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  1. TopTop #3331
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Spring Day

    On the eighth day of a spring month, in a time called the white year,
    I tried to hold my mind and make it
    still—
    my mind that wanders aimlessly.
    Repeatedly I tried, ever more dejectedly.
    I wished to merge my mind
    in the sky of unstained space;
    I wished to float my body
    lightly, in dancing clouds.
    Like a breeze in the open air,
    my mind yearns to drift, ill at ease
    in rest.
    Yet now, before the sun turns red
    and sets,
    may I leave this place, this gaping
    state—
    a field of lotus groves, spacious,
    blissful,
    a mind at ease and joyful.


    - Kelsang Gyatso, seventh Dalai Lama
    (Translated by Thupten Jinpa and Jas’ Elsner)
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  3. TopTop #3332
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Mushroom Hunters

    Science, as you know, my little one, is the study
    of the nature and behaviour of the universe.
    It’s based on observation, on experiment, and measurement,
    and the formulation of laws to describe the facts revealed.

    In the old times, they say, the men came already fitted with brains
    designed to follow flesh-beasts at a run,
    to hurdle blindly into the unknown,
    and then to find their way back home when lost
    with a slain antelope to carry between them.
    Or, on bad hunting days, nothing.

    The women, who did not need to run down prey,
    had brains that spotted landmarks and made paths between them
    left at the thorn bush and across the scree
    and look down in the bole of the half-fallen tree,
    because sometimes there are mushrooms.

    Before the flint club, or flint butcher’s tools,
    The first tool of all was a sling for the baby
    to keep our hands free
    and something to put the berries and the mushrooms in,
    the roots and the good leaves, the seeds and the crawlers.
    Then a flint pestle to smash, to crush, to grind or break.

    And sometimes men chased the beasts
    into the deep woods,
    and never came back.

    Some mushrooms will kill you,
    while some will show you gods
    and some will feed the hunger in our bellies. Identify.
    Others will kill us if we eat them raw,
    and kill us again if we cook them once,
    but if we boil them up in spring water, and pour the water away,
    and then boil them once more, and pour the water away,
    only then can we eat them safely. Observe.

    Observe childbirth, measure the swell of bellies and the shape of breasts,
    and through experience discover how to bring babies safely into the world.

    Observe everything.

    And the mushroom hunters walk the ways they walk
    and watch the world, and see what they observe.
    And some of them would thrive and lick their lips,
    While others clutched their stomachs and expired.
    So laws are made and handed down on what is safe. Formulate.

    The tools we make to build our lives:
    our clothes, our food, our path home…
    all these things we base on observation,
    on experiment, on measurement, on truth.

    And science, you remember, is the study
    of the nature and behaviour of the universe,
    based on observation, experiment, and measurement,
    and the formulation of laws to describe these facts.

    The race continues. An early scientist
    drew beasts upon the walls of caves
    to show her children, now all fat on mushrooms
    and on berries, what would be safe to hunt.

    The men go running on after beasts.

    The scientists walk more slowly, over to the brow of the hill
    and down to the water’s edge and past the place where the red clay runs.
    They are carrying their babies in the slings they made,
    freeing their hands to pick the mushrooms.

    - Neil Gaiman
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  5. TopTop #3333
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Planetarium

    Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750–1848)
    astronomer, sister of William; and others.

    A woman in the shape of a monster
    a monster in the shape of a woman
    the skies are full of them

    a woman ‘in the snow
    among the Clocks and instruments
    or measuring the ground with poles’

    in her 98 years to discover
    8 comets

    she whom the moon ruled
    like us
    levitating into the night sky
    riding the polished lenses

    Galaxies of women, there
    doing penance for impetuousness
    ribs chilled
    in those spaces of the mind

    An eye,

    ‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
    from the mad webs of Uranusborg

    encountering the NOVA

    every impulse of light exploding

    from the core
    as life flies out of us

    Tycho whispering at last
    ‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

