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Hope and Love
All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the customs of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark.
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.
- Jane Hirshfield
The Necklace
Take, from my palms, for joy, for ease,
A little honey, a little sun,
That we may obey Persephone’s bees.
You can’t untie a boat unmoored.
Fur-shod shadows can’t be heard,
Nor terror, in this life, mastered.
Love, what’s left for us, and of us, is this
Living remnant, loving revenant, brief kiss
Like a bee flying completed dying hiveless
To find in the forest’s heart a home,
Night’s never-ending hum,
Thriving on meadowsweet, mint, and time.
Take, for all that is good, for all that is gone,
That it may lie rough and real against your collarbone,
This string of bees, that once turned honey into sun.
- Osip Mandelstam
(Translated by Christian Wiman)
Before The Men's Retreat
She asks: “What is it?”
And I say: “100 men naked in the woods.”
She wrinkles her nose and says: “No clothes?”
And I say: “Sometimes.”
And she says: “What do you do?”
I say: First we removed the coat of corporate soldier, of worker
bee, of boss, of coach, of business owner.
Then we pull off the jacket of marriage.
Toss aside the shoes of parenthood.
The umbrella of son.
The backpack of friend.
The helmet of hero, savior, tough guy.
We pull from our pockets the mantle of lady’s man, lover,
slayer of the weaker sex.
We check in our charm and toss away the pants of romance.
All the roles and expectations we carry about in our
lives, we leave behind like a pile of clothes on the floor.”
She says: “On the floor? That’s what I thought. Then you’re naked?”
Says I: “Not yet. We promise not to engage in physical violence,
then we strip off unnecessary civilization. Toss it in the
pile with all the rest.”
She: “Then you’re naked.”
I: “No. We still hold onto our tattered dysfunctions and
threadbare beliefs like a 10 year old pair of bikini briefs.
That’s the last thing, but we hold fast, because, you know,
those stinking little lies and truths, that stained and
shredded pair of underwear held our life together for 10,
20, 40 years. And only when we can toss that old thing away
are we truly naked”
She blinks and says: “So it’s 100 men in the woods in tattered
underwear.”
I say: “Yes. But over the course of the week, it washes away in
the realm of ritual. Blown away by the breath of spirit.
Cracked open under the scrutiny and support of men. Pried
off by the power of story.”
She stares at me, silent, and then: “Why? ... Why do you do it?”
I say: “So we can see what’s left. That’s us. Naked. We can
hardly recognize ourselves, but that’s who we are. It’s
blinding. Dazzling. Beautiful. Very painful, but very real.
We walk with it. Work with it. Sing songs to honor and
protect it. Wounds are revealed, healed, become our
strength and our shield. Internal lands are explored.
Monsters are banished. And in the end, we bring some
of all this back into life, even as we put our clothes back on.”
She shifts and settles, ponders and pads about the room, then
smiles and says: “Well have a good time then.”
- Greg Kimura
The Reckoning
All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.
We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.
What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keeps us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.
- Theodore Roethke
Funeral Blues
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
- W.H. Auden
I love this poem! One (meaning I) usually thinks of Auden as a "public poet" somehow, mainly. But as a love poet he can be sublime! Here's another one which a friend sent me recently:
SONG
W.H. Auden
The chimney sweepers
Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;
The lighthouse keepers
Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;
The prosperous baker
Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;
The undertaker
Pins a small note on the coffin saying, "Wait till I return,
I've got a date with Love."
And deep-sea divers
Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top,
And engine-drivers
Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;
The village rector
Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;
The sanitary inspector
Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm --
To keep his date with Love.
ps: a friend in Walnut Creek was a protege of Auden, as a young man. I'll ask him if he has anything to share.
Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems
Every revolution needs fresh poems
that is the reason
poetry cannot die.
It is the reason poets
go without sleep
and sometimes without lovers
without new cars
and without fine clothes
the reason we commit
to facing the dark
and
rein ourselves, regularly, to the possibility
of being wrong.
Poetry is leading us.
It never cares how we will
be held by lovers
or drive fast
or look good
in the moment;
but about how completely
we are committed
to movement
both inner and outer;
and devoted to transformation
and to change.
- Alice Walker
Reading Neruda While Waiting for an Ultrasound
We try hard not to fall into error - like trying to avoid the beehive, though it's where the honey is kept.
Autocorrect wants to make beehive Bernice, wants to turn Neruda into Jerusalem
My own eyes, when they spot The Redress of Poetry on my shelf, see The Red Dress of Poetry.
When i love you less than perfectly, it is the same.
When I am the sand in your soap, it is the same.
Peel back the edge for the honey.
- Michael Sierchio
Reckoner
You open your mouth—wide, wider—
and voilà, a foggy forest
slips out. Open again and spit
a castle. And so on…for a moat,
a stable, and the ever
sallying-forth dead aunties.
