Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Olema Blues


Sitting silently in zazen
an earworm love song with
big old hearts in my head,
the whole world morphed into music.


The room itself was a twelve bar blues fading
into crickets, or frogs, or
was that just my tinnitis?
A siren on Hiway 1, somewhere, a sinister guitar.

Alarmed, my caffeinated mind looked for
something solid. The redwood deck boards?
The gravel path? The gnarly eucalyptus trunk?
But no, all of it hummed with quantum motion,

And me? A shaky hammer striking emptiness,
emptiness resounding in sweet chorus for all with ears to hear,
Brown hills spinning show tunes faster than I
could possibly sing along.


- Barton Stone

[Larry Robinson]

Request


For a long time I was sure
it should be "Jumping Jack Flash," then
the adagio from Schubert's C major Quintet,
but right now I want Oscar Peterson's


"You Look Good to Me." That's my request.
Play it at the end of the service,
after my friends have spoken.
I don't believe I'll be listening in,


but sitting here I'm imagining
you could be feeling what I'd like to feel—
defiance from the Stones, grief
and resignation with Schubert, but now


Peterson and Ray Brown are making
the moment sound like some kind
of release. Sad enough
at first, but doesn't it slide into


tapping your feet, then clapping
your hands, maybe standing up
in that shadowy hall in Paris
in the late sixties when this was recorded,


getting up and dancing
as I would not have done,
and being dead, cannot, but might
wish for you, who would then


understand what a poem—or perhaps only
the making of a poem, just that moment
when it starts, when so much
is still possible—


has allowed me to feel.
Happy to be there. Carried away.


- Lawrence Raab

[Larry Robinson]

The Cheetah Mother


On the Serengeti Plain in East Africa

near Seronera
I saw a cheetah mother with two cubs
in their early years.
They lay in the unholy midday
equatorial heat under a thorn acacia.
Vertical sunrays traced lazy patterns of
scant shade onto the golden pool of yellow prairie grasses
dried by the African winds.
I was close.


Her black rimmed topaz eyes pierced and pinned me
to her wild gaze. Muscles twitched
under sheen of spotted skin. The playful
cubs clawed and pawed, bit her tail.
She cuffed and enfolded the,
panted and waited for the
dark night and the moon
on the cool side of midnight
to leave them hidden and
take up the exhausting, endless hunt
to keep them alive.


Into this deep-set well of ancestral motherhood
her immersion is explicit.
Absolute in the early years, this space of time
day, night, dark, light
merges into an endless arc of custodial care.
Govern, guide, protect, provide.


Through the twin lenses of my memory
the sensory image remains -
the mother and her cubs
forever etched in my mind.


- Maxine Collin Williams

[Larry Robinson]

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.


A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.


If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world..


- Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
(Stephen Mitchell translation)

[Larry Robinson]

Earth Changes


what response
can I give
to the universe


for all the mistakes
this mind
and body commit


when I watch
water skippers
on the surface


I am entranced
by all the circles
not just one


- Joyce Pointe

[Larry Robinson]

Before The World Was Made

If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made. What if I look upon a man As though on my beloved, And my blood be cold the while And my heart unmoved? Why should he think me cruel Or that he is betrayed? I'd have him love the thing that was Before the world was made. - William Butler Yeats

[Larry Robinson]

Rhapsody in A Minor

for my seventh decade, feeling distant still
from the final page but Death a familiar now
and Life a bursting seed in the never-old play
of light and shade in the everywhere somewhere
water flows, in the veins of a burgundy trillium say
April’s tracery, encasing sips of sun and air,
easing trails of scent into infinite mornings
dreams waving every which way
from the mind, the trees, a gay yellow beak
trilling intricate avian alchemies
peals of instinct and breath that end the instant
the robin is aware I discovered her nest
and I almost regret my craving eyes
added a quake of alarm to her warrior gaze
like the flightless owl, whose eyes flare wide
when my stranger hand opens his cage
not fooled when I looked away
oh no, defiant and glaring for stronger proof
it’s love I offer this day


- Cynthia Poten

[Larry Robinson]

The Mad Potter


Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke
On the old one's ragged end.I bite my tongue
As the end of me--of my rope of stuff and nonsense
(The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke),
Of bones and light, of levity and crime,
Of reddish clay and hope - still bides its time.


Each of my pots is quite unusable,
Even for contemplating as an object
Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being
Useless, though, each of them remains unique,
Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing,
Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak.