    What we see, we see
    and seeing is changing

    the light that shrivels a mountain
    and leaves a man alive

    Heartbeat of the pulsar
    heart sweating through my body

    The radio impulse
    pouring in from Taurus

    I am bombarded yet I stand

    I have been standing all my life in the
    direct path of a battery of signals
    the most accurately transmitted most
    untranslatable language in the universe
    I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
    luted that a light wave could take 15
    years to travel through me And has
    taken I am an instrument in the shape
    of a woman trying to translate pulsations
    into images for the relief of the body
    and the reconstruction of the mind.

    - Adrienne Rich
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  7. TopTop #3334
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Why Regret?

    Didn't you like the way the ants help
    the peony globes open by eating the glue off?
    Weren't you cheered to see the ironworkers
    sitting on an I-beam dangling from a cable,
    in a row, like starlings, eating lunch, maybe
    baloney on white with fluorescent mustard?
    Wasn't it a revelation to waggle
    from the estuary all the way up the river,
    the kill, the pirle, the run, the rent, the beck,
    the sike barely trickling, to the shock of a spring?
    Didn't you almost shiver, hearing book lice
    clicking their sexual dissonance inside an old
    Webster's New International, perhaps having just
    eaten of it izle, xyster, and thalassacon?
    Forget about becoming emaciated. Think of the wren
    and how little flesh is needed to make a song.
    Didn't it seem somehow familiar when the nymph
    split open and the mayfly struggled free
    and flew and perched and then its own back
    broke open and the imago, the true adult,
    somersaulted out and took flight, seeking
    the swarm, mouth-parts vestigial,
    alimentary canal come to a stop,
    a day or hour left to find the desired one?
    Or when Casanova took up the platter
    of linguine in squid's ink and slid the stuff
    out the window, telling his startled companion,
    "The perfected lover does not eat."
    Didn't you glimpse in the monarchs
    what seemed your own inner blazonry
    flapping and gliding, in desire, in the middle air?
    Weren't you reassured to think these flimsy
    hinged beings, and then their offspring,
    and then their offspring's offspring, could
    navigate, working in shifts, all the way to Mexico,
    to the exact plot, perhaps the very tree,
    by tracing the flair of the bodies of ancestors
    who fell in this same migration a year ago?
    Doesn't it outdo the pleasure of the brilliant concert
    to wake in the night and find ourselves
    holding hands in our sleep?

    - Galway Kinnell
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  9. TopTop #3335
    Dorothy Friberg's Avatar
    Dorothy Friberg
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I wanted to look up a few of the poets words in the now defunct dictionary but I appreciate the brilliant images this Irish poet portrays. Thanks again Larry for awakening my soul this morning.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Why Regret?

    Didn't you like the way the ants help
    the peony globes open by eating the glue off?...
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  10. TopTop #3336
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Races

    You are a Brother
    And a Sister
    In the colors of Life
    Some people believe
    They are races
    Human races
    Whatever that may be
    Races are for running
    The competitive edge
    Distrust and confusion
    Leaving alterations
    In innocent faces
    We are natural Life
    A part of Mother Earth's design
    A blending of colors
    To make the difference
    In the teaching
    of meanings
    We are colors in the family
    of Life.

    - John Trudell
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  12. TopTop #3337
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Crazy Jane and God


    That lover of a night
    Came when he would,
    Went in the dawning light
    Whether I would or no;
    Men come, men go;
    All things remain in God.

    Banners choke the sky;
    Men-at-arms tread;
    Armoured horses neigh
    Where the great battle was
    In the narrow pass:
    All things remain in God.

    Before their eyes a house
    That from childhood stood
    Uninhabited, ruinous,
    Suddenly lit up
    From door to top:
    All things remain in God.

