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powerful poem! Thank you!
brings this to mind (allied in spirit)
And the breath of God, through the Masters and saints,
brought the rains and the sun in due season.
And when floods came or drought,
they did not huddle in fear or curse the sky,
but looked into their hearts to find the sin
and adjusted their sacrifice to the laws of Nature and God.
(Francis Brabazon, STAY WITH GOD, p. 125)
Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!
- Paul Lawrence Dunbar
On Grief
When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.
Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.
There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.
It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.
Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.
- John O'Donohue
Ars Poetica #100: I Believe
Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said
“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I'”),
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other?
- Elizabeth Alexander
Post time
What my father loved about the track —
time compressed into three-minute segments,
the idea of someone losing his shirt
or a few bucks, or winning big …
He loved the last-minute window,
gamblers tense to place the last winning bet,
and all the losing tickets he stepped on
walking to the boy who ran to get his car.
Once, at ten, sleepless, I carried to his room
some nameless fear I wanted him to soothe.
He told me his secret: to lie on one side
and concentrate to keep away the dread.
I used to think only of my father’s anger.
Now I think of his loneliness.
- Robin Becker
Enough of This
Enough of this—names, titles, roles—
all the bits and pieces
that shored up this self
now crumbling beyond repair.
Let them go.
Watch the memories
and moments
spill like beads
from a broken string
too worn to knot again or replace.
One thing after another,
once piled up like a barricade
against who knows what.
Books, concepts, causes,
travels or acquired tastes—
all futile fumblings
for something to hold on to,
each a willful distraction
from what is happening now.
What matters in this moment?
Not these words but
the wind whistling,
the empty sky, the smell
and touch of grass,
and the clear taste
of water from this glass.
- Newton Smith
I enjoy the images and appreciate the sentiment expressed
However, what if...
that empty sky now burns,
the grass crunches below our feet
and the clear taste of water is befouled?
Perhaps those causes we fight for are not just futile fumblings or willful distractions...
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
wow, love this esp!:
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
How Could I Ever Forget That Flash
How could I ever forget that flash of light!https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...6_12-05-43.png
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...12-03-46-1.png
In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be,
The cries of fifty thousand killed
At the bottom of crushing darkness;
Through yellow smoke whirling into light,
Buildings split, bridges collapsed,
Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers.
Soon after, skin dangling like rags;
With hands on breasts;
Treading upon the broken brains;
Wearing shreds of burn cloth round their loins;
There came numberless lines of the naked,
all crying.
Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like
jumbled stone images of Jizo;
Crowds in piles by the river banks,
loaded upon rafts fastened to the shore,
Turned by and by into corpses
under the scorching sun;
in the midst of flame
tossing against the evening sky,
Round about the street where mother and
brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
The fire-flood shifted on.
On beds of filth along the Armory floor,
Heaps, and God knew who they were?
Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
Pot-bellied, one-eyed, with half their skin peeled
off bald.
The sun shone, and nothing moved
But the buzzing flies in the metal basins
Reeking with stagnant ordure.
How can I forget that stillness
Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousands?
Amidst that calm,
How can I forget the entreaties
Of departed wife and child
Through their orbs of eyes,
Cutting through our minds and souls?
- Mitsuyoshi Toge
Mitsuyoshi Toge, born in Hiroshima in 1917, was a Catholic and a poet. He was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 6, 1945, when he was 24 years old. Toge died at age 36. His firsthand experience of the bomb, his passion for peace, and his realistic insight into the event made him a leading poet in Hiroshima. This poem is from Hiroshima-Nagasaki: A Pictorial Record of the Atomic Destruction (1978).
Hiroshima
How vast the seas of destruction,
the horror!
How ever could our countries speak again?
How could there be another spring?
The depth of such pain,
The unimaginable resilience
of this world!
Is there within us the
same?
- Scott O'Brien
beautiful! man, did you grab me with this!
Is there within us the
same?
Ode To Gaiety
Go gloom
Begone glum and grim
Off with the drab drear and grumble
It's time
its pastime
to come undone and come out laughing
time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets
and feed them to the sourpusses
Come frisky pals
Come forth wily wags
Loosen your screws and get off your rocker
Untie the strait lacer
Tie up the smarty pants
Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw
Share quips and pranks with every victim
of grouch pomposity or blah
Woe to the bozo who says No to
tee hee ho ho and ha ha
Boo to the cleancut klutz who
wipes the smile off his face
Without gaiety
freedom is a chastity belt
Without gaiety
life is a wooden kimono
Come cheerful chums
Cut up and carry on
Crack your pots and split your sides
Boggle the bellyacher
Convulse the worrywart
Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds
Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead
at the guillotine of the mindless
Be wise and go merry round
whatever you cherish
what you love to enjoy what you live to exert
And when the high spirits
call your number up
count on merriment all the way to the countdown
Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle
Long live gaiety
for all the laity
- James Broughton
The Word That Is a Prayer
One thing you know when you say it:
all over the earth people are saying it with you;
a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
he says, Please.
