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  1. TopTop #4291
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thirst

    They are all older than me —
    the mountains, seas, trees.
    They hold the wisdom of the years,
    the secrets to survive.
    They know not to fret
    over small things,
    that the world goes on around them
    crazy and blind.
    They remain steadfast in presence,
    all drinking from the same pool —
    the one at the center of the universe,
    the one offering me a sip.

    - Sherrie Lovler
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  3. TopTop #4292
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Rise of Stone

    Once in a cool June wood
    I saw scattered rocks roll slowly uphill --
    gravity’s undoing in the hush of noon
    The mirage persisted until my mind
    shifted to another circuit

    and I remembered we were rock once
    ground to dust over the eons,
    somehow spiraled into flesh and bone,
    given the power to create
    and to destroy, to rise and fall

    so I followed the rocks uphill and
    found a massive boulder near the crest,
    a monument to Time’s compression
    urging me to climb its creviced flank
    and perch on a smooth shoulder

    Distant hills flowed like violet silk
    between green fields and endless sky
    A jay flew in, curled its feet around a branch
    while its feathers pulled blue from rays of
    light that sped through galaxies,

    to bind the jay and me in mutual beholding
    of sentient life unfolding,
    vassals to the realm of leaves
    vessels anchored in an Earth-bound
    sea of mortal breath

    - Cynthia Poten
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  5. TopTop #4293
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What I Wanted

    Why is it that people always say,
    “I wanted to ask you”...or
    "I wanted to say"...or
    "I wanted to suggest something else"?

    I always wonder, "When did you
    want that? Yesterday? Last week?
    Last year? Or, maybe you mean it's a
    Constant craving over a long piece of time?"

    When I turn back to my monkey business,
    People seem puzzled, mouths half-open.
    "But," they will say, "I wanted..."
    I reply, "Yes, yes...I heard you."

    The past wants desperately to hold us,
    As if with blindfolds and gags,
    And lethal loyalty to old, old tales
    Which actually died long, long ago.

    Isn't it time now to stand up,
    And step forward in the here and now?
    To be present in your experience,
    And finally say, if even a whisper: "I want."?

    I hope so. Because if we ride on life's wagon,
    Rolling like a stone to the next future,
    And our feet hang low on the tailgait,
    We will never see it coming.


    - Jon Jackson
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  7. TopTop #4294
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Naughty Negros

    Those Negros weren’t acting right,
    When peckerwoods ruled the land.
    Back then, they said,
    if the Mississippi River,
    dried up one night,
    The waking of the murdered black bodies,
    Rising and walking
    out of the holding,
    gripping mud,
    shaking off indignity;
    slavery,
    night riders,
    humiliation,
    rape,
    sold down the river,
    that silent line,
    would wind from Natchez to
    Detroit in the light.

    What sounds would they make?
    Pulling air into reborn
    lungs, new breath,
    moving wrapped and
    fallow limbs like a chrysalis
    breaking into
    the light.
    Free now.
    What choice,
    oh, naughty noble warrior,
    Can you reveal to push
    back
    The night?

    After slavery, some
    deny and even glorify,
    a period of lynching,
    too gruesome a sight for
    Lady peckerwoods dinner flight,
    so, they came in the middle of the night.
    Terror and fear geared to bringing
    Power to those who happened to be
    White. Oh, they were never
    Close to God or being right.


    Negros up and moved to the northern hoods.
    Lynching and burning were not evident.
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  9. TopTop #4295
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ecology of Soul

    We already know about
    our dwindling environment
    the dead seas
    the polluted air
    the disappearing species.

    We are accomplished at
    pointing fingers
    putting off fixes, and
    holding on to the
    technological promise
    of eventual solutions.

    But what would happen
    if we stopped looking outside
    and started looking within.

    The degradation of
    our external world
    is obviously taking a toll
    on our physical being,

    but what about
    our ecology of soul?
    Aren’t we living beyond
    our means there as well.

    - Rabon Saip
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  11. TopTop #4296
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pilgrimage


    Vicksburg, Mississippi


    Here, the Mississippi carved
    its mud-dark path, a graveyard

    for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
    Here, the river changed its course,

    turning away from the city
    as one turns, forgetting, from the past—

    the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
    above the river's bend—where now

    the Yazoo fills the Mississippi's empty bed.
    Here, the dead stand up in stone, white

    marble, on Confederate Avenue. I stand
    on ground once hollowed by a web of caves;

    they must have seemed like catacombs,
    in 1863, to the woman sitting in her parlor,

    candlelit, underground. I can see her
    listening to shells explode, writing herself

    into history, asking what is to become
    of all the living things in this place?

