Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Halley's Comet

Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street—
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

- Stanley Kunitz

[Larry Robinson]

Talking Back to God
For P.V.J.

This time, you tricked us all—
Ashes to ashes, jade stones of sorrow.
We swallow until we sink
into the small rooms of our grief.

The script said you’d leave the hospital
(you’d beaten the odds so many times before).
That you, even small as a swallow,
would rise in a whir of wings.
That you would talk back to God—
Tell him he better call on somebody else.

Instead, you made a grand exit
drawing the curtains on our surprise
and stepped out of your frail body
a Russian doll—becoming
a phoenix blazing bright
with love and redemption.

Wherever you are, we ask one last request:
Open the curtains of our surprise—speak back to us—
breathe back the fire into our hearts
until the wooden walls of our grief
burn to cinders.

- Iris Dunkle

[Larry Robinson]

At Great Pond

the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,*
and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore
a white bird is standing
like a white candle ---
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation ---*
while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.
Later, I will consider
what I have seen ---
what it could signify ---
what words of adoration I might
make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk ---
I will sit in my chair ---
I will look back*
into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,*
so peacefully,
I am almost the lily ---
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of night.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun—
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

- Joseph Stroud

[Larry Robinson]

Old Man Leaves Party

It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body. The moon shone down as it will
On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath.
And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree.
Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt.
The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads.
I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods.
Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more.
How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body.
I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now
With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and
Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not
Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment?

- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

Everything

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don't go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves, I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I
want to write while crossing the fields that are
fresh with daisies and everlasting and the
ordinary grass.I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the wold;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Full Moon

Full moon,
pull this poem
like the tide
from my heart.

Full moon,
send your magic
from beyond
to heal
my ill mother.

Full moon,
hold this holiday
in your timeless keep,
there to revisit
always with joy.

Full moon,
follow my daughters,
keep them safe
as they journey
their night.

Full moon,
delight my love,
call your cousin,
thin silver arc,

Full moon,
bring on my age
with the soft glow
of the orchard
filling with silent
shadows of deer.

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

Communion

If I'm you, or you me—
Interpenetrating God—
enlarge our intimacy.

You who are animus
and blood—
who make me dust

from this table
blown into grass,
invisible—

Is it you—or I—
I pass
and cannot see?

- Fiona Sampson

[Larry Robinson]

Near The Wall Of A House

Near the wall of a house painted
to look like stone,
I saw visions of God.

A sleepless night that gives others a headache
gave me flowers
opening beautifully inside my brain.

And he who was lost like a dog
will be found like a human being
and brought back home again.

Love is not the last room: there are others
after it, the whole length of the corridor
that has no end.

- Yehuda Amichai

[Larry Robinson]

The Laughter Of Women

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

This will be my last poetry post until August 16. Blessings to you all.
Larry

Fern, Coal, Diamond

The intense pressure of the earth
makes coal out of ferns, diamonds out of coal.
The intense pressure of the earth
is within us, and makes coal
and diamond desires.

For instance, we are a river
flowing and flowing out to sea,
an oak fire flaring and flaring in a night
with no wind, or, protean,
a river, a fire, an oak, a hawk, a wind.

And now, at first light,
I mark the stages of our growth:
mark fern, coal, diamond,
mark a pressure transforming
even broken nails and broken glass into
clear molten light.

- Arthur Sze

[Larry Robinson]

