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  1. TopTop #4741
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Does It Happen?

    It happens at the borders
    when grim men answer
    all questions with a flag
    and dismiss talk of civil rights
    with scribble of a pen.

    It happens when freedom slams
    its door on desperate, broken
    hands, and punishes the children
    who come from different lands.

    It happens when the knees of
    democracy buckle and money
    decides, who walks the long
    way home and who gets a
    chauffeured ride.

    It happens when we’re busy and
    ignore the signs that tell, not how
    or when, but enough to know, we
    lose the country when we, the people
    lose control.

    How do we change it?
    Vote because you can

    - Patrice Warrender
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  3. TopTop #4742
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Voted




    I voted today.


    I dropped my heart into the ballot box
    And cast my vote for the world I want to see.


    I voted for country over party,
    And planet over country.


    I voted for everyone, and their dog.


    I voted for the ancestors,
    And the dreams they prayed we would fulfill.


    I voted for the children,
    Carnivals and innocence and joy.


    I voted for the elders,
    Soft wisdom, busy hands weaving webs of time.


    I voted for the Divine Feminine
    To rise again and take her throne.


    I voted for the moon.


    I voted for owls and crows and croaking toads
    And ancient forests teeming with life.


    I voted for the Great Spirit
    To guide us toward our rightful place
    At the feet of the sacred,
    Through the gates of conscience,
    That we may find our way back home.


    And of course, I voted for love.


    Now what to do
    But wait for the ballots to be counted?


    Meanwhile, rivers roar, bones rattle,
    Past and future ages hold their breath.


    They are waiting to see
    If our hearts will reawaken...
    Eyes open and ears pricked forward,
    Songs on the tips of their tongues,
    Ready to welcome us back to the chorus of life.


    I voted today.
    I voted for you and me, free.


    I voted that we'll make it
    Back home together, alive.


    - Shannon Wills
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  5. TopTop #4743
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    One Vote


    After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution

    My parents are from countries
    where mangoes grow wild and bold
    and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
    America loved this bird too and made

    it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
    if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
    down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
    on its own accord by first testing the air-slide

    over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
    a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
    of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
    its own. Must make the choice on its own

    no matter what its been taught. Some forget
    that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
    than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
    vote can make the difference for every bright thing.

    - Aimee Nezhukumatathil




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  6. Gratitude expressed by:

    Dre
  7. TopTop #4744
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    When Fannie Lou Hamer Said


    I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired


    She meant
    No more turned cheek
    No more patience for the obstruction
    of black woman’s right to vote
    & plant & feed her family


    She meant
    Equality will cost you your luxurious life
    If a Black woman can’t vote
    If a brown baby can’t be fed
    If we all don’t have the same opportunity America promised


    She meant
    Ain’t no mountain boulder enough
    to wan off a determined woman


    She meant
    Here
    Look at my hands
    Each palm holds a history
    of the 16 shots that chased me
    harm free from a plantation shack


    Look at my eyes
    Both these are windows
    these little lights of mine


    She meant
    Nothing but death can stop me
    from marching out a jail cell still a free woman


    She meant
    Nothing but death can stop me from running for Congress


    She meant
    No black jack beating will stop my feet from working
    & my heart from swelling
    & my mouth from praying


    She meant
    America! you will learn freedom feels like
    butter beans, potatoes & cotton seeds
    picked by my sturdy hands


    She meant


    Look
    Victoria Gray, Anna Divine & Me
    In our rightful seats on the house floor


    She meant
    Until my children
    & my children’s children
    & they babies too
    can March & vote
    & get back in interest
    what was planted
    in this blessed land


    She meant
    I ain’t stopping America
    I ain’t stopping America


    Not even death can take away from my woman’s hands
    what I’ve rightfully earned


    - Mahogany L. Browne







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  8. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  9. TopTop #4745
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Crossroads


