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  1. TopTop #1471

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thank you, Larry, for a perfect New Year's greeting....

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Great Matter

    Cooking, eating, sleeping,
    every deed of everyday life
    is nothing else than the Great Matter.
    Realize this!
    So we extend tender care
    with a worshipping heart
    even to such beings as beasts and birds--
    but not only to beasts,
    not only to birds,
    but to insects too.
    Even to grass, to one blade of grass,
    even to dust, to one speck of dust.
    Sometimes I bow to the dust....


    - Soen Nakagawa
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  2. Gratitude expressed by:

  3. TopTop #1472
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A New Year’s Blessing


    Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
    good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
    the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
    kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.


    Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
    a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
    some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
    then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;


    May all this and more be yours this year
    and every year after to the end of your days.


    - Larry Robinson
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  4. TopTop #1473
    tezor's Avatar
    tezor
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Larry,

    I thank you for your dedication in providing these nuggets of truth daily. I read one that spoke to me the day it was available, and now read everyone of them . They seem to follow my needs, and the course of my life in some way. Speaking to the things in my life, as if planned to directly touch me. As we all go through so much in our lives, I couldn't imagine I was the only one feeling this way. In the light of that, I would like to give you my gratitude for your continued presents/presence, both work well for me. May the New Year bless us all with peace, inside our hearts, and across our world. Thank you for your contribution to that peace.
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  5. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  6. TopTop #1474

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I agree, and "dedication" is the right word. We feel your gift personally, Larry, but our benefit is collective. Your dedication to bringing poetry into our lives moves us subtly and immeasurably in the direction of health, love, peace, and sanity, as individuals, as a community, as a people.

    While we know and appreciate your enthusiasm for poetry, we're all familiar with mornings when nothing is easy. For all the mornings, from the happily easy to the vexingly hard, when you pass along to us poems that touch lives, open hearts, and hone minds, thank you, thank you, thank you.

    We are all better for your effort, and pass along the mysterious threads of sensibility. One of the 108 names of Tara is She Who Increases Beauty and Intelligence in the World. Thank you for helping Tara live up to Her name.
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  7. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  8. TopTop #1475
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fantasia: a weekly cycle

    come Monday, a man in chainmail robe with
    star-stained hands and a bone-handled blade
    will mount and ride toward Tuesday whose

    abandoned brick kiln houses a curved
    bowl shard pointing toward Wednesday
    where a wild woman flaunts silk-clad feet

    and ash-dark eyes in which is reflected
    Thursday hosting a chieftain who issues orders
    germane to war and leads young men to the

    edge of an acidic lake where Friday, re-floating
    a silver-edged saddle once taken across Rumania
    in a wooden oxcart, demands that Saturday’s starchily

    uniformed Prussian officers pull down barbed wire
    from atop a cobbled wall so Sunday, incarcerated,
    bitter, may get a view of daffodils, forget-me-

    nots and squat cork trees lording it on a grassy bank
    where a horse with demented eyes and feet shod in cobalt
    rears on back legs and runs pell-mell so come Monday

    - David Beckman
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  10. TopTop #1476
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dirge without Music


    I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
    So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
    Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
    With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.


    Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
    Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
    A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
    A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.


    The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
    They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
    Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
    More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.


    Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
    Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
    Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
    I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.


    - Edna St. Vincent Millay
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  11. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  12. TopTop #1477
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thoughts In The Cabin


    Why do I suddenly feel free of panic?
    Here a summer afternoon, wind-
    Blown lake, a cabin of strong logs.


    I can live and die with no more
    Fame; I'd like ground to walk on,
    A few books, occasionally a storm.


    I know stories I can tell, and I may
    Or may not. There is more
    To learn: the wind and the screendoor.


    The granary of images, the Norwegian
    Lore, the power of Schmad Razum,
    Good or evil, success or failure.


    Expect something else from me—
    Less— and don't rule out
    Misdirection, silence, misinformation.


