Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

They


The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
New right to breed an honourable race,
They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'



'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'
And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange.'

- Siegfried Sassoon

The Paradox


I am the mother of sorrows,
I am the ender of grief;
I am the bud and the blossom,
I am the late-falling leaf.


I am thy priest and thy poet,
I am thy serf and thy king;
I cure the tears of the heartsick,
When I come near they shall sing.


White are my hands as the snowdrop;
Swart are my fingers as clay;
Dark is my frown as the midnight,
Fair is my brow as the day.


Battle and war are my minions,
Doing my will as divine;
I am the calmer of passions,
Peace is a nursling of mine.


Speak to me gently or curse me,
Seek me or fly from my sight;
I am thy fool in the morning,
Thou art my slave in the night.


Down to the grave will I take thee,
Out from the noise of the strife;
Then shalt thou see me and know me—
Death, then, no longer, but life.


Then shalt thou sing at my coming,
Kiss me with passionate breath,
Clasp me and smile to have thought me
Aught save the foeman of Death.


Come to me, brother, when weary,
Come when thy lonely heart swells;
I’ll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
Down where the Dream Woman dwells.


- Paul Laurence Dunbar
(June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His parents were slaves. He died at 33 from tuberculosis.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

- Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) spent much of his short, adult life as a volunteer soldier for the British military during World War I.
He wrote vivid and terrifying poems about modern warfare. Owen was killed by machinegun fire just days before the end of the war.

What a powerful poem!

Leonard Cohen used the same images to decry the slaughter of part of a generation in the Vietnam era, in his song "Story of Isaac." Here are the lyrics of the first 3 verses (masterful, imo! There's a 4th verse I don't really care for.), and below, a link to a YouTube video of Cohen singing the song:

The door it opened slowly,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtdYnhnoGI0

My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
And you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
The lake a lady's mirror,
We stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
He looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By the Devil or the Lord.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

Cinders

With every breath I take
I inhale the ash of homes
where families convened,
the trees that exhaled oxygen
and gave birds a place to rest
I breathe in the Safeway, the Taco Bell
that exploded in the dead of night
and the remains of squirrels and spiders
and grasshoppers, who had nowhere to run
as flames surrounded them


A hundred miles from the fire
There’s not a cloud in the sky
Yet it’s still gray. And cold.
Two small birds chatter outside my office
They can’t stay inside today,
or wear masks to filter the air


A year ago the smoke came from our county
The pall it created spread thick and wide
Today we inhale misery from far away
The singed dreams of our neighbors
Knowing that nothing will ever be as it was
But that from the ashes springs renewal

- Michael Shapiro

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

velociraptor


she puts her clawed finger to her
terrifying lips & whispers

tell them
tell them predators
only hunt when hungry

of course she means wild predators
not the domesticated cat
contaminated by human whim

when we’re hungry we hunt
when we’re successful we kill
when we kill we eat
then we’re not hungry
all our neighbors relax
we enjoy each other’s beauty

she is light on her feet
the plodding protoceratops lifts his heart
seeing the speed of her dance
across the plain

scents of grasses mingle
with the soft grinding of cretaceous teeth
the rumbling of digestion
heavy legs impressing the soil
bending the blades

the sun falls abundantly & warm
soft colors of skin undulating over muscles
scaled, feathered & fragrant
everyone’s motions fascinate everyone’s eyes
a symphony of effort & repose

velociraptor rejoices
it’s a good day & all around are big & small bodies
breathing, singing praises of abundance & suspense
light on her feet she dances
light on her feet she entertains
she is entertained
not hunting

- Sandy Eastoak

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

The Tubbs Fire from Freestone

It was midnight and I could not sleep.
My window open and barely a hint of smoke,
a gas grill, I thought, or the first fire
this season in a neighbor’s wood stove.
Terrible winds were in the trees
a death rattle shaking of
the pull-down shades
in an open window.
I still did not know why
I could not, could not sleep
in the yet ocean-moist autumn air.

The next morning I woke to a world
now bone dry and strange, oddly metallic,
a coppery sky and its dull shining.
I took a photo of that eerie color
escaping the clouds and burning
into my consciousness.
I drove inland as I always do for coffee
to spark-plug the day. And I saw it,
and pulled over. Blood orange
the sun as I had never seen before.
It scared me the way heat-
lightning did that first time,
of no warning and not knowing
what it was.

