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  1. TopTop #1501
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I, Coyote, Stilled Wonder


    When did I get that 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
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  2. Gratitude expressed by:

  3. TopTop #1502
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In My Spare Time


    During my long, boring hours of spare time
    I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
    I establish countries without police or parties
    and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
    I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
    and I create continents and oceans
    that I save for the future just in case.
    I draw a new colored map of the nations:
    I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
    and I let the poor refugees
    sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
    in the fog
    dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
    I switch England with Afghanistan
    so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
    provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
    I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
    to Comoro, the islands
    of the moon in its eclipse,
    keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
    At the same time I transport Baghdad
    in the midst of loud drumming
    to the islands of Tahiti.
    I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
    to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
    This is before I surrender America
    back to the Indians
    just to give history
    the justice it has long lacked.


    I know that changing the world is not easy
    but it remains necessary nonetheless.


    - Fadhil al-Azzawi
    (translation: Khaled Mattawa)
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  5. TopTop #1503
    edie
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    In My Spare Time


    During my long, boring hours of spare time
    I sit to play with the earth’s sphere.
    I establish countries without police or parties
    and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
    I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
    and I create continents and oceans
    that I save for the future just in case.
    I draw a new colored map of the nations:
    I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
    and I let the poor refugees
    sail pirates’ ships to her coasts
    in the fog
    dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
    I switch England with Afghanistan
    so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
    provided courtesy of Her Majesty’s government.
    I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
    to Comoro, the islands
    of the moon in its eclipse,
    keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
    At the same time I transport Baghdad
    in the midst of loud drumming
    to the islands of Tahiti.
    I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
    to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
    This is before I surrender America
    back to the Indians
    just to give history
    the justice it has long lacked.


    I know that changing the world is not easy
    but it remains necessary nonetheless.


    ****- Fadhil al-Azzawi
    ****(translation: Khaled Mattawa)

    I would keep the continents and oceans where they are
    but ship the $banks$ to Alcatraz and sink the Island after that.*
    No credit cards or printed money,
    barter only with solid goods, handy work and mind-creations.
    I would strew the seeds of magic-*
    to enhance our human minds and hearts
    to keep all the goodness and more of it to add.
    Just keep a tiny bit of mean to balance of it all...
    and wars would fade away...

    edith
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  7. TopTop #1504
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Voices from the Trees


    Deep roots
    Wide reach


    Listen to the whispering wind,
    the raging gale.
    Feel the quiet in your depths.


    Release your seeds into the breeze
    You probably won't see
    where they land and grow.


    Your reaction to inevitable wounds
    engenders the face you show the world.


    Offer your fruit
    to all who need it.


    When old, remember the suppleness of youth.
    When young, imagine the strength of age.


    Grow ever toward flaming passion
    as we reach toward the sun.


    - Alan Cohen
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  9. TopTop #1505
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To A Friend whose Work Has Come To Nothing


    Now all the truth is out,
    Be secret and take defeat
    From any brazen throat,
    For how can you compete,
    Being honour bred, with one
    Who, were it proved he lies,
    Were neither shamed in his own
    Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
    Bred to a harder thing
    Than Triumph, turn away
    And like a laughing string
    Whereon mad fingers play
    Amid a place of stone,
    Be secret and exult,
    Because of all things known
    That is most difficult.


    - William Butler Yeats
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  11. TopTop #1506
    edie
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    To A Friend whose Work Has Come To Nothing
    True happiness is of a retired nature,
    and an enemy to pomp and noise;
    it arises, in the first place,
    from enjoyment of one's self,
    and in the next
    from the friendship
    and conversation
    of a few selected companions.

    Joseph Addison
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  13. TopTop #1507
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In the Yuzgir Pass




    For Karim Minu

    As my eyes followed her,
    The dragonfly
    Rose and fled.
    The preying mantis
    Did not reach her.
    If he had,
    Nothing would remain of her
    Save for a colorful pair of wings.

    When the foolish hunter
    Was sleeping in his hiding-place
    In the Yuzgir Pass,
    The pretty gazelle,
    Under my gaze,
    Drank deeply from the spring
    And went away
    And nothing remained of her
    But her recent droppings.