By the time you hear what he's saying,
the light changes, the cab pulls away,
and you don't go back, though you know
someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
Please: a word so short
it could get lost in the air
as it floats up to God like the feather it is,
knocking and knocking, and finally
falling back to earth as rain,
as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
and you walk in that weather every day.
- Ellery Akers
Blackberries
It must be August.
Brambles have taken over the roads,
have conquered the verges
and now invade the rest.
The long fingernails of blackberry canes
run down the blackboard of my car.
"Sweeeeeeeet!" they shriek,
"Sweet, sweeeeeet,"
until I am driven mad with lust,
abandon the vehicle,
heedless of clothing or skin
and plunge into Sleeping Beauty's barrier,
a briar hoard of juice.
Drunk with sugar,
rival to hornets and wasps
I bumble from berry to berry,
wade in, then back out
against an ebb tide of claws.
Stigmata bloom: my blood or the plant's?
Perhaps a blend of both.
Later, at home, consuming crumble or tart,
I wonder at fine red road maps
etched on forearms and shins;
sweetness purchased at a price
I did not know
I was paying at the time.
It must be August.
Endings and beginnings
stand back to back.
Harvest's gloss eclipses
winter's pending loss,
and tangled caverns of seasons past
buttress this moment's bounty;
when Then and Yet-to-Be mingle--
dead cane and subtle seed--
and haunt the sweet sharp syrup
of this summer's day seduction.
- Jane L. Mickelson
Green Apples
In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something:
Saying something urgent.
I was happy.
The green apples fell on the sloping roof
And rattled down.
The wind was shaking me all night long;
Shaking me in my sleep
Like a definition of love,
Saying, this is the moment,
Here, now.
- Ruth Stone
Starfish
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?
Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.
And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.
Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.
So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.
- Eleanor Lerman
Ancestors & Angels
I write words to catch up to the ancestors
An angel told me the only way
to walk through fire
without getting burned
is to become fire.
Some days angels whisper
In my ear as I walk
Down the street and I fall in love
With every person I meet,
And I think, maybe this
Could be a bliss
Like when Dante met
Beatrice.
Other days all I see
is my collusion
with illusion.
Ghosts of projection
masquerading
as the radiant angel
of love.
You know I feel like
the ancestors
brought us together.
I feel like the ancestors
Brought us here and they
Expect great things.
They
expect us to say what
we think and
live how
we feel and follow the hard paths
that bring us near joy.
They expect us
to nurture
all the children.
I write poems to welcome angels
and conjure ancestors.
I pray to the angels of politics
and love.
I pray for justice sake
not to be relieved of my frustrations,
at the same time burning sage
and asking for patience.
I march with the people
to the border
between nations
where
everything stops
except
the greed of corporations.
Thoughts like comets
calculating the complexity
of the complicity.
There is so much noise in the oceans
the whales can’t hear each other.
We’re making them crazy,
driving dolphins insane.
What kind of ancestors
are we?
Thoughts like comets
leaving craters
in the landscape of my consciousness.
I pray to the ancestors and angels.
Meet me in the garden.
Meet me where spirit walks softly
in the cool of the evening.
Meet me in the garden
under the wings of the bird
of many colors.
Meet me
in the garden
of your longing.
Every breath
is a pilgrimage.
Every
breath
is a pilgrimage
to you.
I pray
to be
a conduit.
An angel told me:
The only way
to walk through fire—
become fire.
- Drew Dellinger
Hate to take lines out of context, but these few are sooo great:
Sara
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
takes me there! thanks for the wings! \♥/
In Search of the Very First Seed
It is time to tend the garden again.
It is wise not to wait too long.
I have learned my lesson,
But it wasn’t easy!
For I have been bloodied clearing the bramble of neglect.
Sometimes I think I know what I am doing
and the garden laughs, “Ha you silly soul!”
I was lulled by the pause of darkness,
I grew fat and lost my way
But the garden is still there...waiting.
It is time to tend the garden again.
Its a dirty, filthy...lovely job.
I’d get help but everyone has their own garden to tend.
I thought my garden was a mess, then I saw others
and had to reconsider.
It is time to tend the garden again.
I am in search of the very first seed -
I think it came from the vapor like everything else.
I wonder - is LIFE a specialty of condensation?
I think my garden will teach me.
- Jeff Rooney
Pride
If I claim I was a terrible, horrible,
Evil no-good person,
It would be a lie, and it would be
Wanting always to be the best or the worst.
So now I’m destined to wander,
My bag full of pride a lot lighter,
And if I say I am done
With whatever ails me,
That would also be a lie.
