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  1. TopTop #601
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Let's Remake The World


    Let's remake the world with words.
    Not frivolously, nor
    To hide from what we fear,
    But with a purpose.
    Let's,
    As Wordsworth said, remove
    "The dust of custom" so things
    Shine again, each object arrayed
    In its robe of original light.

    And then we'll see the world
    As if for the first time.
    As once we gazed at the beloved
    Who was gazing at us.

    - Gregory Orr
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  2. TopTop #602
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Waste

    Not even waste
    is inviolate.
    The day misspent,
    the love misplaced,
    has inside it
    the seed of redemption.
    Nothing is exempt
    from resurrection.
    It is tiresome
    how the grass
    re-ripens, greening
    all along the punched
    and mucked horizon
    once the bison
    have moved on,
    leaning into hunger
    and hard luck.

    - Kay Ryan
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  3. TopTop #603
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    If, On Account Of The Political Situation


    If, on account of the political situation,

    there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and
    men

    Lying about in the countryside neither drunk nor
    asleep,

    If all sailings have been cancelled till further
    notice,

    If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,

    Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,

    The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,

    That is not at all unusual for this time of year.

    If that were all, we should know how to manage.
    Flood, fire,

    The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,

    Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal
    grief,

    These are after all our familiar tribulations,

    And we have been through them all before, many, many
    times.

    As events which belong to the natural world where

    The occupation of space is the real and final fact

    And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,

    They occur again and again but only to pass

    Again and again into their formal opposites,

    From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to
    work,

    So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern
    composed

    By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly
    happen

    Is permanent in a general average way.



    Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we
    seemed

    To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the
    tiger,

    The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,

    Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:

    To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not

    So impossible after all; to cut our losses

    And bury our dead was really quite easy. That was why

    We were always able to say: "We are children of God,

    And our Father has never forsaken His people."

    But then we were children: That was a moment ago,

    Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced

    Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we
    were.

    Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain

    We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone

    In the waiting room of the country junction, looking

    Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion

    But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way
    in?

    Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:

    We can only say that now It is there and that nothing

    We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest
    use,

    For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if

    We had left our house for five minutes to mail a
    letter,

    And during that time the living room had changed
    places

    With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;

    It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered

    Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching
    our shadow

    Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean

    That the world of space where events reoccur is still
    there,

    Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere

    Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:

    I mean that although there's a person we know all
    about

    Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,

    That person has become a fiction; our true existence

    Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.



    That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome

    The nursery bogey or the winecellar ghost, why even

    The violent howling of winter and war has become

    Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are
    afraid

    Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare

    Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.

    This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.

    - W.H. Auden
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  4. TopTop #604
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    We are pleased to announce the third place winner in our Poems For Haiti contest, George Taylor's "Remembering Haiti". Tomorrow we will share the second place winner and on Wednesday the first place. Stay tuned.

    Many thanks to all of you who submitted such beautiful gifts!



    Remembering Haiti

    I see their dark Haitian faces
    in the halls at my mother's retirement home.
    The men carry tape measures on plaster-stained leather belts.

    Jean Phillipe holds a screw driver
    in my mother's kitchen.
    He says in a Caribbean-French accent
    "Your mother is my teacher."

    The his smile reaches out to me
    across three hundred years of history
    which neither of us mentions,
    across the rift in the earth
    which brought down Haiti's buildings
    and across the screams of parents.

    This broad white-toothed smile hovers thankfully
    above the men and women unloading truckloads of food.

    "She helps my English, very bad" Jean Phillipe says.

    He smiles again
    across the landscape between Haiti and Mill Valley
    full of people who help each other
    any way they can.

    - George Taylor
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  5. TopTop #605
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Today we offer you the second place winner in our Poems For Haiti Contest.

    In Memoriam

    for Haiti

    One minute heating up the stove
    to cook a little lunch
    then sweep the floor
    the next a rumble
    as if trains stampeded through rooms
    through walls toppling like lincoln logs
    she had given birth
    the papers said
    on a bed with blue sheets
    her baby's face
    no longer hers
    but the thousands pinned beneath stone
    singing could not break through
    where they stood swaying
    the jut of a hip or dusty feet under skirts
    the sky buried itself
    no time for
    a lullaby, not even a kiss
    on the mother's half-opened lips.