    On our return,
    I found a goat-bell.
    I hung it round my neck
    And we ran down the goat trail:
    I wanted to be the dragonfly's wings
    I wanted to be the gazelle's legs.


    - Majid Naficy
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  15. TopTop #1508
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Ordinary Path to the Limitless

    The child learning the bird
    is not just naming it,
    She is for a fleeting moment
    escaping the prison of the small,
    the self suddenly become vast
    in the bird’s wing and the flying
    song in the secret branches of a tree.
    That song is heard in the ear of a heart
    learning a brown bird’s name, for the first time,
    a brown bird that is neither outside
    nor inside, nor imagined, as it flies off,
    as it merges into the familiar
    magnificence, that is everywhere
    and they are both the size of the sky.


    - Judith Stone
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  17. TopTop #1509
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Alone among mountains and hills,
    coiling like dragons and snakes,
    I've come to live.
    All day, I know nothing
    but joy.
    Sometimes, I climb
    a solitary peak,
    and let loose a howl
    that chills
    the Universe.

    - Khong Lo (?-1119)
    Vietnam
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  19. TopTop #1510
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Price of Right


    So much grace available, but how we receive it depends on what we can let go of.
    - Joi Sharp


    Inside the place where we are right, the rain
    can never fall. Inside the place where we
    are right, the leaves fall yellowed off the trees.
    No breeze. No bells. No peaches. We explain.
    We judge, contend, defend and claim, maintain
    our certainty. And meanwhile, we don't see
    the lilacs wilting, grasses browning, bees
    without their hives, lost crows, the sunset drained.
    But sometimes in this shrinking cage of right
    wings in a doubt. A question. Nothing's clear.
    And see how soon the crows return, a slight
    of breeze, a scent of rain. I'll meet you here,
    this open place, exposed, unclosed. How light
    comes spilling in as our defenses disappear.


    - Rosemerry Trommer
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  21. TopTop #1511
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You Are Not Christ
    New Orleans, Louisiana
    For the drowning, yes, there is always panic.
    Or peace. Your body behaving finally by instinct
    alone. Crossing out wonder. Crossing out
    a need to know. You only feel you need to live.
    That you deserve it. Even here. Even as your chest
    fills with a strange new air, you will not ask
    what this means. Like prey caught in the wolf’s teeth,
    but you are not the lamb. You are what’s in the lamb
    that keeps it kicking. Let it.


    - Ricky Laurentiis
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  23. TopTop #1512
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    There is also this to see:
    They will live on, they will increase,
    No longer pawns of time.
    They will grow like the sweet wild berries
    The forest ripens as its treasure.

    Then blessed are those who never turned away
    And blessed are those who stood quietly in the rain.
    Theirs shall be the harvest; for them the fruits.

    They will outlast the pomp and power
    Of lawmakers, whose meanings will crumble.
    When all else is exhausted and bled of purpose,
    They will lift their hands,
    that have survived.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  25. TopTop #1513
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pentimenti

    "Pentimenti of an earlier position of the
    arm may be seen."—Frick Museum



    It's not simply
    that the top image
    wears off or
    goes translucent;
    things underneath
    come back up
    having enjoyed the
    advantages of rest.
    That's the hardest
    part to bear, how
    the decided–against
    fattens one layer down,
    free of the tests
    applied to final choices.
    In this painting,
    for instance, see how
    a third arm––
    long ago repented
    by the artist**––
    is revealed,
    working a flap
    into the surface
    through which
    who knows what
    exiled cat or
    extra child
    might steal.

    - Kay Ryan
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  27. TopTop #1514
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I never get enough of laughing with you,
    that wild humor.


    Thirsty and dry, I complain, but everything is made of
    water!
    Lonely, yet my head leans against your shirt!
    My wounded hands, your hands.


    Do something drastic.


    You say, "Come and sit in the innermost room,
    where you'll be safe from the love-thief."


    I reply, "But I've tried to be the ringknocker
    on your door, so you won't have to
    always be letting me in and out."


    You say, "No. You stand on the threshold waiting,
    and you're here in the inner chamber too.
    You're at home in both places."


    I love the quietness of such an answer.
    Come to this table of quietness.


