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  1. TopTop #1321
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ice Cream Truck Mystery


    Every summer night, although the fog turns
    evenings cool in Northern California,
    one dilapidated ice cream truck,
    pink as the strawberry
    in a block of Neapolitan,
    putts down my street.

    Its driver is an old man in a turban,
    quite serene,
    whom I make out to be a Sikh.
    Its tune the traditional:
    “Turkey in the Straw,”
    always of mysterious relevance to ice cream,
    which repeats on a calliope
    with a monotony like migraine.

    I have never known a soul to buy his goods:
    not parent, child, the adolescent boys
    out shooting baskets in the neighbor’s driveway
    nor the girls next door
    pretending not to watch the boys.

    And so I’d like to think
    this is the ice cream truck of evening prayer:
    his one last daily meditation on
    the Omnipresent in all neighborhoods.
    He practices compassion and good will
    in the face of apathy and bad music,
    careful of the children,
    circumventing potholes,
    ego, anger, lust, attachment, greed.

    As stars come out
    in the branches of the bo trees,
    alone as Jesus,
    riding in his pink mystery,
    this one man’s caravan drives by,
    recalling the Unknowable
    for all of us.

    - Laurie Kirkpatrick
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  3. TopTop #1322
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Feathered Alignment


    When gun point ideologies
    breathe their final blood stained sigh
    and the glare of mourning the broken world
    fades to a darkling pink
    the way white petals sometimes do

    When greed has crushed the last bed of ferns
    held in feathered alignment
    by only a faintly wind in the once was forest
    will you remember then to love the child
    whose no machine and inborn tongue
    could lead us home?


    - Cynthia Poten
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  5. TopTop #1323
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Have News for You




    There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
    as a symbol of ruined childhood


    and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
    of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.


    There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
    and think about past pleasures unrecoverable


    and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
    I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings


    do not send their sinuous feeder roots
    deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives


    as if they were greedy six-year-olds
    sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;


    and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
    debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.


    Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
    There are some people, unlike me and you,


    who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
    unattainable as that moon;
    thus, they do not later
    have to waste more time
    defaming the object of their former ardor.


    Or consequently run and crucify themselves
    in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.


    I have news for you-
    there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room


    and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
    and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.


    - Tony Hoagland
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  7. TopTop #1324
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode to the Oat


    Ah, most noble oat,
    How grand a grain you are!
    The stuff of brawn and bone,
    of Scottish Highlander.


    Your golden seeds
    are pummeled flat,
    and soaked and cooked as meal.
    Stick to the ribs
    (and pots and bowls) . . .
    Endurance is so real!


    The rosy glow
    of children's cheeks
    Betrays the breakfast grain.
    A good day's start
    will last two weeks
    before they eat again.


    - Karl Frederick
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  9. TopTop #1325
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Constant


    We live for constants,
    Rain in winter, the cat
    Curled like a furry comma
    On the edge of the bed.


    Sometimes, many times
    These don’t come, instead
    There is drought, the father dies,
    The mother grows old.


    The constant is this:
    The mind insists, persists in the insane
    Circle of creation from chaos.
    Make order of mystery.


    “Listen to me,” it shouts.
    So we listen.
    Constant chatter, constant need
    Growing like a curse.


    The constant is this:
    Life is chaos, disintegration, blooming
    Anew into order and collapsing
    Again to blossom into something more perfect,
    Then chaos, disintegration and on.


    We watch helplessly, entranced
    Like the magician’s audience,
    The hypnotist’s mark.


    Nothing to do but join hands,
    Bow heads, say blessings
    To the capricious, wild
    original god.