    - Claire Drucker
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  6. TopTop #606
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Today we are pleased to share the first place winner in our Poetry For Haiti contest, Laurie Kirkpatrick's "Retrospect".

    Retrospect

    These photos have been altered
    since New Year's week
    when my daughter brought them home from Port-au-Prince.

    Grey bungalows with fuchsia porches float over the treetops,
    opening into air.

    Stacked high under plastic tarps and Digicel umbrellas,
    ripe guavas. Roosters wave their handful of orange feathers
    and insolent blue tails. A wedding flickers in a church
    of paper lanterns, baby's breath.

    Hibiscus winds through barbed wire.
    Archways are latticed in iron filigree.
    The least windows are barred as if
    the enemy can be shut out.

    Before a door the turquoise color of portable latrines
    a man carries a bag of soil, or maybe it's cement, on his head;
    a woman balances a whole week's groceries in her hamper,
    their strong arms and backs about to
    shoulder the dead.

    - Laurie Kirkpatrick
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  7. TopTop #607
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Forge

    All I know is a door into the dark.
    Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
    Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,
    The unpredictable fantail of sparks
    Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
    The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
    Horned as a unicorn, one end square,
    Set there immovable: an altar
    Where he expends himself in shape and music.
    Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
    He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
    Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
    Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
    To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.

    - Seamus Heaney
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  8. TopTop #608
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Unknown Citizen

    (To js/07/m/378
    This Marble Monument
    Is Erected by the State)

    He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
    One against whom there was no official complaint,
    And all the reports on his conduct agree
    That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
    For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
    Except for the War till the day he retired
    He worked in a factory and never got fired,
    But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
    Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
    For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
    (Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
    And our Social Psychology workers found
    That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
    The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
    And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
    Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
    And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
    Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
    He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
    And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
    A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
    Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
    That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
    When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
    He was married and added five children to the population,
    Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation,
    And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
    Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
    Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

    - W.H. Auden
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  9. TopTop #609
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Invictus


    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

    - William Ernest Henley
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  10. TopTop #610
    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 Britains.

    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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  11. TopTop #611
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Story

    Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
    We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
    with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
    closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
    or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
    precisely folded garments washed half to death,
    unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
    There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
    must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
    with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
    to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
    This was the center of whatever family life
    was here, this and the sink gone yellow
    around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
    ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
    of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
    Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
    the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
    gray and certainly pine, shows through.
    Father stood there in the middle of his life
    to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
    must surely be listening. When no one answered
    you can see where his heel came down again
    and again, even though he'd been taught
    never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
    they had well water they pumped at first,
    a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
    at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
    to where the woods once held the voices
    of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
    of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
    one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
    with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
    is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
    those two stained ridges were handholds
    she relied on; they never let her down.
    Where is she now? You think you have a right
    to know everything? The children tiny enough
    to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
    of their own and to abandon them, the father
    with his right hand raised against the sky?
    If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
    where are the woods? They had to have been
    because the continent was clothed in trees.
    We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
    Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
    of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
    into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
    there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
    of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.

    - Philip Levine
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  12. TopTop #612
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ecclesiastes II:I

    We must cast our bread
    Upon the waters, as the
    Ancient preacher said,

    Trusting that it may
    Amply be restored to us
    After many a day.

    That old metaphor,
    Drawn from rice farming on the
    River's flooded shore,

    Helps us believe
    That it's no great sin to give,
    Hoping to receive.

    Therefore I shall throw
    Broken bread, this sullen day,
    Out across the snow,

    Betting crust and crumb
    That birds will gather, and that
    One more spring will come.

    - Richard Wilbur
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  13. TopTop #613
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    blessing the boats


    (at St. Mary's)

    may the tide
    that is entering even now
    the lip of our understanding
    carry you out
    beyond the face of fear
    may you kiss
    the wind then turn from it
    certain that it will
    love your back
    may you
    open your eyes to water
    water waving forever
    and may you in your innocence
    sail through this to that

    - Lucille Clifton
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  14. TopTop #614
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Planting a Sequoia

    All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard,
    Digging this hole, laying you into it, carefully packing the soil.
    Rain blackened the horizon, but cold winds kept it over the Pacific,
    And the sky above us stayed the dull gray
    Of an old year coming to an end.

    In Sicily a father plants a tree to celebrate his first son's birth-
    An olive or a fig tree-a sign that the earth has one more life to bear.
    I would have done the same, proudly laying new stock into my father's
    orchard,
    A green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs,
    A promise of new fruit in other autumns.