    My body, now that we will not be traveling together much longer
    I begin to feel a new tenderness toward you, very raw and unfamiliar,
    like what I remember of love when I was young —


    love that was so often foolish in its objectives
    but never in its choices, its intensities
    Too much demanded in advance, too much that could not be promised —


    My soul has been so fearful, so violent;
    forgive its brutality.
    As though it were that soul, my hand moves over you cautiously,


    not wishing to give offense
    but eager, finally, to achieve expression as substance:


    it is not the earth I will miss,
    it is you I will miss


    - Louise Glück
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  11. TopTop #4746
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Nothing Is Fixed




    For nothing is fixed,

    forever, forever, forever,

    it is not fixed;

    the earth is always shifting,

    the light is always changing,

    the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

    Generations do not cease to be born,

    and we are responsible to them

    because we are the only witnesses they have.

    The sea rises, the light fails,

    lovers cling to each other,

    and children cling to us.

    The moment we cease to hold each other,

    the moment we break faith with one another,

    the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.


    - James Baldwin


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  12. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  13. TopTop #4747
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Sun

    Have you ever seen
    anything
    in your life
    more wonderful

    than the way the sun,
    every evening,
    relaxed and easy,
    floats toward the horizon

    and into the clouds or the hills,
    or the rumpled sea,
    and is gone --
    and how it slides again

    out of the blackness,
    every morning,
    on the other side of the world,
    like a red flower

    streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
    say, on a morning in early summer,
    at its perfect imperial distance --
    and have you ever felt for anything
    such wild love --
    do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
    a word billowing enough
    for the pleasure

    that fills you,
    as the sun
    reaches out,
    as it warms you

    as you stand there,
    empty-handed --
    or have you too
    turned from this world --

    or have you too
    gone crazy
    for power,
    for things?

    - Mary Oliver

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  14. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  15. TopTop #4748
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Passing Through


    I borrow this dust
    from a lonely planet—
    the earth rotting and dry,
    scaffolding sent to the heavens,
    wanting more.


    I borrow this heart
    from a warn out soldier
    sharing a victory or defeat,
    lost in the questions,
    lost in himself.


    I borrow these eyes
    from the one who sees
    beyond the surface
    into the lagoon of many faces,
    into the water of life.


    I hold it all, heart in hand,
    visions of better days—
    freer, more alive.
    My longings cast on the mountain,
    scattered.


    Some held back to ignite me now
    as I rise through the blanket of ash
    wafting through snippets of dreams—
    trying to make sense
    of the path I’m on.


    Consoling the losses,
    encouraging the remains.


    - Sherrie Lovler
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  17. TopTop #4749
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Time to take a breath


    Now is a time of deep relief,
    of grief for the brokenness of things—
    certainly, no time for gloating
    nor for complacency.


    We have work to do,
    each of us.
    We must ask the question—
    always, ask the question—
    "What is mine to do?"


    And the answer, surely,
    is to reach out,
    beyond our comfort zone,
    to find some way,
    however small or insignificant seeming,
    to connect with someone who seems,
    on the face of things,
    to be different from ourselves
    and to learn, then,
    how we are the same.


    And that involves listening to their story.
    This is nothing new.
    We always have
    this job to do.


    - Bill Denham
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  19. TopTop #4750
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Yielding


    When I inquire
    about prayer and opening
    to the Great Mystery,
    the I Ching responds with
    “Field/Yielding” and
    the Mother Goddess,
    the Dark Animal Mother.
    Six young yin lines,
    no relating hexagram.
    It is pure and clear
    in its message.
    She gives blessings.
    She receives the dead.
    The field is open
    and enfolds all things.
    It is my task to yield
    to each arising moment.
    There is no way to doubt or to
    brush away the guidance
    with the customary wave
    of my cynical had.
    I am in a great field.
    I yield.