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

  11. TopTop #1326
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Blessing for a Wedding
    Today when persimmons ripen
    Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow
    Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song
    Today when the maple sets down its red leaves
    Today when windows keep their promise to open
    Today when fire keeps its promise to warm
    Today when someone you love has died
    or someone you never met has died
    Today when someone you love has been born
    or someone you will not meet has been born
    Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness
    Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired
    Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow
    Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace
    Today, let this light bless you
    With these friends let it bless you
    With snow-scent and lavender bless you
    Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly
    Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears
    Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes
    Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you
    Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days
    - Jane Hirshfield
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  13. TopTop #1327
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Honey At The Table

    It fills you with the soft
    essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
    a trickle soft as a hair that you follow
    from the honey pot over the table


    and out the door and over the ground,
    and all the while it thickens,


    grows deeper and wilder, edged
    with pine boughs and wet boulders,
    pawprints of bobcat and bear, until


    deep in the forest you
    shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,


    you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
    bits of the tree, crushed bees — a taste
    composed of everything lost, in which everything
    lost is found.


    - Mary Oliver
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  15. TopTop #1328
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I will be traveling until mid-July so this will be the last poem I post until I return. May you all stay safe and at ease.
    Larry


    Start Close In

    Start close in,
    don't take the second step
    or the third,
    start with the first
    thing
    close in,
    the step you don't want to take.

    Start with
    the ground
    you know,
    the pale ground
    beneath your feet,
    your own
    way of starting
    the conversation.

    Start with your own
    question,
    give up on other
    people's questions,
    don't let them
    smother something
    simple.

    To find
    another's voice
    follow
    your own voice,
    wait until
    that voice
    becomes a
    private ear
    listening
    to another.

    Start right now
    take a small step
    you can call your own
    don't follow
    someone else's
    heroics, be humble
    and focused,
    start close in,
    don't mistake
    that other
    for your own.

    Start close in,
    don't take the second step
    or the third,
    start with the first
    thing
    close in,
    the step you don't want to take.



    - David Whyte
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  17. TopTop #1329
    Barry's Avatar
    Barry
    Founder & Moderator

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On behalf of myself and the many Waccos who are nourished and inspired by the poems you share with us daily, thank you, Larry, thank you!

    May your travels be full of wonder!


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    I will be traveling until mid-July so this will be the last poem I post until I return. May you all stay safe and at ease.
    Larry
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  19. TopTop #1330
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Return


    Some day, if you are lucky,
    you'll return from a thunderous journey
    trailing snake scales, wing fragments
    and the musk of Earth and moon.


    Eyes will examine you for signs
    of damage, or change
    and you, too, will wonder
    if your skin shows traces


    of fur, or leaves,
    if thrushes have built a nest
    of your hair, if Andromeda
    burns from your eyes.


    Do not be surprised by prickly questions
    from those who barely inhabit
    their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
    their own possibility, who barely dream.


    If your hands are empty, treasureless,
    if your toes have not grown claws,
    if your obedient voice has not
    become a wild cry, a howl,


    you will reassure them. We warned you,
    they might declare, there is nothing else,
    no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
    just this frantic waiting to die.


    And yet, they tremble, mute,
    afraid you've returned without sweet
    elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
    a fluent dance or holy language
    to teach them, without a compass
    bearing to a forgotten border where
    no one crosses without weeping
    for the terrible beauty of galaxies


    and granite and bone. They tremble,
    hoping your lips hold a secret,
    that the song your body now sings
    will redeem them, yet they fear


    your secret is dangerous, shattering,
    and once it flies from your astonished
    mouth, they-like you-must disintegrate
    before unfolding tremulous wings.


    - Geneen Marie Haugen
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  21. TopTop #1331
    Barry's Avatar
    Barry
    Founder & Moderator

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Welcome back, Larry! No prickly questions here! Just gratitude!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Return

    Some day, if you are lucky,
    you'll return from a thunderous journey..
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  22. Gratitude expressed by:

  23. TopTop #1332
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Soul And The Old Woman

    What is the soul? Consciousness. The more awareness,
    the deeper the soul, and when

    such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around. It’s
    so simple to tell one who

    puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from
    the real thing. We know the taste

    of pure water. Words can sound like a poem but not have
    any juice, no flavor to

    relish. How long do you look at pictures on a latrine
    wall? Soul is what draws

    you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman
    who sits outside by the door

    in the sun. She’s half blind, but she has what soul loves
    to flow into. She’s kind, she weeps.

