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  1. TopTop #4261
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sing with Liberty: Psalm of Protest 15

    Sing with Liberty,
    For the Mother of Exiles weeps at our sunset gates,
    Weeps for her battered proclamation
    Twisted to shut our sea-washed shores
    To the innocent
    Fleeing violence and deprivation.

    Sing with Liberty,
    For we too were once among the tired and the poor,
    Our parents and grandparents
    Were the huddled masses
    Journeying to a land where they could breathe free.

    Sing with Liberty,
    Sing with Emma,
    Sing with the generations,
    The wretched refuse
    Washed upon our teeming shores,
    Who built this nation,
    Who hold us accountable to defend our legacy.

    Sing with Liberty,
    For from her beacon-hand
    Still glows a world-wide welcome,
    Flickering now,
    But not yet extinguished.
    And we will continue to sing with Liberty
    The song of freedom,
    Beckoning the homeless,
    The tempest-tost,
    To the lamp at our golden door.

    - Alden Solovy
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  3. TopTop #4262
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Woodstock

    In the mud of a tire rut,
    we were the filaments.

    We said if Mrs. Agnew could make music
    on Spiro’s flute

    we said the clubs in the hands of the Chicago cops
    would liquefy.

    The trees shook with the throb of steel.

    What did we do to be so red, white, and blue?

    We were inexorable
    like the dialectic unraveling from Hanoi
    to the Jacksonian grass.

    We were the inebriates of vitamin C and cocaine,
    the daughters of the gray flannel suit.

    And when the shaman spread his yellow robe like the sun
    he was all teeth and amp

    and what were we?

    - Peter Balakian
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  5. TopTop #4263
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shine, Perishing Republic


    While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
    And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass
    hardens,

    I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make
    earth.
    Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and
    home to the mother.

    You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
    long or suddenly
    A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing
    republic.

    But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
    center; corruption
    Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left
    the mountains.

    And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
    insufferable master.
    There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he
    walked on earth.


    - Robinson Jeffers
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  7. TopTop #4264
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lightening the Load

    The first thing we have to do
    is to notice
    that we've loaded down the camel
    with so much baggage
    we'll never get through the desert alive.
    Something has to go.

    Then we can begin to dump
    the thousand things
    we've brought along
    until even the camel has to go
    and we're walking barefoot
    on the desert sand.

    There's no telling what will happen then.
    But I've heard that someone,
    walking in this way,
    has seen a burning bush.

    - Francis Dorff
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  9. TopTop #4265
    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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  10. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  11. TopTop #4266
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    God Breaks the Heart Again and Again Until It Stays Open
    after a quote from Sufi Inayat Khan

    But what if my heart is a 7-Eleven after its third daytime robbery in a week?

    What if my heart is a piñata trashed to tissue and peppermint shrapnel?

    What if my heart is a peeled mango bearing an emerald housefly?

    What if my heart is an air conditioner weeping a rosary of rusty tears?

    What if my heart is Sebastião Salgado’s sinkhole swallowing another child?

    What if my heart is Death Valley in wide-view Cinemascope?

    What if my heart is a chupacabrón chanting, Build the wall?

    What if my heart is the creepy uncle’s yawning zipper?

    What if my heart is a Pentecostal babbling a river of tongues?

    What if my heart is the cross-eyed Jesus bought at the Poteet flea market?

    What if my heart is El Paso, Texas, in bed with the corpse of Ciudad Juárez?

    What if my heart is unhinged from the weight of its lice-ridden wings?

    What then for an encore, oh my soul, when you have blessed me a
    hundredfold?

    - Sandra Cisneros
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  13. TopTop #4267
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Oath of Disloyalty

    I am a disloyal Jew.
    I am not loyal to a political party.
    Nor will I be loyal to dictators and mad kings.
    I am not loyal to walls or cages.
    I am not loyal to taunts or tweets.
    I am not loyal to hatred, to Jew-baiting, to the gloating connivings of white supremacy.