Peach


Having endured the annual descent into bleak November
and winter – even a California winter –
with its diminished imagination of the edible,
the monotonous shuffle of apples and tasteless bananas,
I long to hear from those messengers
from the Other World of summer.
*
Asparagus appears first, quickly reserving a space on the grill
for its partner, the fresh salmon (once the price comes down).
*
Later on I’ll thrill to the advent of vine-ripe tomatoes,

especially the black crims that go so well in Greek salad,

and those glorious red peppers.
*
But when July announces mid-summer,
Sweet Jesus, the peaches arrive!
A joyous procession of yellow peaches, white peaches,
miniature peaches, peaches with every kind of exotic name.
*
I admire them, kiss and fondle them,
check them every few hours until they reach that fine line
between ripe and overripe.
*
I like to make a sliced peach, almond butter and cream cheese sandwich, with really dark, French roast coffee, cream, no sugar!
*
Call me silly, call me compulsive, say, “Get a life!”
I call myself peach lover, peach aficionado,
devotee of all things round and pink.
Oh great apparition of the mother-goddess herself!
I prostrate myself to you 108 times.
I have lived another year.

- Barry Spector
*

[Larry Robinson]

On the Uncountable Nature of Things

I.

Thus, not the thing held in memory, but this:
The fruit tree with its scars, thin torqued branches;

The high burnished sheen of morning light
Across its trunk; the knuckle-web of ancient knots,


II.

The swift, laboring insistence of insects—
Within, the pulse of slow growth in sap-dark cores,

And the future waiting latent in fragile cells:
The last, terse verses of curled leaves hanging in air—

And the dry, tender arc of the fruitless branch.


III.

Yes: the tree's spine conditioned by uncountable
Days of rain and drought: all fleeting coordinates set

Against a variable sky—recounting faithfully
The thing as it is—transient, provisional, changing

Constantly in latitude—a refugee not unlike
Us in this realm of exacting, but unpredictable, time.


IV.

And only once a branch laden with perfect
Fruit—only once daybreak weighed out perfectly by

The new bronze of figs, not things in memory,
But as they are here: the roar and plough of daylight,

The perfect, wild cacophony of the present—
Each breath measured and distinct in a universe ruled


V.

By particulars—each moment a universe:
As when under night heat, passion sparks—unique,

New in time, and hands, obedient, divine,
As Desire dilates eye—pulse the blue-veined breast,

Touch driving, forging the hungering flesh:
To the far edge of each moment's uncharted edge—


VI.

For the flesh too is earth, desire storm to the marrow—
*Still—the dream of simplicity in the midst of motion:

Recollection demanding a final tallying of accounts,
The mind, loyal clerk, driven each moment to decide—

Even as the tree's wood is split and sweat still graces
The crevices of the body, which moment to weigh in,

For memory's sake, on the mobile scales of becoming.


- Ellen Hinsey

[Larry Robinson]

The Cure

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney's translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

[Larry Robinson]

A Yom Kippur Conversation

Hello God.
I think it's time for you and me
to have a little chat.
You know, I've prayed
year after year
for forgiveness
and in Your kindness,
You have always loved and forgiven me,
even though I keep making mistakes..

But here, today, while I am quiet -
alone with You
and with my prayers
alone with my heart.
God, I want to hear
Your voice.

Now, Eternal One,
in Your Omnipotence
Tell me the good things
You know about me.
Tell me
about the times my smile
brought smiles to others;
when my words brought love
to another;
The times my "please" and "thank you"
brightened someone's day.

And Holy One,
while You are telling me these good things,
while You have forgiven me,
Dear, Sweet, Loving God.
Teach me to forgive
myself.

- Marylou Shira Hadditt

[Larry Robinson]

Blues

Those five or six young guys
lunched on the stoop
that oven-hot summer night
whistled me over. Nice
and friendly. So, I stop.
MacDougal or Christopher
Street in chains of light.

A summer festival. Or some
saint's. I wasn't too far from
home, but not too bright
for a nigger, and not too dark.
I figured we were all
one, wop, nigger, jew,
besides, this wasn't Central Park.
I'm coming on too strong? You figure
right! They beat this yellow nigger
black and blue.

Yeah. During all this, scared
in case one used a knife,
I hung my olive-green, just-bought
sports coat on a fire plug.
I did nothing. They fought
each other, really. Life
gives them a few kicks,
that's all. The spades, the spicks.