    She makes quick personal decisions and laughs so easily.


    - Jellaludin Rumi
    ( translated by Coleman Barks)
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  25. TopTop #1333
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bouganvillea


    I like the inner lives of the silverware; the fork,
    the spoon, the knife. I appreciate
    how they each have a different reference toward
    god, how the fork is Muslim,
    the spoon, like a stone, is Buddhist, how the knife
    is Roman Catholic—
    always worried, always having
    a hard time forgiving people, the knife kneeling
    down in Ireland and Africa. In San Francisco
    my lamp has become a temple.
    Every time I turn it on the light moves out across
    the room like a meditation,
    like a bell or a robe
    the way it covers everything and doesn’t want to
    kill. Light is the husband
    and everything it touches is its bride, the floor,
    the wall, my body,
    the bronze installation in Hayes Valley
    its bride. The lamp chants
    and my clothes, my hat thrown in the corner of the room
    chants back: nothing, nothing. In my next life
    I’ll have no fingers, no toes. In my next life I’ll be
    a bougainvillea. A Buddhist monk
    will wake up early on Sunday morning and not be a fork
    and not be a knife, he will look down at the girl
    sleeping in his bed like a body of water,
    he will think about how
    he lifted her up like a spoon to his mouth all night, and walk
    into the courtyard and pick up the shears
    and cut a little part of me, and lie me down next to her mouth
    which is breathing heavily and changing all the dark in the room to light.


    - Matthew Dickman
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  27. TopTop #1334
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sligo Glen: Walking Out Of Silence


    And then, after,
    when you'd turned back
    by the way you came,
    back toward
    the mouth of the Glen
    you'd entered
    noisiliy just an hour before,
    calling to the others
    and you reached again,
    but this time alone
    the invisible line
    where
    you could mark exactly
    when you began to hear
    the sounds of the road
    and the machines and the blank
    cries of everyday commerce,
    so that for a moment you could
    retrace that one single step
    back into the Glen
    and immerse yourself
    instantly
    in the quiet
    source of revelation
    you had felt
    only a moment before,


    as if under water,
    as if slipping back
    into the river
    of silence running between
    the tree lined walls
    and then you could practice
    leaving and
    returning in your own body,
    through your own breath,
    inward and outward,
    descending and
    entering and reentering the silence
    and shelter of your own
    narrow valley of aloneness,
    from interiority
    to conversation
    and back.


    So that you suddenly realized
    you were given
    the complete and utter gift
    of your own transparency,


    the revelation of your
    own ex act boundary with
    the world.


    The frontier
    between silence and speech
    exactly
    the line you must cross
    to give yourself
    while saving yourself,


    the gleam in your heart
    and your eye,
    another sun rising,
    the old memories alive
    after a long night of absence
    and the world again
    suddenly worth
    risking,
    worth seeing,
    worth innocence,
    worth everything.


    - David Whyte
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #1335
    meherc's Avatar
    meherc
    Supporting member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    God, I love poetry.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Sligo Glen: Walking Out Of Silence


    And then, after,
    when you'd turned back
    by the way you came,
    back toward
    the mouth of the Glen
    you'd entered
    noisiliy just an hour before,
    calling to the others
    and you reached again,
    but this time alone
    the invisible line
    where
    you could mark exactly
    when you began to hear
    the sounds of the road
    and the machines and the blank
    cries of everyday commerce,
    so that for a moment you could
    retrace that one single step
    back into the Glen
    and immerse yourself
    instantly
    in the quiet
    source of revelation
    you had felt
    only a moment before,


    as if under water,
    as if slipping back
    into the river
    of silence running between
    the tree lined walls
    and then you could practice
    leaving and
    returning in your own body,
    through your own breath,
    inward and outward,
    descending and
    entering and reentering the silence
    and shelter of your own
    narrow valley of aloneness,
    from interiority
    to conversation
    and back.