    I am a disloyal Jew.
    I am not loyal to any foreign power.
    Nor to abuse of power at home.
    I am not loyal to a legacy of conquest, erasure and exploitation.
    I am not loyal to stories that tell me who I should hate.

    I am a loyal Jew.
    I am loyal to the inconveniences of kindness.
    I am loyal to the dream of justice.
    I am loyal to this suffering Earth
    And to all life.
    I am not loyal to any founding fathers.
    But I am loyal to the children who will come
    And to the quality of world we leave them.
    I am not loyal to what America has become.
    But I am loyal to what America could be.
    I am loyal to Emma Lazarus. To huddled masses.
    To freedom and welcome,
    Holiness, hope and love.



    - Irwin Keller


    Listen to Irwin chanting this: https://www.irwinkeller.com/itzikswe...-of-disloyalty
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  15. TopTop #4268
    franjoy's Avatar
    franjoy
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I wear my disloyalty like a badge of honor
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  17. TopTop #4269
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    From Blossoms

    From blossoms comes
    this brown paper bag of peaches
    we bought from the boy
    at the bend in the road where we turned toward
    signs painted Peaches.

    From laden boughs, from hands,
    from sweet fellowship in the bins,
    comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
    peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
    comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

    O, to take what we love inside,
    to carry within us an orchard, to eat
    not only the skin, but the shade,
    not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
    the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
    the round jubilance of peach.

    There are days we live
    as if death were nowhere
    in the background; from joy
    to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
    from blossom to blossom to
    impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

    - Li-Young Lee
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  19. TopTop #4270
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Nellie Jo

    I remember the landscape in your eyes
    alone and petrified, we took you in
    coaxing with a Christmas ham from a neighbor was good
    and to seal the bet, our diplomatic Rottweiler befriended
    it took the edge off being lost on a holiday
    your thin matte black coat and nails worn rough
    was telling enough
    we never got the full story where you’d been and
    weeks in, when no one claimed you
    we gave you a name
    soon we found how others were unkind to you
    it arrived in your bad manners and temperament
    biting white jagged teeth
    insecure with bitches less than you
    we pulled you off fights by the hind legs
    we didn’t know you
    but your softness belied the toughness
    when we taught you to swim, you were all legs
    pounding in the green water
    over and over your target
    during the summer in Grass Valley
    it seemed you found your calling then
    when the idea of a home became easier,
    we were troubled in our marriage and
    you showed us how persistence and goofiness
    were the best tricks to a happiness
    and when you stopped chasing the ball
    we forgot how to play too
    but you stayed with us
    much later, one Thanksgiving
    when whole bowls of water
    emptied onto the wood floors telling us how you’d fallen
    and the imminent months ahead
    increased with medications
    we doubted if we could care for you
    in the same carefree way you did us
    but we tried
    the days ensued, opened slowly
    and slower beside you
    we didn’t know when the end
    so we asked you
    for some sign on the road to Stop
    and when you did, it was clear (enough)
    on a searing summer blue day
    trembling like in the beginning
    we touched your thick down for comfort
    and held onto you, but first
    we brought you to the lush, open field where you once played
    when it was time to go
    your deep brown eyes blinked a few more times into mine
    and closed in again
    towards home.

    - Danielle Bryant
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  21. TopTop #4271
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Time’s Up

    Lately I’ve been crawling out
    Of your machine.
    I’ve been removing your phallus
    From my temple and releasing
    My sisters from your chains.

    Lately I’ve been wearing black
    Through the hot summer days
    Because my grief is stronger than the sun.

    There is no recompense for all I have lost,
    Even were you to bow your head
    And beg forgiveness.

    I used to believe I would
    Recover my joy.
    Now, as I wrest my sovereignty
    From your calloused hands,
    I will settle for freedom.

