Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

We Breathe You

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There was a curious dusting of a talcum-like substance on my car one morning last week.

I drove away. It flew off, disappearing into the air.

Then it came to me.

The fires.

The terrible, terrible fires reducing your homes, your towns, even some of you into fine ash and carried on the wind thirty, forty, fifty, miles off.

We read newspapers, see the pictures and videos, wring our hands and pray.

My wife put together blankets, pillows, food and water.
“Paper says you can leave them at Community Market. They’ll get them to the victims.”

I couldn’t get into the market’s driveway for the long lines of those dropping off their boxes filled with concern and love.

Heard that I could take the items to a union hall – “We hopped to get enough to fill a semi truckload,” the man at the hall said, “but we got that on the first day, we’re sending another.”

So many good people.

And the ash of your homes, towns, of you - we breathe it in taking you into our bodies - you literally become us - streaming through our hearts.


- Armando Garcia-Dávila

Moonless Night, Tomales Bay

bioluminescence – n. the emission of light from living organisms

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I set out upon an indigo bay
in evening's spare light,
yellow life jacket and red canoe, frail
against the muscle of dark water.

Pushing past the island
of cormorants and gull,
each stroke ignites ripples; oars
dripping with minute life.

An intimate, star-petaled sky
scatters its glow upon the sea.
Darting fish set a thousand blazes
and the spill of Milky Way
makes horizon meaningless.

Dazzled, I slip
beneath the surface,
the slide of my body against
the tide trails a comet of living light.
I stroke through
shimmering swells,
a second heartbeat.

Lit from inside, my hands open,
reveal the gold coins, passage
to life's unknown edge.
I am not yet ready to spend them,
but if I were, this might be the place,
purified by fire and water.

- Susan Lamont

Fall Comes to Healdsburg


Fall arrives, time’s most favored season—
at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist
so that I no longer need to know who I am

I return to the hills and the great presences—
light, heat, clouds, the bull pines—
to recover for myself the purity of the falling world
to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence

I read the calligraphy of the oaks against
the fading skies, the grass bending in the meadow,
the last robins— I am a circle reaching
the first place for the first time—

in youth among fall leaves I refused
to acknowledge the ancient writing—
that the basket of summer empties, that
the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds—
and yet I stood among fall leaves overjoyed
with the beauty of loss

now I stand on autumn’s wooded knoll
that my life too may vanish
that night may fall into the earth’s arms

time is calling her trout
from their playgrounds in the sea
to river mouth, and redemption, and fury—
for it is by means of the long delay
that we come to the righteousness of passion.


- Lee Perron

September. At the Lake


In early June the lake is new.
Glaciers on the granite rim melt,
rivulets of ice-clouded water gush
down lime-streaked vertical walls.
It is alpine here
with an awareness of snow in every cloud,
even on brilliant blue warm days.
At dawn, wood smoke rises from chimneys.
Campers awake chilled, don sweaters,
brew coffee, greet the morning, wait
for voices rising up along the trail.
Youngsters arrive to scramble over boulders,
climb the cliffs as a test of themselves,
hesitate, then dare the perilous leap.
They fling themselves airward
and the dark lake swallows them in a bellowing splash
until they emerge, gasping.


Throughout the summer, we make the pilgrimage,
yearning to recapture a dream -
these cabins, cold lemonade at the store,
black and white photographs of a time before the road,
a pristine world that once was, everywhere.
The long, endless days stretch toward autumn.
September. The quiet time.
Nothing left to prove, no need to hurry.
The lake is its own slow clock.
It mirrors leaves glowing gold and red.
Trout rise in spreading circles,
aspens shiver dry and sound like
a memory of rain,
jays and squirrels grow plump,
and one last trickle winds its way
from the peak to the lake
playing brook music on the water.

- Elaine Watkins

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, are holding up all this falling.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)

Relax

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice -one white, one black -scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

- Ellen Bass

The Way It Is

There is a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
But you don't ever let go of the thread.

- William Stafford

Eclipse


Hey, the moon doesn't care

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and the clouds don't either.
It was just by chance
that the veil lifted
and there she was
small round inscrutable
high away up in the solstice sky.
A different color,
yes, a little rosy like they’d said,
but only a little,
otherwise not so very different
from any other midnight moon.
Then the cloud curtains closed
and I went back inside.