    - Maya Spector
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  20. Gratitude expressed by:

  21. TopTop #4751
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sneaking This Poem In On You


    the way the river bends
    or her spooning body
    lost and found
    you misplaced distance
    that afternoon of shadows
    sold your busted canoe
    to the true hippie there
    waiting near the avenue
    she couldn't say the words
    so I'm sneaking this poem
    in on you even though
    you say trust the moon
    I just heard your slant rhymes
    your chants against
    the government and yet
    as it was said in that old blues
    no one spoke up they had
    money to lose even Republican
    politicians may bemoan
    their fate soon
    and make excuses
    for the last four years
    all power corrupts
    except individual truth
    highway towns
    and woods of faith
    lead the way
    this grave of mine
    dug years ago
    no fortune not a way
    forward in the dark
    except in the book
    a few stars
    if I add in dreams
    you'll see
    a regular glory
    hawks and buzzards
    a plan again for leaving
    just after I sneak this
    poem in and say
    hello America
    goodbye forgotten songs
    Republicans with heart
    are voting blue and
    here's your remedy
    downhearted
    lift your eyes
    to the light the sky


    - Jack Crimmins
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  22. TopTop #4752
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rain In The Time Of Plague


    I


    Its curtain falls gentle as a quarantine from God
    that keeps souls tidied from rain and one another’s faces.


    Rain baffles down.


    Its oratorio
    complains of nothing,
    fears nothing,
    and nothing can resist.


    And I?


    I praise and thank grace
    to keep me and you well indoors and warm
    as others of us cower in holey tarps and tents
    in helter-skelter shelter from the domination
    of the reign of the plague and the rain.


    It rains convincingly as I on dry paper write —
    what thanks can match such fortune and such favor?


    Anything that falls from a thousand feet falls to death.


    Save rain that damages in striped tumble
    no one and nothing.


    II


    Plague
    scorches
    Earth.


    And with its reins The Old Cloaked Coachman drives us into stalls
    and stalls everything, each and everyone
    for once everywhere the same.










    Listen, O listen, you blessèd who read this ink
    that on this page
    falls clear as rain
    and
    black
    as plague.


    Take courage.
    Take shelter in the shelter of our common cause for once.


    III




    For in this inundation, O World, we hold handless hands.


    We join the drenched in ample consideration for each other now.


    Peace, sweet ones.
    I cannot stop speaking.
    I cannot bear to let you go.


    Our shelter is we are the leaves of every tree in one tree.


    Thus do we bless the blessing of the plague —
    its safety our sequester.


    For that which curtains us choirs us.


    Plague’s separation joins us.

    This pestilential deluge for a time
    your heart with all hearts unites —
    hidden —
    hidden away in song,
    in a chant
    we all chant
    protected.


    Then
    rest.




    - Bruce Moody
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  24. TopTop #4753
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    All for You, Honored Ones


    The teacher Dongshan was washing his bowl by the river and saw two crows fighting over a frog and tearing it apart. The student asked, “Why does it always have to be like this?” Dongshan answered, “It’s all for you, Honored One.





    First the monk asks
    “Why does it always come to this?”
    Then the teacher
    “It’s all for you.”

    The steps of the medieval church
    Malachite of the Mediterranean
    Below, the bridal party
    Gathered. It’s all
    For you.

    The child limp and lifeless
    Another beach, the Mediterranean
    Cobalt. The sky cloudless
    Pitiless. It’s all
    For you.

    Locked in our homes
    Fearing the faces
    Of friends, others. Fear
    On our faces, hidden
    Behind our plague masks.
    It’s all for us, Honored Ones.

    One day, we are the Frog
    Feeling our joints torn
    The body opening to
    A heartless world
    The place of no belonging
    An alien inside our own
    Skin, a refugee,
    Ripped from home.

    Or today, we are the Crow
    Ravaging, tearing to pieces
    Others, remaking them into food
    For infinite need, boundless greed.
    An invader, the conquerer carrying
    Chaos and terror like a torch.
    It’s all for us, the Honored Ones.

