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  1. TopTop #1801
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Geometry of Water

    Ask water
    for its diameter dimension circumference,
    it will laugh,
    scoff even,

    “You dividers and geometers,”
    it might say,
    “contain me all you want,
    bind me in your suit of shape or form—
    your rectangles, triangles, circles …
    Temporary constraints, all,
    I will wear them out,
    splash over
    leak under
    punch through
    or evaporate from
    and congregate elsewhere.
    And what do your shapes and sizes have to do with me then?

    “My geometry is you,
    you shapers and marauders of space,
    My formlessness is your form-in-waiting;
    You are my splash walking.
    Your million billion tributaries
    are my river
    overflowing
    into the living crust,

    “If I am not your God,
    I am the mother of your God…”
    - Gary Turchin
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  3. TopTop #1802
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Water


    I think of the times we traced the leaks
    in our boat to unknown entrance places.
    It was the mystery and the game
    that water played with us.
    I would comb the shelves
    with a small mirror and run my fingers
    under ledges to detect wetness.
    She would always escape.
    Even if I sealed her out one place,
    she found the next.
    She was always seeking an entrance to my heart.
    But I didn't recognize it.


    - Mary Morgan
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  5. TopTop #1803
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The History Teacher


    Trying to protect his students' innocence
    he told them the Ice Age was really just
    the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
    when everyone had to wear sweaters.
    And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
    named after the long driveways of the time.
    The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
    than an outbreak of questions such as
    "How far is it from here to Madrid?"
    "What do you call the matador's hat?"
    The War of the Roses took place in a garden,
    and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan.
    The children would leave his classroom
    for the playground to torment the weak
    and the smart,
    mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses,
    while he gathered up his notes and walked home
    past flower beds and white picket fences,
    wondering if they would believe that soldiers
    in the Boer War told long, rambling stories
    designed to make the enemy nod off.


    - Billy Collins
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  7. TopTop #1804
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sleeping in the Forest


    I thought the earth remembered me, she

    took me back so tenderly, arranging
    her dark skirts, her pockets
    full of lichens and seeds. I slept
    as never before, a stone
    on the riverbed, nothing
    between me and the white fire of the stars
    but my thoughts, and they floated
    light as moths among the branches
    of the perfect trees. All night
    I heard the small kingdoms breathing
    around me, the insects, and the birds
    who do their work in the darkness. All night
    I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
    with a luminous doom. By morning
    I had vanished at least a dozen times
    into something better.


    - Mary Oliver
    Last edited by Barry; 11-17-2013 at 03:44 PM.
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  9. TopTop #1805
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Epiphany


    Just as I gave up waiting

    and turned back to tend the fire,
    the full moon rose over the Mogollon Rim,
    sending a flashflood of light
    racing up the narrow canyon.


    Sometimes the distance
    between the ordinary and the sacred
    is no greater than the width
    of a moonbeam.


    - Larry Robinson
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  10. TopTop #1806
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In November

    Outside the house the wind is howling
    and the trees are creaking horribly.
    This is an old story
    with its old beginning,
    as I lay me down to sleep.
    But when I wake up, sunlight
    has taken over the room.
    You have already made the coffee
    and the radio brings us music
    from a confident age. In the paper
    bad news is set in distant places.
    Whatever was bound to happen
    in my story did not happen.
    But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
    Perhaps a name was changed.
    A small mistake. Perhaps
    a woman I do not know
    is facing the day with the heavy heart
    that, by all rights, should have been mine.


    - Lisel Mueller
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  12. TopTop #1807
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wakeup Call


    In our age faith versus science
    believers state fables with force
    ignoring stress on resources
    the aquifers are drying


    The jet stream snaps at the ice caps
    setting bears awash in the sea
    tornados chop cities to flatland
    typhoons roil ocean and shore


    Neo-luddites warn against progress


    Insisting cell stems are human - alive
    and not to be dissected or studied
    That would be a challenge to God
    It’s better by far to remain as - we are


    Research halted - vision muddied
    Cover up cancer with sunscreen
    Let disease be ordained without cry
    as genetically food can be altered
    and the shale is fracked for oil


    That takes complex understanding


    Robber barons ignore facts
    or advancement- count coin
    as displacement of fear
    and a garbage pit grows in the ocean


    While the coral reefs disappear


    - Maryann Schacht
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  13. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  14. TopTop #1808
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lay Me Down Out West


    There's but one proper way I'd prefer to check out

    Just go unnoticed-- no need to be loud
    I'll invite my old Shasta--in dog years my match
    At twelve he's turned grizzled--I'm seven times that

    Deep in the canyon past mesquite and sage
    With a view of the river I'll turn the last page
    On this long book of life I've been blessed to write
    Chock-full of footnotes half stormy-half bright

    My wife took her leave and rode on ahead
    It's been near a decade since we shared our bed
    And the Grandkids are grown they'll be ok
    I hope they'll forgive me for going this way

    At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
    I'll say "adios" to this land I love best-- when I lay me down out West

    No you won't find me hog-tied to some city bed
    Where they poke you and prod you and watch you to death
    The Indian answer seems so much more sane
    When you're no longer useful--just drift away

    I'll settle for shade ‘neath a tall cottonwood
    And ease my boots off 'cause it's high time I should
    Take a strong pull of whisky to sweeten the spell
    And re-run some highlights from deep in the well

    As far as things go I've been lucky enough
    But a stray bolt of lightning sure woke me up
    I've marvelled at sunsets and lake-mirrored stars
    Made my amends and healed 'most my scars

    At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
    I'll say "adios" to this land I love best--when I lay me down out West