I am not done, will never be done
Till the day I die,
But I am content to be human,
Naked and shaking with love
At the moment, and the next moment,
I just can’t say.
- Noelle Kocot
Peach
Having endured the annual descent into bleak November
and winter – even a California winter –
with its diminished imagination of the edible,
the monotonous shuffle of apples and tasteless bananas,
I long to hear from those messengers
from the Other World of summer.
Asparagus appears first, quickly reserving a space on the grill
for its partner, the fresh salmon (once the price comes down).
Later on I’ll thrill to the advent of vine-ripe tomatoes,
especially the black crims that go so well in Greek salad,
and those glorious red peppers.
But when July announces mid-summer,
Sweet Jesus, the peaches arrive!
A joyous procession of yellow peaches, white peaches,
miniature peaches, peaches with every kind of exotic name.
I admire them, kiss and fondle them,
check them every few hours until they reach that fine line
between ripe and overripe.
I like to make a sliced peach, almond butter and cream cheese sandwich, with really dark, French roast coffee, cream, no sugar!
Call me silly, call me compulsive, say, “Get a life!”
I call myself peach lover, peach aficionado,
devotee of all things round and pink.
Oh great apparition of the mother-goddess herself!
I prostrate myself to you 108 times.
I have lived another year.
- Barry Spector
The Moment
- Dorothy Walters
And not once,
but many times over,
again and again,
how we disappeared
into that deep well
of darkness, shuddering beneath that load of silence,
clinging to our narrow ledge.
Yet the darkness, sometimes,
unfolded as light.
Our atoms dissolved in it,
each separate molecule opening
into a radiant disk of feeling.
How still we became,
witness and thing seen,
spectacle and observer,
each point admitting an untrammeled flood.
The Second Music
Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.
When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it
touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.
I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.
I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.
- Annie Lighthart
Learning
A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.
My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."
Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.
- William Stafford
To The Reader: If You Asked Me
I want you with me, and yet you are the end
of my privacy. Do you see how these rooms
have become public? How we glance to see if—
who? Who did you imagine?
Surely we’re not here alone, you and I.
I’ve been wandering
where the cold tracks of language
collapse into cinders, unburnable trash.
Beyond that, all I can see is the remote cold
of meteors before their avalanches of farewell.
If you asked me what words
a voice like this one says in parting,
I’d say, I’m sweeping an empty factory
toward which I feel neither hostility nor nostalgia.
I’m just a broom, sweeping.
- Chase Twichell
Three Seasons
In the early seventies
Greg and I moved back to the land.
Here, no National Guard, no protests
on the steps of Bank of America,
no hash to smuggle into Isla Vista.
We watched leaves turn copper and vermilion
while rutting elk bellowed through air so still
even the aspen refused to quiver.
The radio played country western.
The local paper came twice a month.
Outside, winter drifts swallowed
fence posts. Inside, I couldn’t feed
the smoke-stained fireplace enough
to warm the house and didn’t think
about the rifle tucked behind
his Gibson guitar in the bedroom closet.
Nights shortened, river ice shattered,
and every morning another newborn calf
shimmered among rangy herds
grazing in spring melt.
With pickax and shovel, Greg
tilled thawing dirt for our garden
but never opened the packet of seeds.
When he told me he wanted to leave this place,
I thought he meant our home.
It didn’t occur to me to hide the bullets.
- Teetle Clawson
Point Reyes
Sandpipers at the margin
in the moon -
Bright fan of the flat creek
On dark sea sand,
rock boom beyond:
The work of centuries and wars,
a car,
Is parked a mile above
where the dirt road ends.
In naked gritty sand,
Eye-stinging salty driftwood campfire
smoke, out far.
It all begins again.
Sandpipers chasing the shiny surf
in the moon light -
By a fire at the beach.
- Gary Snyder
So Many Gifts
There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday,
There are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
"Everything I have is also yours."
Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend
If we break into a sweet laughter
When your heart complains of being thirsty
When ages ago
Every cell in your soul
Capsized forever
Into this infinite golden sea.
Indeed,
A lover's pain is like holding one's breath
Too long
In the middle of a vital performance,
In the middle of one of Creation's favorite
Songs.
Indeed, a lover's pain is this sleeping,
This sleeping,
When God just rolled over and gave you
Such a big good-morning kiss!
There are so many gifts, my dear,
Still unopened from your birthday.
O, there are so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to your life
From God.
- Hafiz
Quartz Clock
The ideas of a physicist
can be turned into useful objects:
a rocket, a quartz clock,
a microwave oven for cooking.
The ideas of poems turn into only themselves,
as the hands of the clock do,
or the face of a person.
It changes, but only more into the person.
- Jane Hirshfield