    I had wild Jack for a lover;
    Though like a road
    That men pass over
    My body makes no moan
    But sings on:
    All things remain in God

    - William Butler Yeats
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  14. TopTop #3338
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Refuse to Shrink



    Have you Cried enough in this lifetime

    To reclaim the watersheds?

    To heal the rainforest ?

    Encourage all grief to pour forth

    Spread yourself wide

    Refuse to shrink

    from your oceanic nature.

    - Kristy Hellum
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  16. TopTop #3339
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Road

    Here is the road: the light
    comes and goes then returns again.
    Be gentle with your fellow travelers
    as they move through the world of stone and stars
    whirling with you yet every one alone.
    The road waits.
    Do not ask questions but when it invites you
    to dance at daybreak, say yes.
    Each step is the journey; a single note the song.

    - Arlene Gay Levine
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  18. TopTop #3340
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  The-Road.jpg
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  20. TopTop #3341
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Dignity of the Races

    the innocent faces
    of the many races
    cause explosive reactions
    in the brains of many
    leaving traces
    of negative thoughts and feelings
    that were taught
    from the beginning

    the work is
    letting the fog
    cover angry lessons
    save smiles and tears
    till the landscape clears
    and walk the peaceful plank
    that many think they can’t
    because those faces
    stand in the way
    of happiness, their happiness

    I know, for I have seen
    how they go on without realizing
    that happiness resides
    in all the faces
    for everyone
    has their own happiness
    and their own dignity
    the dignity of the races

    - Jayro Dyer
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  22. TopTop #3342
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eulogy



    My mother was a dictionary.

    She was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal language.

    She knew dozens of words that nobody else knew.

    When she died, we buried all of those words with her.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    She knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.

    She knew words that will never be spoken again.

    She knew songs that will never be sung again.

    She knew stories that will never be told again.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    My mother was a thesaurus,

    My mother was an encyclopedia.

    My mother never taught her children the tribal language.

    Oh, she taught us how to count to ten.

    Oh, she taught us how to say “I love you.”

    Oh, she taught us how to say “Listen to me.”

    And, of course, she taught us how to curse.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    She was one of the last four speakers of the tribal language.

    In a few years, the last surviving speakers, all elderly, will also be gone.

    There are younger Indians who speak a new version of the tribal

    language.

    But the last old-time speakers will be gone.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    But she never taught me the tribal language.

    And I never demanded to learn.

    My mother always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”

    She was right, she was right, she was right.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    When she died, her children mourned her in English.

    My mother knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.

    Sometimes, late at night, she would sing one of the old songs.

    She would lullaby us with ancient songs.

    We were lullabied by our ancestors.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    I own a cassette tape, recorded in 1974.

    On that cassette, my mother speaks the tribal language.

    She’s speaking the tribal language with her mother, Big Mom.

    And then they sing an ancient song.

    I haven’t listened to that cassette tape in two decades.

    I don’t want to risk snapping the tape in some old cassette player.

    And I don’t want to risk letting anybody else transfer that tape to

    digital.

    My mother and grandmother’s conversation doesn’t belong in the

    cloud.

    That old song is too sacred for the Internet.

    So, as that cassette tape deteriorates, I know that it will soon be dead.

    Maybe I will bury it near my mother’s grave.

    Maybe I will bury it at the base of the tombstone she shares with my

    father.

    Of course, I’m lying.

    I would never bury it where somebody might find it.

    Stay away, archaeologists! Begone, begone!

    My mother was a dictionary.

    She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years.

    She knew words that will never be spoken again.

    I wish I could build tombstones for each of those words.

    Maybe this poem is a tombstone.

    My mother was a dictionary.

    She spoke the old language.

    But she never taught me how to say those ancient words.

    She always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”

    She was right, she was right, she was right.