I pound at all my clay. I pound the air.
This senseless lump, slapped into something like
Something, sits bound around by my despair.
For even as the great Creator's free
Hand shapes the forms of life, so - what? This pot,
Unhollowed solid, too full of itself,
Runneth over with incapacity.
I put it with the others on the shelf.


These tiny cups will each provide one sip
Of what's inside them, aphoristic prose
Unwilling, like full arguments, to make
Its points, then join them in extended lines
Like long draughts from the bowl of a deep lake.
The honey of knowledge, like my milky slip,
Firms slowly up against what merely flows.


Some of my older pieces bore inscriptions
That told a story only when you'd learned
How not to read them: LIVE reverted to EVIL,
EROS kept running backwards into SORE.
Their words, all fired up for truth, got burned.
I'll not write on weak vessels any more.


My juvenalia? I gave them names
In those days: Hans was all handles and no spout;
Bernie believed the whole world turned about
Himself alone; Sadie was close to James
(But Herman touched her bottom when he could);
Paul fell to pieces; Peter wore away
To nothing; Len was never any good;
Alf was a flat, random pancake, May
An opened blossom; Bud was an ash-tray.
Even their names break off, though; Whatsisface,
That death-mask of Desire, and - you know! -
The smaller version of that (Oh, what was it? -
You know . . .) All of my pots now have to go
By number only. Which is no disgrace.


Begin with being - in an anagram
Of unending - conclude in some dark den;
This is no matter. What I've been, I am:
What I will be is what I make of all
This clay, this moment. Now begin again . . .
Poured out of emptiness, drop by slow drop,
I start up at the quarreling sounds of water.
Pots cry out silently at me to stop.


What are we like? A barrelfull of this
Oozy wet substance, shadow-crammed, whose smudges
Of darkness lurk within but rise to kiss
The fingers that disturb the gently edges
Of their bland world of shapelessness and bliss.


The half-formed cup cries out in agony,
The lump of clay suffers a silent pain.
I heard the cup, though, full of feeling, say
"O clay be true, O clay keep constant to
Your need to take, again and once again,
This pounding from your mad creator who
Only stops hurting when he's hurting you."


What will I then have left behind me? Over
The years I have originated some
Glazes that wear away at what they cover
And weep for what they never can become.
My Deadware, widely imitated; blue
Skyware of an amazing lightness; tired
Hopewear that I abandoned for my own
Good reasons; Hereware; Thereware; ware that grew
Weary of everything that earth desired;
Hellware that dances while it's being fired,
Noware that vanishes while being thrown.


Appearing to be silly, wisdom survives
Like tribes of superseded gods who go
Hiding in caves of triviality
From which they laughingly control our lives.
So with my useless pots: safe from the blow
Of carelessness, or outrage at their flaws,
They brave time's lion and his smashing paws.
- All of which tempts intelligence to call
Pure uselessness one more commodity.
The Good-for-Nothing once became our Hero,
But images of him, laid-back, carelessly
Laughing, were upright statues after all.
From straight above, each cup adds up to zero.


Clay to clay: Soon I shall indeed become
Dumb as these solid cups of hardened mud
(Dull terra cruda colored like our blood);
Meanwhile the slap and thump of palm and thumb
On wet mis-shapenness begins to hum
With meaning that was silent for so long.
The words of my wheel's turning come to ring
Truer than Truth itself does, my great
Ding Dong-an-sich that echoes everything
(Against it even lovely bells ring wrong):
Its whole voice gathers up the purest parts
Of all our speech, the vowels of the earth,
The aspirations of our hopeful hearts
Or the prophetic sibilance of song.


- John Hollander
(1929-2013)

[Larry Robinson]

When I Am Asked


When I am asked
how I began writing poems,
I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,
a brilliant June day,
everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench
in a lovingly planted garden,
but the day lilies were as deaf
as the ears of drunken sleepers
and the roses curved inward.
Nothing was black or broken
and not a leaf fell
and the sun blared endless commercials
for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingenue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.

- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

Letter To Issa


Reflected
in the
dragonfly's eye...
mountains.
Issa (1763-1867)


Tell me, Issa,
what is a dragonfly's eye?


Is it a mirror
we walk through
each morning
to enter
our assumed world?


Is it a well
tunneling
into the depths of darkness
and strangely lit hovering landscapes
we call our dwelling place?


Is it a map of our own features
etched immutable
on a scarf of gold,
something to carry with us,
a reminder,
a talisman,
a conundrum daring us
to solve?


- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

My Grandmother’s Hands


Looking at my hand as I write
I am drawn back
to the calmness of your stately image
the peace in your gentle embrace.


Knitting needles click
in the easy warm light of our living room.
Stories unfold
with the elegant flight of flesh and bone.


I know these hands.


Fingers intertwined
across generations and continents.
Safe in the soft strong grip of this sisterhood
I grew wings.


I feel those hands now
lifting me
guiding me
gifting me with a vision that comes easily.


Looking at my hand as I write
I remember your smile
the velvet touch of translucent skin
like a blessing.


You bloom in my heart like joy.


- Jennifer Horrigan

[Larry Robinson]

Zimmer Imagines Heaven
For Merrill Leffler

I sit with Joseph Conrad in Monet’s garden.
We are listening to Yeats chant his poems,
A breeze stirs through Thomas Hardy’s moustache,
John Skelton has gone to the house for beer,
Wanda Landowska lightly fingers the clavichord,
Along the spruce tree walk Roberto Clemente and
Thurman Munson whistle a baseball back and forth.
Mozart chants with Ellington in the roses.

Monet smokes and dabs his canvas in the sun,
Brueghel and Turner set easels behind the wisteria.
The band is warming up in the Big Studio:
Bean, Brute, Bird, and Serge on saxes,
Kai, Bill Harris, Lawrence Brown, trombones,
Little Jazz, Clifford, Fats on trumpets,
Klook plays drums, Mingus bass, Bud the piano.
Later Madam Schumann-Heink will sing Schubert,
The monks of Benedictine Abbey will chant.
There will be more poems from Emily Dickinson,
James Wright, John Clare, Walt Whitman.
Shakespeare rehearses players for King Lear.

At dusk Alice Toklas brings out platters
Of Sweetbreads a la Napolitaine, Salad Livoniere,
And a tureen of Gaspacho of Malaga.
After the meal Brahms passes fine cigars.
God comes then radiant with a bottle of cognac,
She pours generously into the snifters,
I tell Her I have begun to learn what
Heaven is about. She wants to hear.
It is, I say, being thankful for eternity.
Her smile is the best part of the day.


- Paul Zimmer

[Larry Robinson]

Hum for the Bolt


It could of course be silk. Fifty yards or so
of the next closest thing to water to the touch,
or it could just as easily be a shaft of wood


crumpling a man struck between spaulder and helm.
But now, with the rain making a noisy erasure
of this town, it is the flash that arrives


and leaves at nearly the same moment. It's what I want
to be in this moment, in this doorway,
because much as I'd love to be the silk-shimmer


against the curve of anyone's arm,
as brutal and impeccable as it'd be to soar
from a crossbow with a whistle and have a man


switch off upon my arrival, it is nothing
compared to the moment when I eat the dark
draw shadows in quick strokes across the wall


and start a tongue counting
down to thunder. That counting that says,
I am this far. I am this close.


- Jamall May

[Sara S]

Wow! Great one; and it made me go look up "spaulder"..........

Hum for the Bolt


It could of course be silk. Fifty yards or so
of the next closest thing to water to the touch,
or it could just as easily be a shaft of wood

crumpling a man struck between spaulder and helm.
But now, with the rain making a noisy erasure
of this town, it is the flash that arrives

and leaves at nearly the same moment. It's what I want
to be in this moment, in this doorway,
because much as I'd love to be the silk-shimmer

against the curve of anyone's arm,
as brutal and impeccable as it'd be to soar
from a crossbow with a whistle and have a man

switch off upon my arrival, it is nothing
compared to the moment when I eat the dark
draw shadows in quick strokes across the wall

and start a tongue counting
down to thunder. That counting that says,
I am this far. I am this close.

- Jamall May

[Larry Robinson]

Danny Boy
I dreamed my dead friend, Dan,
came back. All six feet of him,
dressed as usual, minus shoes.


I offered him some brown size twelves
my uncle left behind.
But he shook his head,


gave me a hug, so strong, so real,
I felt the buttons on his shirt,
the wale of his beige cords.


In stocking feet, we walked the streets
slowly, picking our way
across asphalt knobs and sharp stones.


Dan, you’re dead, a ghost, I said.
and placed my palm against his cheek
to feel slight stubble there.


What have you been doing
all this time? Your wife’s
remarried, your children are grown.


He grinned, It’s classified.
Put a finger to his lips, then gently
blessed my head.