    - Robert Bly
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  13. TopTop #1478
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A December Without Snow


    Moon smaller each morning
    its medium a dense darkness
    meadow grasses rimed with frost
    ice tipped cedars and pines and
    naked oak branch whippets strange
    a December without snow


    I walk in the woods toward this
    pallid moon in a flat gray sky
    turn suddenly on a whim and
    walk in the opposite direction
    surprising a young coyote
    I am his first human
    he's tracking me in a light trop
    we both stop to stare at
    one another
    sensing something's wrong
    the angelus of purity abandons
    our sky there are no wise men
    no rare gifts
    of the eternal and sacred to be
    found wrapped around leaves
    or the tri-fold bond of acorns


    No footprints in this frozen dust
    the world turns into its long night
    bracts of cones and mistletoe
    join deer and hooded juncos
    on this path into a dark copse
    all of us hoping for lost mornings
    when everything drifts white


    - Daniel Williams
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  15. TopTop #1479
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Flamenco


    "I have four dogs," he tells us, apropo
    Of nothing. "One weighs one kilo, five.
    They had to operate on her," he says. I ask
    Her name. Olivia, then there's Pepe, Prisci,
    Juanito. He used to have eleven, when he lived in Avila–
    That walled medieval attraction that sits on a rise
    Exposed to vicious cold, endless winds. No wonder
    Teresa became a saint to withstand such boredom.


    But the taxista never mentions Teresa, nor the walls,
    Just the cold, the dogs, a life of rural routine.
    Then, he asks if we like flamenco. Flamenco:
    Gypsy music, what most tourists think
    When they think of Spain, what most Spaniards disparage.
    A culture of crude, separatist fortune-telling
    Thieves, liars, prostitutes and pick-pocket children.


    "Would you like to hear some flamenco?"
    He slips in a CD and
    A cry fills the car, a cry of joy,
    Of agony, longing sought for the sake of longing.
    To love what one has, the cry says, to want
    The heat, the burn of wanting itself.
    "I'm the singer," he says,
    With neither pride nor humility.His face shines
    Like a small, satisfied sun, escaped
    From the prison of austere Avila.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  17. TopTop #1480
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Museum of Fools


    I imagined I walked the west wing of the Victoria-Albert
    Museum and came upon an exhibition entitled,
    "The Fools' Journey to the East" Inside were
    displays of the relics of the 60's road travels of
    Westerners in India. A glass case contained the
    tools used for drugs-- chillums and pipes with
    filter rags and screens and famous syringes
    without the drugs to fill them. Another displayed
    samples of shaved hair, beads and prayer shawls-
    typical offerings at temples. Necklaces had been
    worn, walking staffs carried on pilgrimages by the
    illuminated, the likes of Eight-finger Eddie, Brunos
    the French one, the Italian, the Spanish one,
    Desire the Dutch bride of wonder and Peter the bride
    groom of new frontiers, Blind George and Crippled
    George and Coffee Beans. These were the names
    of heroes in my road mythology, relics of the royalty
    that blazed and blundered the paths of the seekers,
    bodies some decades gone now.
    Emptied of life now, crowns outlasted heads,
    legends outlasted limbs. That conch shell on the wall
    sounded at the twilight hour when many gathered
    around communal fires. Since eternity could not fit
    into this temporary exhibit, artifacts were amassed
    instead. Costumes were laid out for view along with
    those silver belts from Goa that had circled the
    waists of the nudes that bounced upon the waves of
    the Arabian Sea.
    As for me in all of this, I'm still alive.There remains
    a wistful sigh in my feelings for these objects, the hand
    still warm in that glove someone wore, the earrings and
    sacraments my reveling heart still reaches for. Yes, I'm
    still here with this requited love for that tribe that adopted
    me. I'm stubborn and determined to live when I'm gone.
    I will revisit this wing of the museum for years after I fade away.

    - Rich Meyers
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  19. TopTop #1481
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Tamalpais Solution

    When asked what he did to take care of himself,
    her father John would reply, “That mountain,
    three times a week, I walk up that mountain.”

    That eminence where meandering plants thrive
    in serpentine soils, where the redwood creek
    drains into the John Muir-discovered woods,
    and where Arroyo Corte Madera del Presidio
    cascades to Richardson’s Bay opening radiantly
    upon the Golden Gate—indeed that mountain
    dominating the horizon beyond his front door
    as it had long before doors and houses,
    animals, neighbors, humanity, et al.

    This mountain looming many ages before
    oak and Douglas-fir began sprouting,
    eons prior to any Scotsman David Douglas
    at Scone Palace 1837 where the sweet quick bread
    Scone (rhyming with “John”) also was born.