    But today we kneel in the cold planting you, our native giant,
    Defying the practical custom of our fathers,
    Wrapping in your roots a lock of hair, a piece of an infant's birth cord,
    All that remains above earth of a first-born son,
    A few stray atoms brought back to the elements.

    We will give you what we can-our labor and our soil,
    Water drawn from the earth when the skies fail,
    Nights scented with the ocean fog, days softened by the circuit of bees.
    We plant you in the corner of the grove, bathed in western light,
    A slender shoot against the sunset.

    And when our family is no more, all of his unborn brothers dead,
    Every niece and nephew scattered, the house torn down,
    His mother's beauty ashes in the air,
    I want you to stand among strangers, all young and ephemeral to you,
    Silently keeping the secret of your birth.

    - Dana Gioia
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  15. TopTop #615
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Passing

    How swiftly the strained honey
    of afternoon light
    flows into darkness

    and the closed bud shrugs off
    its special mystery
    in order to break into blossom:

    as if what exists, exists
    so that it can be lost
    and become precious

    - Lisel Mueller
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  16. TopTop #616
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Self-Unseeing

    Here is the ancient floor,
    Footworn and hollow and thin:
    Here is the former door
    Where the dead feet walked in.

    She sat here in her chair,
    Staring into the fire;
    He who played stood there,
    Bowing it higher and higher.

    Childlike I danced in a dream;
    Blessings emblazoned that day;
    Everything glowed with a gleam;
    Yet we were looking away.

    - Thomas Hardy
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  17. TopTop #617
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rock and Hawk

    Here is a symbol in which
    Many high tragic thoughts
    Watch their own eyes.

    This gray rock, standing tall
    On the headland, where the seawind
    Lets no tree grow,

    Earthquake-proved, and signatured
    By ages of storms: on its peak
    A falcon has perched.

    I think, here is your emblem
    To hang in the future sky;
    Not the cross, not the hive,

    But this; bright power, dark peace;
    Fierce consciousness joined with final
    Disinterestedness;

    Life with calm death; the falcon's
    Realist eyes and act
    Married to the massive

    Mysticism of stone,
    Which failure cannot cast down
    Nor success make proud.

    - Robinson Jeffers
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  18. TopTop #618
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rock Bottom

    So this is what it comes down to in the end: earth and sand
    skimmed, trimmed, filleted from rocky bone, leaving only
    solid unshakeable bottom, what doesn't in the end give in
    to the relentless hammer, whoosh, and haul-away of tides
    but stands there saying "Here I am here I stay," protestant
    to the pin of its absolute collar, refusing to put off the sheen
    on its clean-scoured surface, no mourning weeds in spite of loss
    after loss – whole wedges of the continent, particles of the main
    plummeting from one element to the other and no going back
    to how things were once, but to go on ending and ending here.

    - Eamon Grennan
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  19. TopTop #619
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Alba

    Climbing in the mist I came to a terrace wall
    and saw above it a small field of broad beans in flower
    their white fragrance was flowing through the first light
    of morning there a little way up the mountain
    where I had made my way through the olive groves
    and under the blossoming boughs of the almonds
    above the old hut of the charcoal burner
    where suddenly the sent of the bean flowers found me
    and as I took the next step I heard
    the creak of the harness and the mule’s shod hooves
    striking stones in the furrow and then the low voice
    of the man talking softly praising the mule
    as he walked behind through the cloud in his white shirt
    along the row and between his own words
    he was singing under his breath a few phrases
    at a time of the same song singing it
    to his mule it seemed as I listened
    watching their breaths and not understanding a word.

    - W.S. Merwin
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  20. TopTop #620
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    White Horse


    Through the woods of Annadel,

    past trees gently arched,

    trunks and stones moss-matted —

    comes the fair stallion steady on the trail



    One angel on a treetop sings

    one note, repeated,

    repeated



    Milky surface of stream,

    little wall of water

    falling into it,

    and the white horse

    coming nearer

    with a steady sound

    beating under the boughs

    in the darkness of woods

    as if by magic

    moving towards

    to where, upon the ribbed edge,

    he passes

    trails a veil of light

    that shakes us

    as though wind

    as though ecstasy



    — Katherine Hastings
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  21. TopTop #621
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Advice from a Tree