My face smashed in, my bloody mug
pouring, my olive-branch jacket saved
from cuts and tears,
I crawled four flights upstairs.
Sprawled in the gutter, I
remember a few watchers waved
loudly, and one kid's mother shouting
like "Jackie" or "Terry,"
"now that's enough!"
It's nothing really.
They don't get enough love.

You know they wouldn't kill
you. Just playing rough,
like young Americans will.
Still it taught me something
about love. If it's so tough,
forget it.

- Derek Walcott

[Larry Robinson]

Bread

for Wendell Berry

Each face in the street is a slice of bread
wandering on
searching

somewhere in the light the true hunger
appears to be passing them by
they clutch

have they forgotten the pale caves
they dreamed of hiding in
their own caves
full of the waiting of their footprints
hung with the hollow marks of their groping
full of their sleep and their hiding

have they forgotten the ragged tunnels
they dreamed of following in out of the light
to hear step after step

the heart of bread
to be sustained by its dark breath
and emerge

to find themselves alone
before a wheat field
raising its radiance to the moon

- W. S. Merwin

[Larry Robinson]

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

-Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

The Peace of Wild Things
*
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

A Prayer

Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven -
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.

*******- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

[Larry Robinson]

A Morning Offering
*
I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.
*
All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.
*
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.
*
May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
*
May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.
*
-*John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

MEDITATIONS AT LAGUNITAS

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed . It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry .

- Robert Hass

[Larry Robinson]

For Strong Women

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

- Marge Piercy

[Larry Robinson]

For the Sake of a Single Poem

Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life.
You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime,
and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end,
you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines.

For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions
(one has emotions early enough) - they are experiences.
For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities,
many people and things, you must understand animals,
must feel how birds fly,
and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.
You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighbourhoods,
to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming;
to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained,
to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up
(it was a joy meant for somebody else);
to childhood illnesses that began so strangely
with so many profound and difficult transformations,
to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea,
to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along overhead and went flying with all the stars,
and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.

You must have memories of many nights of love,
each one different from all the others,
memories of women screaming in labor,
and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again.
But you must also have been beside the dying,
must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and scattered noises.
And it is not yet enough to have memories.
You must be able to forget them when they are many,
and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return.
For the memories themselves are not important.
Only when they have changed into our very blood,
into glance and gesture, and are nameless,
no longer to be distinguished from ourselves -
only then can it happen that in some very rare hour
the first word of a poem arises in their midst
and goes forth from them.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

[Larry Robinson]

The Last Salmon

When the last salmon come home
like Chief Joseph's beaten tribe
gulls will arrive from the dump
as honor must be accorded, and
the sunshine will be dignified
though we love no dead but our own.

From reserved seats on the dike
we will watch them leaping, see
their darkening flanks like old tires
in the water. The river will be at low flow
as decreed by the army engineers. Here
at the rapids the high school band
will cheer, playing the passage
of great fish through the air.

- William A. Roecker

[Larry Robinson]

Rebutting Rilke

How can Rilke say that perhaps
at the end of a long life
one might be able to write
10 good lines
he explains this in 34

are they that good or not
do they make a poem
and who decides what is good
or makes a poem

I love Rilke insight sensitivity
at times I feel he is speaking
from a place inside my own heart

when he says notice how birds fly
notice what it’s like to sit next to the dying
hear the woman screaming in labor
I do take note
his wisdom outweighs the arrogance

perhaps I expect too much
I expect Obama to not smoke
I expect the pilot to pay attention when I board the plane
I expect Rilke’s words to ring true

but what of the young child who
writes about ice cream
running down his chin
the how not what of experience
cool texture of the moment
exploring gravity stickiness
a melting wonder
yummyness silliness
so much for a young mind to explore
no less valid than
the vast experience of on octogenarian
who might soon be reducing reality
to the sensation of something dribbling down his chin

one person, no matter how educated or aware
cannot chart the course of another’s interiority
though I suppose I’ve tried to do
just this very thing

language so damn tricky
if only the poem had said “might” instead of “must”
none of this would be scribbled out
in such fervent rebellion

- Sharon Bard

[Larry Robinson]

Ten Years In Abundance

And then it is the semi-darkness of Joseph Cornell's decaying wooden window boxes.