    When the area began budding with people,
    the coastal Miwok believed that a witch,
    not a good witch so many now prefer, but
    a malignant scheming witch cast poisonous
    soap root like a fish net over this mountain
    where she dwelt glutted with venom at its peak
    where no Miwok brave dared tread lest
    long-imagined horrors would engulf them.

    After pausing for awhile at the top,
    John looks over all that has been given,
    sits to rest, unwraps his sandwich of
    salami, swiss, mustard and lettuce
    on rye bread and determines that for now,
    “All is good,” and makes preparations
    for his return home to the foothills.

    With his back to the mountain’s peak,
    John misses the Miwok witch, her arms
    spread in malevolent welcome—
    he, descending, unwittingly escapes
    one more time until he will not again.


    - Ed Coletti
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  21. TopTop #1482
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mount Tam at dusk

    If I walk through my front door,
    step off the stoop,
    swing my body to the left
    and start toward the hills,
    the hills that hide from me
    the sun’s early morning rays,
    the ground beneath my feet falls away,
    slowly at first, then with more speed,
    till it bottoms out at the first cross street
    and begins a rapid ascent
    that takes an effort to mount.

    And if I stop to catch my breath
    half way up this steep slope,
    and if the day is over
    and the sun is dropping
    into the sea
    and all around me
    will soon grow slowly gray,
    and if I turn, as I rest,
    look back over the pass,
    I have a near clear view
    through the crisscrossed wires
    that hang from poles on the edge of my sight,
    of that familiar shape the earth takes—
    the rise and dip and rise and fall
    of Mount Tam across the bay.
    And if the sky is cloudless,
    the summer evening air crystalline and cool,
    I see the edge of the earth glow red
    along its dark, rough spine—fire red,
    as air burns to touch the mountain top,
    cools to magenta, to mauve, to light pink, to nearly white,
    this thinnest of blankets, this rarest of good night kisses
    from the deepening, clear, gray, blue, early evening sky.
    And if I turn again toward the hills,
    I find a lightness in my step,
    a joy in my breath.
    - Bill Denham
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  23. TopTop #1483
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prologue: The Way of Power


    I will tell you how it is with Power
    The Way is hard
    and easily lost.


    Take me for example.
    Once I had a tiny power
    no greater than the breath of a bird,
    the power to make words.
    But it was more than I could handle.


    I was sloppy with it,
    spoke too much
    and at the wrong times,
    used the poems badly
    for my own glory.


    So the Power was taken away.
    Even the breath of a bird
    made me vain and arrogant
    and I used it to make myself little.


    Now I sit still on my porch
    and I see how
    I am a stupid man
    who was made sick
    by the bird's breath.


    I am dying of it
    because the breath got inside me
    before I made myself strong
    and now it is blowing me away
    like a small frail bird
    caught in a high wind.


    What is left for me
    is to die quietly
    because my stupidity made a bid noise.
    This is what I know
    about Power.
    - Red Hawk
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  25. TopTop #1484
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Burning in the Rain
    Someday compassion would demand
    I set myself free of my desire to recreate
    my father, indulge in my mother’s losses,
    strangle lovers with words, forcing them
    to confess for me and take the blame.
    Today was that day: I tossed them, sheet
    by sheet on the patio and gathered them
    into a pyre. I wanted to let them go
    in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding
    beside the azaleas and ficus bushes,
    let them crackle, burst like winged seeds,
    let them smolder into gossamer embers—
    a thousand gray butterflies in the wind.
    Today was that day, but it rained, kept
    raining. Instead of fire, water—drops
    knocking on doors, wetting windows
    into mirrors reflecting me in the oaks.
    The garden walls and stones swelling
    into ghostlier shades of themselves,
    the wind chimes giggling in the storm,
    a coffee cup left overflowing with rain.
    Instead of burning, my pages turned
    into water lilies floating over puddles,
    then tiny white cliffs as the sun set,
    finally drying all night under the moon
    into papier-mâché souvenirs. Today
    the rain would not let their lives burn.


    - Richard Blanco
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  27. TopTop #1485
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Railway Children


    When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
    We were eye-level with the white cups
    Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.


    Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
    East and miles west beyond us, sagging
    Under their burden of swallows.


    We were small and thought we knew nothing
    Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
    In the shiny pouches of raindrops,


    Each one seeded full with the light
    Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
    So infinitesimally scaled


    We could stream through the eye of a needle.


