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  1. TopTop #4501
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hospital Chaplain


    In the other room,
    that only masked nurses and doctors can enter,
    he hears with the ears of his heart the last breaths of the dying.
    The family, in the emptiness of the waiting room, clings to him even though they may not touch.


    How do you comfort- in another room, or from six feet away?


    Only a presence that is prayer
    can fill that distance with the breath of love
    that is the one breath,
    shared breath,
    first and last and living and dying and waiting
    and right now.


    May the dying one sense the presence of his loved ones filling that almost empty room.
    And may they accompany
    with attention and awe and broken-open hearts
    the work of letting go.


    May you be there,
    helpless,
    and so helpful,
    to patients and families and staff and all -
    an emptied instrument through which
    ruach breath of Spirit blows unimpeded
    a vessel of that ununderstandable peace.


    - Ruah Bull
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  3. TopTop #4502
    american dream's Avatar
    american dream
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Beautiful, wonderful piece; a reminder of what truly matters - Thank you for sharing! (Also the one by Sherman Alexie; I love his books but didn't know that poem.
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  5. TopTop #4503
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In a time of distance




    The unexpected always happens in the way


    The unexpected has always occurred:


    While we are doing something else,


    While we are thinking of altogether


    Different things – matters that events


    Then show to be every bit as unimportant


    As our human concerns so often are;


    And then, with the unexpected upon us,


    We look at one another with a sort of surprise;


    How could things possibly turn out this way


    When we are so competent, so pleased


    With the elaborate systems we’ve created –


    Networks and satellites, intelligent machines,


    Pills for every eventuality – except this one?


    And so we turn again to face one another


    And discover those things


    We had almost forgotten,


    But that, mercifully, are still there:


    Love and friendship, not just for those


    To whom we are closest, but also for those


    Whom we do not know and of whom


    Perhaps we have in the past been frightened;


    The words brother and sister, powerful still,


    Are brought out, dusted down,


    Found to be still capable of expressing


    What we feel for others, that precise concern;


    Joined together in adversity


    We discover things we had put aside:


    Old board games with obscure rules,


    Books we had been meaning to read,


    Letters we had intended to write,


    Things we had thought we might say


    But for which we never found the time;


    And from these discoveries of self, of time,


    There comes a new realisation


    That we have been in too much of hurry,


    That we have misused our fragile world,


    That we have forgotten the claims of others


    Who have been left behind;


    We find that out in our seclusion,


    In our silence; we commit ourselves afresh,


    We look for a few bars of song


    That we used to sing together,


    A long time ago; we give what we can,


    We wait, knowing that when this is over


    A lot of us – not all perhaps – but most,


    Will be slightly different people,


    And our world, though diminished,


    Will be much bigger, its beauty revealed afresh.


    - Alexander McCall Smith
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  7. TopTop #4504
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dust in the Wind
    Recalled During Times of Covid 19


    (with gratitude to Ken Burns)




    To Amarillo came the initial
    two-mile-high wave of dust
    choking first the roosters
    followed by the hens,
    cows, swine, and humans.
    Then it buried Oklahoma,


    Its no-man’s-land above Texas’
    panhandle suffocating shriveling.
    Where were the rain clouds in ’32?
    nothing whatsoever grew
    “what didn’t grow we tried harder
    to grow, no crop new, just more.”


    (collapsing demand for so much
    too-abundant over-fertile crop
    blonde and auburn very sexy)


    First, radios electric haywired,
    you couldn’t shake hands at all
    just before the dusters came
    and all the little kids were freed
    from school same as in the North
    during the big snow storms up there.


    Here on the plains just dust after
    the buffalo grass was plowed under,
    the water dried up, and the rain
    stopped coming where there’d been
    boom times of high golden wheat,
    great big homes with telephones!