    - Jean Redus
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  23. TopTop #4272
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Much

    When the time comes
    and you are still not ready
    and everything you did has added up to
    just this, because who wants
    to go into the cold dark
    and after all this maybe
    is your only one -- this life
    and did you love it
    what you were given? How much
    did you waste wishing and weeping
    and gnashing your teeth
    when you could have danced --
    when you could have
    what you are leaving now


    - Elizabeth C. Herron
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  25. TopTop #4273
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Why California Will Never Be Like Tuscany

    There must have been huge oaks and pines, cedars,
    maybe madrone,
    in Tuscany and Umbria long ago.
    A few centuries after wood was gone, they began to build with
    brick and stone.

    Brick and stone farmhouses, solid, fireproof,
    steel shutters and doors.

    But farming changed.
    60,000 vacant solid fireproof Italian farmhouses
    on the market in 1970,
    scattered across the land.

    Sixty thousand affluent foreigners,
    to fix them, learn to cook, and write a book.

    But in California, houses all are wood —
    roads pushed through, sewers dug, lines laid underground —
    hundreds of thousands, made of strandboard, sheetrock,
    plaster —.

    They won’t be here 200 years from now — they’ll burn or rot.
    No handsome solid second homes for

    Thousand-year later wealthy
    Melanesian or Eskimo artists and writers here,

    — oak and pine will soon return.


    - Gary Snyder
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  27. TopTop #4274
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Things to Love


    The determination of hate

    how damp wood likes to hiss

    the way water speaks with stone

    the impermanence of fire

    the permanence of photographs

    the victory of two over one

    weeds’ sovereignty over lawns

    the conviction of nettles to belong

    the slurpy sound of bracken being ripped from the earth

    how air lives its freedom and freedom loves the air

    being swallowed whole by the ocean

    blue flame skies at Fanore

    the suddenness of freckles after sun

    whiskey’s lucidity

    the stern humour in coffee

    the victory of one over two

    blood, wine, the razzamatazz of dandelions

    butterflies with ragged wings.


    This planet and its song

    offerings everywhere

    should we choose to look and see

    - Aoife Reilly
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #4275
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Proclamation

    Whereas the world is a house on fire;
    Whereas the nations are filled with shouting;
    Whereas hope seems small, sometimes
    a single bird on a wire
    left by migration behind.
    Whereas kindness is seldom in the news
    and peace an abstraction
    while war is real;
    Whereas words are all I have;
    Whereas my life is short;
    Whereas I am afraid;
    Whereas I am free –despite all
    fire and anger and fear;
    Be it therefore resolved a song
    shall be my calling – a song
    not yet made shall be vocation
    and peaceful words the work
    of my remaining days.

    - Kim Stafford
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  31. TopTop #4276
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mr. Duffy

    “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”
    ~ James Joyce from The Dubliners.

    He didn’t talk about it much
    Who would believe him
    He knew the truth of it
    He lived a short distance from his body

    None of his clothes liked his body
    He looked like he dressed
    in a moment of forgetfulness
    He knew this

    Mr. Duffy thought about yoga a lot
    It could really be good for him
    Stretching and all that
    There was just that one problem

    Maybe a lot of problems
    But the big one
    He lived a short distance from his body

    He noticed it first on the playground
    You know when the ball comes straight at you
    And it goes right through you
    He knew it should have hurt

    He felt nothing then
    He feels nothing now
    He still lives a short distance from his body

    - Doug von Koss
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  33. TopTop #4277
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Storm

    1

    Against the stone breakwater,
    Only an ominous lapping,
    While the wind whines overhead,
    Coming down from the mountain,
    Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces;
    A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
    And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against
    the lamp pole.

    Where have the people gone?
    There is one light on the mountain.

    2

    Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
    The waves not yet high, but even,
    Coming closer and closer upon each other;
    A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,
    Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,
    The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
    Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness.

    A time to go home!--
    And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley,
    A cat runs from the wind as we do,
    Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia,
    Where the heavy door unlocks,
    And our breath comes more easy--
    Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
    The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
    The walls, the slatted windows, driving
    The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
    To their cards, their anisette.

    3

    We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress.
    We wait; we listen.
    The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
    Bending the trees half-way down to the ground,
    Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard,
    Flattening the limber carnations.