    So that you suddenly realized
    you were given
    the complete and utter gift
    of your own transparency,


    the revelation of your
    own ex act boundary with
    the world.


    The frontier
    between silence and speech
    exactly
    the line you must cross
    to give yourself
    while saving yourself,


    the gleam in your heart
    and your eye,
    another sun rising,
    the old memories alive
    after a long night of absence
    and the world again
    suddenly worth
    risking,
    worth seeing,
    worth innocence,
    worth everything.


    - David Whyte
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  30. Gratitude expressed by:

  31. TopTop #1336
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Losing Steps


    1
    It's probably a Sunday morning
    in a pickup game, and it's clear
    you've begun to leave
    fewer people behind.


    Your fakes are as good as ever,
    but when you move
    you're like the Southern Pacific
    the first time a car kept up with it,


    your opponent at your hip,
    with you all the way
    to the rim. Five years earlier
    he'd have been part of the air


    that stayed behind you
    in your ascendance.
    On the sidelines they're saying,
    He's lost a step.


    2
    In a few more years
    it's adult night in a gymnasium
    streaked with the abrupt scuff marks
    of high schoolers, and another step


    leaves you like a wire
    burned out in a radio.
    You're playing defense,
    someone jukes right, goes left,


    and you're not fooled
    but he's past you anyway,
    dust in your eyes,
    a few more points against you.


    3
    Suddenly you're fifty;
    if you know anything about steps
    you're playing chess
    with an old, complicated friend.


    But you're walking to a schoolyard
    where kids are playing full-court,
    telling yourself
    the value of experience, a worn down


    basketball under your arm,
    your legs hanging from your waist
    like misplaced sloths in a county
    known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.


    - Stephen Dunn
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  33. TopTop #1337
    RexCasteel
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I have a feeling that wisdom only comes with a decline in power.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Losing Steps


    1
    It's probably a Sunday morning...
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  34. TopTop #1338
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Become Part Of The Truth

    When school and mosque and minaret
    get torn down, then dervishes
    can begin their community.


    Not until faithfulness turns into betrayal
    and betrayal into trust
    can any human being
    become part of the truth.


    Not until a person dissolves,
    can he or she know
    what union is.


    There is a descent into emptiness.
    A lie will not change
    the truth with just
    talking about it.


    While you are still yourself,
    you're blind to both worlds.


    That ego-drunkenness
    will not let you see.
    Only when you are cleansed of both,
    will you cut the deep roots
    of fear and anger.


    - Jellaluddin Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks from The Soul of Rumi)
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  35. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  36. TopTop #1339
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stand firmly, sit serenely, mutter profoundly, sing outrageously and dance all the way to your death.


    - James Broughton
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  37. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  38. TopTop #1340
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    STUBBORN DONKEY


    Silence is a stubborn donkey
    whose master turns toward
    home again and again
    and the ass has his own
    destination that even his
    god doesn't know.


    Do not try to tame the donkey
    or the silence
    or the master...
    turn towards home
    and bow to what god
    arrives at the well.


    - Lizbeth Hamlin
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  39. Gratitude expressed by:

  40. TopTop #1341
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hands


    I should hate to lose them in a freakish accident.
    They have brought me much covert pleasure.
    Like shell-less crabs;
    they have leased their homes, rested as itinerant workers,
    travelling between finger grasps.
    They have been my living.


    Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by hands.
    He understood that if you could draw them,
    you could shape cathedrals from water.
    You could see the inner workings
    of a hidden language.


    I turn them over, as I would
    a page of scripture, eager for more light.
    Every pound of flesh takes the strain,
    works cantilevers, pulls ropes
    just to open them above gravity.