    This whole city is a grave. Every spring—
    Pilgrimage—the living come to mingle

    with the dead, brush against their cold shoulders
    in the long hallways, listen all night

    to their silence and indifference, relive
    their dying on the green battlefield.

    At the museum, we marvel at their clothes—
    preserved under glass—so much smaller

    than our own, as if those who wore them
    were only children. We sleep in their beds,

    the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped
    in flowers—funereal—a blur

    of petals against the river's gray.
    The brochure in my room calls this

    living history. The brass plate on the door reads
    Prissy's Room. A window frames

    the river's crawl toward the Gulf. In my dream,
    the ghost of history lies down beside me,

    rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.

    - Natasha Trethewey
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  13. TopTop #4297
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Sorrow of Cement

    We step on over around
    The world, altered for our
    Vision, improvement on
    Perfection of stone, water, air.
    The Spanish have a saying,
    "Cogido con las manos
    En la masa, "caught with our
    Hands in the mix." This,
    The corruption of our time.

    Did the stone ask to
    Be reduced to dust, mixed
    With minerals, foreign or
    Domesticated?

    And what of the cattle, the chickens
    All companions on this plain?
    Their lives twisted, distorted
    Lives without reach into lives
    Meant to live.

    Above jet tracks drawn
    As though by a child
    Wobble and widen.
    Unnatural to the sky's
    Forget-me-not blue
    Trails of vaporous poison


    Cursed, like Adam and Eve
    First standing upright
    Surveying their world.
    Did they wonder then
    How to improve, manipulate
    Or simply to live alongside?

    - Rebecca del Rio




    "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
    - Wendell Berry
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  15. TopTop #4298
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    September Tomatoes


    The whiskey stink of rot has settled
    in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises
    when I touch the dying tomato plants.


    Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms
    flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots
    and toss them in the compost.


    It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
    to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
    what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
    Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.


    My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village
    as they pulled the flax. Songs so old
    and so tied to the season that the very sound
    seemed to turn the weather.


    - Karina Borowicz
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  17. TopTop #4299
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shame on us

    for silence on Palestine, Kashmir, Amazon, Bahamas, detention centers in US and much more
    for letting our neighbor’s homes be demolished
    for allowing fascist politicians to take over our countries
    for merely paying lip service to our martyrs after they are killed
    for saying prayers and then forgetting what they died for
    Shame on us
    for blaming the colonization for more than it is responsible for
    for our own actions and lack of actions
    for silence on the murder of Israa Gharib by her own family
    ..and many more beautiful girls for supposed “honor”
    … no honor in brutal murder or in excusing it
    Shame on us
    for patriarchy and tribalism
    for tossing trash into our streets
    for not composting
    for buying Israeli products while speaking of resistance
    for tolerating corrupt leaders
    for shaking hands with corrupt officials
    for silence and for cajoling powers
    Shame on us
    for our self-imposed weakness and for lack of organizing
    for not respecting law and order
    for inactions and for apathy in the face of oppression
    for believing in might instead of right
    for letting down Basel Al-Araj, Bassam Aburahma
    … and thousands more
    Shame on us
    for allowing Netanyahu to visit occupied Hebron
    … leaving only a few young people challenging him
    for letting self-appointed “leaders” attack Issa Amro and youth against settlements
    for superstition and belief in a god who would save us
    Shame on us
    for “security coordination”
    and for following orders
    for accepting to be paid blood money to help the occupiers
    for allowing a few bad apples spoil much of the population
    for feeling helpless
    and internalizing repression (mental colonization)
    Shame on us
    for lack of reading
    for losing dignity
    for ignoring
    …our power to change
    …our own history
    ….our rich canaanitic culture
    …..our young minds
    … suffering for so many people
    Fellow human beings
    …and the suffering of our planet
    Home to fellow living things
    Shame on us
    for forgetting that Palestine was and is the country of beauty
    …Of the Fertile Crescent
    …Of the cradle of civilization
    …Of successful resistance*
    …Of miracles of rebirth
    For forgetting that this planet earth is our only home
    …home of good and bad
    …home of Einstein and Ben Gurion
    …Ibn Sina and Ibn Saud
    …home of death and rebirth
    …home our only home

    - Mazin Qumsiyeh




    "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts."
    - Wendell Berry
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  19. TopTop #4300
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Happens When You Get Lost

    Out in the mountains nobody gives you anything.