I took another picture of that
sun, red siren of warning,
signaling an already charred
County and its remains,
its kiln dried bone fragments,
skeletons of an old world.
A choking smoke
beginning of this other!

It will take years and lifetimes
to sift through the black presence:

the raku-glazed shards,
the inky charcoal earth, now toxic,
the fire bombing of treasures,
landmarks exploded, and everywhere
cars are deader than doornails.

We are all breathing-in melted electronics.
whole stoves, refrigerators, computers,
plus bibles, trees, dead birds. Whole libraries
vanish into our lungs along with the deer.
Black clouds of ash descend
as entire neighborhoods
become unfamiliar, are bequeathed
to the bravery of first responders
still evacuating residents, and
their animals, and fighting fire.
Ambulances scream: a horrible
midnight parade that went on until morning.
Freeways packed, all the way to San Francisco!
A trauma stained beginning of that day
begins a collective story of dying and rising
together for years, companions of that ash.

- Judith Stone

It’s Always Been About Wind


It’s early and the top of the oak
wet with dew is swaying, calling me
as it did when I was a boy, and
the birds, singing before we wake,
are the hearts of those who’ve
suffered, reborn as soft things
that sit in trees.

As for me, I’ve become
a hollow bone through which
things long needing to be said
are sung, though I often don’t
know what they mean.

I have been carved out, one
heartache at a time, to make
a clear sound. I don’t cite this
as a principle, just what
happened to me.

I lean my head to the wind
and my heart sings. Then
I eat the song.

- Mark Nepo

How to be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity…

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

- Wendell Berry

Darling


1.

I break this toast for the ghost of bread in Lebanon.
The split stone the toppled doorway.

Someone's kettle has been crushed.
Someone's sister has a gash above her right eye.

And now our tea has trouble being sweet.
A strawberry softens, turns musty,

overnight each apple grows a bruise.
I tie both shoes on Lebanon's feet.

All day the sky in Texas that has seen no rain since June
is raining Lebanese mountains, Lebanese trees.

What if the air grew damp with the names of mothers?
The clear-belled voices of first graders

pinned to the map of Lebanon like a shield?
When I visited the camp of the opposition

near the lonely Golan, looking northward toward
Syria and Lebanon, a vine was springing pinkly from a tin can

and a woman with generous hips like my mother's
said, "Follow me."

2.

Someone was there. Someone not there now
was standing. In the wrong place
with a small moon-shaped scar on his cheek
and a boy by the hand.
Who had just drunk water, sharing the glass.
Not thinking about it deeply
though they might have, had they known.
Someone grown, and someone not grown.
Who imagined they had different amounts of time left.
This guessing-game ends with our hands in the air,
becoming air.
One who was there is not there, for no reason.
Two who were there.

It was almost too big to see.

3.

Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate
he likens it to a darling.

We will take this word in our arms.
It will be small and breathing.
We will not wish to scare it.
Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.
Nothing else will save us now.
The word "together" wants to live in every house.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

Communion, NYC
September 25, 2001, for A.

He is breathing the dust
of his neighbors.
At night he wakes
to cough a path of air
down his throat between
their body motes.
In the day he walks streets
fluttered with faces they once wore
and flags. Grief-
cry, battle-cry, wind.

**
Their ashes
line his lungs now,
stir on his air,
sting on his unskinned eye.
He drinks the tea
they make of his tears,
serves it to others
whose names he does not know.

***
In his dream, death is finally worn
on the surface. A small black square
above each head and to the right:
undeniable.

***
He wakes to clear his throat in the night.
Death is inside him now,
released
from its long exile in the grave.
His body is the charnel ground,
his breath the white white vulture
churning ash into bread
bread into touch
touch passed from stranger
to stranger
through the dust
of fallen walls.