    Dear Friend

    Stand Tall and Proud
    Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
    Reflect the light of your true nature
    Think long term
    Go out on a limb
    Remember your place among all living beings
    Embrace with joy the changing seasons
    For each yields its own abundance
    The Energy and Birth of Spring
    The Growth and Contentment of Summer
    The Wisdom to let go like leaves in the Fall
    The Rest and Quiet renewal of Winter
    Feel the wind and the sun
    And the delight in their presence
    Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
    And the mystery of the stars at night
    Seek nourishment from the good things in life
    Simple pleasures
    Earth, fresh air, light
    Be content with your natural beauty
    Drink plenty of water
    Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes
    Be flexible
    Remember your roots
    Enjoy the view!

    - Ivan Shamir
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  22. TopTop #622
    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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  23. TopTop #623
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hatred


    See how efficient it still is,

    how it keeps itself in shape -

    our century's hatred.

    How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.

    How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

    It's not like other feelings.

    At once both older and younger.

    It gives birth itself to the reasons

    that give it life.

    When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.

    And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it.


    One religion or another -

    whatever gets it ready, in position.

    One fatherland or another -

    whatever helps it get a running start.

    Justice also works well at the outset

    until hate gets its own momentum going.

    Hatred. Hatred.

    Its face twisted in a grimace

    of erotic ecstasy.

    Oh these other feelings,

    listless weaklings.

    Since when does brotherhood

    draw crowds?

    Has compassion

    ever finished first?

    Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?

    Only hatred has just what it takes.

    Gifted, diligent, hard working.

    Need we mention all the songs it has composed?

    All the pages it has added to our history books?

    All the human carpets it has spread

    over countless city squares and football fields?

    Let's face it:

    it knows how to make beauty.

    The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.

    Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.

    You can't deny the inspiring pathos of ruins

    and a certain bawdy humor to be found

    in the sturdy column jutting from their midst.

    Hatred is a master of contrast -

    between explosion and dead quiet,

    red blood and white snow.

    Above all, it never tires

    of its leitmotif - the impeccable executioner

    towering over its soiled victim.

    It's always ready for new challenges.

    If it has to wait awhile, it will.

    They say it's blind. Blind?

    It has a sniper's keen sight

    and gazes unflinchingly at the future

    as only it can.

    - Wislawa Szymborska
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  24. TopTop #624
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I strain my ears
    I raise my head
    and wait for the dawn breeze
    How many times dreamily
    herding an ox in the Spring rain?
    Who realizes that this intention pierces heaven?
    Just remain with rising eyebrows
    And blinking eyes

    - Dogen Zenji
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  25. TopTop #625
    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
    the desiccated remains
    of all your life's
    calamitous events.

    Look around for missed ingredients.
    Add clean water, local honey and vinegar.
    Bring this mess to a rolling boil then
    simmer on a back burner for several days.

    When your kitchen smells good,
    Ask a close friend to come over.
    Get out two old bowls,
    they need not match.
    Just before serving add a dollop of success
    and a smidgen of failure.
    Then be very liberal with paprika.

    Solemnly bless the goulash,
    and take a few bites…
    Laugh together, forgive yourself,
    then gratefully
    go out to eat.

    - Doug von Koss
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  26. TopTop #626
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Farewell Song

    There is a new bird in this forest - song so sweet it breaks my heart to be
    leaving. Twenty-seven years of the Stellar Jay's harsh voice drowning out
    the songbirds. And now, melodious song rings all around, a solitary
    woodpecker accompanying on percussion. Yesterday I recorded them with a plan
    to reveal their identities. But for now, the trees sing with this mystery of
    sweetness - my farewell song.

    What then, if I let the world break my heart with it's terrible beauty and
    unceasing change?