    And you learn what the rules were after the game is over.
    By then it is already night and it doesn’t make any difference
    what anyone else is thinking or doing because now you have to
    turn into an Indian.

    You remember stories and now you know that the tellers were
    part of all they told.
    And everyone else was, and even you.

    They’re all around you now, but if you’re afraid you will never find them.
    And those questions that people always ask-
    “What would you do if…”
    They have their own answer right now- nothing.

    Some things cannot be redeemed in a hurry no matter what the intentions are.
    What could be done had to have been done a long time ago.
    Because mistakes have consequences that do not just disappear.
    If evil could be canceled easily it would not be very evil.

    And so, the stars see you.
    While you drift away they have their own courses and they watch you.
    And listen, they already know your name.

    - William Stafford
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  21. TopTop #4301
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fall

    Fall, falling, fallen. That's the way the season
    Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
    That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
    Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
    With the final remaining cardinals) and then
    Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
    Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
    At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
    In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
    And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
    Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
    Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
    A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
    Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
    Changes and moves in the split second between summer's
    Sprawling past and winter's hard revision, one moment
    Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
    Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
    Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
    From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
    Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
    Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
    Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
    And every year there is a brief, startling moment
    When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
    Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
    Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
    It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
    It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

    - Edward Hirsch
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  23. TopTop #4302
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ithaka

    As you set out for Ithaka
    hope your road is a long one,
    full of adventure, full of discovery.
    Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
    angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
    you’ll never find things like that on your way
    as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
    as long as a rare excitement
    stirs your spirit and your body.
    Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
    wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
    unless you bring them along inside your soul,
    unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

    Hope your road is a long one.
    May there be many summer mornings when,
    with what pleasure, what joy,
    you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
    may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
    to buy fine things,
    mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
    sensual perfume of every kind—
    as many sensual perfumes as you can;
    and may you visit many Egyptian cities
    to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

    Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
    Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
    But don’t hurry the journey at all.
    Better if it lasts for years,
    so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
    wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
    not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

    Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
    Without her you wouldn't have set out.
    She has nothing left to give you now.

    And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
    Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
    you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

    - C.P. Cavafy

    (Translation by Edmund Keeley)
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  25. TopTop #4303
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Didn’t Ask For My Parents

    It isn’t like you bend
    your dainty spirit neck
    down from God’s baby-soul-land
    and point to a copulating couple
    who strike your fancy.

    Don’t think it works that way.

    You are blind-folded
    and shot down through heaven’s tunnel
    into life and where you plop
    willy-nilly that’s your home.

    The Jewish couple may be in the act
    at the same time as their Muslim neighbor.

    Where you end up
    even the cherub who pushed you off
    the edge can’t know.

    We grow up forgetting
    our incidental placements
    become fond of whatever
    bread and religion we are fed.

    Listen,

    Who has salvation
    when we all claim it?

    - Sholeh Wolpé
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  27. TopTop #4304
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love Can’t Wait

    “That’s one small step for man;
    one giant leap for mankind.”
    Take a stand and end the war.

    Which war you say?
    Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt,
    Libya, Syria, Iran?
    It’s not the one you see out there:
    It’s the one you can’t see in your own heart.

    How do I do that? You ask.
    Love this breath, your heart,
    Find your true being.
    Send love to yourself, to your neighbor &
    when finally strengthened, you can, to the
    very one who you believe irks you.

    For the way to peace starts here: it's within.
    This is “One giant leap”
    human kind-ness.

    - Muskie Fields
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  29. TopTop #4305
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Birthday of the World


    On the birthday of the world
    I begin to contemplate
    what I have done and left
    undone, but this year
    not so much rebuilding

    of my perennially damaged
    psyche, shoring up eroding
    friendships, digging out
    stumps of old resentments
    that refuse to rot on their own.

    No, this year I want to call
    myself to task for what
    I have done and not done
    for peace. How much have
    I dared in opposition?

    How much have I put
    on the line for freedom?
    For mine and others?
    As these freedoms are pared,
    sliced and diced, where

    have I spoken out? Who
    have I tried to move? In
    this holy season, I stand
    self-convicted of sloth
    in a time when lies choke

    the mind and rhetoric
    bends reason to slithering
    choking pythons. Here
    I stand before the gates
    opening, the fire dazzling

    my eyes, and as I approach
    what judges me, I judge
    myself. Give me weapons
    of minute destruction. Let
    my words turn into sparks.