    Hungry or hunted
    Observer or observed,
    Crow, frog, sapien, or oak,
    We are the Honored Ones
    For whom Life presents.
    Life in its many guises
    Including Death, fire
    Joy and change. All for you,
    Honored ones.
    All.


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

  26. TopTop #4754
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Because Even The Word Obstacle Is An Obstacle


    Try to love everything that gets in your way;
    The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
    murmuring together in Mandarin and doing leg exercises in your lane
    while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
    one for every item on your to-do list.
    The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
    like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
    whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
    Teachers all. Learn to be small
    and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
    without grudges or memory. Dart
    toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
    is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
    lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
    Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
    in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
    Be glad she'll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
    keep going. Swim by an uncle
    in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
    how to hold his breath underwater,
    even though kids aren't supposed
    to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
    years from now, this boy
    who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
    you want to touch and turn
    may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
    raising his champagne glass in a toast
    when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
    He'll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
    but he'll come up like a cork,
    alive. So your moment
    of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
    because if something is in your way, it is
    going your way, the way
    of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.


    - Allison Luterman
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  28. TopTop #4755
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In The Book

    A hand appears.
    It writes on the wall.
    Just a hand moving in the air,
    and writing on the wall.

    A voice comes and says the words,
    "You have been weighed,
    you have been judged,
    and have failed."

    The hand disappears, the voice
    fades away into silence.
    And a spirit stirs and fills
    the room, all space, all things.

    All this in The Book
    asks, "What have you done wrong?"
    But The Spirit says,
    "Come to me, who need comfort."

    And the hand, the wall, the voice
    are gone, but The Spirit is everywhere.
    The story ends inside the book,
    but outside, wherever you are --

    It goes on.

    - William Stafford
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  30. TopTop #4756
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cave


    Someone standing at the mouth had
    the idea to enter. To go further


    than light or language could
    go. As they followed
    the idea, light and language followed


    like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
    panting. A shapeless scent
    in the damp air …


    Keep going, the idea said.


    Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
    others had been there. Others had left


    objects that couldn’t have found their way
    there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Ground
    hematite. On the walls,


    as if stepping into history, someone saw
    their purpose: cows. Bulls. Bison. Deer. Horses—
    some pregnant, some slaughtered.


    The wild-
    life seemed wild and alive, moving


    when someone moved, casting their shadows
    on the shadows stretching
    in every direction. Keep going,


    the idea said again. Go …


    Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
    outside was another idea.




    - Paul Tran
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  32. TopTop #4757
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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  33. Gratitude expressed by:

  34. TopTop #4758
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    November for Beginners


    Snow would be the easy

    way out—that softening

    sky like a sigh of relief

    at finally being allowed

    to yield. No dice.

    We stack twigs for burning

    in glistening patches

    but the rain won’t give.



    So we wait, breeding

    mood, making music

    of decline. We sit down

    in the smell of the past

    and rise in a light

    that is already leaving.

    We ache in secret,

    memorizing



    a gloomy line

    or two of German.

    When spring comes

    we promise to act

    the fool. Pour,

    rain! Sail, wind,

    with your cargo of zithers!


    - Rita Dove
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  36. TopTop #4759
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Legends of Ordinary Wisdom




    When he is eighty-eight
    The poet
    bent like the trunk of
    a weathered oak
    shuffles to the lip of the pond
    and drinks the vision
    there at his feet.
    "Hello, Old Mirror Friend,"
    he tells the water.
    "How well you hold
    my withered countenance today
    with its wrinkles and crows' feet
    surrounded by turquoise sky.
    Hello."
    And the water ripples back.


    And when he's done
    Off he trudges
    the turtle he has become
    to sit on an ancient rock.
    He pats it
    with a hand
    dry as a long fallen leaf
    and rests a while.
    "Thanks for warming my backside,"
    he sighs to the stone
    as he stands to leave
    And when he is gone up the path
    the loam where he padded so slowly
    remembers the gentle steps of his feet.