    I half expect to see,
    engraved on the skin of my palms, little faces,
    old lovers, a long dead dog, Da Vinci
    smiling between a wrinkled Mona Lisa.
    Goya working alone in the uncertain darkness
    of a broken life.


    Yesterday I spiced ground pork.
    As the meat caressed my fingers,
    my hands felt like two nursing sows.
    Fingers know their mother.
    They know that to pray with greasy hands
    and an appetite, is a perfect redemption


    At times, I want to clean them
    like seabirds caught in an oil slick.
    Then I remember,
    they still miss all my fumbled catches.
    They wash me every day, as I wash them.


    - Eric Ashford
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  41. Gratitude expressed by:

  42. TopTop #1342
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The English Are So Nice!
    The English are so nice
    so awfully nice
    they are the nicest people in the world.
    And what’s more, they’re very nice about being nice
    about your being nice as well!
    If you’re not nice they soon make you feel it.
    Americans and French and Germans and so on
    they’re all very well
    but they’re not really nice, you know.
    They’re not nice in our sense of the word, are they now?
    That’s why one doesn’t have to take them seriously.
    We must be nice to them, of course,
    of course, naturally—
    But it doesn’t really matter what you say to them,
    they don’t really understand—
    you can just say anything to them:
    be nice, you know, just be nice
    but you must never take them seriously, they wouldn’t understand.
    Just be nice, you know! oh, fairly nice,
    not too nice of course, they take advantage—
    but nice enough, just nice enough
    to let them feel they’re not quite as nice as they might be.


    - D.H. Lawrence
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  44. TopTop #1343
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Luminism



    And though it was brief, and slight, and nothing
    To have been held on to so long, I remember it,
    As if it had come firm within, one of the scenes
    The mind sees for itself, night after night, only
    To part from quickly and without warning. Sunlight
    Flooded the valley floor and blazed on the town’s
    Westward facing windows. The streets shimmered like rivers,
    And trees, bushes, and clouds were caught in the spill,
    And nothing was spared, not the couch we sat on
    Not the rugs, nor our friends, staring off into space.
    Everything drowned in the golden fire. Then Philip
    Put down his glass and said: “This hand is just one
    In an infinite series of hands. Imagine.”
    And that was it. The evening dimmed and darkened
    Until the western rim of the sky took on
    The purple look of a bruise, and everyone stood
    And said what a great sunset it had been.This was a while ago,
    And it was remarkable, but something else happened then--
    A cry, almost beyond our hearing, rose and rose,
    As if across time, to touch us as nothing else would,
    And so lightly, we might live out our lives and not know.
    I had no idea what it meant until now.


    - Mark Strand
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  46. TopTop #1344
    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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  47. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  48. TopTop #1345
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Water Shed


    The green expanse of duck weed
    Parts and there he sits,
    Proud - or so I imagine -
    In all his feathered irridescence,
    Shedding water with neither thought nor effort.


    The late Spring rains
    Fall on Sonoma Mountain and English Hill,
    Dancing down the Laguna and Atascadero Creek.
    So Wintergreen becomes Summergold.


    But where are salmon, the steelhead,
    The pronghorn and the grizzly?


    There is so much for us to grieve now,
    So much lost that we will never see again.
    And yet so much still arising
    That we have only begun to dream.


    Can we shed despair
    As we shed our tears
    And see with clearer eyes
    The shining form now emerging?


