Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Howard]

The Country of Marriage


Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.


- Wendell Berry

And so bright it was on this Wednesday...

[Larry Robinson]

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open -
pools of lace,
white and pink -
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities -
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again -
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Everybody Knows


Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows


- Leonard Cohen

[rossmen]

it is an assumption that everybody knows all of this, i don't. i know what i assume, do you? do you want to know my assumptions? i am willing to share them with you...

Everybody Knows

[Barry]

it is an assumption that everybody knows all of this, i don't. i know what i assume, do you? do you want to know my assumptions? i am willing to share them with you...

OK, I'll bite. Please post your assumptions to new thread.

[Larry Robinson]

Praise Song For The Day

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.


- Elizabeth Alexander

[Larry Robinson]

How sweet it was yesterday imagining I was a tree!
I had almost rooted in one place
and grew in sovereign slowness there.
I took the breeze and the north wind,
caresses, blows--what difference did it make?
I was neither joy nor torment to myself,
I couldn't detach myself from my own center,
no decisions, no movement:
if I moved it was because of the wind.


- Jonathan Galassi

[Larry Robinson]

Old Man Leaves Party


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


- Mark Strand

[Larry Robinson]

Objector


In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity—the ordered life
our leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,
our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk and The Pentagon from the moon
is bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;
be ready for whatever it takes to win: we face
annihilation unless all citizens get in line."


I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhere
other citizens more fearfully bow
in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
Our signs both mean, "You hostages over there
will never be slaughtered by my act." Our vows
cross: never to kill and call it fate.


- William Stafford

[Michelle Noe]

Larry,
Thank you so very much for bringing all these amazing poems into my days!
Michelle

Old Man Leaves Party
It was clear when I left the party
That though I was over eighty I still had
A beautiful body........

[Chris Dec]

Wonderful. I am going to do this with my utensils today, whevever I go, and pass the lovely prayer along to the diners next to me, and maybe they will pass it along, until we are all doing it...

As Arlo said, back in 1966:

"And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in say 'Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant.' And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, walking in singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may think it's a movement. And that's what it is, the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar."

Objector

In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity—......

[gardenmaniac]

Thank you, Larry, for your contribution to maintaining our independence and reclaiming our democracy.

Objector
In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity—...........

[Larry Robinson]

ON THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757


While free from Force the Press remains,
Virtue and Freedom chear our Plains,
And Learning Largesses bestows,
And keeps unlicens'd open House.
We to the Nation's publick Mart
Our Works of Wit, and Schemes of Art,
And philosophic Goods, this Way,
Like Water carriage, cheap convey.
This Tree which Knowledge so affords,
Inquisitors with flaming swords
From Lay-Approach with Zeal defend,
Lest their own Paradise should end.


The Press from her fecundous Womb
Brought forth the Arts of Greece and Rome;
Her offspring, skill'd in Logic War,
Truth's Banner wav'd in open Air;
The Monster Superstition fled,
And hid in Shades in Gorgon Head;
And awless Pow'r, the long kept Field,
By Reason quell'd, was forc'd to yield.


This Nurse of Arts, and Freedom's Fence,
To chain, is Treason against Sense:
And Liberty, thy thousand Tongues
None silence who design no Wrongs;
For those who use the Gag's Restraint,
First Rob, before they stop Complaint.


- Benjamin Franklin

[Larry Robinson]

The Birthing

Call out the names in the procession of the loved.
Call from the blood the ancestors here to bear witness
to the day he stopped the car,
we on our way to a great banquet in his honor.
In a field a cow groaned lowing, trying to give birth,
what he called front leg presentation,
the calf comes out nose first, one front leg dangling from his mother.
A fatal sign he said while rolling up the sleeves
of his dress shirt, and climbed the fence.
I watched him thrust his arms entire
into the yet to be, where I imagined holy sparrows scattering
in the hall of souls for his big mortal hands just to make way.
With his whole weight he pushed the calf back in the mother
and grasped the other leg tucked up like a closed wing
against the new one’s shoulder.
And found a way in the warm dark to bring both legs out
into the world together.
Then heaved and pulled, the cow arching her back,
until a bull calf, in a whoosh of blood and water,
came falling whole and still onto the meadow.
We rubbed his blackness, bloodying our hands.
The mother licked her newborn, of us oblivious,
until he moved a little, struggled.
I ran to get our coats, mine a green velvet cloak,
and his a tuxedo jacket, and worked to rub the new one dry
while he set out to find the farmer.
When it was over, the new calf suckling his mother,
the farmer soon to lead them to the barn,
leaving our coats just where they lay
we huddled in the car.
And then made love toward eternity,
Without a word drove slowly home. And loved some more.