    (collapsing demand for so much
    too-abundant over-fertile crop
    blonde and auburn very sexy)


    Wheat went down to seventeen cent,
    and “we seen droughts before, and
    things’ll get better next year,” and
    Roosevelt preached loudly “no fear”
    while this ram of dust charged and
    charged again and more than once again.


    You were breathing in the black
    blizzards, but, in between storms,
    it couldn’t be more blue and beautiful,
    the irony surrounding destructive force,
    for the land had been swept clean of
    its topsoil and an explosion of jackrabbits


    (blonde and auburn very sexy)


    Jackrabbits everywhere like lost soil moving,
    and the screaming of rabbit, the jackrabbits
    being clubbed by men, women and kids screaming.
    Rabbits were replaced by ton on ton
    upon ton of strangling black dust,
    a third of the land was blowing.


    Most of the starving cattle shot,
    humans dispossessed and foreclosed.
    Suicides landed like buzzards on families
    until the Black Blizzard of 1934
    rendered suicide mostly irrelevant.
    Black so black “black’s” very essence.


    Even fearless FDR feared
    a new man-made sahara
    no longer the good earth
    this desert produced nomads
    seekers after light and fruit.


    (collapsed demand for so much
    too-abundant over-fertile crop
    blonde and auburn very sexy)



    Black Sunday 1935 portended
    further years of drought and of
    depression, depression and
    drought little doubt they would remain
    as with the rain which never left
    the clouds, they vowed not to leave
    their homes, such as they were, only
    movement here being four million
    acres shifting, sliding, blowing.
    Little girls in flour sack without
    a piece of bread, daddy’s too proud
    to take charity or seek a loan.


    California no dust and the sun
    no black wind or dust pneumonia.
    3 out of 4 stoically remain behind
    leave others to the migration,
    defeat and shame carrying dust
    by the lungful into Needles,
    San Berdoo, Oakland, Merced,
    picking oranges, prunes, grapes
    when they could and all the while
    hacking up remnants of the plains.


    I’d thought they all had left,
    that Oklahoma was no more,
    Arkansas a wasteland,
    the Panhandle holding nothing,
    that California held all surviving.
    But Roosevelt made Democrats of
    the plains while the dispossessed
    in California became the Okies, and
    “Okie go back, we don’t want you!”
    the sign of those California times.


    Back home, 1937 in the Dust Bowl,
    the worst followed a snow storm,
    dust increasing four days straight,
    tidal waves of dust devouring towns.
    What is worse, the dirt or the water?



    Then government paid farmers
    not to grow their crops,
    erosion cut in half, but
    the rains came and so did
    the grasshoppers like a moving earth.
    more rain and the snow,
    better farming, less erosion,
    and sunflowers lit the land again.
    and the wheat outgrew the children,
    what rain! what good rain!
    what good nourishing rain!
    what a wonderful wheat crop!


    (blonde and auburn very sexy)


    The speculators returned;
    they planted malignant seeds
    for later dust storms carrying
    once again in ‘51 the lesson,
    “Listen to the land and not to us!”


    - Ed Coletti
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  9. TopTop #4505
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Aubade for the the Quiet House

    I awaken to a still-dark room
    No sound to acknowledge a new day

    The silent saluki across my feet
    is, like me, not moving but awake
    His eyes as always awaiting my move

    Was it like this yesterday and the day
    before? was it dark and silent?

    Will it be like this tomorrow
    or will we be able to move freely
    call out an aubade to the morning

    Open to what once was as natural
    as the sun falling across your face
    As natural as another day of living

    - fran claggett-holland
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  11. TopTop #4506
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Rhythm of Each


    I think each comfort we manage-
    each holding in the night, each opening
    of a wound, each closing of a wound, each
    pulling of a splinter or razored word, each
    fever sponged, each dear thing given
    to someone in greater need-each
    passes on the kindness we've known.


    For the human sea is made of waves
    that mount and merge till the way a
    nurse rocks a child is the way that child
    all grown rocks the wounded, and how
    the wounded, allowed to go on, rock
    strangers who in their pain
    don't seem so strange.