It was tempting to personify,
but I didn't.
It was just by luck the mist drew back,
just by chance
the rains held off,
and when I felt that friendly
though distant moon saying
“Hello, how do I look like this?”
it was just me making it up.

- Julia Bartlett

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(translated by Robert Bly)

A Momentary Creed

I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me

it extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day

for as long as it is here and is me

- W.S. Merwin

I, Coyote, Stilled Wonder

When did I get this bejawed look,

that flashes up out of creeks and pools?
Was it when I fled across
pasture and through woods,
up to ledge, and came out
in the world to let myself think events
back into their right sequence again?
Man glaring into bloody mess on ground,
cow, who has birthed calf, I,
Coyote, actually tasted,
ate of it well past demarcating line
where calf becomes aftermatter.
I think it was then, when I fled
singing, happy, to wood’s edge.
I could see Man raise arms,
steady his over-and-under, and squeeze.
I, Coyote, I was there, yes I saw it all,
even the flock of tiny lead
that went scattering past.
I felt in me all those that hit,
nearly shattered wraith, clinging
to crushed jawbone, invisibly
slickering through trees, from here on
alone, I, Coyote, stilled wonder.


- Galway Kinnell

Autumn Equinox

Light pregnant with gold develops from
the first glow of red over the horizon,
its shining presence eager to arrive before
the full moon has left the sky.
It is a promise that its decision to leave day by day
will have meaning.

I am held in the stillness of this honeyed presence,
reminded of the exquisite nature of being
in those last moments
before loss becomes certain.

- Jean Norelli

Fig Tree

Offering herself to strangers,

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ripe purple ova,
sweet sacks of seeds
soft for the squeezing and tasting--
somebody tell her
not to do that!
Sprawled all over the sidewalk
for any dogwalker to finger,
any old lady, hobbling by on her walker, gets one,
or homeless guy settling in for a smoke,
or surreptitious single mother
with her plastic bags,
her army of climbing kids.
Not very ladylike,
crotch open for a sneakered foot,
a panting embrace,
and all that black honey, oozing.
See how her heart’s left
smashed on the sidewalk
for feral cats to sniff,
her intimate goo underfoot,
pecked by pigeons, swarmed with ants.
Should have pruned her harder,
brought her up short
before she showed her desire so freely
upraised arms opening to sky, profligate
branches that could poke somebody’s eye out:
such crazy need to feed the world.


- Allison Luterman

I love it! An Open Secret about figs! :): Wish the heck I could find some, the only big tree around here is all picked, nothin' on the ground at all! She is one of my favorite poets, but I sent her my work to critique and she was more critical than I'd thought she'd be, ouch! So I haven't read as much of her since the bruised ego, and now this poem of hers about bruised figs, which is DELICIOUS! :heart:

The Word


Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning - to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing

that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?

that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?

Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,
but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,

the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen

- Tony Hoagland

right on, Baby!

Chant

We live to stay
Alive. Prey all, alert
For predators, aware
We will be eaten.

Omnivorous, life eats all,
Grass, sheep,
The upright Sapiens,
Wolf whole.

Ferocious, tenacious life
Hangs in beautiful balance.
Feral child of chance,
Luck and luckless.

The wily mind
Calculates its chances,
The heart drums
Her maniacal mantra:

Alive, alive, alive.

- Rebecca del Rio

Enlightenment
Ten years ago I couldn't stop thinking, feeling,
Just anger, just rage, until this moment.
A crow laughs, the dust clears, I hold the arhat's fruit.
Spotted sunlight in Zhaoyang Palace, a pale face chanting.
- Ikkyu
(translated by Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith)