- Kim Rosen

Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene

Thank you, instant mashed potatoes, your bland taste
makes me feel like an average American. Thank you,

incarcerated Americans, for filling the labor shortage
and packing potatoes in Idaho. Thank you, canned

cranberry sauce, for your gelatinous curves. Thank you,
Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin, your lake is now polluted

with phosphate-laden discharge from nearby cranberry
bogs. Thank you, crisp green beans, you are my excuse

for eating apple pie à la mode later. Thank you, indigenous
migrant workers, for picking the beans in Mexico’s farm belt,

may your children survive the season. Thank you, NAFTA,
for making life dirt cheap. Thank you, Butterball Turkey,

for the word, butterball, which I repeat all day butterball,
butterball, butterball because it helps me swallow the bones

of genocide. Thank you, dark meat, for being so juicy
(no offense, dry and fragile white meat, you matter too).

Thank you, 90 million factory-farmed turkeys, for giving
your lives during the holidays. Thank you, factory-farm

workers, for clipping turkey toes and beaks so they don’t scratch
and peck each other in overcrowded, dark sheds. Thank you,

genetic engineering and antibiotics, for accelerating
their growth. Thank you, stunning tank, for immobilizing

most of the turkeys hanging upside down by crippled legs.
Thank you, stainless steel knives, for your sharpened

edge and thirst for throat. Thank you, de-feathering
tank, for your scalding-hot water, for finally killing the last

still-conscious turkeys. Thank you, turkey tails, for feeding
Pacific Islanders all year round. Thank you, empire of

slaughter, for never wasting your fatty leftovers. Thank you,
tryptophan, for the promise of an afternoon nap;

I really need it. Thank you, store-bought stuffing,
for your ambiguously ethnic flavor, you remind me

that I’m not an average American. Thank you, gravy,
for being hot-off-the-boat and the most beautiful

brown. Thank you, dear readers, for joining me at the table
of this poem. Please join hands, bow your heads, and repeat

after me: “Let us bless the hands that harvest and butcher
our food, bless the hands that drive delivery trucks

and stock grocery shelves, bless the hands that cooked
and paid for this meal, bless the hands that bind

our hands and force-feed our endless mouth.
May we forgive each other and be forgiven.”

- Craig Santos Perez

Grace


Though the world is dented and dinged
and scuffed and scorned,
we trim the beans and peel the potatoes,
and the kitchen is warm and full
of laughter. We hum as we work
and break into scraps of song.
All day our hands are joyful
as they prepare the meal to come.
There are wars and battles even now,
not all of them fought with guns,
some waged intimately in our thoughts,
our scraped up hearts. And still,
this scent of apple pie, sweetening
as it bakes, this inner insistence
that love is not only possible,
it is every bit as real as our fear.
Whether the host has brought
out his best wine and his best crystal glasses
or water in chipped clay cups,
there is every reason
to be generous, to serve not only
our family, our friends, ourselves,
but also those we don’t yet know how to love
and those parts of ourselves we
have tried to keep separate.
Tonight the host has hidden bait
in the dinner—we all are caught.
Scent of sage, scent of mushrooms
and cream. The bite of cranberry.
Never mind the potatoes cooked too long.
Blessings seep into all the imperfect places,
even if you can’t name the blessings—
consider them secret ingredients.
The point is not to understand the feast,
but to eat, to eat it together.

- Rosemerry Trommer

Ode to Gratitude

Thanks to the word
that gives thanks.
Thanks to the gratitude
for how excellently
the word melts snow or iron.

The planet seemed full of threats
until soft
as a translucent
feather,
or sweet as a sugary petal,
from lip to lip,
it passed,
thank you,
magnificent, filling the mouth,
or whispered,
hardly voiced,
and the soul became human again,
not a window,
some clear shine
penetrated the forest:
it was possible again to sing beneath the leaves.

Gratitude, you are medicine
opposing
scorn’s bitter oxides,
light melting the cruel altar.

Perhaps
you are also
the carpet
uniting
the most distant men,
passengers spread out
through nature
and the jungle
of unknown men,
merci,
as the delirious train
penetrates a new country,
eradicating frontiers,
spasibo,
joined with the sharp-cusped
volcanoes, frost and fire,
thanks, yes, gracias, and the Earth
turns into a table,
a single word swept it clean,
plates and cups glisten,
forks jingle,
and the flatlands seem like tablecloths.