Sure, you can spew a distant fire-chucking
volcano. Or blow a spit-bubble
with a baby in it. What language,
what words will said baby let fly
when you’re nowhere? When you’re
roaming her dreams with her dear deceased
(& why were hers all ball-gowned up?),
when you’re a dirt speck in an earth clod
in a world that’s eventuated…back to
warlessness, back and back to only rats
in the underground, back back back
to fowl becoming fish.
- Nance Van Winckel
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
- Billy Collins
What a great poem! Just as Al Young is now characterized as "California Poet Laureate Emeritus", let's not ever forget Billy, America's Renowned Poet Laureate Emeritus.
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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
When I forget how to use Google, will I then know that I've gotten truly forgetful?
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Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
- Mary Oliver
Litany
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they are dreamed and are dead.
from Yeats’ “Easter, 1916”
Enough to know.
They are dreamed.
And are dead.
The litany in my head
Utters their names
One by one.
Dead. Not dead.
Dreamed.
The beginning. Kneel down
On the cold stone floor.
The stone of the heart recalls first
Her name. Mary. The Grandmother,
The grandmother from Wales
Whose voice always took me to the lilt
Of Dylan Thomas.
Then the children: Marietta Walker,
First child of the young bride.
Donald, after her husband,
Who worked in the mine.
Carrie. Bill. Sam. Norval.
The family grew, boys
Following their father
Into the coal-dark days.
The child Kenneth,
The only one never to reach adulthood,
Adored by my mother, Maggie May.
(Maggie May, Margeret, Midge—
Alll names worn by my mother.)
And the youngest: Betty (Mary Elizabeth).
Elbert. Lucy Florence. Robert.
Twelve children and never an angry word
From the parents from Wales, from Scotland.
But the names go on. Chidren
Of their children. Cousins. Brothers.
My knees, on that ancient stone
Known to my memory, have no feeling.
Only telling.
The names
Come faster.
They are hard to say.
And now, in silence,
The stone. My heart. My love.
Say it.
Enough to know.
Dreamed.
And dead.
- Fran Claggett
Quiet Psalm
Let there be a quiet that falls like grace,
over all of us:
over our hands
which have slowly become guns,
our teeth, now daggers,
and over our hearts,
which explode with the suicide bombs.
Let us take ourselves back
to the first time we saw each other
on the Fertile Crescent,
where we drew water to drink
from the same river,
or back to the first playground
where you asked, What's your name?
and I responded, I am you.
Let us follow this unmentioned history
back in time so that we may see
that the suffering of one
is the suffering of all,
and furthermore,
the responsibility.
Let us gather up our missiles,
our shrapnel, our tanks,
our nuclear threats, and our hatred
and ask:
How could I have thought
to use these against you?
And let there a quiet that falls over us like grace,
as we stand dumbed by the asking.
And then
let there be a Listening
for the deepest of answers.
- Silvio Machado
So beautiful. Thanks again, Larry.
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Red Brocade
The Arabs used to say
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he's come from,
where he's headed.
That way, he'll have strength enough
to answer.
Or, by then you'll be such good friends
you don't care.
Let's go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came!
I was not preparing to be busy.
That's the armor everyone put on
to pretend they had a purpose
in the world.
I refuse to be claimed.
Your plate is waiting.
We will snip fresh mint
into your tea.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
This brings to mind Waccobees following the quest of the black bear cub last year at about this time on this website. Can we all resolve that should such an event recur, that we take whatever measures necessary to preserve the life of these treasured beings. I, for one would gladly contribute to the owner of injured or dead goats in hopes of preserving the larger animal's life.
That bear traveled several miles through whatever wild places were available to it. and the people who killed it over a dead goat live in a wild area very near Boho Grove. Let's make every effort to preserve whatever wildlife we have left as long as we are not in danger and be unified in this effort.
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Reverse Living
Life is tough.
It takes up a lot of your time. All your weekends.
And what do you get at the end of it -
Death - A great reward.
I think that the life cycle is all backwards.
You should die first. Get it out of the way.
Then you live 20 years in an old folks home.
You get kicked out when you're too young.
You get a good watch. You go to work.
You work for 40 years until you are young enough to enter college.
You learn to party until you are ready for High School.
You go to High School, Grade School,
You become a little kid.
You play, you have no responsibilities.
You become a little baby.
You go back into the womb.
You spend the last nine months floating
Only to finish off as a gleam in somebodies eye.
- Lynne Vance
this is a grand scheme, but knowing what I/we know now, just how innocent could I/we become when regressed to youth and infancy? just sayin' ...
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Beet Poetry
I have seen the best veg of my germination destroyed by cooking:
carrots, beetroot, swedes; mashed with butter by angry chefs at dusk,
or grated and juiced by the illuminated machinery of kitchens
purple-headed onions burning in forgotten pans in neon-lit takeaways
and lettuce, turning, turning:
caught in the starry dynamo of the machinery of saladspinner.