    - Sherman Alexie
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  24. TopTop #3343
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poetry Repair

    The sign said, Poetry Body & Fender Repair
    In smaller print Domestic Only
    and even smaller print
    Experienced English Major on Duty

    My dented poem about lost youth and food coloring
    had a few problems so I pushed it in the open door

    “May we be of service, sir?”
    My poem has a slow leak and now and then the steering is loose

    “That’s dreadful. Have you discerned anything else, sir?”
    Well, it start ok but it slows down when I change direction

    “Has it been repaired before, sir?”
    Too many times I’m afraid

    “Sir, it appears your poem has met with a collision.”
    How can you tell?

    There is a plethora of indications. We can hear
    a whispering murmur, a susurrus actually
    from under the hood. And it’s dripping verbs at an appalling rate.”

    Plethora? Susurrus? Appalling? I don’t use words like that.

    “There you have it. That’s your problem sir. Good day.”

    - Doug von Koss
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  26. TopTop #3344
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When you think about it, mostly, a cage is air -

    When you think about it, mostly, a cage is air - 
    so what is there
    to be afraid of?
    A cage of air. Baudelaire said
    Poe thought America was one giant cage.
    To the poet, a nation is one big cage?
    And isn’t the nation mostly filled with air?
    Try to put a cage around your dream.
    The cage escapes the dream.
    I see it streak and stream.

    - Sandra Simonds
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  28. TopTop #3345
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tabernacle

    Since they shared the same
    monogram, Jim
    Crow & Jesus
    often found themselves

    getting the other’s dress shirts
    back from the wash.
    This was after Jim
    had made it big

    & could afford such
    small luxuries. He
    & Jesus mostly met
    Sundays in church

    where Jesus came for the singing
    but stayed for the sermon
    & to see whether the preacher
    ever got it right.

    Jim, you guessed it,
    came for the collection plate
    & after stayed
    for the hot

    plates of the Ladies
    Auxiliary (no apostrophe).
    To one
    folks prayed,

    the other they obeyed.

    - Kevin Young
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  30. TopTop #3346
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Dominguez Escalante Expedition


    When the Dominguez Escalante Expedition
    couldn’t find a way
    to cross the river,
    they left a vast expanse
    of redrock

    empty

    at the center
    of their map.

    Our lives
    are like that,
    we know so much,
    words can describe so much,

    and yet,
    at our infinite center,
    there is
    an emptiness
    a space
    where all
    that truly matters
    lives.

    - Trout Black
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  32. TopTop #3347
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Sadness At The Heart Of The Nation

    Waking up after bad dreams,
    loss, grief, unable to reach you;
    I think of the sadness at the heart
    of the nation. Where song fades out.
    How there is a train to prison
    that young men ride each day.
    We are torn from each other, lost,
    some rageful, as we dive down
    into our unconscious wounds, awake to
    our present reality. There is
    no one here in the darkness.
    The great storms carry thunder snow.
    New rains cause flooding in the west.
    There is a sadness at the heart.
    The painters will show us colors
    and textures of our inner life.
    We hope for vibrancy, movement,
    our shadows illuminated.
    In the distance, musicians
    begin to write, sing, chant
    of our dark mystery, our protest,
    and we honor and embrace
    a sadness that will not end soon enough.
    There are drums, now, to be played.
    We are the strong, grieving, drummers
    of our American world. And so I go
    downtown early, for a cup of coffee,
    5:30 in the morning, and driving,
    hear Dave Carlson's band,
    Tazmanian Devils, on KRSH radio,
    "Roots, Blues, Americana",
    playing a live version of "Not Fade Away",
    as good as it gets rock 'n roll,
    magical in the early dark,
    the crowd cheering at the end.
    And I think I'm going to be all right again,
    even with this sadness at the heart of the nation.

    - Jack Crimsons
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  34. TopTop #3348
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Memorizing A Poem

    In the beginning was the Word.
    Creation is involved here.
    This is not “print-on-a-page”.
    These are the flowers
    of the ages.

    Nor can you clip them
    and stuff them
    in some mental vase.
    You have to plant them inside!