I’ve been watching all of you,
as you watch TV, finding
things to make me smile or laugh.


When I awoke, I understood:
the dead, no longer in our shoes,
take our lives lightly.


Softly as moths,
they slip among us,
drawn by our joy,
suffusing us with their love.


- Anna Belle Kaufman

[gardenmaniac]

wow. that's it, just WOW.

thx Larry, for all you offer so freely, for the joy the sadness the light and the dark the wisdom the beauty the thought-provoking and so much more that you add to the mix of my daily grind.

Danny Boy

I dreamed my dead friend, Dan,
came back. All six feet of him,
dressed as usual, minus shoes....

[Michelle Noe]

Danny Boy

I dreamed my dead friend, Dan,
came back. All six feet of him,
dressed as usual, minus shoes....

Wow!

[Larry Robinson]

The Life of a Day


Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.


- Tom Hennen

[Larry Robinson]

Freedom's Plow


When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on the world,
On the great wooded world,
On the rich soil of the world,
On the rivers of the world.
The eyes see there materials for building,
See the difficulties, too, and the obstacles.
The mind seeks a way to overcome these obstacles.
The hand seeks tools to cut the wood,
To till the soil, and harness the power of the waters.
Then the hand seeks other hands to help,
A community of hands to help-
Thus the dream becomes not one man’s dream alone,
But a community dream.
Not my dream alone, but our dream.
Not my world alone,
But your world and my world,
Belonging to all the hands who build.
A long time ago, but not too long ago,
Ships came from across the sea
Bringing the Pilgrims and prayer-makers,
Adventurers and booty seekers,
Free men and indentured servants,
Slave men and slave masters, all new-
To a new world, America!
With billowing sails the galleons came
Bringing men and dreams, women and dreams.
In little bands together,
Heart reaching out to heart,
Hand reaching out to hand,
They began to build our land.
Some were free hands
Seeking a greater freedom,
Some were indentured hands
Hoping to find their freedom,
Some were slave hands
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
But the word was there always:
Freedom.
Down into the earth went the plow
In the free hands and the slave hands,
In indentured hands and adventurous hands,
Turning the rich soil went the plow in many hands
That planted and harvested the food that fed
And the cotton that clothed America.
Clang against the trees went the ax into many hands
That hewed and shaped the rooftops of America.
Splash into the rivers and the seas went the boat-hulls
That moved and transported America.
Crack went the whips that drove the horses
Across the plains of America.
Free hands and slave hands,
Indentured hands, adventurous hands,
White hands and black hands
Held the plow handles,
Ax handles, hammer handles,
Launched the boats and whipped the horses
That fed and housed and moved America.
Thus together through labor,
All these hands made America.
Labor! Out of labor came villages
And the towns that grew cities.
Labor! Out of labor came the rowboats
And the sailboats and the steamboats,
Came the wagons, and the coaches,
Covered wagons, stage coaches,
Out of labor came the factories,
Came the foundries, came the railroads.
Came the marts and markets, shops and stores,
Came the mighty products moulded, manufactured,
Sold in shops, piled in warehouses,
Shipped the wide world over:
Out of labor-white hands and black hands-
Came the dream, the strength, the will,
And the way to build America.
Now it is Me here, and You there.
Now it’s Manhattan, Chicago,
Seattle, New Orleans,
Boston and El Paso-
Now it’s the U.S.A.
A long time ago, but not too long ago, a man said:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--
ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR
WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS--
AMONG THESE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
His name was Jefferson. There were slaves then,
But in their hearts the slaves believed him, too,
And silently too for granted
That what he said was also meant for them.
It was a long time ago,
But not so long ago at that, Lincoln said:
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT THAT OTHER’S CONSENT.
There were slaves then, too,
But in their hearts the slaves knew
What he said must be meant for every human being-
Else it had no meaning for anyone.
Then a man said:
BETTER TO DIE FREE
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES
He was a colored man who had been a slave
But had run away to freedom.
And the slaves knew
What Frederick Douglass said was true.
With John Brown at Harper’s Ferry, Negroes died.
John Brown was hung.
Before the Civil War, days were dark,
And nobody knew for sure
When freedom would triumph
"Or if it would," thought some.
But others new it had to triumph.
In those dark days of slavery,
Guarding in their hearts the seed of freedom,
The slaves made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
That song meant just what it said: Hold On!
Freedom will come!
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
Out of war it came, bloody and terrible!
But it came!
Some there were, as always,
Who doubted that the war would end right,
That the slaves would be free,
Or that the union would stand,
But now we know how it all came out.
Out of the darkest days for people and a nation,
We know now how it came out.
There was light when the battle clouds rolled away.
There was a great wooded land,
And men united as a nation.
America is a dream.
The poet says it was promises.
The people say it is promises-that will come true.
The people do not always say things out loud,
Nor write them down on paper.
The people often hold
Great thoughts in their deepest hearts
And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
Haltingly and stumblingly say them,
And faultily put them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land."
America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don’t be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don’t be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Woven from the beginning
Into the warp and woof of America:
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.
Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:
We say, NO!
A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!