And the wheat paste, gatefold, hand-lettered, double-sided, paint pen silk screen in the oil-based machine craft of 300 dots per inch at ten stories.

And the it is the stripe-socked bike messenger screaming at the aerostar, and the newly bruised innocence in the eyes of backseat daughters.

And the afro-peruvian whistle stopping downtempo in the 12-string electric bottle rocket of the High Dials downstairs in an uptown lounge.

And then it is the bait and switch of a bacon-wrapped hot dog with no onions in the flash toned hollow of Doc's Clock.

And the french-pressed, pan seared, rock salt rubbed, checked fried fillet of locally grown yellowtail lomo saltado on sourdough sag paneer with cebollitas on the half shell.

And then it is the velocity of plantain blossoms and stalled exhaust fumes under the heels of a thousand memories of blackened bubble gum.

And the tannic toxicity of pigeon dander in reconstituted rubber rose hips with notes of elderflower seafoam and blood orange oil.

And then it is the litany of distrustful promises made by the sky as it scrapes the hills, and the look of recognition in the faces of so many adopted cousins, stepping from the brass rails and ultraviolet Edwardian split levels, locking deadbolts with haste and checking their phones for the time.

- Max Spector

[Sara S]

She says "if only the poem had said “might” instead of “must”"

but above she says "How can Rilke say that perhaps
at the end of a long life
one might be able to write
10 good lines"

So what DOES Rilke say there?

Rebutting Rilke

How can Rilke say that perhaps
at the end of a long life
one might be able to write
10 good lines
he explains this in 34

are they that good or not
do they make a poem
and who decides what is good
or makes a poem

I love Rilke insight sensitivity
at times I feel he is speaking
from a place inside my own heart

when he says notice how birds fly
notice what it’s like to sit next to the dying
hear the woman screaming in labor
I do take note
his wisdom outweighs the arrogance

perhaps I expect too much
I expect Obama to not smoke
I expect the pilot to pay attention when I board the plane
I expect Rilke’s words to ring true

but what of the young child who
writes about ice cream
running down his chin
the how not what of experience
cool texture of the moment
exploring gravity stickiness
a melting wonder
yummyness silliness
so much for a young mind to explore
no less valid than
the vast experience of on octogenarian
who might soon be reducing reality
to the sensation of something dribbling down his chin

one person, no matter how educated or aware
cannot chart the course of another’s interiority
though I suppose I’ve tried to do
just this very thing

language so damn tricky
if only the poem had said “might” instead of “must”
none of this would be scribbled out
in such fervent rebellion

- Sharon Bard

[Larry Robinson]

Early August Evening

This time of year the grass
on these gentle uplands
is already dry
except for the green swale
bordered by blackberry and wild rose.

We're picking Gravensteins now
and the redwoods are beginning
to shed last year's needles
though the tomatoes are only
beginning to ripen.

On the savannah below
shadows lengthen
over the green carpet
beneath the valley oaks.
The main channel of the Laguna
carves a green meander lined
with tule and willow.

The fog is rolling in off the ocean
through the Petaluma gap
and circling north around
Sonoma Mountain and Sugar Loaf.

The small family of deer -
mother and two yearlings -
picks its way through cockleburrs
to the water's edge.

The egrets are making their evening commute
back to the pines on HIgh Street
to roost for the night.

I make my way up the swale
through pennyroyal,
ryegrass and spiders
to the source of all this
life-giving moisture:
the air conditioning unit
behind the hospital
condensing the vapor
of ten thousand breaths.

- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Silence

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

"It is golden," while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.
A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

- Wendell Berry

*