    First-reading scatters
    the seeds of words,
    atoms whirling with life,
    even the ones that seem inert.

    Then: repetition
    becomes the steady hand
    holding the watering can.

    Imperceptibly, every word sprouts.
    Secret tendrils grow day by day,
    reach out, join hands,

    become part of something larger,
    a clause, a sentence. Finally,
    each word so tropically
    bonded with others,
    it no longer exists
    as a separate thing.

    A stanza coheres. The force
    continues to flow onward,
    new critical mass accrues,
    the spirit leaps

    across the gap to the next,
    back to the one before!
    Every reading, connections
    establish themselves more firmly.
    New ones arise,
    flourish like bougainvillea.
    Roads appear: Turn Left Here.
    Paths and gardens of knowing
    form in the brain. Bouquets
    climb up into the air,
    perfume the air, above the brain!

    Finally, a newly-created world
    lives within you
    to be invoked when needed,
    called forth like a genie from a bottle.

    Every poem or story
    made one’s own
    initiates its keeper
    into the long line
    stretching back
    to ancient campfires.
    Every teller chants with Homer,
    Valmiki, bards whose names
    we do not know,

    carries this line,
    the Light in eyes,
    onward

    - Max Reif
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  36. TopTop #3349
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Simonides of Crete

    I read Simonides of Crete.
    His words twenty-five centuries ago
    speak as living stone:

    “Across the pale stillness
    of water, keel-carven,
    these lovely eyes of desire
    drag the ship to her doom.”

    He speaks from a character of firm kindness
    and, as you can see, also from a respect for the strong arm of nature.

    He speaks of climbing the rock walls to Virtue,
    and how only those with sweat, with clenched concentration and courage
    reach the peak,
    but also how blithe her attendant there are
    as they celebrate their hymns.

    And, likewise (for even the Gods had their defects),
    how to never expect perfection from any mortal –
    forgiving those especially whose luck was bad.

    And how finally (how fate-grave all Greek poetry is!)
    Prosperity may vanish
    or overturn.
    The light-lifting wing of a dragonfly
    is not more swift.

    I like hard Greek conclusions. Except that, of course,
    Fate may, but spirit does not,
    ever
    really
    conclude.

    - Bruce Moody
    Last edited by Barry; 05-21-2017 at 01:18 PM.
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  38. TopTop #3350
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reversal of Fortune

    Somewhere in the crevice between dusk and dawn
    just before the grey glow of daylight creeps
    through the blinds, awakening my ache
    for just one more hour of sleep,
    and you

    Your hand reaches down from the heavens,
    once again stroking my forehead
    from the bridge of my nose to the hairline
    smoothing out worry lines etched
    since childhood, erasing mental litter,
    like waves of the ocean washing the shore

    The very shore where we strolled on
    our first date, your large hand cradling mine,
    my own hand saying “yes,” while we spoke
    in low tones as I’m speaking to you now
    across the divide:

    You wouldn’t believe that the country you fled
    to find refuge from uniformed men goose-stepping
    through your dreams, insisting
    in the native tongue you detested
    that you are one of them and there is no escape

    That very land that worshipped blond and blue-eyed boys
    is now led by a woman, is embracing
    a million desperate dark-skinned people,
    and the grandchildren of your uncles and aunts
    wash swastikas off buildings, place bronze plaques
    on sidewalks announcing the truth of their clotted past
    lest they forget

    While the country where you sought and found asylum –
    remember the woman lifting her torch to the huddled masses –
    has closed its borders in a great forgetting of fake news
    and alternative facts

    Did you know what was coming? Is that why, twenty years
    before the buried grenades of terror and hate
    burst forth like fireworks in America’s spacious skies,
    you returned to die in your homeland’s pastoral countryside?


    The same countryside abutting the Black Forest
    my family crossed on foot through perilous nights
    to Amsterdam’s port, to the bowels of a ship,
    to my country tis of thee, just before the glass shattered in yours?