    A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
    Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
    Water roars into the cistern.

    We lie closer on the gritty pillow,
    Breathing heavily, hoping--
    For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater,
    The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell,
    The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses,
    And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.

    - Theodore Roethke
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  35. TopTop #4278
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cure

    We think we get over things.
    We don’t get over things.
    Or say, we get over the measles
    but not a broken heart.
    We need to make that distinction.
    The things that become part of our experience
    never become less a part of our experience.
    How can I say it?
    The way to “get over” a life is to die.
    Short of that, you move with it,
    let the pain be pain,
    not in the hope that it will vanish
    but in the faith that it will fit in,
    find its place in the shape of things
    and be then not any less pain but true to form.
    Because anything natural has an inherent shape
    and will flow towards it.
    And a life is as natural as a leaf.
    That’s what we’re looking for:
    not the end of a thing but the shape of it.
    Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
    without obliterating (getting over) a single
    instant of it.

    - Albert Huffstickler
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  37. TopTop #4279
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Theories of Time and Space


    You can get there from here, though
    there’s no going home.

    Everywhere you go will be somewhere
    you’ve never been. Try this:

    head south on Mississippi 49, one—
    by—one mile markers ticking off

    another minute of your life. Follow this
    to its natural conclusion—dead end

    at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
    riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

    in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
    the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

    dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
    terrain of the past. Bring only

    what you must carry—tome of memory
    its random blank pages. On the dock

    where you board the boat for Ship Island,
    someone will take your picture:

    the photograph—who you were—
    will be waiting when you return

    - Natasha Trethewey
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  39. TopTop #4280
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Singularity


    (after Stephen Hawking)

    Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
    we once were?

    so compact nobody
    needed a bed, or food or money —

    nobody hiding in the school bathroom
    or home alone

    pulling open the drawer
    where the pills are kept.

    For every atom belonging to me as good
    Belongs to you. Remember?

    There was no Nature. No
    them. No tests

    to determine if the elephant
    grieves her calf or if

    the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
    oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;

    would that we could wake up to what we were
    — when we were ocean and before that

    to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
    liquid and stars were space and space was not

    at all — nothing

    before we came to believe humans were so important
    before this awful loneliness.

    Can molecules recall it?
    what once was? before anything happened?

    No I, no We, no one. No was
    No verb no noun
    only a tiny tiny dot brimming with

    is is is is is

    All everything home

    - Marie Howe
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #4281
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Practice

    I touch my toes.

    When I was a child,
    this was difficult.
    Now I touch my toes daily.

    In 2012, in Sanford, Florida,
    someone nearby was touching her toes before bed.

    Three weeks ago,
    in the Philippines or Myanmar, someone was stretching.

    Tomorrow, someone elsewhere will bend
    first to one side, then the other.

    I also do ten push-ups, morning and evening.

    Women’s push-ups,
    from the knees.
    They resemble certain forms of religious bowing.

    In place of one, two, four, seven,
    I count the names of incomprehension: Sanford, Ferguson, Charleston.
    Aleppo, Sarajevo, Nagasaki.

    I never reach: Troy, Ur.

    I have done this for years now.
    Bystander, listener. One of the lucky.
    I do not seem to grow stronger.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  43. TopTop #4282
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For All

    Ah to be alive
    on a mid-September morn
    fording a stream
    barefoot, pants rolled up,
    holding boots, pack on,
    sunshine, ice in the shallows,
    northern rockies.

    Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
    stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
    cold nose dripping
    singing inside
    creek music, heart music,
    smell of sun on gravel.

    I pledge allegiance

    I pledge allegiance to the soil
    of Turtle Island,
    and to the beings who thereon dwell
    one ecosystem
    in diversity
    under the sun
    With joyful interpenetration for all.