Thanks, gracias,
you travel and return,
you rise
and descend.
It is understood, you don’t
permeate everything,
but where the word of thanksgiving
appears like a tiny petal,
proud fists hide
and a penny’s worth of a smile appears.

- Pablo Neruda

:heart:Gracias! :heart:

When Giving Is All We Have

One river gives
Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

- Alberto Ríos

What the Birds Know

once we have looked away
once we have mourned
and banished all smoldering thoughts
about the tribe of blackened trees
replacing the known world
for now and another season
and the last long fingers of smoke
have been ushered out by wind
a ticking begins
no one has seen them arrive in such numbers
the birds are neither lost nor passing through
they are simply linked tight
to the lingering scents
the promise of white fruits
protein concealed by bark
so were the ways of ancestors
who began their journeys
as specks in the distance
some fifty thousand years ago
riding miles of smoky gold
along a known line of hunger
growing closer and closer
the black beat of instinct
working a migration upstream
against the flow of smoke
into the source and its multiple riches
one preens its dusk-and-opal plumage
others tap like a knock on the door
whose answer is advice provided
by the ages
long as genetic fibers coiled
in every cell beak and bone
muscle and shiny eye
the birds are awake to the growth
and abundance soon to follow
with the diligence
of all known colors unfurling
from the soil’s chocolatey darkness
from the trees re-greening come spring
from the blackness

- Maya Khosla
(Maya Khosla is Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate)

Our Fire Circle Tree

Every Wednesday in Sebastopol, California, a small group
of men meet around an outdoor fire at the foot of an old Gravenstein apple tree


We are witnessed and inspired by this age-old tree
some branches lost to storm or time
some covered with cankers and galls
a trunk hollowed to a twisted shell
by fire and little creatures
yet still claiming its sacred ground

And upon the rising of the sun season

its blood stirs 

buds burst into exquisite white blossoms

and it emerges as a bride

ready to renew her vows to life once again

when the bees grant their blessing



Then upon the rising of the moon season

it settles into awe and gratitude 

knowing that its union, unlike the salmon’s,

will not claim its life

and silently revels in the dreams

of what is yet to come

- Jean-Pierre Swennen

Fire and Ice Revisited Following the October 2017 Blaze That Consumed Our House (apologies to Robert Frost)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what Frost tasted of desire
He held with those who favor fire.
But added if it must end twice,
His understanding of man’s hate
Informed him for destruction ice
Is also great and would suffice.
But in my present case I note
The first becomes my final vote.
What’s been started from a flicker
Gets it done a whole lot quicker.

- Ed Coletti

To Create An Enemy


Start with an empty canvas
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.

Dip into the well of your own
disowned darkness
with a wide brush and
stain the strangers with the sinister hue
of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,
hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as
your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the
abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares - devils
demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become
merely an enemy of G-D, an impediment
to the sacred dialectic of history.


- Sam Keen

For the Children

They were unutterably lovely, the aliens,
when finally we knew them, when at last we understood
they had lived and moved among us from the beginning

in bodies the image of ours, through smoother, eyes wider,
as if the world were a little darker for them, or more wonderous,
and we loved them as wildly and deeply and helplessly

as our first loves, our dreams, our lost ones, all at once,
though we knew they were wilder and deeper than we were, and freer,
and loving them only deepened our loneliness.

When they gathered on evening corners, faintly luminous,
and their murmurring rose in urgency, calling on stars,
we feared they would leave us for worlds far, far beyond us,

though we dared not ask, in their language so eerily ours,
Will you carry us with you?—lest they look away, bored
with our dullness, our burdensome love, our ignorant dying.

What could we, after all, with our dim minds, our narrowed snesoria,
know of the lightning of their thoughts, the storm of their joys?—
or their sorrows, for sorrow was theirs, they were lords of sorrow.

Why in the world these creatures, immortal and perfect,
should be so gloomy and aimless was beyond us,
yet they grew so slowly into the unprecedented lives

we had thought they would seize instantly as their right
that it seemed the long long future brooding over them
was so heavy they could hardly bear it forward one little step.