    - Seamus Heaney
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  29. TopTop #1486
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A SONNET FOR EURYDICE

    Recall the time we swam beneath the wave.
    We never thought of air as something we


    might need, and never lived in time. The sea
    was all we breathed, and all that Nature ever gave.

    And then we went our sep’rate ways. Oh, woe!
    Yes, you to Hades’ secret lair, and I,
    while playing lyric songs, consumed, did die
    a thousand deaths, each one another low.

    But, when I came, at last, my life so gone,
    and you fell back along our trek, you sang
    out Hermes’ name! Oh, he it was who turned

    to look! And, as he fell, we then moved on
    together to the light. Then strings did hang
    above the fire…oh, where they nicely burned!


    - Jon Jackson
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  31. TopTop #1487
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Remember




    That to have the eyes of an artist,


    That can be enough,


    The ear of a poet,


    That can be enough.


    The soul of a human


    just pointed


    in the direction of the divine,


    that can be more than enough.


    I tell you this to remind myself.


    Every gesture is an act of creation.


    Even empty spaces and silence


    can be the wings and voices of angels.


    - Michele Linfante
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  33. TopTop #1488
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Finch Song


    A solitary red male Cassin
    played his note for me.
    Billowy dark cumulus clouds
    the remnant of a storm passed,
    pressed the background.
    Mountains cast in shadow
    and sunlight.

    Sun as bright as gold,
    cutting through the early afternoon.
    My friend’s chest ruffled out
    Red, streaked, proud, confident
    His note filled the air.
    The day holds promise of
    something grand.

    His notes were not
    just for me I know
    but the expectation
    of a better day and some
    grand achievement not understood.
    I did not mind.
    His soulful note on these
    diminished years,
    good enough.


    - Ernie Carpenter
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  35. TopTop #1489
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The most logical place to begin

    is not always the best.
    Often the beginning is buried
    in the midst of a terrible tangle;
    by pulling on the salient thread
    you will only tighten the knots.
    Start softly.
    Sift apart the strands.
    Don't be afraid to cut.
    Make some knots of your own--
    the knit will hold.
    Gray goes well with gold.
    Slubs of overlapping color
    add to texture
    and if you have pieces
    left over, well...
    let the cat play with them,
    stuff a pillow,
    or save them for a rainy day.


    - Barbara Hazard
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  36. Gratitude expressed by:

  37. TopTop #1490
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Inward Revolution




    One must be willing to stand alone—


    in the unknown,


    with NO reference to the known


    or the past


    or any of one's conditioning.


    One must stand where no one has stood before


    in complete nakedness,


    innocence,


    and humility.


    One must stand in that dark light,


    in that groundless embrace,


    unwavering and true


    to the Reality beyond all self,


    not just for a moment


    but forever without end.


    For then,


    that which is sacred,


    undivided,


    and whole


    is born with consciousness


    and begins to express itself.


    That expression is the salvation of the whole.


    It is the ACTIVITY of an inward revolution


    brought down into time and space.




    - Adyashanti
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  39. TopTop #1491
    hafiza
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I like this poem! Thanks for bringing it to us.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Inward Revolution

    One must be willing to stand alone—

    ...

    - Adyashanti
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  40. TopTop #1492
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Power

    Power made me a coat. For a long time I
    kept it in the back of my closet. I didn't like to
    wear it much, but I always took good care of it.
    When I first started wearing it again, it smelled
    like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting
    better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.

    I was afraid if I wore the coat too much
    someone would want to take it or else I would
    accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room.
    But it has my name on the label now, and it
    doesn't really fit anyone else. When people ask
    me where I found such a becoming garment, I
    tell them about the tailor, Power, who knows
    how to make a coat that you grow into. First
    you must the courage to approach him
    and ask him to make your coat. Then, you
    must find the patience inside yourself to
    wear the coat until it fits.



    - J. Ruth Gendler
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  42. TopTop #1493
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For George Snyder


    I Have Walked Along Many Roads


    I have walked along many roads,
    and opened paths through brush,
    I have sailed over a hundred seas
    and tied up on a hundred shores.


    Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve seen
    excursions of sadness,
    angry and melancholy
    drunkards with black shadows,


    and academics in offstage clothes
    who watch, say nothing, and think
    they know, because they do not drink wine
    in the ordinary bars.


    Evil men who walk around
    polluting the earth. . .