    - Kay Crista
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  27. TopTop #627
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Signals and Leaves

    The signals we give—yes, or no, or maybe—
    should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
    William Stafford

    If we listen to the lesson of the falling leaves
    we will send the right signals to each other,
    the yes, the no, the maybe. We will send
    love
    and faith
    and the knowledge that letting go
    is the only way of knowing whether our signals
    (of grace, of god)
    are coming through
    true.
    - Fran Claggett

    After reading “Ritual to Read to Each Other” by William Stafford
    and “The Lesson of the Falling Leaves” by Lucille Clifton
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  28. TopTop #628
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Parade

    Across the valley
    carried by the fullness of the spring sun
    echo something distant and
    familiar: drums. The high
    school band prepares again
    in the heat of early morning
    for the annual parade in our town,
    small enough that anyone who
    wants can join in,
    whose neighbors, children, friends,
    animals, enemies, rivals, and anonymous
    relatives will march, all steady, then
    pause to wait for those ahead
    to perform before the judging stand and
    then march on, and on, and on

    out to the edge of town, out off the far end, marching still
    to where they
    will echo
    and someday start, I know,
    for I can feel it already,
    a single tear
    to salt my closed
    and grateful eye.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  29. TopTop #629
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To A Young Poet

    Don’t believe our outlines, forget them
    and begin from your own words.
    As if you are the first to write poetry
    or the last poet.

    If you read our work, let it not be an extension of our airs,
    but to correct our errs
    in the book of agony.

    Don’t ask anyone: Who am I?
    You know who your mother is.
    As for your father, be your own.

    Truth is white, write over it
    with a crow’s ink.
    Truth is black, write over it
    with a mirage’s light.

    If you want to deal with a falcon
    soar with the falcon.

    If you fall in love with a woman,
    be the one, not she,
    Who desires his end.

    Life is less alive than we think but we don’t think
    of the matter too much lest we hurt emotion’s health.

    If you ponder a rose for too long
    you won’t budge in a storm.

    You are like me, but my abyss is clear.
    And you have roads whose secrets never end.
    They descend and ascend, descend and ascend.

    You might call the end of youth
    the maturity of talent
    or wisdom. No doubt, it is wisdom,
    the wisdom of a cool non-lyric.

    One thousand birds in the hand
    don’t equal one bird that wears a tree.

    A poem in a difficult time
    is beautiful flowers in a cemetery.

    Example is not easy to attain
    so be yourself and other than yourself
    behind the borders of echo.

    Ardor has an expiration date with extended range.
    So fill up with fervor for your heart’s sake,
    follow it before you reach your path.

    Don’t tell the beloved, you are I
    and I am thou, say
    the opposite of that: we are two guests
    of an excess, fugitive cloud.

    Deviate, with all your might, deviate from the rule.

    Don’t place two stars in one utterance
    and place the marginal next to the essential
    to complete the rising rapture.

    Don’t believe the accuracy of our instructions.
    Believe only the caravan’s trace.

    A moral is as a bullet in its poet’s heart
    a deadly wisdom.

    Be strong as a bull when you’re angry
    weak as an almond blossom
    when you love, and nothing, nothing
    when you serenade yourself in a closed room.

    The road is long like an ancient poet’s night:
    plains and hills, rivers and valleys.
    Walk according to your dream’s measure: either a lily
    follows you or the gallows.

    Your tasks are not what worry me about you.
    I worry about you from those who dance
    over their children’s graves,
    and from the hidden cameras
    in the singers’ navels.

    You won’t disappoint me,
    if you distance yourself from others, and from me.
    What doesn’t resemble me is more beautiful.

    From now on, your only guardian is a neglected future.

    Don’t think when you melt in sorrow
    like candle tears, of who will see you
    or follow your intuition’s light.
    Think of yourself: is this all of myself?

    The poem is always incomplete, the butterflies make it whole.

    No advice in love. It’s experience.
    No advice in poetry. It’s talent.

    And last but not least, Salaam.

    - Mahmoud Darwish
    Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah
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  30. TopTop #630
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Morning After

    I’m contemplating how the snake knows
    it’s time to shed her skin. Imagining the internal
    clock of now that wakes her, or, simply,
    winter over, spine expanding
    exponentially when she stretches,
    straightens from the eternal coil
    of sleeping and waking. Maybe
    it’s the startle of a boy stepping near
    above the rock she’s chosen
    to wait for summer heat.
    One day, like a tossed glove, like
    a dress which no longer contains the shape
    of her seduction, skin breaks.
    The slow pull of self comes
    like Nature always taught. The robes
    of distinction, of wife, mother, lover,
    sinner, are all behind her.
    The boy whose eye is keen
    will find the remnant, take it home,
    tack it above his bed.
    He’ll admire the length and depth,
    will dream the dream of her
    the knowledge of her existence
    full in his head, the way to sun baked
    rock, winding, but clear.

    - Cindy Dubielak Yeager
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