    - Marge Piercy
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  31. TopTop #4306
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Having Come This Far


    I've been through what my through was to be
    I did what I could and couldn't
    I was never sure how I would get there

    I nourished an ardor for thresholds
    for stepping stones and for ladders
    I discovered detour and ditch

    I swam in the high tides of greed
    I built sandcastles to house my dreams
    I survived the sunburns of love

    No longer do I hunt for targets
    I've climbed all the summits I need to
    and I've eaten my share of lotus

    Now I give praise and thanks
    for what could not be avoided
    and for every foolhardy choice

    I cherish my wounds and their cures
    and the sweet enervations of bliss
    My book is an open life

    I wave goodbye to the absolutes
    and send my regards to infinity
    I'd rather be blithe than correct

    Until something transcendent turns up
    I splash in my poetry puddle
    and try to keep God amused.

    - James Broughton
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  33. TopTop #4307
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Conjugation of the Paramecium

    This has nothing
    to do with
    propagating

    The species
    is continued
    as so many are
    (among the smaller creatures)
    by fission

    (and this species
    is very small
    next in order to
    the amoeba, the beginning one)

    The paramecium
    achieves, then,
    immortality
    by dividing

    But when
    the paramecium
    desires renewal
    strength another joy
    this is what
    the paramecium does:

    The paramecium
    lies down beside
    another paramecium

    Slowly inexplicably
    the exchange
    takes place
    in which
    some bits
    of the nucleus of each
    are exchanged

    for some bits
    of the nucleus
    of the other

    This is called
    the conjugation of the paramecium.

    - Muriel Rukeyser
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  35. TopTop #4308
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Current Histories

    The world you came out of
    well to be fair
    The World We came out of

    is a cartography of abattoirs
    everything eats everything
    the eye that beholds
    is more biome than human
    and the greatest myth
    we created
    when forest spat savannah
    but after feathered serpents
    became pools of our own
    undoing

    A longgame revenge pact
    extinction on extinction on extinction
    back to basic building blocks
    Try Again! Try Again! Try Again!
    Till some combination of clay
    creates a clockwork creature
    a symboless golem or rather
    Until micro self-organizes
    reinvents macro and for a
    moment forgets
    later
    off course
    We remember
    No

    difference
    between sense making primates
    a carrot a clam a cicada a currant
    except in expression

    Now show me
    The Face
    Before and
    again After
    We were Born.

    - Juris Ahn
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  37. TopTop #4309
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian

    Tumbling through the
    city in my
    mind without once
    looking up
    the racket in
    the lugwork probably
    rehearsing some
    stupid thing I
    said or did
    some crime or
    other the city they
    say is a lonely
    place until yes
    the sound of sweeping
    and a woman
    yes with a
    broom beneath
    which you are now
    too the canopy
    of a fig its
    arms pulling the
    September sun to it
    and she
    has a hose too
    and so works hard
    rinsing and scrubbing
    the walk
    lest some poor sod
    slip on the
    silk of a fig
    and break his hip
    and not probably
    reach over to gobble up
    the perpetrator
    the light catches
    the veins in her hands
    when I ask about
    the tree they
    flutter in the air and
    she says take
    as much as
    you can
    help me
    so I load my
    pockets and mouth
    and she points
    to the step-ladder against
    the wall to
    mean more but
    I was without a
    sack so my meager
    plunder would have to
    suffice and an old woman
    whom gravity
    was pulling into
    the earth loosed one
    from a low slung
    branch and its eye
    wept like hers
    which she dabbed
    with a kerchief as she
    cleaved the fig with
    what remained of her
    teeth and soon there were
    eight or nine
    people gathered beneath
    the tree looking into
    it like a
    constellation pointing
    do you see it
    and I am tall and so
    good for these things
    and a bald man even
    told me so
    when I grabbed three
    or four for
    him reaching into the
    giddy throngs of
    yellow-jackets sugar
    stoned which he only
    pointed to smiling and
    rubbing his stomach
    I mean he was really rubbing his stomach
    like there was a baby
    in there
    it was hot his
    head shone while he
    offered recipes to the
    group using words which
    I couldn’t understand and besides
    I was a little
    tipsy on the dance
    of the velvety heart rolling
    in my mouth
    pulling me down and
    down into the
    oldest countries of my
    body where I ate my first fig
    from the hand of a man who escaped his country
    by swimming through the night
    and maybe
    never said more than
    five words to me
    at once but gave me
    figs and a man on his way
    to work hops twice
    to reach at last his
    fig which he smiles at and calls
    baby, c’mere baby,
    he says and blows a kiss
    to the tree which everyone knows
    cannot grow this far north
    being Mediterranean
    and favoring the rocky, sun-baked soils
    of Jordan and Sicily
    but no one told the fig tree
    or the immigrants
    there is a way
    the fig tree grows
    in groves it wants,
    it seems, to hold us,
    yes I am anthropomorphizing
    goddammit I have twice
    in the last thirty seconds
    rubbed my sweaty
    forearm into someone else’s
    sweaty shoulder
    gleeful eating out of each other’s hands
    on Christian St.
    in Philadelphia a city like most
    which has murdered its own
    people
    this is true
    we are feeding each other
    from a tree
    at the corner of Christian and 9th
    strangers maybe
    never again.