    - Gary Snyder
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  45. TopTop #4283
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Old Friend
    for all of my old friends

    My old friend lives far away
    from me and
    I live far away
    from my old friend.
    We send email back and forth
    from time to time,
    a photo, a song, or
    something in the news.
    I am a part of my
    old friend’s life,
    only a part,
    and my old friend is a
    part of my life, too,
    but just
    a part.
    We share good memories.
    One day my email will not be answered.
    Or perhaps
    one day I will not
    be here to open
    my old friend’s message.
    One of us will become
    pure memory.
    Sooner or later
    both of us will
    disappear into the
    land of eternal forgetting.

    - Eric T. MacKnight
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  47. TopTop #4284
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rise and Fall

    Let go of fear
    and rest in that which is.
    For peace, like love,
    comes to those who allow it.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in stillness.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Watch the tide rise...
    and fall.
    Watch towers rise...
    and fall.

    Watch walls rise...
    and fall.
    Watch statues rise...
    and fall.

    Watch empires rise...
    and fall.
    Watch the breath rise...
    and fall.

    Let go of fear
    and rest in the arms
    of the One
    who has always held you,
    the One who holds
    atoms and empires
    and oceans and stars.

    Let go of fear
    and watch what happens next.

    - Larry Robinson
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  49. TopTop #4285
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Turning

    There were so many times it seemed impossible;
    Everything getting worse and worse
    Suffering, hopelessness, corruption;
    Dire news every day.
    Just too much wrong,
    And always
    On the dark horizon
    The looming sentence of our demise.

    It was in everything
    Metastasized like a cancer;
    A life threatening hatred,
    Let loose to poison our hearts.

    But then, slowly,
    imperceptibly at first,
    when all hope seemed lost,
    Things started to turn.

    A girl from Sweden,
    A demonstration of youth,
    A regulation that held;
    A town that stood its ground,
    A truth that was louder than lies.
    A fire that was extinguished,
    A kindness that was extended,
    A moral fiber that poked through the tattered web
    and began the mending.

    It gathered strength in
    The steady march of the silent, electric cars,
    the gleaming solar panels,
    and the Greening, Oh the Greening,
    everywhere we could
    The rooftops and sidewalks, and windowsills, spilling into sunlight.
    We’d hardly noticed the birds were missing
    until they began to sing again.

    Eventually the corruption gave way
    Like corroded metal,
    Collapsing under the weight of people’s hearts.
    Politicians falling through their selfish webs,
    First one, then another,
    Until like dominoes, they were scattered on the dust heap of history.

    The stench was gone.
    The hatred just no fun anymore;
    Even the worst had no taste for it.

    We picked up the pieces, scattered over the land.
    We were quiet.
    We were humbled.
    We were careful.
    We listened.
    We sang.
    We told new stories.

    We barely even noticed when it began.
    But looking back,
    It was happening all along.

    And then, at last, we laughed.


    - Anodea Judith
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  51. TopTop #4286
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Border Line

    Acorn woodpeckers gather in
    early morning on the bare-limbed oak
    calling Jacob, Jacob, Jacob…
    But first comes the sparrow hopping
    through the grass, Queen Anne’s lace hangs
    in the air as I step toward the sloping bushes
    to pluck blackberries—
    a bowl of stillness and stealth—
    while below, a doe with her young
    dips and crosses over our neighbor’s line—
    no questions asked.


    - Raphael Block
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  53. TopTop #4287
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Soham Soham Soham


    I am, I am, I am

    Havayah, Havayah, Havyah

    Sanskrit, English, Hebrew

    It all says the same thing

    Being, Universe, Ultimate Realty

    God

    Soham, Soham, Soham

    Sooooo... the sound of inhalation.

    Hummmm... the sound of exhalation.

    Am, Am, Am

    repeated, it quickly becomes

    Ma, ma, ma

    The first word spoken by a child

    In any language

    From any land

    Mama, Eema, Mam, 妈妈, أمي

    It’s all the same

    Does the child really say “mother”?

    Perhaps she says, “ I am.”

    I am here, I am here, I am here.

    Here I am, here I am, here I am.

    Hineini

    Connected to the universe.

    A part of being

    Ultimate reality in me and me in it.