    Eventually, the rhythm of kindness
    is how we pray and suffer by turns,
    and if someone were to watch us
    from inside the lake of time, they
    wouldn't be able to tell if we are
    dying or being born.


    - Mark Nepo
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  13. TopTop #4507
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The Time Of The Virus


    In the fullness of time you said
    by which I remembered
    all life is vibration, a sine wave
    an ebb and flow
    Even a virus has rhythm
    gathering and tightening, loosening
    and letting go


    On the valley oaks the nubs of leaves
    are a promise of shade
    In the orchards
    blossoms promise apples


    and in the fullness of time
    you will bend to see
    your granddaughter’s first smile
    the gap where your grandson lost
    his first tooth


    In the fullness of time
    we will greet and hold each other
    close as the season’s light
    and shadows close
    as the fingers of my hand
    raised now to wave to you


    - Elizabeth C. Herron
    Last edited by Barry; 04-06-2020 at 01:45 PM.
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  15. TopTop #4508
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Our Chrysalis Moment




    This is our chrysalis moment
    Where the transformation begins.


    Every caterpillar must do it eventually;
    Or die,
    Never to sprout their colorful wings in the air
    And fly.


    So like the caterpillar,
    We may as well surrender.
    Cocooning in our homes
    Our world turned upside down.


    Inside, we can no longer spread
    our vicious disease of consumption
    No longer run mindlessly toward our destruction.
    Inside there is stillness
    Inside, there is rest.


    Outside, the air is clearing,
    The rains are falling.
    You can feel the peace,
    Settling on the land at last.


    And Yes, there is death.
    For there’s always a dissolution.
    Old systems falling away,
    That were already pretty slimy.


    It may be frightening
    All the uncertainty and loss.
    But even in the darkness
    Imaginal cells are awakening
    Weaving a new web .


    Recognizing that this is finally
    Our time.
    Our time to be heard
    Our time to make new sense
    Our time to do things differently


    And when at last the dream awakens
    To its nascent beginnings,
    The chrysalis melts away.


    A caterpillar no longer,
    We spread our tender wings
    And fly.


    - Anodea Judith
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  17. TopTop #4509
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    No Man Is An Island


    No man is an island,
    Entire of itself;
    Every man is a piece of the continent,
    A part of the main.


    If a clod be washed away by the sea,
    Europe is the less,
    As well as if a promontory were:
    As well as if a manor of thy friend's
    Or of thine own were.


    Any man's death diminishes me,
    Because I am involved in mankind.
    And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
    It tolls for thee.

    - John Donne
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  18. TopTop #4510
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Passover

    Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .
    and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
    - Exodus 12: 7 & 13


    They thought they were safe
    that spring night; when they daubed
    the doorways with sacrificial blood.
    To be sure, the angel of death
    passed them over, but for what?
    Forty years in the desert
    without a home, without a bed,
    following new laws to an unknown land.
    Easier to have died in Egypt
    or stayed there a slave, pretending
    there was safety in the old familiar.

    But the promise, from those first
    naked days outside the garden,
    is that there is no safety,
    only the terrible blessing
    of the journey. You were born
    through a doorway marked in blood.
    We are, all of us, passed over,
    brushed in the night by terrible wings.

    Ask that fierce presence,
    whose imagination you hold.
    God did not promise that we shall live,
    but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
    brilliant in the desert sky.

    - Lynn Ungar
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  20. TopTop #4511
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Passover


    Tell me: how is this night different
    From all other nights?
    How, tell me, is this Passover
    Different from other Passovers?
    Light the lamp, open the door wide
    So the pilgrim can come in,
    Gentile or Jew;
    Under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
    Let him enter and sit down with us;
    Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
    Let him consume the bread of affliction,
    The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
    This is the night of differences
    In which you lean your elbow on the table,
    Since the forbidden becomes prescribed,
    Evil is translated into good.