    When she is ninety-three
    confined to her chair
    She sits
    bones melting
    to painful memory
    her life miniaturized
    like she'd never have believed
    While the essence of her
    scribbles the poem that says,


    "I ache to ground myself here
    planting as symbol
    a cutting from a jade plant
    rootless
    into the dry soil of a neglected flowerpot
    I want to plant my feet
    ankle deep into my garden
    I want them to grow roots…”*


    A busy young mother
    reads the words
    that dance the page
    And snatches up her youngest
    her peanut buttered daughter
    Whisking to the yard
    to root their feet deep
    in fragrant bread warm earth.
    "Now stand up!" she cries
    And they are trees
    waving arm branches
    at a turquoise sky.
    "This is what it feels like,"
    she says to her little one
    the one with eyes that eat the world.
    "See? We have our feet in the earth
    just like trees
    and we are growing and becoming
    and greening and breathing."
    And her little girl thinks
    she is crazy
    and so so beautiful
    delicious as a peanut butter sandwich.


    When that wee one
    is twenty-two
    and completely unmoored
    by heartbreak
    She remembers the earth
    up to her knees
    tethering her
    steadying her
    Holding her
    like a mother
    And the peanut butter fragrance
    the treeness of it all.


    When he is forty-five
    and missing his grandfather
    and worrying about his sons and his students
    living in the hell of their world
    The physics teacher holds the sight
    he saw from his boyhood bird blind
    of the old poet
    bent like an ancient oak
    as he shuffled down the path
    And now he greets the pond
    and sits on his grandfather's friend
    Whispering
    "Thanks for warming my backside."


    - Sashana Kane Proctor




    *from the poem, “Returning Home After the Fire Evacuation” by Vilma Olsvary Ginzberg
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  37. Gratitude expressed by:

  38. TopTop #4760
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In A True Democracy


    If forests of trees
    smelling smoke from distant fires,
    could cast their vote for rain,
    We’d have a downpour.


    If flocks of birds,
    Dropping from the skies
    Could cast their vote for clean air
    Their left and right wings
    Would flap together in formation.


    If the teeming oceans
    With their colorful schools of fish
    could vote for their coral reefs
    We’d have a blue wave tsunami.


    If the thousands of children
    Lost from their parents
    could cast their vote for
    re-united states,
    they would weep for joy.


    If those breathing in ventilators
    Or already dead from Covid,
    Could cast their vote for science,
    Their sigh of relief would
    Cleanse the filth of lies.


    If those in distant countries
    Forced to bear the burden
    Of our consumption and climate denial
    Could cast a vote for sanity,
    They could stay with their loved ones
    in their homeland.


    If the future could vote
    for a celebration of diversity and wonder
    It would deliver evolution’s promise.


    But it’s up to us to carry these voices
    And vote for the ongoing symphony
    Of all creation.


    - Anodea Judith
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  40. TopTop #4761
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    We All Want Something Different


    In the space between
    civilization and chaos
    what form is your fear
    going to take?


    Pay attention my friend
    for the unruly imagination
    will undoubtedly fill the gap


    Who will carry the guns?
    The army or the people?
    Those are NOT MY questions
    Could they be yours?


    I cannot afford
    to listen to the news


    I have dreamt, as others have
    a multitude of profound
    and disturbing
    apocalyptic dreams


    And they have been given
    their proper due


    I can tell you this;
    my dreams have more validity
    than the NY Times does


    Do not read another news article
    (or listen to another debate)
    without remembering your dreams
    It may not be safe


    I repeat
    I can no longer afford
    to listen to the news
    unless I take care to balance it


    By reading Langston Hughes
    or imagining that I am Mary Oliver
    taking daily prescriptions of nature
    and wonderment
    or singing gospel music
    every once in a while
    or perhaps daily amen


    When you have developed
    enough lucidity to determine
    the outcome of your dreams
    please come running
    and let me know


    Only then you can go about
    your business of trying
    to save the rest of us.