- Langston Hughes

[Beverly Riverwood]

That posting was so perfect for the 50th anniversary of the March and the great address that Obama has just delivered. Keep on Marching!

[gardenmaniac]

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning how to dance in the rain." Langston Hughes

Freedom's Plow...

[Larry Robinson]

Roll Call


Red wolf came, and passenger Pigeon,
and Dodo Bird, all the gone or endangered
came and crowded around in a circle,
the Bison, the Irish Elk waited
silent, the Great White Bear fluid and strong,
sliding from the sea, streaming and creeping
into the gathering darkness, nose down
bowing to earth its tapered head,
where the Black-footed Ferret, paws folded,
stood in the center surveying the multitude
and spoke for us all: “Dearly beloved,” it said.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Rescued


Sitting on the lawn bench at Memorial Hospital
I heard the sound of helicopter wings above and
watched the whirling blades soften to land so
gracefully on the hospital rooftop. To be rescued
from disaster I imagine is to be sealed in total
surrender, to be carried helpless by metallic wings
hovering over the patchwork map below of other
mortals' houses, lawns and garages. It is a succumbing
to the fullness of disbelief, a strange, crushing, emptying
of anything certain.
Maybe the broken and bewildered body must cling
to some sense of deliverance, by an angel or a
mothership. It must give itself over to an astral magnet
that pulls as it has before in dreams into a field
of guidance. One may have to go blind to any palpable
thing, paralyzed to touch the world with any
interpretation or labeling by thought.
Every day for years in Vietnam the wounded were
lifted to hospitals. Did those torn and shattered forms
lodge some principle of impermanence, slightly ahead
of death, already an event in the realm of the transient?
Was there an endless void in their eyes, body trapped
in air with no other earth to imagine? Maybe they overcame
fear by sensing that ascension was possible, by grasping
a resource beyond flesh that eased them into leaving
this world.
There are no dog-tags that identify this ineffable
experience,no names for the portals the rescued may
pass through to enter complete acceptance. On any
day the body can prove to be perishable but I imagine
it is the soul that allows its journey the next mile. I have
not been carried through the mortal sky to the fallen
gate of this one life I've known. No, I have never been
close enough to God's ear to whisper,"Thy will be done."


- Rich Meyers

[meherc]

SELF-PORTRAIT

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

- David Whyte

For Dixon

[Larry Robinson]

Blackberry-Picking


Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.


- Seamus Heaney
(1939-2013)

[tashee]

Rest In Peace, dear Seamus Heaney.

Blackberry-Picking


Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.


- Seamus Heaney
(1939-2013)

[Larry Robinson]

I Said To My Friend


When I knew you would die
sooner, rather than later, much later,
after the transplant you never got,
I said to my friend, who is 89 (but
says she is 90, and who can begrudge
her that extra year when she's
lived so many?) "I'm glad
I'm with you,
you're experienced with this." "Oh, no,"
she tells me. "You never get experienced
with death. Each one is
new." So true as I watch you
move on without me. Later,
Erica and I see you walking down a
Portland sidewalk, pulling
a suitcase behind you.
You always did keep moving.


- Rebecca Del Rio


(For Diana Mercedes Del Drago
March 3, 1946-August 21, 2013)

[Larry Robinson]

September 1, 1939


I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.


Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.


Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.


Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.


Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.


The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.


From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?


All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.


Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.


- W.H. Auden

[Larry Robinson]

Postscript


And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.


- Seamus Heaney
(13 April 1939-30 August 2013)

[Larry Robinson]

September Meditation


I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.
I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine
remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.
I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's gathering or if the
bluejay remembers the meaning of snow.
I do not know if the air remembers September or if the night remembers
the moon.
I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring or if
the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.
Perhaps that is the reason for our births - to be the memory for
creation.
Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.
Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
"What can you tell me about September?"

- Burton D. Carley