- Deborah Digges

[Larry Robinson]

On Television


It is best to turn on the set only after all the stations have gone off the air and just watch the snowfall. This is the other life you have been promising yourself; somewhere back in the woods, ten miles from the nearest town, and that just a wide place in the road with a tavern and a gas station. When you drive home, after midnight, half drunk, the roads are treacherous. And your wife is home alone, worried, looking anxiously out at the snow. This snow has been falling steadily for days, so steadily the snow plows can't keep up. So you drive slowly, peering down the road. And there? Did you see it? Just at the edge of your headlight beams, something, a large animal, or a man, crossed the road. Stop. There he is among the birches, a tall man wearing a white suit. No, it isn't a man. Whatever it is it motions to you, an almost human gesture, then retreats farther into the woods. He stops and motions again. The snow is piling up all around the car. Are you coming?


- Louis Jenkins

[ronliskey]

This hits the eternal chord. Been there. Done that. Too often. So crazy. So "wrong." Living for the moment it happens again. :-)

On Television


It is best to turn on the set only after all the stations have gone off the air and just watch the snowfall. This is the other life you have been promising yourself; somewhere back in the woods, ten miles from the nearest town, and that just a wide place in the road with a tavern and a gas station. When you drive home, after midnight, half drunk, the roads are treacherous. And your wife is home alone, worried, looking anxiously out at the snow. This snow has been falling steadily for days, so steadily the snow plows can't keep up. So you drive slowly, peering down the road. And there? Did you see it? Just at the edge of your headlight beams, something, a large animal, or a man, crossed the road. Stop. There he is among the birches, a tall man wearing a white suit. No, it isn't a man. Whatever it is it motions to you, an almost human gesture, then retreats farther into the woods. He stops and motions again. The snow is piling up all around the car. Are you coming?


- Louis Jenkins

[ronliskey]

Perfect

Objector

never to kill and call it fate.


- William Stafford

[ronliskey]

You/He nailed it (so to speak). Here's hoping Bradley Manning can hear the words to Alice's Restaurant within the depths of the US Inquisition System.

As Arlo said, back in 1966:

"And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation..."

[Chris Dec]

Dear Bradley. If we sing it very loudly each and every time it comes around on the guitar, maybe he will hear. Can we sign him up to get the WaccoBB Digest? Is he even allowed a computer?

You/He nailed it (so to speak). Here's hoping Bradley Manning can hear the words to Alice's Restaurant within the depths of the US Inquisition System.

[Larry Robinson]

Which Are You?
There are two kinds of people on earth to-day;
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.
Not the sinner and saint, for it’s well understood,
The good are half bad, and the bad are half good.
Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man’s wealth,
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.
Not the humble and proud, for in life’s little span,
Who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man.
Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.
No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift, and the people who lean.
Wherever you go, you will find the earth’s masses,
Are always divided in just these two classes.
And oddly enough, you will find too, I ween,
There’s only one lifter to twenty who lean.
In which class are you? Are you easing the load,
Of overtaxed lifters, who toil down the road?
Or are you a leaner, who lets others share
Your portion of labor, and worry and care?


- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919)

[Larry Robinson]

For My Father Who Never Made It To Paris


For my father who never made it to Paris
I meet friends late at night in smokey cafes
To drink frothy cappuccino and listen
To Coltrane sax solos on old jukeboxes
And talk of the wounds
Of fathers and sons


For fathers and sons
Who never returned home,
I reach down for words to express my grief,
Like an emergency ward surgeon groping
For stray sharpnel in the flesh
Of bleeding loved ones.


For all the words never found between men,
The buried burning words slowly infecting us,
I drop quarters in no-name bar telephones.
To call suicidal friends, distraught fathers,
Lone wolf sons who howl at the indifference of the moon,
And offer the round table of brotherhood.


For all the tumors caused by sorrow,
And all the ulcers formed by anger,
For all the nightmares wrought by rage,
And all the emptiness carved by despair,
I probe friends and family
For healing stories.


For my father and all fathers
Who never saw Paris,
One friend listens, reveals,
Reaches in an open wound,
Finds a piece of gold shrapnel,
Cashes it in for airfare,
Takes his father to the Left Bank.