    And everywhere I’ve been I’ve seen
    men who dance and play,
    when they can, and work
    the few inches of ground they have.


    If they turn up somewhere,
    they never ask where they are.
    When they take trips, they ride
    on the backs of old mules.


    They don’t know how to hurry,
    not even on holidays.
    They drink wine, if there is some,
    if not, cool water.


    These men are the good ones,
    who love, work, walk and dream.
    And on a day no different from the rest
    they lie down beneath the earth.


    - Antonio Machado
    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  44. TopTop #1494
    Bird Watcher's Avatar
    Bird Watcher
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    And this one, Larry... your own, which in October 2011 made me think of George after hearing about his cancer:


    Twilight in Hendy Woods

    This is the hour of magic
    When this world and the other world
    Touch in a lingering kiss
    And a deep stillness settles over all things.

    This is the hour of magic
    When the Earth,
    For one eternal moment, holds its breath
    Before turning from the sun.

    This is the hour of magic
    When, if you listen
    With an open heart and a quiet mind,
    You can hear the Ancient Ones, the elders of the forest

    Telling the old stories:
    Of the chainsaw massacres and the fires;
    Of the great ice ages and the birth of mountain ranges;
    Of the times long past when they were many and covered the Earth.

    They are leaving us now.
    When they are gone,
    Who will tell these stories?

    -Larry Robinson
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  46. TopTop #1495
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Revolver

    Here is a revolver.
    It has an amazing language all its own.
    It delivers unmistakable ultimatums.
    It is the last word.
    A simple, little human forefinger can tell a terrible story with it.
    Hunger, fear, revenge, robbery, hide behind it.
    It is the claw of the jungle made quick and powerful.
    It is the club of the savage turned to magnificent precision.
    It is more rapid than any judge or court of law.
    It is less subtle and treacherous than any one lawyer or ten.
    When it has spoken, the case cannot be appealed to the supreme
    court, nor any mandamus nor any injunction nor any stay of ex-
    ecutation come in and interfere with the original purpose.
    And nothing in human philosophy persists more strangely than the
    old belief that God is always on the side of those who have the
    most revolvers.

    - Carl Sandburg
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  48. TopTop #1496
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Clean

    The man sitting beside me,
    his drink flew straight up
    from his glass,
    hit the ceiling,
    and splashed down
    onto his wrist and his hand
    and his pants.

    “Shit!” I thought,
    “this plane’s going to break up,
    and we’re going to die.”

    And then,
    where did this come from?
    I thought to ask my dead parents
    how it is up there.
    Up?
    A habit I’d learned.

    The old plane continued to buck
    and I asked.

    My mom came on first.
    I’d never spoken to her after she died,
    her rigor-mortised arm crooked
    like that famous photo
    of Chief Big Foot
    after the massacre
    at Wounded Knee.

    “We’re clean up here,”
    she said.
    “There’s nothing left
    of the stuff
    of our lives.
    We’re just clean,
    waiting for our next chance
    to live again.”

    Then Dad said,
    “All our mistakes,
    all the hurts,
    all our confusions,
    are gone.
    The good stuff, too.
    It’s all gone.
    We’re completely clean.
    Just us.”

    Later,
    the bucking stopped.

    Our windows were under the wing.
    I saw the plane’s wheels
    as they hit the runway’s pavement.
    They went from being still
    to a big smoke of rubber
    to spinning
    as fast as the pavement
    went whizzing past.
    We slowed,
    and turned,
    and taxied over to the terminal.

    ----------

    Three years later,
    surrounded by death,
    -suicides,
    our cat,
    Newtown’s massacre,
    Susan gone,
    Steve sick,
    Silvia’s dad could die any day
    (each of us, too)-
    I walked up the fishtail trail
    and thought to ask
    Mom and Dad
    more about what it was like.

    They weren’t there.

    They’d left
    to inhabit new bodies.

    An answer came through though,
    from spirit,

    “What you’re wondering about
    is true.


    Your job,
    here in this life,
    is to get as clean as you can.
    Not pure,
    that’s worthless.
    Just clean.

    When Buddha
    admired a daisy
    in front
    of hundreds of listeners,
    only one person smiled.

    He was clean.
    Be like that.”