    - Kristy Hellum
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  41. Gratitude expressed by:

  42. TopTop #4762
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You God


    You God, who plows my face in furrowed lines
    Who lets me tap my foot in time
    Who skipped the world in wild delight
    Before first blackbird throated his height
    Come play again and take delight
    in a field so plowed and furrowed and harrowed
    Might?
    Come race across my forehead
    slide down my nose
    ring around my sockets
    dance on my pose


    Pat-a-cake my waiting cheeks
    Peek-a-boo my ears
    Gather what you will for ball
    Splash among my tears


    And when you’ve played your fill
    and say you’ve had enough


    Gather up all your toys
    including Blind Mans Bluff


    - Patricia Mack
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  43. Gratitude expressed by:

  44. TopTop #4763
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Journey Poem III
    Our whole life is a search party for home,
    even if someone still greets us with open arms,
    even if someone broke our spirit there,
    even if it was gutted and now it’s a parking lot.

    Home is the place where the curtains billow,
    where the cat needs more milk
    but she keeps crying for something else,
    and the dog you never had licks you awake.

    After years of leaving home,
    your heart becomes brick and mortar.
    Your fingers are keys,
    your feet concrete, hard to lift.

    Your body becomes the whole foundation
    as you settle deeply into the only home
    you knew, the one where the hump back whale
    sings its way across the miles.

    It’s a place that lives at the water’s edge,
    In the middle of the prairie,
    hugged in between other homes
    on a busy city street.

    In the end home is the lullaby and the prayer,
    the blackberry bush that scraped your arms,
    the broken porch light,
    the bent screen door, the soft summer breeze.

    Home hands you coffee and kisses your neck
    calls you crying as you say - I am afraid of leaving.
    You leave anyway, then run like lightning
    toward your own search party for home.

    - Laura Lentz
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  46. TopTop #4764
    MonicaV's Avatar
    MonicaV
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thank you for this timely poem. As so many of us are craving, re creating, re imagining home with our loved ones either close by or far, we touch that tender spot within where home lives. My adult daughter thirsts for the time when she was a child when her grandmother created our large family gatherings, full of laughter, connection, and love. For her, this is home. As her search party continues its journey, she wishes for me to fill the roll of the matriarch so that she can feel that comfort. I hope this poem will shine light on a boundless sense of "home" for my daughter.
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  47. TopTop #4765
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Contemplating the Sioux Treaty of 1868 at Thanksgiving 2016
    for the Standing Rock Sioux and allies protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline set to run through their tribal lands


    Countrymen, we have reneged on agreements,
    retreated from treaties.
    Now we try cheating on physics
    which insists: seawaters will rise, coastlines
    dissolve, ice caps melt.


    At my safe distance, I conjure
    the young, the native, the brave
    whose faith the path of the pipeline dishonors.
    Whose lakes and rivers we may foul.


    The protesters brace for water cannons in 20 degrees.
    Still, on behalf of us all, they stare down monster storms,
    tear gas in their eyes.
    Safe at my supper,
    I send them this message of thanks.


    - Phyllis Meshulam
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  49. TopTop #4766
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Gratitude Goulash


    Take down your biggest pot,
    bigger than you think you need


    Slice, dice or cut into manageable pieces
    memories of unbounded joy
    and the desiccated remains
    of life's calamitous events


    Now throw them in the pot


    Look around for missed ingredients
    there are bound to be some


    Add spring water, local honey, vinegar,
    a pinch of heaven
    a smidgen of hell


    Bring this mess to a rolling boil, cover, reduce heat
    simmer on a back burner for
    as long as it takes
    stirring occasionally

    When your kitchen has a mysterious scent
    ask a close friend to dinner


    Get out a couple bowls
    they need not match

    Just before serving fold in
    a cup of success
    and a quarter pound of failure