    - Jelelludin Rumi
    Ode 2244
    Version by Coleman Barks


    Hitch up your camel. It is time again for Rumi's Caravan, a magical evening of poetry and music, returns. This event usually sells out. Tickets are $25 and are available at the Rug Gallery in Santa Rosa at 514 B Street, at Many Rivers Books and Tea in Sebastopol at 130 S. Main St. and at brown paper tickets. See the attached flyer for more details.


    Where: Glaser Center, 547 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa
    When: February 9. Doors open at 6 pm for pre-show wine and appetizers, and the performance begins at 7 pm.
    Tea and cake will be served at intermission.

    Lavish attire encouraged.

    Performers:

    Carol Fitzgerald
    Claressa Darden Morrow
    Doug von Koss
    Gwynn O'Gara
    Kay Crista
    Larry Robinson
    Maja Apolonia Rodé
    Richard Naegle

    Musicians:
    Cynthia Albers
    Kim Atkinson
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  29. TopTop #1515
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Twilight Under Pine Ridge

    Earth between two lights,
    one just now draining away
    from tiny trees on the western shoulder
    and one to come,
    as the stars begin to open in the field of night.
    On every slope great trees are flowering
    in beautiful relation and yet
    all solitary. In the green darkness
    clear voices leave off
    and fold inward toward sleep.
    The grass
    parts.
    Lord God slides forward on his belly.


    - Robert Mezey
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  30. TopTop #1516
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Descant

    “We, the people…” he intoned, like a master chorister,
    long, lean hands arcing slowly, gracefully,
    pointing upward to that place where sparrows,
    eyed from on high,
    pursue their simple song of happiness and freedom.

    “He wants to annihilate us,” whines the weepy Speaker to his obstinate troops,
    as if turning from tedious, tiresome talk of guns, butter, and sour statistics
    would so disentangle their gnarly grip on the ship of state
    that they and it would sink together,
    like water-logged wooden weights,
    to the dark depths of memory’s vast ocean.

    “We, the people…” over and over he calmly calls us back,
    back from the brink of life-sapping fear,
    back from shallow slogans’ thin air,
    back to that place where confidence reins,
    like boy sopranos singing above the gloom,
    their harmonious descant lifting us skyward
    with a vibrant ancient song.

    - Bill Dickinson
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  32. TopTop #1517
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Boy Died In My Alley


    to Running Boy


    The Boy died in my alley
    without my Having Known.
    Policeman said, next morning,
    "Apparently died Alone."


    "You heard a shot?" Policeman said.
    Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
    I never see the Dead.


    The Shot that killed him yes I heard
    as I heard the Thousand shots before;
    careening tinnily down the nights
    across my years and arteries.


    Policeman pounded on my door.
    "Who is it?" "POLICE!" Policeman yelled.
    "A Boy was dying in your alley.
    A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
    And have you known this Boy before?"


    I have known this Boy before.
    I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.
    I never saw his face at all.
    I never saw his futurefall.
    But I have known this Boy.


    I have always heard him deal with death.
    I have always heard the shout, the volley.
    I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
    And I have killed him ever.


    I joined the Wild and killed him
    with knowledgeable unknowing.
    I saw where he was going.
    I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
    I did not take him down.


    He cried not only "Father!"
    but "Mother!
    Sister!
    Brother."
    The cry climbed up the alley.
    It went up to the wind.
    It hung upon the heaven
    for a long
    stretch-strain of Moment.


    The red floor of my alley
    is a special speech to me.


    - Gwendolyn Brooks
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  34. TopTop #1518
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Be a Slave of Intensity


    Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
    Jump into experience while you are alive!
    Think. . .and think. . .while you are alive.
    What you call “salvation’ belongs to the time before death.


    If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
    do you think
    ghosts will do it after?


    The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
    just because the body is rotten--
    that is all fantasy.
    What is found now is found then.
    If you find nothing now,
    you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of
    Death.
    If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you
    will have the face of satisfied desire.


    So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
    Believe in the Great Sound!


    Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
    it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
    does all the work.
    Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


    - Kabir
    (version by Robert Bly)
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  36. TopTop #1519
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bent to the Earth
    They had hit Ruben
    with the high beams, had blinded
    him so that the van
    he was driving, full of Mexicans
    going to pick tomatoes,
    would have to stop. Ruben spun

    the van into an irrigation ditch,
    spun the five-year-old me awake
    to immigration officers,
    their batons already out,
    already looking for the soft spots on the body,
    to my mother being handcuffed
    and dragged to a van, to my father
    trying to show them our green cards.