    Havayah, Havayah, Havayah

    The ineffable name

    Present tense of “to be.”

    In a language that lacks that verb in that form.

    Not Adonai, or Lord or even Eternal One

    Just being

    Not Yahweh, or Jehovah or even Yahoo.

    Just ultimate presence. Here. Now.

    Better pronounced as breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out.

    Yud - inhale

    Heh - exhale

    Vav - inhale

    Heh - exhale

    Breathing in light

    Breathing out, as through a window.

    Soham, Soham, Soham

    So

    Ham

    In

    Out

    Yud

    Heh

    Here

    Now

    Am

    I

    - Daniel Gropper

    (Soham or Sohum (सो ऽहम् so 'ham or so 'Hum[1]) is a Hindu mantra, meaning "I am He/That" in Sanskrit.[2][3]

    In Vedic philosophy it means identifying oneself with the universe or ultimate reality.[2]

    The mantra is also inverted from so 'ham (the sandhi of saḥ + aham) to ham + sa.)
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  55. TopTop #4288
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The End
    For Eliot, September 7, 2004

    And after everything, what is there to say, really,
    to an animal whose death
    one has long been expecting?
    Perhaps it’s best not to say anything.
    Better just to sit with him—
    to stroke the fur that no one’s washed in months,
    to scratch the ears which no longer hear,
    to slowly shift that golden flop of a friend
    to the spot he’d loved the best:
    a little hilltop overlooking a harbor
    where the boats are forever turning
    toward the morning light,
    where the heron is always just now landing, its ripple a whisper.

    And careful with the legs, which stopped working, forever,
    sometime last night, you turn him around gently
    so that even though he can’t see so well his body can remember.
    And that’s when he raises his fine head just one more time
    to honor this slender, splendid patch of life—
    the geese flying high and North forever,
    the boats with their delicate dance.
    He holds his head that way for several minutes though it hurts—
    one more time smelling what’s West,
    and the breeze dallies one final time
    in the soft fur of his chest.

    And that’s when you whisper, though you’re weeping
    “It will be okay, it will be okay.”
    And he shifts a thick, gentle paw, and somehow it finds your hand.
    And may you have the sense, then, to sit with him in silence,
    and to understand what he’s been saying all along—
    to know, at last, what it means to love the earth this way—
    to endure this kind of pain
    just for one more morning’s breeze,
    and the boats, and the blue,
    so much blue.

    - Lisa Starr
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  57. TopTop #4289
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Praise What Comes

    surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
    of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
    that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise

    talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
    that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
    before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps

    you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
    you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
    and only a few very simple questions: did I love,

    finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
    of the many names of God? At the intersections,
    the boundaries where one life began and another

    ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
    possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
    did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

    - Jeanne Lohmann
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  59. TopTop #4290
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    She Dreamed of Cows


    I knew a woman who washed her hair and bathed
    her body and put on the nightgown she’d worn
    as a bride and lay down with a .38 in her right hand.
    Before she did the thing, she went over her life.
    She started at the beginning and recalled everything‹
    all the shame, sorrow, regret and loss.
    This took her a long time into the night
    and a long time crying out in rage and grief and disbelief‹
    until sleep captured her and bore her down.

    She dreamed of a green pasture and a green oak tree.
    She dreamed of cows. She dreamed she stood
    under the tree and the brown and white cows
    came slowly up from the pond and stood near her.
    Some butted her gently and they licked her bare arms
    with their great coarse drooling tongues. Their eyes, wet as
    shining water, regarded her. They came closer and began to
    press their warm flanks against her, and as they pressed
    an almost unendurable joy came over her and
    lifted her like a warm wind and she could fly.
    She flew over the tree and she flew over the field and
    she flew with the cows.

    When the woman woke, she rose and went to the mirror.
    She looked a long time at her living self.
    Then she went down to the kitchen which the sun had made all
    yellow, and she made tea. She drank it at the table, slowly,
    all the while touching her arms where the cows had licked.

    - Norah Pollard
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  60. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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