    Then be very liberal with paprika
    this is goulash after all


    Welcome your friend to the table
    solemnly bless what’s there
    taste the bitter and the sweet

    One bite is all you’ll need
    enough to taste
    the complex flavors of gratitude


    Now forget the goulash
    take your friend out to dinner


    Order something you’ve never tried


    - Doug von Koss
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  51. TopTop #4767
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Grace


    Thanks and blessing be
    to the Sun and the Earth
    for this bread and this wine,----
    this fruit, this meat, this salt,
    ---------------this food;
    thanks be and blessing to them
    who prepare it, who serve it;
    thanks and blessing to them
    who share it
    -----(and also the absent and the dead.)
    Thanks and blessing to them who bring it
    --------(may they not want),
    to them who plant and tend it,
    harvest and gather it
    --------(may they not want);
    thanks and blessing to them who work
    --------and blessing to them who cannot;
    may they not want — for their hunger
    ------sours the wine
    ----------and robs the salt of its taste.
    Thanks be for the sustenance and strength
    for our dance and the work of justice, of peace.


    - Rafael Jesús González





    Gracias

    Gracias y benditos sean
    el Sol y la Tierra
    por este pan y este vino,
    -----esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
    ----------------este alimento;
    gracias y bendiciones
    a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
    gracias y bendiciones
    a quienes lo comparten
    (y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
    Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
    --------(que no les falte),
    a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
    lo cosechan y lo recogen
    -------(que no les falte);
    gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
    -------y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
    que no les falte — su hambre
    -----hace agrio el vino
    -----------y le roba el gusto a la sal.
    Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
    para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
    --------por la justicia y la paz.




    - Rafael Jesús González
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  53. TopTop #4768
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To a Passer-By on Thanksgiving Day


    Gentle Reader,
    it is good that you have paused
    along your way, accepting
    the silent invitation of these lines


    For it was you I had in mind
    when I sat to write these words,
    you, holding a paper cup
    of lukewarm dark roast coffee
    and a satchel filled with groceries,
    or you, clutching the dog’s leash
    in one hand, with the other
    pushing a stroller around the corner,
    and even you, whom I had not
    imagined in such precise terms


    For you I drew my pen across the empty page
    as earlier I drew my garden rake
    again and again through withered grass
    and over the buried front walk,
    metal tines clawing wet concrete
    gathering sodden maple leaves,
    potent gift of high summer sun
    turning then returning now to earth


    For you I cleared a solitary path
    prepared the way for your lonely passage
    so that a mere moment of your journey
    through the detritus of this world
    might be blessed by an open space
    awaiting your arrival,
    conspicuous in its care,
    this page inscribed in answer
    to the ground now scraped bare.


    - Seth H. Truby
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  54. Gratitude expressed by:

  55. TopTop #4769
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Arms Full


    Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,
    love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
    rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
    Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
    reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.


    To talk of gratitude is to be
    the fool in a cynic’s world.
    Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
    the admission of humility before something
    given without expectation or attachment.


    Gratitude tears open the shirt
    of self importance, scatters buttons
    across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
    ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.


    Even more, gratitude bares her breasts, rips open
    her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
    What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
    Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
    something unasked for, something unearned.


    What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet
    is simply this:
    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  57. TopTop #4770
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fire Recovery Heart Sutra

    My house is nothing more than emptiness,
    emptiness is nothing more than my house.
    Home is exactly empty,
    and emptiness is exactly home.

    My house is empty:
    Nothing is born, nothing dies,
    nothing increases and nothing decreases.
    My house is ash.

    No things.
    No end to things.
    No more Target purchases! No end to Target purchases.
    No reading material. No end to reading material.
    No memory. No end to memories.
    They are hard to find but never cease.

    There is no attainment of joy.
    There is no joy to attain.
    There is nothing but joy to attain.

    Yes.
    Gone.

    Gone,
    gone over,
    so totally gone.
    My home is ash.
    Awakened!
    So be it!


    - Amy Elizabeth Robinson
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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