    We will spend the night recounting
    Far-off events full of wonder,
    And because of all the wine
    The mountains will skip like rams.
    Tonight they exchange questions:
    The wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
    And time reverses its course,
    Today flowing back into yesterday,
    Like a river enclosed at its mouth.
    Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
    Soaked straw and clay with sweat,
    And crossed the sea dry-footed.
    You too, stranger.
    This year in fear and shame,
    Next year in virtue and in justice.

    - Primo Levi
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  22. TopTop #4512
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Paschal


    Easter was the old North
    Goddess of the dawn.
    She rises daily in the East
    And yearly in spring for the great


    Paschal candle of the sun.
    Her name lingers like a spot
    Of gravy in the figured vestment
    Of the language of the Britons.


    Her totem the randy bunny.
    Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays
    Are stained by syllables of thunder
    And Woden's frenzy.


    O my fellow-patriots loyal to this
    Our modern world of high heels,
    Vaccination, brain surgery—
    May they pass over us, the old


    Jovial raptors, Apollonian flayers,
    Embodiments. Egg-hunt,
    Crucifixion. Supper of encrypted
    Dishes: bitter, unrisen, a platter


    Compass of martyrdom,
    Ground-up apples and walnuts
    In sweet wine to embody mortar
    Of affliction, babies for bricks.


    Legible traces of the species
    That devises the angel of death
    Sailing over our doorpost
    Smeared with sacrifice.


    - Robert Pinsky
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  24. TopTop #4513
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Easter Morning In Wales

    A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
    Neglected for years,
    The layers of its soil deep and thick.
    Trees in the corners with branching arms
    And the tangled briars like broken nets.

    Sunrise through the misted orchard,
    Morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs.
    I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
    If I am really seeing, or dreaming,
    Or simply astonished
    Walking toward sunrise
    To have stumbled into the garden
    Where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.

    - David Whyte
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  26. TopTop #4514
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Passover Remembered


    Pack nothing.
    Bring only your determination to serve
    and your willingness to be free.

    Don't wait for the bread to rise.
    Take nourishment for the journey,
    but eat standing,
    be ready to move at a moment's notice.

    Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind - fear, silence, submission.

    Only surrender to the need of the time;
    to love justice and walk humbly with your God.

    Do not take time to explain to the neighbors.
    Tell only a few trusted friends and family members.

    Then begin quickly, before you have time to sink back into the old ways.

    Set out in the dark.
    I will send fire to warm and encourage you.
    I will be with you in the fire
    and I will be with you in the cloud.

    You will learn to eat new food and find refuge in new places.
    I will give you dreams in the desert
    to guide you safely home to that place
    you have not yet seen.

    The stories you will tell one another around the fires in the dark
    will make you strong and wise.

    Outsiders will attack you and some who follow you,
    and at times you will get weary
    and turn on each other
    from fear and fatigue and blind forgetfulness.

    You have been preparing for this for hundreds of years.
    I am sending you into the wilderness to make a new way
    And to learn my ways more deeply.

    Some of you will be so changed
    by weathers and wanderings
    that even your closest friends
    will have to learn your features
    as though for the first time.
    Some of you will not change at all.

    Some will be abandoned by your dearest loves
    and misunderstood by those
    who have known you since birth
    and feel abandoned by you.

    Some will find new friendship
    in unlikely faces, and old friends
    as faithful, and true
    as the pillar of God's flame.

    Sing songs as you go,
    and hold close together.
    You may at times grow confused
    and lose your way.

    Continue to call each other
    By the names I’ve given you,
    To help you remember who you are.
    Touch each other and keep telling the stories.

    Make maps as you go,
    remembering the way back
    from before you were born.

    So you will be only the first
    of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas.
    It is the first of many beginnings
    your Paschaltide.
    Remain true to this mystery.

    Pass on the whole story.

    Do not go back.

    I am with you now
    and I am waiting for you.

