
I pass
and cannot see?

- Fiona Sampson

Near The Wall Of A House

Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that has no end.

- Yehuda Amichai

The Laughter Of Women

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

- Lisel Mueller