And at last they dismissed the fantastic travels, faster then light,
that had landed them only here, and their magic technologies
that had taught them, it seemed, what anyone could have told them,

and they ceased to gather on corners, dreaming of rescuers,
and glanced, if at all, only sidelong at the stars.
Maybe some earthly pathogen had worn them,

or the weakness of our yellow sun had left tem so wan
that even their radiant children could not tell them from us
when they sat with us, sipping at coffee, a little more patiently now,

enduring our sadness, our sad adoration, even our sad relief
that life was a little less possible than once we had hoped,
and gratefully meeting our eyes, since who else in the universe knew

that they were as luminous and unutterably lovely
as our first loves, our dreams, our lost ones all at once,
so impossible they were beautiful, so beautiful they were true?

- James Richardson

The Carrying
The sky’s white with November’s teeth,
and the air is ash and woodsmoke.
A flush of color from the dying tree,
a cargo train speeding through, and there,
that’s me, standing in the wintering
grass watching the dog suffer the cold
leaves. I’m not large from this distance,
just a fence post, a hedge of holly.
Wider still, beyond the rumble of overpass,
mares look for what’s left of green
in the pasture, a few weanlings kick
out, and theirs is the same sky, white
like a calm flag of surrender pulled taut.
A few farms over, there’s our mare,
her belly barrel-round with foal, or idea
of foal. It’s Kentucky, late fall, and any
mare worth her salt is carrying the next
potential stake’s winner. Ours, her coat
thicker with the season’s muck, leans against
the black fence and this image is heavy
within me. How my own body, empty,
clean of secrets, knows how to carry her,
knows we were all meant for something.

- Ada Limon

She is Spitting a Mouthful of Stars
(nikâwi’s song)

She is Spitting a Mouthful of Stars
She is laughing more than the men who beat her
She is ten horses breaking open the day
She is new to her bones
She is holy in the dust


She is spitting a mouthful of stars
She is singing louder than the men who raped her
She is waking beyond the Milky Way
She is new to her breath
She is sacred in this breathing


She is spitting a mouthful of stars
She is holding the light more than those who despised her
She is folding clouds in her movement
She is new to this sound
She is unbroken flesh


She is spitting a mouthful of stars
She is laughing more than those who shamed her
She is ten horses breaking open the day
She is new to these bones
She is holy in their dust.

- Gregory Scofield

Sacred Wine

Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.

Hold it like a sacred wine in a golden cup.

The wine may break you and if it does, let it.

To be human is to be broken,

and only from brokenness can one be healed.

The ancestors say:

the world is full of pain,

and each is allotted a portion.

If you do not carry your share,

then others are forced to carry it for you,

And the suffering you bring

to the world is your sin,

But the suffering you bring

to yourself will be your hell.

Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.

Hold it there like a sacred wine in a golden cup.

- Greg Kimura

American Song

I'm in sweatpants, pouring boiling water
over grounds that smell of soil
and autumn ferment.
The radio is pouring out Bye bye
Miss American Pie
so I scoop up the cat for a dance.
Hey Jackson, this country has lost
its mind and I don't know
what to do I whisper,
right into his soft pink ear.
He stares at me quizzically,
his narrow face part lynx,
part fallen angel and I don't know what
he says back except it looks like
I want to eat you.
All these years I've spent
pouring words onto the page,
while the work of the street goes on
outside my window:
traffic and yelling and mariachi and wafting
smoke from my neighbor's barbeque,
and kids walking to school and their parents
running after them with homework they forgot.
The poem works or it doesn't,
my life has meaning, or not,
and it all keeps pouring through anyway,
like lava, molten, relentless.
And yes, I am caught
in the honey of my time
like a bug trapped in amber,
and I make what I can of the struggle.
Okay Jackie, I say to my disdainful,
needy familiar.
We're well on our way
toward the mouth of the falls now,
so let me be poured like oil
or wine or cool sweet water,
over the lip of the world,
into the heart of the song.