    - Alla Renee Bozarth
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  28. TopTop #4515
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    He Is Risen
    They tell that a man
    so loving & just
    that many take him
    for benevolent god
    was killed because his teaching
    so loving & just threatened
    the very foundations of empire
    & that against all law of life
    three days later resurrected,
    not unheard of in myth
    but wondrous still.

    His teaching still threatens empires
    & many who dare follow it
    are persecuted & killed,
    & his resurrection is nothing
    less than revolution.

    - Rafael Jesús Gonzáles
    Ha resucitado

    Cuentan que un hombre
    tan amoroso y justo
    que muchos lo toman
    por benévolo dios
    fue muerto porque su enseñanza
    tan amorosa y justa amenazaba
    los meros cimientos del imperio
    y que contra toda ley de la vida
    tres días después resucitó,
    cosa no inaudita en el mito
    pero asombrosa aun.Su enseñanza aun amenaza imperios
    y muchos que atreven seguirla
    son perseguidos y muertos
    y la resurrección de él es nada
    menos que revolución.
    - Rafael Jesús González


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    M/M
  30. TopTop #4516
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Antidotes To Fear Of Death


    Sometimes as an antidote
    To fear of death,
    I eat the stars


    Those nights, lying on my back,
    I suck them from the quenching dark
    Til they are all, all inside me,
    Pepper hot and sharp.


    Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
    Into a universe still young,
    Still warm as blood:


    No outer space, just space,
    The light of all the not yet stars
    Drifting like a bright mist,
    And all of us, and everything
    Already there
    But unconstrained by form.


    And sometime it’s enough
    To lie down here on earth
    Beside our long ancestral bones:


    To walk across the cobble fields
    Of our discarded skulls,
    Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
    Thinking: whatever left these husks
    Flew off on bright wings.


    - Rebecca Elson
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  32. TopTop #4517
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    threshing floor


    the veil is thin today, branches reach
    for you, bursting with spring, caressing
    your grief, even as we are dying,
    blossoms with tongues whisper
    it's going to be alright, though
    we leave you in confusion.
    how can this be? we, no longer
    struggling for the next breath
    now suspended on a sacred breeze.


    listen to plants, to birds' insistent calls
    feel your earth spin and the sky open
    to a great pause, the stillness within a shift.
    yes, nothing will ever be the same
    you may have one day or many
    no matter: inhale, exhale, let go
    and wander between what used to be
    necessities, no need to outshine
    yourself anymore.


    trust the cycle intensifying now.
    you are infected and waking up,
    you are churning on a threshing floor
    of loss as new seeds ricochet, burrow,
    sprout, grow up and out of the
    teeming masses, the mulch of it all.
    there's no denying the unknown
    or so much life, climbing like a
    hungry vine out of your waiting.


    - fran carbonaro
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  34. TopTop #4518
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    If I Could

    If only for a moment
    I would silence the world’s motors
    and the roar of the airplane would not be so much as a hum
    and the thunder of the locomotive would become less than a moan

    No blaring horn
    no screeching brakes
    no screaming police sirens would come from the avenue

    The din of industry would cease
    and the factory would fall into a coma
    the miracles of the dawn and the dusk
    would reclaim their sacred stillness

    Children would play a game of statues
    the wino realizing the gift of his existence would leave his bottle corked

    The right would swing to the left, and the left would not know where to turn
    Politician would be left without plots to hatch
    and the devil would run out of tricks

    Shouts would turn to whispers
    whispers to prayers
    and prayers to meditation
    chicks, in their nests, would sleep

    And in every canton and hamlet
    in every town and city
    one would only hear the rhythmic breathing

    of deep slumber and the throbbing of their own heart
    and the only sounds interrupting this immense meditation
    would be the wisps of butterfly wings
    and a prayerful chant
    quietly echoing throughout the land

    “Love.” “Love.” “Love.”