    - Trout Black
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #1497
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Discover the moment


    Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
    Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
    Who comes to a spring thirsty
    and sees the moon reflected in it?
    Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
    smells the shirt of his son and can see again?
    Who lets a bucket down
    and brings up a flowing prophet?
    Or like Moses goes for fire
    and finds what burns inside the sunrise?


    Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
    and opens a door to the other world.
    Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.
    Omar storms in to kill the prophet
    and leaves with blessings.
    Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
    An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
    Now there's a pearl.


    A vagrant wanders empty ruins
    Suddenly he's wealthy.


    But don't be satisfied with stories,
    how things have gone with others.
    Unfold your own myth,
    without complicated explanation,
    so everyone will understand the passage,
    We have opened you.


    - Jellaludin Rumi
    (translated by Coleman Barks)
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  52. TopTop #1498
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    [This is the poem that was read at the inauguration]

    One Today

    One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
    peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
    of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
    across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
    One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
    told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.
    My face, your face, millions of faces in morning's mirrors,
    each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
    pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
    fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
    begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
    bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
    on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
    to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
    for twenty years, so I could write this poem.
    All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
    the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
    equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
    the "I have a dream" we keep dreaming,
    or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won't explain
    the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
    today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
    breathing color into stained glass windows,
    life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
    onto the steps of our museums and park benches
    as mothers watch children slide into the day.
    One ground. Our ground, rooting us to every stalk
    of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
    and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
    in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
    digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
    as worn as my father's cutting sugarcane
    so my brother and I could have books and shoes.
    The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
    mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
    through the day's gorgeous din of honking cabs,
    buses launching down avenues, the symphony
    of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
    the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.
    Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
    or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
    for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
    buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
    in the language my mother taught me—in every language
    spoken into one wind carrying our lives
    without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.
    One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
    their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
    their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
    weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
    for the boss on time, stitching another wound
    or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
    or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
    jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.
    One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
    tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
    of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
    that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
    who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
    who couldn't give what you wanted.
    We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
    of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
    always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
    like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
    and every window, of one country—all of us—
    facing the stars
    hope—a new constellation
    waiting for us to map it,
    waiting for us to name it—together.


    - Richard Blanco
    Last edited by Barry; 01-23-2013 at 12:39 PM.
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  54. TopTop #1499
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Note To Reality

    Without even knowing it, I have
    believed in you for a long time.

    When I looked at my blood under a microscope
    I could see truth multiplying over and over.

    —Not police sirens, nor history books, not stage-three lymphoma
    persuaded me

    but your honeycombs and beetles; the dry blond fascicles of grass
    thrust up above the January snow.
    Your postcards of Picasso and Matisse,
    from the museum series on European masters.

    When my friend died on the way to the hospital
    it was not his death that so amazed me

    but that the driver of the cab
    did not insist upon the fare.

    Quotation marks: what should we put inside them?

    Shall I say “I” “have been hurt” “by” “you,” you neglectful monster?

    I speak now because experience has shown me
    that my mind will never be clear for long.

    I am more thick-skinned and male, more selfish, jealous, and afraid
    than ever in my life.

    “For my heart is tangled in thy nets;
    my soul enmeshed in cataracts of time...”

    The breeze so cool today, the sky smeared with bluish grays and whites.

    The parade for the slain police officer
    goes past the bakery

    and the smell of fresh bread
    makes the mourners salivate against their will.

    - Tony Hoagland
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  56. TopTop #1500
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Jerusalem


    "Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
    Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
    is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine."
    -Tommy Olofsson, Sweden


    I'm not interested in
    who suffered the most.
    I'm interested in
    people getting over it.


    Once when my father was a boy
    a stone hit him on the head.
    Hair would never grow there.
    Our fingers found the tender spot
    and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
    stands up. A bucket of pears
    in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.
    The pears are not crying.
    Later his friend who threw the stone
    says he was aiming at a bird.
    And my father starts growing wings.


    Each carries a tender spot:
    something our lives forgot to give us.
    A man builds a house and says,
    "I am native now."
    A woman speaks to a tree in place
    of her son. And olives come.
    A child's poem says,
    "I don't like wars,
    they end up with monuments."
    He's painting a bird with wings
    wide enough to cover two roofs at once.


    Why are we so monumentally slow?
    Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
    big guns, little pills.
    If you tilt your head just slightly
    it's ridiculous.


    There's a place in my brain
    where hate won't grow.
    I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
    Something pokes us as we sleep.


    It's late but everything comes next.


    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

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