Carrots, who curled, abandoned, on chopping boards; and leeks
who ran through streets in mad dreams screaming “celeriac! celeriac!”.
who rotted down on compost heaps
who sprouted in the supernatural dark of larders,
who were lost, beneath mouse-grey mould on ectoplasmic fridge-door shelves
who were rooted in the shadow of Didcot smokestacks
who cowered in terror under September squash-leaves
who tasted radiant cool flesh, of early-morning marrows
and who wept onion-tears as they contemplated
knifesteel, from hessian sacks and box-scheme crates:
who faced the peeler and the grater in insane fear of casserole
and nightmares of spilt beetrootblood, and gouged potato-eyes
who were macerated, blended, chopped; or marinated overnight with wine:
who leached their flavours into stock, or roasted crisp around the body of a duck
who dreamed of honey-glaze. Chillies,
who spilled their hot seed carelessly on formica worktops, and parsnips
too obscene for supermarket shelves: who were diced and boiled
for pasties and trapped inside the crescents of crusts, or
who found their place in cold cottage-pies
who were gently peeled, and chopped and sliced
with beetroot in the quiet of Oxford kitchens
who were dressed in oil in soft wooden spoonfuls:
who were served in bowls in cornerless rooms,
haunted by the echoes of verse and song
who shared their hearts with loving people,
who dream of broccoli forests and
who understand the power and the poetry
in these thin green stems.
- Jack Prichard
All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
- Shantideva
This one put a smile on my face!
It reminds me of Jiddu Krishnamurti (but with a twist!) who said "Die a little every day" referring to the need to let go of the past in order to make room for the present. As always, thank you Larry!
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Get a job, Beetnik!
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Just listen to those veggies HOWL!
Janet
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Where Is God?
It’s as if what is unbreakable -
the very pulse of life - waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.
It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.
- Mark Nepo
Oración de la lucha del campesino
Enséñame el sufrimiento de los más desafortunados;
así conoceré el dolor de mi pueblo.
Líbrame a orar por los demás
porque estás presente en cada persona.
Ayúdame a tomar responsabilidad de mi propia vida;
sólo así, seré libre al fin.
Concédeme valentía para servir al prójimo
porque en la entrega hay vida verdadera.
Concédeme honradez y paciencia
para que yo pueda trabajar junto con otros trabajadores.
Alúmbranos con el canto y la celebración
para que se eleve el espíritu entre nosotros.
Que el espíritu florezca y crezca
para que no nos cansemos de la lucha.
Acordémonos de los que han caído por la justicia
porque a nosotros han entregado la vida.
Ayúdanos a amar aun a los que nos odian;
así podremos cambiar el mundo.
Amen.
por César E. Chávez, Fundador del UFW (1927-1993)
Robert Lentz
Prayer of the Farm Workers' Struggle
Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
thus I will know my people's plight.
Free me to pray for others,
for you are present in every person.
Help me take responsibility for my own life
so that I can be free at last.
Grant me courage to serve my neighbor
for in surrender is there truly life.
Grant me honesty and patience
so that I can work with other workers.
Enlighten us with song and celebration
so that the spirit will be alive among us.
Let the spirit flourish and grow
so that we will never tire of the struggle.
Let us remember those who have died for justice
for they have given us life.
Help us love even those who hate us;
thus we can change the world.
Amen.
by César E. Chávez, UFW Founder (1927-1993)
All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
- Shantideva
The Seder Dinner
For Sherrye on her 80th birthday
The emerald in the jeweler’s case is magnificent,
for it is rare;
the shimmering green dragonfly in the sun is more so,
for it is not.
Life constantly presents itself in a vast, breathtaking array
of ingredients; to make of it what we will.
A child wishes for an unending menu of desserts,
but the wise cook knows the balance of sweet and bitter,
rich and lean.
She works with what is given, eating each meal
as the feast that it is.
Unconcerned with whether the kitchen is clean
or if the pantry is full for tomorrow,
she savors each bite of the complex and rich stew that has
cooked over time, knowing that it nourishes her with a
deepening wisdom; a satisfying repast.
Live in fullness for all of your days.
- Alan Cohen
Snowflakes
Ecclesiastes says “for everything there is a season.”
You say “It’s tax season;
it’s baseball season; it’s allergy season;
I’ve got to season the steak on the barbie;
besides, I don’t have time to change the world.”
Goethe tells us of the genius, power and magic in boldness.
You say “What can I do, anyway?
The foxes are guarding the henhouse;
the juggernaught is out of control;
we’re all just snowflakes in a windstorm.”
The mountain asks “Which snowflake, falling,
will be the one to send down the avalanche
to change this entire landscape?”
- Larry Robinson
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