- Alison Luterman

Sometimes A Wild God


Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.
When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.
He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.
You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.
The dog barks.
The wild god smiles,
Holds out his hand.
The dog licks his wounds
And leads him inside.
The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.
‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.
When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.
The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.
Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.
You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.
The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.
The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.
The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.
In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.
In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table.
The moon leans in through the window.
The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.
‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’
Listen to them:
The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…
There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.
Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.
Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

- Tom Hirons

The Well


My sons gathered theirs
and walked on
because they had to
and we say thank you and thank you
and thank you
until our hearts stop bleeding

I packed my life and turned
with my stuff and my man
and drove away
from friends gathered
and I shout thank you and thank you
and thank you
until I can hear

My friend stopped writing poems forever
and turned and left the earth
and still I sing thank you and thank you
and thank you
until I can bear our silence

For there in the deep
of gratitude
is
birdsong headlong falling into fullness
hearthwarm clasp of hands familiar
held close hearts beating time
pull of ocean tide
that holds me holy
on nighttime breath of knowing
who I am
in the arms of these
in the face of loss
and abundance

There in the well of
gratitude
where tears know
the worth of every drop

There I know
thank you.

- Sashana Kane Proctor
.

Enriching the Earth

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. Against the shadow
of veiled possibility my workdays stand
in a most asking light. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.

- Wendell Berry

Basket of Figs

Bring me your pain, love. Spread
it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,
warm eggs, cinnamon
and cloves in burlap sacks. Show me

the detail, the intricate embroidery
on the collar, tiny shell buttons,
the hem stitched the way you were taught,
pricking just a thread, almost invisible.

Unclasp it like jewels, the gold
still hot from your body. Empty
your basket of figs. Spill your wine.

That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it,
cradling it on my tongue like the slick
seed of pomegranate. I would lift it

tenderly, as a great animal might
carry a small one in the private
cave of the mouth.

- Ellen Bass

Cause Of Death: Fox News

Toward the end he sat on the back porch,
sweeping his binoculars back and forth
over the dry scrub-brush and arroyos,

certain he saw Mexicans
moving through the creosote and sage
while the TV commentators in the living room,

turned up loud enough for a deaf person to hear,
kept pouring gasoline on his anxiety and rage.

In the end he preferred to think about illegal aliens,
about welfare moms and healthcare socialists,
than about the uncomfortable sensation of the disease

crawling through his tunnels in the night,
crossing the river between his liver and his spleen.
It was just his luck

to be born in the historical period
that would eventually be known
as the twilight of the white male dinosaur,

feeling weaker and more swollen every day,
with the earth gradually looking more like hell
and a strange smell rising from the kitchen sink.

In the background those big male voices
went on and on, turning the old crank
about hard work and god, waving the flag

and whipping the dread into a froth.
Then one day my father had finished
his surveillance, or it had finished him,

and the cable-TV guy
showed up at the house apologetically
to take back the company equipment:

the complicated black box with the dangling cord,
and the gray rectangular remote control,
like a little coffin.

- Tony Hoagland

Raking the Leaves with Jack
for Jack Ridl and all the rakers

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...9_14-20-37.png

Pulling the rake through the cottonwood leaves,
I think of Jack in Michigan pulling his rake
through beech, birch, oak and ash leaves.
I stop to lean on my rake and I think
of him stopping to lean on his rake
and talk to the gods. I’m not so sure I believe
in gods, but I believe in Jack. I believe in kindness.

I believe in friendship that grows despite distance.
I believe that these rhythms of raking and making piles
bring us closer together—all of us rakers, all of us
who step into the slow cadence of pull and reach,
and pull and reach. There is something unifying
in this annual act of tidying the world. Every day
the news is full of all we can’t set right. But we
can drag the rake through the yard so that we
can see the path again. And we can set the rake
aside and stare at the sky and think of all
the people we love and all the people
we’ll never know who join us in this simple act,
reach and pull, reach and pull, reach and pull,
the sound of metal tines grating, the beat
of our own hearts scraping against our chests.


- Rosemerry Trommer

language lesson for young angels

the wooden stone fiber box
in which they sleep
in which they dream
the box in which their possessions
keep them
the box is called a house
how’s?
no house
with heart force they say home
ho om
the metal rubber vinyl fiber box
the box in which they roll over
the strips of tar that they lay down
burning smell machine cooking
the thick black goo
the metal box is called automobile
haut oh mo veal?
no aw toe mo beel
with heart force they say my car
mihigh karr
and we funnels of the everlasting godhead’s
grace
we guardians of the young of all species
we warrior shield against wayward meteors
we vibration balancers of all tectonic plates
we singers of the constant Glory
we are called angels
han gelz?
no angels

- Theresa Roach Melia

Cabin Poem

I've decided to make up my mind
About nothing, to assume the water mask,
To finish my life disguised as a creek,
An eddy, joining at night the full,
Sweet flow, to absorb the sky,
To swallow the heat and cold, the moon
And the stars, to swallow myself
In ceaseless flows.