    By what miracle did we find each other’s hands in the dark,
    did I allow the fingers of the enemy to caress away nightmares
    of men in striped pajamas with yellow stars?

    And by what quirk of fate are you gone, but the dreams are back
    just before dawn, so I escape through the crack in search of
    hallowed ground, where I can finally kneel at your grave,
    sing you to sleep, and rest my head on the grassy mound.

    - Linda Blachman
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  40. TopTop #3351
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Trees

    The trees are coming into leaf
    Like something almost being said;
    The recent buds relax and spread,
    Their greenness is a kind of grief.

    Is it that they are born again
    And we grow old? No, they die too,
    Their yearly trick of looking new
    Is written down in rings of grain.

    Yet still the unresting castles thresh
    In fullgrown thickness every May.
    Last year is dead, they seem to say,
    Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

    - Phillip Larkin
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  42. TopTop #3352
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A World in Pain

    later that night
    i held an atlas in my lap
    ran my fingers across the whole world
    and whispered
    where does it hurt?

    it answered
    everywhere
    everywhere
    everywhere

    - Warshan Shire
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  44. TopTop #3353
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lost in the Mail

    Madeleine Bell, at 2240
    in her wavy print dress
    hobbled up to the mailbox and
    inspected each piece:
    another sympathy card
    for her run over dog,
    this from her bridge partner,
    Mrs. Scanlon.
    I could tell.
    It was small and white and quickly read,
    then quickly closed.
    And it made her eyes water
    and she squeezed them to dry in the fading sun.
    Now her shoulders
    slumped even more
    as she made her way home,
    those wavy blue stripes,
    not unlike, I imagined,
    tire treads running
    the length of her back.

    Raymond, next door, shuffled his stack
    and covering the papers from his ex-wife’s attorney
    (so I wouldn’t see the divorce became final)
    with a large yellow envelope from which he withdrew
    a Polaroid snapshot of:
    Single white female
    seeks romantic long evenings,
    non-smokers only,
    I wished him luck on this one,
    as I had every week.

    And my own empty box,
    except for the Guardian
    telling me to pay up,
    it was, once again
    another spent year
    measured in stamps.

    But the three of us stopped to look up from our leaving
    and caught each others eyes just at the moment
    that the sky turned suddenly a bright shade of Mercurochrome
    swabbing our hurting world.

    C.Dec, 1991
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  46. TopTop #3354
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In My Wallet I Carry a Card

    In my wallet I carry a card
    which declares I have the power to marry.

    In my wallet I carry a card
    which declares I may drive.

    In my wallet I carry a card
    that says to a merchant I may be trusted to pay her.

    In my wallet I carry a card
    that states I can borrow a book in the town where I live.

    In my hand I carry a card.
    Its lines declare I am cardless, carless,
    stateless, and have no money.

    It is buoyant and edgeless.
    It names me one of the Order of All Who Will Die.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  48. TopTop #3355
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Where I'm From
    (after George Ella Lyon)

    I am from smooth clay,
    from the rope swing over the riverbank.
    I am from the acacia tree outside the sunstruck window.
    (Blur of yellow,
    the air particulated
    like La Grande Jatte.)
    I am from the old hammock,
    brittle in the walnut shade
    where I lay unseen all summer.

    I'm from Gravenstein apple orchard,
    from delicate dust and blackberry thicket.
    I'm from warm trumpet brass
    and the green Victorian,
    from slim brown wrists and peeling white paint.
    I'm from question authority
    and you can't hug a child
    with nuclear arms.

    I am from the comfrey and the ivy,
    from Occidental and the car won't start.
    From the rosehip garland my mother strung
    in the stillness of the graveyard noon,
    the maps of the moon and the ocean floor.
    Under the house were boxes of books
    limned by mildew,
    the old photographs of faces
    strangely young, before the eclipse
    of the present overtook them.
    They were smiling.
    They didn't know
    what in the world to expect.