    They let us go. But Alvaro
    was going back.
    So was his brother Fernando.
    So was their sister Sonia. Their mother
    did not escape,
    and so was going back. Their father
    was somewhere in the field,
    and was free. There were no great truths

    revealed to me then. No wisdom
    given to me by anyone. I was a child
    who had seen what a piece of polished wood
    could do to a face, who had seen his father
    about to lose the one he loved, who had lost
    some friends who would never return,
    who, later that morning, bent
    to the earth and went to work.


    - Blas Manuel De Luna
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  37. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  38. TopTop #1520
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    State Of The Union (2005)


    Today the President speaks
    of his plan to liberate us all.
    The bodhisattvas have a similar plan,
    but theirs will take a little longer:
    endless lifetimes, in fact.


    His, of course, is more urgent
    due to the coming Rapture,
    when all true believers will be lifted
    out of their cars and clothes
    and credit card debt.


    I, too, pray for the Rapture.
    After they’re gone we’ll untangle
    the wrecked cars and the broken bodies.
    We’ll wash their clothes and give them to the poor.
    We’ll write off their debts and open their homes to the
    homeless.


    Then we’ll get on with rebuilding
    our bombed cities and shattered lives,
    our schools, our libraries and our poisoned soil.
    We’ll clean our rivers, plant rice and bake bread.
    We’ll sing and make love and drink red wine.
    We’ll raise our children and do the laundry
    and argue about much smaller things.


    As for me, I want to smell
    the just open daphne and go for a walk with Cynthia.
    I want to prune the apricot tree
    and talk with my neighbor
    about the unseasonably delicious foretaste of Spring
    this second day of February, 2005.


    - Larry Robinson 2/2/05
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  40. TopTop #1521
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    an orphan & the Dharma do well together
    last week the odd couple gave birth to a divine child
    old friends don’t recognize me
    “how different you look”, they say
    on Cold Mountain it is Spring
    naked I chase butterflies & moonbeams
    mountain outside, mountain inside
    all is wholeness dreaming itself alive

    - Robert Leverant
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  41. Gratitude expressed by:

  42. TopTop #1522
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Song of Wandering Aengus




    I went out to the hazel wood,
    Because a fire was in my head,
    And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
    And hooked a berry to a thread;
    And when white moths were on the wing,
    And moth-like stars were flickering out,
    I dropped the berry in a stream
    And caught a little silver trout.


    When I had laid it on the floor
    I went to blow the fire aflame,
    But something rustled on the floor,
    And someone called me by my name;
    It had become a glimmering girl
    With apple blossom in her hair
    Who called me by name and ran
    And faded through the brightening air.


    Though I am old from wandering
    Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
    I will find out where she has gone,
    And kiss her lips and take her hands;
    And walk among long dappled grass,
    And pluck till time and times are done
    The silver apples of the moon,
    The golden apples of the sun.


    - William Butler Yeats
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  44. TopTop #1523
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Amo Ergo Sum

    Because I love
    The sun pours out its rays of living gold
    Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.

    Because I love
    The earth upon her astral spindle winds
    Her ecstasy-producing dance.

    Because I love
    Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies,
    Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.

    Because I love
    Wind blows white sails,
    The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.

    Because I love
    The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
    The transparent sunlit trees.

    Because I love
    Larks rise up from the grass
    And all the leaves are full of singing birds.

    Because I love
    The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
    Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.

    Because I love
    The iridescnt shells upon the sand
    Takes forms as fine and intricate as thought.

    Because I love
    There is an invisible way across the sky,
    Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
    And all the stars travel that path by night.

    Because I love
    There is a river flowing all night long.

    Because I love
    All night the river flows into my sleep,
    Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,
    And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.

    - Kathleen Raine
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  46. TopTop #1524
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Silence


    There is the sudden silence of the crowd
    above a player not moving on the field,
    and the silence of the orchid.


    The silence of the falling vase
    before it strikes the floor,
    the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.


    The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
    the silence of the moon
    and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.


    The silence when I hold you to my chest,
    the silence of the window above us,
    and the silence when you rise and turn away.