ON REMAINING NEUTRAL WHILE YOUR FIVE-YEAR-OLD HANDLES A GUN


It takes practice. It must,
to find just the right balance,
the right way to sift, to modulate energy,
attitude, so he won’t walk
back to the car, eyes glued to asphalt,
filled with rapture or
steeped in judgment,
after touching that thing. You want
him to be infused with nothing but sky. The barrel
is propped (mounted, I guess) on the edge
of a Vietnam copter. A boy
in fatigues keeps watch, with a personal
Airsoft lazily tossed beneath the seat
of the vintage machine he’s been left with.
A boy in fatigues. Left with a Vietnam copter.
The gun’s metal is dull, not the sleek shine
your son’s mind was led to expect by the small
doses of gunplay he’s been able to see
in his carefully-crafted home environment.
Softly, softly, he asks, Mom, what’s this?
His small hands lift and lower the gun on
its perch, no sign of bullets, or battle, or death.
A gun, you answer, so cool. His hands flutter
a moment, then return with a question.
It won’t work anymore, you tell him. Again,
so cool. What was it for? For war. Four days
later, up north, one more young man, barely
a man, releases his misplaced white-hot vitriol into the bodies
of students. Your crafted, elusive
equanimity gone, you unloose all your anger
and fear of the gun not in your home (hush!) but on
Facebook. You even piss off your sister-
in-law. The way we can walk with such marked
restraint amidst casual displays of masculine
violence is itself an object of wonder, you think.
And while you lie on your bed, frazzled and knowing
the sweet, twisted, quite normal joy
of kids being kids, while you fervently
wish the NRA could truly be sent
to a hell you know
will never, ever exist, your five-year-old
wanders in. Elbows propped, small hands under chin:
Mom, I really want a dart-gun.
Shit. It takes practice.


- Amy Elizabeth Robinson

Maple Seeds and Squirrels

How amazing it is
that maple seeds spinning their way down
nourish squirrels
and seeds of all sorts birds feed on
to fly on air that supports bats and flying bugs
who do their own feeding dance
and all so obvious and miraculous at once
and all so at once that time can hold and carry us
until we fall away to spin like maple seeds
and the urgency of sperm and egg
mates new us's to continue spinning
down through whispering atmosphere
thick enough to caress with the wings of our souls
thin enough to let us go when time tells us so.

- Tim Hicks

what a wonderful and gloriously run-on sentence ...

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Maple Seeds and Squirrels

How amazing it is
that maple seeds spinning their way down
nourish squirrels
and seeds of all sorts birds feed on
to fly on air that supports bats and flying bugs
who do their own feeding dance
and all so obvious and miraculous at once
and all so at once that time can hold and carry us
until we fall away to spin like maple seeds
and the urgency of sperm and egg
mates new us's to continue spinning
down through whispering atmosphere
thick enough to caress with the wings of our souls
thin enough to let us go when time tells us so.

- Tim Hicks

---

Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;be ready for whatever it takes to win: we faceannihilation unless all citizens get in line."I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhereother citizens more fearfully bowin a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.Our signs both mean, "You hostages over therewill never be slaughtered by my act." Our vowscross: never to kill and call it fate. - William Stafford

"...we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is a criminal attitude.
In fact, we have been brainwashed."
— from The Realities of War, by The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;be ready for whatever it takes to win: we faceannihilation unless all citizens get in line."I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhereother citizens more fearfully bowin a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.Our signs both mean, "You hostages over therewill never be slaughtered by my act." Our vowscross: never to kill and call it fate. - William Stafford

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The Call Away

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
I want to be out of here, go out,
Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle
Down where no one can find me.
I stare out at the box-elder leaves
Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack
With one door, sit against the door frame.
After twenty years, you will see on my face
The same expression you see in the grass.

- Robert Bly

Shadows

Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
Terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
Senseless acts has its thread looping
Back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
The gold-trimmed thunder
Wanders the sky; the river
May be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
Bring us to grief --- but these are the hours
With the old wooden-god faces;
We lift them to our shoulders like so many
Black coffins, we continue walking
Into the future. I don’t mean
There are no bodies in the river,
Or bones broken by the wind. I mean
Everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
Of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
Of any person, or reason --- I mean
The waters rise without any plot upon
History, or even geography. Whatever
Power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
Dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
The name of the catastrophe, it is never
The opposite of love.

- Mary Oliver

Artificial Tears

We are outliving our eyes
We no longer can cry
In a wicked world politically
uncaring to weep is to act
in some small but at least human
way out or through hopelessness.
Today we watched a dead child
on a foreign beach far from his home
another on a Hungarian railroad track
his father pulling mother and child there
rather than return them to the untenable
and we discovering ourselves to be helpless
are but for this verse individually useless.

- Ed Coletti

Old Friends

Each a mentor
a sherpa
a pathway
a wilderness

Old friends now
elders in gradual
departure into
deeper layers
undiscovered edges
shifting shorelines
a kind of breathing
a sort of threading

in and out
in and out
weaving each other
into living fabric

- Clare Morris

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

- Goethe

(translated by Robert Bly)

For Natalie Rogers:


On the Death of the Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul's gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

- John O'Donohue