- Jim Harrison,

In Autumn

Sometimes seeing what is not there,
other times not seeing what is,
our legs become tangled,
our hands can’t stop wringing
against themselves. Still,
we live mid-stagger
with pure hearts,
let no one’s ignorance
fool you. People do not
become buddhas. Buddhas
do not become human life.
Unborn and undying
like a torn leaf
in an autumn shower,
when was wholeness
ever not whole?

- Peter Levitt

Mind the Gap


The sign on the platform
of the London underground
reads: Mind the gap.
The phraseology –
so polite,
so formal,
so British –
made me smile
when I saw it
for the first time.
Now, I am listening to
Tibetan Buddhist teacher
Pema Chodron speaking
about the bardos of
life, death and after death.
She says the definition
of bardo is gap,
the in-between state,
transition.
And so, I recall the instruction
on that London
underground platform,
revealing the most profound
of teachings.
Yes.
Mind the gap.

- Maya Spector

Between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Today

I read a Korean poem
with the line “Today you are the youngest
you will ever be.” Today I am the oldest
I have been. Today we drink
buckwheat tea. Today I have heat
in my apartment. Today I think
about the word chada in Korean.
It means cold. It means to be filled with.
It means to kick. To wear. Today we’re worn.
Today you wear the cold. Your chilled skin.
My heart kicks on my skin. Someone said
winter has broken his windows. The heat inside
and the cold outside sent lightning across glass.
Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today
it fills with you. The window in my room
is full of leaves ready to fall. Chada, you say. It’s tea.
We drink. It is cold outside.

- Emily Jungmin Yoon

To Posterity

1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.

You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.


- Bertolt Brecht

(translated by H. R. Hays )

Magos


Pensar que yo, Baltasar de Caldea,
tenedor de las cosas sacras,
dejé los observatorios,
cargado de incienso,
para ir allí.
Aun hasta al punto de encuentro fue largo;
para Melchor de Nubia cargado de oro,
para Gaspar de Tarso cargado de mirra,
fue aun más largo.
Y de allí a Judea
y más allá condujo el lucero-
a la morada de animales,
lugar natal del infante mendigo.
Si era dios,
como todo dios,
ha de haber llegado a mal fin.
¿Qué significaban los agüeros?
Tal vez sería el viaje mismo,
oír de los leones de Nubia,
de los ríos de Tarso;
y sobre todo,
sí, tal vez sobre todo,
el ofrendar.

Magos

To think that I, Balthazar of Chaldea,
keeper of the sacred things,
left the observatories,
laden with frankincense,
to come there.
Even to the point of meeting it was long;
for Melchior of Nubia laden with gold,
for Gaspar of Tarshish laden with myrrh,
it was longer.
And from there to Judea
and the star led on -
to the abode of animals,
birthplace of the infant beggar.
If he was a god,
like all gods,
he must have come to a bad end.
What meant the auguries?
Perhaps it was the trip itself,
to hear of the lions of Nubia,
of the rivers of Tarshish;
and above all,
yes, perhaps above all,
the gifting.



- Rafael Jesús González

To Those Who Have Lost Everything

crossed
in despair
many deserts
full of hope

carrying
their empty
fists of sorrow
everywhere

mouthing
a bitter night
of shovels
and nails

“you’re nothing
you’re shit
your home’s
nowhere”—

mountains
will speak
for you

rain
will flesh
your bones

green again
among ashes
after a long fire

started in
a fantasy island
some time ago

turning
Natives
into aliens

- Francisco X. Alarcón

December, 2018

How can it be? so late in the year.
I feel myself spinning
in ever increasing speed
toward the black hole of solstice
like a piece of discarded meat
gets spun
toward the drain and the grind
of the garbage disposal.