    - Ross Gay
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  39. TopTop #4310
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    October

    Light in leaves in wind in sky.
    Bright October brings beauty
    to dead things
    and the wingless learn
    to fly.
    Berries try to stash the summer
    in their skin.
    Squirrels bury food
    and future forests.
    Flowers fall back into all
    the abundance that birthed
    them and decay
    paves the way for life
    upon life.
    When our dreams fall
    we might recall
    that forests are fed
    by the fallen.
    What we call death is only
    the birth
    of bodies and dreams
    without boundaries.
    What we call death is only
    the discovery
    that we belong
    to the beauty
    that burns in all beings.

    - Bernadette Miller
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  41. TopTop #4311
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Last Thing

    First there was the blue wing
    of a scraggly loud jay tucked
    into the shrubs. Then the bluish-
    black moth drunkenly tripping
    from blade to blade. Then
    the quiet that came roaring
    in like the R. J. Corman over
    Broadway near the RV shop.
    These are the last three things
    that happened. Not in the universe,
    but here, in the basin of my mind,
    where I’m always making a list
    for you, recording the day’s minor
    urchins: silvery dust mote, pistachio
    shell, the dog eating a sugar
    snap pea. It’s going to rain soon,
    close clouds bloated above us,
    the air like a net about to release
    all the caught fishes, a storm
    siren in the distance. I know
    you don’t always understand,
    but let me point to the first
    wet drops landing on the stones,
    the noise like fingers drumming
    the skin. I can’t help it. I will
    never get over making everything
    such a big deal.

    - Ada Limón
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  43. TopTop #4312
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When I Am Among The Trees

    When I am among the trees,
    especially the willows and the honey locust,
    equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
    they give off such hints of gladness.
    I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
    I am so distant from the hope of myself,
    in which I have goodness, and discernment,
    and never hurry through the world
    but walk slowly, and bow often.
    Around me the trees stir in their leaves
    and call out, “Stay awhile.”
    The light flows from their branches.
    And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
    “and you too have come
    into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
    with light, and to shine.”

    - Mary Oliver
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  45. TopTop #4313
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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  46. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  47. TopTop #4314
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reconsider your broken heart

    Turn back and reconsider your broken heart
    Reconsider your brokenness
    When the vase tumbles from the counter
    And breaks beyond repair
    You reach for the rose, the iris, the ferns
    Pull them from the wreckage of glass
    Place them lovingly into a new vase
    The flowers reconfigure into a new formation
    Perhaps more beautiful than before
    Refreshed and rearranged

    Flowers that once thrust their roots down into the earth
    Gain strength from their arduous
    Search for nourishment through hard clay and stones
    Plucked from their habitat, resilient
    They reach anew to morning rays

    You are not your brokenness any more than
    the flowers are the broken vase
    When life leaves you cracked and scarred
    You can become sharp, frayed, rigid
    Instead love the disrepair of your heart
    Let your roots find nourishment in
    Faith and love and trust

    When you reach for your desires you must
    Break free from beliefs that hold you back
    Most importantly the belief that you are broken
    In any form
    Consider your heart strong or weak,
    Open or closed, scarred or beautiful
    Cracked or pristine but
    Do not consider your heart to be broken
    At least not broken beyond use
    Break up with your self-imposed ruler
    Break your rules
    Break your vows
    Break open
    Break open again
    Break everything but your heart


    - Sally Churgel
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  49. TopTop #4315
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Some Things I Want to Remember Before Burning