    - Yosha Bourgea
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  50. TopTop #3356
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At 3 AM

    The world is so quiet
    The sun is still asleep
    Stars are yawning
    Stillness…..silence?

    No –

    Rivers rush
    Earth quakes
    Volcanoes spew
    Tornadoes roar
    Hurricanes flood
    Drought cracks
    The earth is not silent
    The earth is not asleep
    We are silent
    We are not awake

    - Rebecca Evert
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  52. TopTop #3357
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Watching

    for my father

    You and I used to talk about
    Lear and his girls
    (I read it in school,

    you saw it on the Yiddish stage
    where the audience yelled:
    Don't believe them,

    they're rotten) —
    that Jewish father and his
    suburban daughters.

    Now I'm here with the rest,
    smelling the silences,
    watching you

    disappear.
    What will it look like?
    Lost on the bed

    without shoes, without lungs,
    you won't talk
    except to the wall: I'm dying,

    and to the nurse: Be
    careful, I
    may live.

    What does a daughter say
    to the bones
    that won't answer —

    Thank you to the nice man?
    Daddy?
    The last time

    we went to the Bronx Zoo,
    the elephants were smelly as ever,
    all those warm Sundays,

    the monkeys as lewd.
    But they put the penguins
    behind curved glass

    with a radiant sky
    painted on the far wall.
    And all those birds

    lined up with their backs to us
    watching the wrong
    horizon.

    - Chana Bloch
    (3/15/1940 - 5/19/2017)
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  54. TopTop #3358
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Secondary Boycott Ode

    I had never seen anything like it. I was walking
    out of the office of the braces doctor,
    in the same building as the acne doctor,
    I was on my way to the lunch counter
    that had sandwiches on soft bread
    with the crusts cut off—& people were blocking
    the doors, following each other around
    in a circle, like our junior high marching band,
    & they were in the way, between me
    & my sandwich. I went up to a lady who was watching,
    & asked her what was happening,
    & she told me about the segregated
    lunch counters in the South—this was
    a secondary boycott, of Woolworth’s. & I asked,
    how do they choose who walks, & she said,
    Anyone can. I had never seen anyone
    saying no with their body, with their feet.
    When I stepped toward the circle, a man walked a little
    faster, & a woman walked a little slower,
    & there was a space for me, to sing
    without making a sound, at last to be
    unfaithful to my family,
    stepping out on silence.

    - Sharon Olds
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  56. TopTop #3359
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I am touched by this memory poem.Today, Memorial Day, I think of my father who wasn't just called to service, to kill Germans and Japanese humans, and without question... it was more of a huge planetary movement and every young man at the time was swept into it. He fathered five of us, all marching against war, dodging drafts, spitting on his blind allegiance to his unquestioned values. Today, I set to permanent rest his old values, and I honor all peace warriors: those who have lost faith and hope and even lives, fighting the GOOD fight. We are the real brave soldiers now, and always faithful to human life, justice, peace and equality.
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  58. TopTop #3360
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Psalm

    Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
    How many clouds float past them with impunity;
    how much desert sand sifts from one land to another;
    how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
    in provocative hops!

    Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
    or alights on the roadblock at the border?
    A humble robin - still, its tail resides abroad
    while its beak stays home. If that weren’t enough, it won't stop bobbing!

    Among innumerable insects, I'll single out only the ant
    between the border guard's left and right boots
    blithely ignoring the questions "Where from?" and “Where to?"

    Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
    prevailing on every continent!
    Isn't that a privet on the far bank
    smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
    And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
    would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

    And how can we talk of order overall?
    when the very placement of the stars
    leaves out doubting just what shines for whom?

    Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
    And dust blowing all over the steppes
    as if they hadn't been partitioned!
    And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
    that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!

    Only what is human can truly be foreign.
    The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

    - Wislawa Szymborska
    (translated by Anya Kucharev)
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  59. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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