So the healing
Can begin.

- Phil Cousineau

[Larry Robinson]

Landscape in Pictures
There is the empty place
Between two evergreens
Where I meant to hang the hammock.
It frames the landscape.
Through it you can see
The hills and the valley
And the creek with no name.
One night I saw
A cottonwood throwing itself
At a sky full of lightning.
In the morning
Leaves were everywhere.
- Tom Hennen

[Larry Robinson]

To Light the Way

I imagine a time
when the spark
you truly are
finally catches fire
through all the damp and mildew
and sets your dead-wood self
ablaze.

I am supposing you will say
something like "yeeouch!"
and possibly you may
be desperate enough
to stop, drop, and roll,
or run for the nearest
body of water.

But then
after several minutes
of mortified lunacy
you will find yourself
unscathed,
covered in dirt
and/or
dripping wet
laughing hysterically,
not caring how insane
the crowds gathering around
might think you are,
not worrying
whether or not
someone has called the police.

I imagine you will stop laughing then
and begin to weep
for all the illusions
of skin
and bone
and sinew
and thought
that now blow somewhere
across the midwest as fertile ash.
All of that illusion
that you once identified with,
and claimed as yourself

gone, gone, gone.

And once the madness
and mourning pass
I suppose you will float away
or choose to stay here as a naked,
penniless, homeless wanderer
with no aim, no fear, and no motive
but to love and to burn like a candle
to light the way.


- Levi Noe

[Larry Robinson]

The Poet's Hierarchy


for Galway Kinnell and
for the Poet Populist Movement


It's as if, here too, there's a hierarchy:
a Poet's Heaven, where the favored few
live, feeding on fame, Pulitzers and paychecks
on parties, applause and booksignings
in the midst of endless wine and crackers and cheese.
O the celebrity! O the throngs!
And then there are the rest of us
also in love with the word, the mystery:
we dance, unnoticed, in the alleys of the world
we dance, barefoot, on the pavement, in mud --
we are the peasants, the gypsies, the beggars
dancing outside the Poet's Heaven,
dancing, nonetheless, under stars.

- Pesha Joyce Gertler

[Larry Robinson]

Ode to Fallen Apple Trees


Driving up Sexton Road-
there at the top of the hill
where the road deadends
into Burnside Road- on this hot summer day
I am surprised at how high the grapevines are-
leaves bright and shiny green in the midday sunshine-
as if they’ve grown overnight-
I just haven’t really noticed-
Maybe I try to not look at this field too closely-


I can still see the apple trees, sturdy and full
each year with trunks, branches, leaves and apples
as the year cycled round-
and then
So brutally chopped down
like corpses lying strewn in the field-
Making way for more grapes and wine
to be made and profits to be earned


Now again the same ugly scene a little farther
down the road closer to town
on Watertrough Road next to a school-
So all the children there became unwilling
witnesses as the murdered trees silently
lie there so still in this soon-to-be vineyard


Once many years ago there were cherry trees
all around here in Sebastopol, west Sonoma county, CA
and then a blight came in and they were all cut down-
Only the name of Cherry Ridge Road remains as a
remembrance of what once was-
And now the apple trees are going-
No blight other than economic-
Greed taking over with the glut of wineries
Not to mention problems with ground water
and pesticide use and the blight of phylloxera-
Someday maybe with the lack of diversity
and planning, all the grapes will be pulled out-
For housing? Maybe marijuana farms? Hemp?


There are still six apple trees
on the property where I live-
I celebrate the seasons round
from the spring blossoms
to late summer Gravensteins-
and delicious pies, crisps and sauce-
to fall pippins, granny smiths and
something like jonathans-
So great for eating, baking, canning
and some years for sharing
the bountiful harvest with friends,
the senior center and Burbank Gardens


O may children continue to know
how an apple orchard looks and smells
and what it is to pick and eat an apple
fresh off the tree
O sing the tart sweetness
Of an apple-
Be it red, green or yellow-
Its crisp fruit
delighting the tongue-
Its harvest a happy endeavor-
O may they continue to blossom
and thrive


- Carla Musik

[Larry Robinson]

“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly..." a Zen story as told by Pema Chödrön


Between Tigers


When one is in the habit of Demands,
there are always Tigers, everywhere
hungry for attention. Strawberries


eaten in haste have little flavor, like
hurried love, pressured between
appointments and sleep.