    Maybe its silly to think of
    Venice in those tiny cordial cups
    one red one gold like the fire
    of one love before it burned out
    the old ceramic bowl that sang
    when you turned it with your fingers
    and the time we fought
    over its purchase and purpose
    5 skulls in porcelain, differing in heights
    each with visions scrawled on their backs
    and one with a penis we never used
    The House That Holds The Sparrows Nest I heard singing
    framed in tonal monotype
    but I never saw the bird,
    Fly Fly Away painted on a long rectangle
    in abstract red pink blue & white
    stunned every time over conversation
    and how it was won,
    a hot orange dish brimmed
    with many places I called home
    rocks crystals and minerals
    from long desert roads and unbroken shores of water,
    in the guest room images of a barn, an icy lake
    and a molten candle dimly illuminating fruit,
    prim apples and the incandescent skin of grapes
    each painted with grandmother’s careful hands
    her old car parked in faded yellow and rusted
    near the periwinkle hydrangea blooming full
    all in graphite pencil

    These many things of personal history
    now a finality of ash,
    somehow are rebuilt into time
    burnt in the mind and somehow
    indelibly, they carry on.

    - Danielle Bryant
    Last edited by Barry; 10-09-2019 at 08:43 AM.
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  51. TopTop #4316
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Book of Lies

    I’d like to have a word
    with you. Could we be alone
    for a minute? I have been lying
    until now. Do you believe

    I believe myself? Do you believe
    Yourself when you believe me? Lying
    is natural. Forgive me. Could we be alone
    forever? Forgive us all. The word

    is my enemy. I have never been alone;
    bribes, betrayals. I am lying
    even now. Can you believe
    that? I give you my word.

    - James Tate
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  53. TopTop #4317
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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  54. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  55. TopTop #4318
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wait

    Wait, for now.
    Distrust everything, if you have to.
    But trust the hours. Haven’t they
    carried you everywhere, up to now?
    Personal events will become interesting again.
    Hair will become interesting.
    Pain will become interesting.
    Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
    Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
    their memories are what give them
    the need for other hands. And the desolation
    of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
    carved out of such tiny beings as we are
    asks to be filled; the need
    for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

    Wait.
    Don’t go too early.
    You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
    But no one is tired enough.
    Only wait a while and listen.
    Music of hair,
    Music of pain,
    music of looms weaving all our loves again.
    Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
    most of all to hear,
    the flute of your whole existence,
    rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

    - Galway Kinnell
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  57. TopTop #4319
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Dream Catcher Restaurant
    Sault Ste Marie, Michigan


    An Elder woman seated across the aisle from us
    Having brunch with a girlfriend
    Her jacket is draped over a chair

    On her jacket are a moose, deer
    An eagle flies overhead. On a clear blue lake cries the loon
    I am back in the North Lakes, wood region

    I hear a faint background of seventies music :
    Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, Gordon Lightfoot
    Mellisa Manchester, Johnny Cash

    Our waitress keeps pouring refills while
    My husband is making travel arrangements
    On his smart phone

    Her jacket calms my racing mind

    I think back to waking up an early morning
    At our family cabin in Northern Minnesota
    Sitting at the dock with a cup of hot chocolate

    Reading second-hand, ear-marked, paper backs
    While listening to the loons, in the far off distance
    After a morning dip

    I was a late teen and care-fee then. A dreamer
    I'd wonder often about that big world out there of
    Infinite possibilities

    Will I go to college? What will I study?
    Where will I live? Will I get married and have children?
    Will I be a drifter?

    The road of my childhood was never a straight line
    My studies and variety of jobs took me far from the lake
    To distant places of no return

    I was brave and foolish then, it is a small miracle
    I am not dead. I play it safe now
    And worry more than I should

    What happened to that care-free teen at the lake?

    The woman across the aisle
    Stood up and put her jacket on
    The jacket with the moose, deer, eagle and loon

    At the lake
    She turned around and gave me a curious smile
    And walked away.

    - Patricia LeBon Herb
    Last edited by Barry; 10-12-2019 at 12:54 PM.
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  59. TopTop #4320
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Character, in time



    The ancient mountain king

    presides quietly in summer sun

    and shakes shaggy limbs

    in winter winds -

    having long forgotten

    youthful dreams:


    the earnest pursuit of self

    in a tidy, upright

    but tender spire

    aspiring to the sky

    before time and the weather

    cut here, on his windward side.


    A lightning strike;

    a cold snap perhaps

    and the main shoot died.



    But life goes on where it can

    becoming a complex and contorted

    monument to persistence, resistance

    and the slow surrender

    to whatever character

    becomes in time.



    - Carne Lowgren
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  60. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

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