    - Armando Garcia-Davila
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  36. TopTop #4519
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Assisted Loving


    She had accommodated to these corridors
    In this home that was not her home
    The facts she faced even without the music
    Told her that the choices were slim


    They told her this was her home now
    Even her church and her world
    Between the hymns and the hearse
    There was still life, they told her


    She knocked on his door, number 221
    Romance astir on what's left of her mind
    An eternity later he opened the door
    Smile greets smile, a human animal reflex


    "You remind me of my wife," he said to his wife
    She blinked twice, her heart fanned itself
    "Get your typed paper from the night table,"
    He blinked, "Are you on it - is that why?"


    "I am Ruth, your Ruth, nothing but Ruth."
    On a sheet of paper typed by his helpful son
    He found her name at the top properly identified
    Below her all his other ID'd family and friends


    Looking at her name kindled spark upon spark
    Memories in used clothing popped in and out
    He sat down on his bed and opened his arms
    As tens of thousands of times before, she moved in


    Together they completed the hug of a lifetime
    The kiss was still familiar, still warm, still home
    Another eternity came and went through the walls
    She had accommodated to these corridors


    - Arnie Reisman
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  37. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  38. TopTop #4520
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Home

    Where I live
    the smoke will arrive
    again, half million
    heartbeats skip in unison
    rising into a warm autumn wind
    we will keep watch
    knowing well what we can
    and cannot do to help
    each other extinguish the flames
    of fear

    Where I live
    the rivers will rise
    again, cresting beyond empty
    store fronts caving in with log jams
    leftover debris from last
    century’s clear cutting until we resettle nearby, without possessions
    but grateful

    Where I live
    people will gather
    again, making sacred circles
    of hand selected stones
    a funeral for the Grey Whales
    like prayers, flower blossoms are scattered over the beautiful
    swelling tides of grief

    Where I live
    beaches were outlawed
    but not churches
    so that we walked to the bluffs
    standing silent in eucalyptus and pine once more feeling the grace and beauty of the only struggle there has
    ever been;

    To know what is good and right
    and choosing to live
    in that place.

    - Kristy Hellum
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  40. TopTop #4521
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    spring: bulldozer and white birds


    the 1959 Ford bulldozer
    last pushed ants' nests, tree-stumps
    and a bag of old shoes
    then came to rest,
    abandoned for five decades


    but today seven egrets soared
    in at seven angles to alight
    on its engine cover and wait --
    three spreading wings to catch
    sunheat, three debating wind-drift,
    one taking notes.


    At 4:15 they arose
    and dispersed over a meadow green with
    spring buds -- four marveling at dragonflies,
    two puzzled by squirrels,
    one memorizing hillscapes


    then careened across
    a church steeple to land
    near a pond
    for a symposium
    on breeding and tadpoles.


    At dusk they rose
    to the roofpeak of an abandoned house
    -- three content that
    at dawn sun's peek-a-boo rise will
    come as always, three unmindful
    of the prospect, and one asleep
    on one leg
    dreaming of mice.


    - David Beckman
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  42. TopTop #4522
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Coronavirus in Springtime


    Everywhere the signs: tiny plum blossoms blushing
    on the sidewalk, clang of crimson tulips, lilac smelling
    of your daughter’s skin after a bath. The sky
    thick cotton candy from an earlier rain, grass
    chartreuse overnight from winter’s bone. In the same
    song, the invisible one, the other melody line
    louder than beginnings: humans cooped
    up in apartments, no money, fear devouring
    breath, emptiness and loss in every corner of the planet.


    I want to go back to a simpler time, when fires
    and floods caused destruction you could see:
    a scorched hillside park, metallic smoke in your mouth,
    rising creek waters up to the door. Unseen, when so little
    has changed to the eye, except everything
    downside up, is the push below,
    lifting us like the tiny seed to be
    born in every minute, wild like the deer
    again and again and again.