    And there is the silence of this morning
    which I have broken with my pen,
    a silence that had piled up all night


    like snow falling in the darkness of the house—
    the silence before I wrote a word
    and the poorer silence now.


    - Billy Collins
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  48. TopTop #1525
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love
    Love means to learn to look at yourself
    The way one looks at distant things
    For you are only one thing among many.
    And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
    Without knowing it, from various ills.
    A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
    Then he wants to use himself and things
    So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
    It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
    Who serves best doesn't always understand.
    - Czeslaw Milosz
    (translated by Robert Hass)
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  50. TopTop #1526
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Famous
    The river is famous to the fish.

    The loud voice is famous to silence,
    which knew it would inherit the earth
    before anybody said so.

    The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
    watching him from the birdhouse.

    The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

    The idea you carry close to your bosom
    is famous to your bosom.

    The boot is famous to the earth,
    more famous than the dress shoe,
    which is famous only to floors.

    The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
    and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

    I want to be famous to shuffling men
    who smile while crossing streets,
    sticky children in grocery lines,
    famous as the one who smiled back.

    I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
    or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
    but because it never forgot what it could do.


    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  52. TopTop #1527
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15

    There is no stray bullet, sirs.
    No bullet like a worried cat
    crouching under a bush,
    no half-hairless puppy bullet
    dodging midnight streets.
    The bullet could not be a pecan
    plunking the tin roof,
    not hardly, no fluff of pollen
    on October’s breath,
    no humble pebble at our feet.

    So don’t gentle it, please.

    We live among stray thoughts,
    tasks abandoned midstream.
    Our fickle hearts are fat
    with stray devotions, we feel at home
    among bits and pieces,
    all the wandering ways of words.

    But this bullet had no innocence, did not
    wish anyone well, you can’t tell us otherwise
    by naming it mildly, this bullet was never the friend
    of life, should not be granted immunity
    by soft saying—friendly fire, straying death-eye,
    why have we given the wrong weight to what we do?

    Mohammed, Mohammed, deserves the truth.
    This bullet had no secret happy hopes,
    it was not singing to itself with eyes closed
    under the bridge.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
    Last edited by Barry; 02-20-2013 at 03:48 PM.
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  54. TopTop #1528
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cave
    (for Werner Herzog)

    300 century-ago paintings
    six times aged over any after.
    Happy 32,000th year since
    artists first conceived art as I do
    while the dormant years bore no
    handmade eyes, soul or elevation
    until other tastes beholding them
    transformed at once to wings.

    Handprints of red dot
    crooked finger
    white horse
    bison with eight legs
    signifying movement,
    likewise a rhino’s
    many tusks, and
    a spinal column.

    Glacial time
    sunny cold
    calcite skull bones of ibis
    and bits of golden eagles
    carried here by bears who
    later scratched the walls white,
    hyenas watching noisily.

    Paleolithic odors
    imagined and real
    of cave dwellers
    envisioned and everywhere,
    small boy with wolf,
    white calcite,
    eyes upon us, while

    The hotel next door
    to the art gallery
    where my own paintings hang
    in Glen Ellen, California
    congruently is named
    “Chauvet.”


    - Ed Coletti
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  55. TopTop #1529
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sweet Darkness


    When your eyes are tired
    the world is tired also.


    When your vision has gone
    no part of the world can find you.
    Time to go into the dark
    where the night has eyes
    to recognize its own.


    There you can be sure
    you are not beyond love.
    The dark will be your womb
    tonight.
    The night will give you a horizon
    further than you can see.


    You must learn one thing.
    The world was made to be free in.


    Give up all the other worlds
    except the one to which you belong.


    Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
    confinement of your aloneness


    to learn


    anything or anyone
    that does not bring you alive


    is too small for you.


    - David Whyte
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  57. TopTop #1530
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Abandoned Farmhouse
    He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
    on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
    a tall man too, says the length of the bed
    in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
    says the Bible with a broken back
    on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
    but not a man for farming, say the fields
    cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.

    A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
    papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
    covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
    says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
    Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
    and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
    And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
    It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

    Something went wrong, says the empty house
    in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
    say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
    in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
    And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
    like branches after a storm--a rubber cow,
    a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
    a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.


    - Ted Kooser
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