    - Larry Robinson
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  49. Gratitude expressed by:

  50. TopTop #1346
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lead

    Here is a story
    to break your heart.
    Are you willing?
    This winter
    the loons came to our harbor
    and died, one by one,
    of nothing we could see.
    A friend told me
    of one on the shore
    that lifted its head and opened
    the elegant beak and cried out
    in the long, sweet savoring of its life
    which, if you have heard it,
    you know is a sacred thing,
    and for which, if you have not heard it,
    you had better hurry to where
    they still sing.
    And, believe me, tell no one
    just where that is.
    The next morning
    this loon, speckled
    and iridescent and with a plan
    to fly home
    to some hidden lake,
    was dead on the shore.
    I tell you this
    to break your heart,
    by which I mean only
    that it break open and never close again
    to the rest of the world.
    - Mary Oliver
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  52. TopTop #1347
    poetrytalks's Avatar
    poetrytalks
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hi Larry,
    a poem from my book is similar to yours:

    Home

    Grief casts a shadow
    on the worn linoleum floor,
    but there’s sunshine all around
    and yellow daffodils in my yard.
    A vision emerges from fecund compost
    of decaying dreams,
    amidst a graveyard with memory tombstones
    that mark the dead.
    New growth rises from the ashes
    of failed pursuits.
    This dream is finer and truer than the rest,
    and brings a fullness of content
    that radiates comfort head to sole.
    A lifetime of seeking for my place
    has revealed
    that home is living in my truth.
    May you always feel the bliss
    of knowing you are home.

    ©2004, Star Kissed Shadows, Sher Lianne Christian


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Water Shed


    The green expanse of duck weed
    Parts and there he sits,
    Proud - or so I imagine -
    In all his feathered irridescence,
    Shedding water with neither thought nor effort.


    The late Spring rains
    Fall on Sonoma Mountain and English Hill,
    Dancing down the Laguna and Atascadero Creek.
    So Wintergreen becomes Summergold.


    But where are salmon, the steelhead,
    The pronghorn and the grizzly?


    There is so much for us to grieve now,
    So much lost that we will never see again.
    And yet so much still arising
    That we have only begun to dream.


    Can we shed despair
    As we shed our tears
    And see with clearer eyes
    The shining form now emerging?


    - Larry Robinson
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  54. TopTop #1348
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Forget
    Forget the suffering
    You caused others.
    Forget the suffering
    Others caused you.
    The waters run and run,
    Springs sparkle and are done,
    You walk the earth you are forgetting.

    Sometimes you hear a distant refrain.
    What does it mean, you ask, who is singing?
    A childlike sun grows warm.
    A grandson and a great-grandson are born.
    You are led by the hand once again.

    The names of the rivers remain with you.
    How endless those rivers seem!
    Your fields lie fallow,
    The city towers are not as they were.
    You stand at the threshold mute.
    - Czeslaw Milosz
    (translation by Robert Hass)
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  56. TopTop #1349
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Invisible Work


    Because no one could ever praise me enough,
    because I don't mean these poems only
    but the unseen
    unbelievable effort it takes to live
    the life that goes on between them,
    I think all the time about invisible work.
    About the young mother on Welfare
    I interviewed years ago,
    who said, "It's hard.
    You bring him to the park,
    run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
    cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
    and there's no one
    to say what a good job you're doing,
    how you were patient and loving
    for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
    And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
    because I am lonely,
    when all the while,
    as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
    by great winds across the sky,
    thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
    the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
    the way worms in the garden
    tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
    and bees ransack this world into being,
    while owls and poets stalk shadows,
    our loneliest labors under the moon.


    There are mothers
    for everything, and the sea
    is a mother too,
    whispering and whispering to us
    long after we have stopped listening.
    I stopped and let myself lean
    a moment, against the blue
    shoulder of the air. The work
    of my heart
    is the work of the world's heart.
    There is no other art.


    - Alison Luterman
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  58. TopTop #1350
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Argonaut

    I am old and have not prospered.
    I possess only my thoughts. I have accumulated only
    memories.
    And I am mad. Insane.
    It is my solace.
    One cannot fail at madness.
    It is my truth.
    It is my freedom.
    To whom does a mad man make account?
    I am not judged for the quality of my madness.
    Like the retarded. I am left alone. To explore.
    To discover.
    This is the new frontier.
    I am the argonaut.


    - Richard Manley
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  59. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

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