    - Claire Drucker
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  44. TopTop #4523
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love This Miraculous World


    Our understandable wish
    to preserve the planet
    must somehow be
    reduced
    to the scale of our
    competence.
    Love is never abstract.
    It does not adhere
    to the universe
    or the planet
    or the nation
    or the institution
    or the profession,
    but to the singular
    sparrows of the street,
    the lilies of the field,
    “the least of these
    my brethren.”
    Love this
    miraculous world
    that we did not make,
    that is a gift to us.


    - Wendell Berry
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  46. TopTop #4524
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Everything Is Going to Be All Right

    How should I not be glad to contemplate
    the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
    and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
    There will be dying, there will be dying,
    but there is no need to go into that.
    The poems flow from the hand unbidden
    and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
    The sun rises in spite of everything
    and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
    I lie here in a riot of sunlight
    watching the day break and the clouds flying.
    Everything is going to be all right.




    - Derek Mahon

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  47. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  48. TopTop #4525
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Oceans


    I have a feeling that my boat
    has struck, down there in the depths,
    against a great thing.


    And nothing
    happens!
    Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .


    - Nothing happens?
    Or has everything happened,
    and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?


    - Juan Ramon Jimenez
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  50. TopTop #4526

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    WOW!
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  51. TopTop #4527
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mornings In Confinement

    Here’s what I want to write:
    That confinement has made me
    A better person, been a gift
    Allowed for consideration,
    Commitment to quiet
    Contemplation and revelation

    Here’s the truth:
    Every morning I open
    My eyes, listen to my heart
    And hear either the tiger
    Pacing and plotting
    Escape. Or the housecat
    Drawn to dream, to sleep
    This solitary time away.

    I open my eyes to sun
    Or dense, deep clouds,
    A remembrance of wonder.
    I consider sleep and awakening
    As sisters fatigued with fighting,

    Knowing, like siblings,
    That one day, they will separate
    Not knowing that one day,
    They will mourn their separation,
    Recognize that, all along,
    Each carried a secret
    Key to the heart of the other.

    - Rebecca del Rio
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  53. TopTop #4528
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet




    Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

    Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

    Open the door, then close it behind you.

    Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

    Give it back with gratitude.

    If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

    Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

    Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

    Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

    Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
    Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

    Don’t worry.

    The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

    The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

    Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

    Do not hold regrets.

    When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

    You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

    Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

    Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

    Ask for forgiveness.

    Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

    Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

    You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

    Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

    Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

    Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

    Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

    Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

    Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

    - Joy Harjo
    Last edited by Barry; 04-26-2020 at 01:36 PM.
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  55. TopTop #4529
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Healing


    I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.
    And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.
    I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
    and wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
    and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
    long, difficult repentance, realisation of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
    from the endless repetition of the mistake
    which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

    - D. H Lawrence
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  57. TopTop #4530
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Letter to My Great, Great Grandchild


    after Matthew Olzmann


    Oh button, don’t go thinking we loved pianos
    more than elephants, air conditioning more than air.
    We loved honey, just loved it, and went into stores
    to smell the sweet perfume of unworn leather shoes.


    Did you know, on the coast of Africa, the Sea Rose
    and Carpenter Bee used to depend on each other?


    The petals only opened for the Middle C their wings
    beat, so in the end, we protested with tuning forks.


    You must think we hated the stars, the empty ladles,
    because they conjured thirst. We didn’t. We thanked


    them and called them lucky, we even bought the rights
    to name them for our sweethearts. Believe it or not,


    most people kept plants like pets and hired kids
    like you to water them, whenever they went away.


    And ice! Can you imagine? We put it in our coffee
    and dumped it out at traffic lights, when it plugged up


    our drinking straws. I had a dog once, a real dog,
    who ate venison and golden yams from a plastic dish.


    He was stubborn, but I taught him to dance and play
    dead with a bucket full of chicken livers. And we danced


    too, you know, at weddings and wakes, in basements
    and churches, even when the war was on. Our cars


    we mostly named for animals, and sometimes we drove
    just to drive, to clear our heads of everything but wind.


    - J.P. Grasser
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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