Bears retreat to caves.
Makes sense.
Although the waning light
brings every remaining yellow and red leaf
still clinging to the tree
sharply into focus
and heightens yearning
to a fever pitch
which we translate
into frenzied purchases.

All the resolutions of the past year
are now revealed
as fantasy
once again
I haven’t changed.
All the money spent on transforming me
into something else
is noted in the spreadsheet
- a fool’s golden attempts.

So drawn towards sleep
in this waning light
which panics me further
for what nightmares might
arise and become real enough
to reach through the screen
of projected dreams
and kill me.

- Barbara Hirschfeld

Awakened

In advanced age, my health worsening,
I woke up in the middle of the night
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
And there was no reason for it.
It didn’t obliterate consciousness;
the past, which I carried, was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.
As if a voice were repeating:
“You can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.
You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago.”
The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Happiness

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy
has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything,
these boys.
I think if they could,
they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are
doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale
over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly.
And goes beyond, really,
any early morning
talk about it.

- Raymond Carver

Credo

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

- Edwin Arlington Robinson

Solstice Color

The other day I looked into my airtight sealed jar of sugar in which
Little tiny, crystalline, black specks moved in the glacial field of white
The tiniest ants I’d ever seen.

If we saw a photo negative of our heart
Would we see tiny black specks moving about
In the vast divine field of white light?
Black holes where our grief and disappointments and yearnings are
Sucked into a black abyss of silence?
If we could look deep into those black silences would we see
Tiny crystalline specs of white light?
Like the solstice where in the deep, dark winter night
We light candles and wait for the return of light

My neighbors have two black sheep and
Two white sheep with black hoods of fur,
A black bull with white horns and a black cat with a white left leg and paws
And a black and white sheep dog
They roam and eat in a brilliant green field where
Red autumn leaves fall in the blue sky after gray mornings

Their black and white coats amid the grand scheme of color
Makes me wonder if the way through our darkest nights
Is not through the dark, or the light, but
Though the noisy, chaotic cacophony of color that is our life
The red sorrows, the yellow bliss, green yearning, turquoise love

In the duel nature of our lives, the myriad black and white choices
That we face daily are not separated by gray nuances
But filled and connected by brilliant luminescent color

Like baking white sugar and flour and black chocolate chips
Into a sweet delicacy that gives us colorful delight


- Sally Churgel

Noel

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

- Anne Porter

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,
Where little children age before their time,
And life wears down the edges of the mind,
Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day's life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed,
Christmas is waiting to be born:
In you, in me, in all mankind.

- Howard Thurman

Of Virgin Births

Smile upon your child Mary, Jewish woman of Nazareth. You gave birth to Jesus, remained a
virgin, and rose to be worshiped by his followers. Your son was born at the death of the year. His
coming brought light to the world.

Smile upon your child Coatlicue, earth mother of Mesoamerica, worshiped by the Aztecs. You
gave birth to Huitzilopochtli god of the sun, who brought light to the world, and you remained a
virgin.

Ride Balthasar, ride Melchior, and Gaspar. Follow the star to the manger baring your gifts for
the god-child.

O priest of Huitzilopochtli raise your obsidian knife and bring it down onto the chest of the
sacrificed. Extract his heart with swift skill, that this gift will please and continue to bring the
sun.

And Jesus died a bloody and torturous death that his followers may know life.

Rise over the horizon Huitzilopochtli and bring sun that your followers may grow maize to
sustain themselves. And rise Jesus, rise from the dead, and give of your body and blood that your
followers may sustain themselves.

- Armando García-Dávila.

Another Christmas Story


What if Mary was María
dark skinned and tired
trudging through the desert
pregnant and far from home?


What if Joseph was José
and there was no donkey
but the burden of fear weighed the same?


What if there was no money
for Joseph or José,
and what if the birth pangs grew sharper
for Mary or María?


What if there were no beds
for any of them,
no shelter, no warmth,
only dust and cold stars glittering above?


What if Bethlehem was Texas?


What if the baby was born
in a manger
or a detention center
this Jesus, this Jesús
this child of God?


Would he be revered
or ripped from his mother’s arms,
this Jesus, this Jesús
this child of God?


Wouldn’t the angels rejoice
at this divine spark
born into the world?


Would we?


- Lisa Shulman