The trick:


to know the Tiger, too, love it,
savor it so voraciously, the ferocity
softens and you see it was


no Demand after all, but rather
an entreaty, a roaring request,
please, please taste me, too.


- Rebecca del Rio

[ronliskey]

Moral? While humans are fleeing their tigers, do not blossom your strawberries.

[Larry Robinson]

Brockport Sunflowers

If they could walk, they would walk slowly.
They would shuffle onto the roads from their fields,
lally-gag into our village, sway on sidewalks,
dangle their silly beautiful heads.
Sexless, they would not bow to women,
or shake men’s hands with their leaves.
Desiring nothing but sunshine and water,
they’d peer into our shops with amazement.
Seeing themselves in windows, they’d know themselves holy.
They would love the children, and listen to them,
all day long, until the children were ready for bed.
As the evening star rose in the heavens,
They would nod goodbye to us, not having said a word,
And return, like walking haloes, to their fields.

- William Heyen

[Larry Robinson]

What We Carry


When I was an intern, we carried everything.
We carried manuals and little personal notebooks, frayed and torn,
crammed with tiny bits of wisdom passed on by a senior or attending.
Yet when a midnight patient rolled in with a myocardial infarction
we didn't look anything up because there were only four drugs we could use:
morphine for the crushing pain,
nitroglycerin to flush open the vessels,
lidocaine for rebellious rhythms,
and furosemide for sluggish fluids.
I'm old.
We had nothing to block the betas or the calcium channels,
nothing to inhibit the ACEs,
no fancy clot-dissolvers,
just the patient and the strip.
Some made it, some didn't.
Our white coats carried splatters from blood and iodine and no one even
noticed.


When people quit smoking, they just had to quit.
There were no nicotine substitutes,
no patch to stick on or gum to chew or spray to spritz or inhalers to sniff.
No varenicline or bupropion, just quit.
So many smoked, and so many died.
For a while I kept a list in my head of everyone I knew who had died from
tobacco, but it got too long.
The corpses between piled up into the millions,
and I felt I carried that load on my back every time I talked with a smoker.
I still do, every time, trying to put the right words together that will
turn the switch.
It's a heavy task that often fails.


Now there are so many drugs and treatments and diagnostic tests
that no one can know it all, yet on rounds I carry almost nothing.
No books, no scribbled notes.
I don't even carry the apps for my phone because when a question comes up
I just challenge my residents to see who can find the answer first.
They dive into their phones, like gleeful pirates plunging into a slender
treasure chest of knowledge,
and someone surfaces in seconds with the shiny golden answer.
And they're almost always right.


So I also try to carry the feelings for them.
Point out the sadness when we asked about that woman's family,
notice the exhaustion when a resident seems disorganized or short-tempered,
mention we haven't asked that man why he's drinking so much booze.
I've got three years with my learners, and then they are on their own.
I try to visibly carry my thirst for knowledge and my curiosity and my drive
to do things right,
to show that this burden is not as heavy as the burden of giving up on them,
and that this passion in fact lightens the load.


- Sandra Miller

[Larry Robinson]

Tomorrow


I

Tomorrow I will start to be happy.
The morning will light up like a celebratory cigar.
Sunbeams sprawling on the lawn will set
dew sparkling like a cut-glass tumbler of champagne.
Today will end the worst phase of my life.

I will put my shapeless days behind me,
fencing off the past, as a golden rind
of sand parts slipshod sea from solid land.
It is tomorrow I want to look back on, not today.
Tomorrow I start to be happy; today is almost yesterday.


II

Australia, how wise you are to get the day
over and done with first, out of the way.
You have eaten the fruit of knowledge, while
we are dithering about which main course to choose.
How liberated you must feel, how free from doubt:

the rise and fall of stocks, today’s closing prices
are revealed to you before our bidding has begun.
Australia, you can gather in your accident statistics
like a harvest while our roads still have hours to kill.
When we are in the dark, you have sagely seen the light.


III

Cagily, presumptuously, I dare to write 2018.
A date without character or tone. 2018.
A year without interest rates or mean daily temperature.
Its hit songs have yet to be written, its new-year
babies yet to be induced, its truces to be signed.

Much too far off for prophecy, though one hazards
a tentative guess—a so-so year most likely,
vague in retrospect, fizzling out with the usual
end-of-season sales; everything slashed:
your last chance to salvage something of its style.

- Dennis O’Driscoll