    I'll unsaddle Rio--he'll find his way home
    And Shasta will follow once he sees he's alone
    He won't be too happy I won the race
    By jumpin’ the gun through the last corral gate

    I'll gladly return what's left to this earth
    Not boxed up or buried by civilized curse
    It's oddly a comfort I'll soon be devoured
    And scattered by critters in the space of some hours

    Tomorrow --it's settled--leave nothing to chance
    Arouse no suspicion-pin a note at the ranch
    The neighbors will wave as I go 'round the bend
    They'll say "there's the old man --off riding again"

    At the final frontier I'll let my hat fly-- up to a cloud that’s driftin’ on by
    And say "adios" to this land I love best
    See I won't be denied my one last request--as I lay me down out West


    - Larry Potts
    ( L.K. Potts Full Range Music Petaluma, CA)
    Last edited by Barry; 11-21-2013 at 02:44 PM.
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  16. TopTop #1809
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    America: A Prophecy (excerpt)
    The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
    The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
    The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
    Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
    Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
    Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
    Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
    Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
    Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
    Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
    And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
    They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
    Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
    And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
    For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.
    For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.
    - William Blake
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  18. TopTop #1810
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    American Tune


    Many's the time I've been mistaken and many times
    confused.

    Yes, and often felt forsaken and certainly misused.

    But I'm all right, I'm all right, I'm just weary to my
    bones.

    Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant so
    far away from home, so far away from home.


    And I don't know a soul who's not been battered I
    don't have a friend who feels at ease.

    I don't know a dream that's not been shattered or
    driven to its knees.

    But it's all right, it's all right, for we've lived so
    well so long.

    Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on, I
    wonder what went wrong, I can't help but wonder what
    went wrong.


    And I dreamed I was dying.

    I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly and looking
    back down at me smiled reassuringly, and I dreamed I
    was flying.

    And high above my eyes could clearly see the Statue of
    Liberty sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was
    flying.


    And we come on the ship they call the Mayflower, we
    come on the ship that sailed the moon.

    We come in the age's most uncertain hour and sing an
    American tune

    oh, but it's all right, it's all right, itís all
    right, you can't be forever blessed.

    Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day and
    I'm trying to get some rest, that's all I'm trying is
    to get some rest.


    - Paul Simon
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  20. TopTop #1811
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Earth the Mother of All


    I will sing of the well-founded Earth,
    mother of all, eldest of all beings.

    She feeds all creatures that are in the world,
    all that go upon the goodly land,
    all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;
    all these are fed of her store.

    Through you, O Queen, we are blessed
    In our children, and in our harvest
    and to you we owe our lives.

    Happy are we who you delight to honor!

    We have all things abundantly:
    our houses are filled with good things,
    our cities are orderly,
    our sons exult with feverish delight.

    (May they take no delight in war)

    Our daughters with flower-laden hands
    play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.

    (May they seek peace for all peoples)

    Thus it is for those whom you honor,
    O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!
    Hail Earth, mother of the gods,
    freely bestow upon us for this our song
    that cheers and soothes the heart!

    May we seek peace for all peoples of the well-founded earth


    - Homeric Hymn XXX adapted by Elizabeth Roberts
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  22. TopTop #1812
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This Compost

    1

    Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
    I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
    I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
    I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
    I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

    O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
    How can you be alive you growths of spring?
    How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
    Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you?
    Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead?


    Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
    Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
    Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
    I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd,
    I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
    the sod and turn it up underneath,
    I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.


    2

    Behold this compost! behold it well!
    Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person--yet behold!
    The grass of spring covers the prairies,
    The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
    The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
    The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
    The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
    The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
    The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
    their nests,
    The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs,
    The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
    colt from the mare,
    Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves,
    Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
    the dooryards,
    The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
    of sour dead.

    What chemistry!
    That the winds are really not infectious,
    That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
    is so amorous after me,
    That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
    That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
    themselves in it,
    That all is clean forever and forever,
    That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
    That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
    That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
    melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
    That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
    Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
    catching disease.

    Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
    It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
    It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
    successions of diseas'd corpses,
    It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
    It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
    It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
    from them at last.


    - Walt Whitman
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  24. TopTop #1813
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Mind Like Compost


    All this new stuff goes on top
    turn it over, turn it over
    wait and water down.
    From the dark bottom
    turn it inside out
    let it spread through
    sift down even.
    Watch it sprout.


    A mind like compost.

    - Gary Snyder
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  26. TopTop #1814
    Dixon's Avatar
    Dixon
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Nice poem! It reminds me of "Fresh Garbage", one of the earliest songs on an environmental theme (late 60s), by the wonderful band Spirit. There also the words can be interpreted environmentally or psychologically.

    "Fresh Garbage"
    lyrics by Jay Ferguson

    Fresh garbage!
    Fresh garbage!
    Look beneath your lid some morning,
    See those things you didn't quite consume
    The world's a can for
    Your fresh garbage . . .
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  28. TopTop #1815
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For All


    Ah to be alive

    on a mid-September morn
    fording a stream
    barefoot, pants rolled up,
    holding boots, pack on,
    sunshine, ice in the shallows,
    northern rockies.

    Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
    stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
    cold nose dripping
    singing inside
    creek music, heart music,
    smell of sun on gravel.

    I pledge allegiance

    I pledge allegiance to the soil
    of Turtle Island,
    and to the beings who thereon dwell
    one ecosystem
    in diversity
    under the sun
    With joyful interpenetration for all.
    - Gary Snyder
    Last edited by Barry; 11-27-2013 at 02:45 PM.
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  30. TopTop #1816
    markwjam's Avatar
    markwjam
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    thanks, Larry.
    I also love Greg Brown's recitation of For All,
    that opens his "In The Hills Of California" (live at Kate Wolf) album..

    Mark B.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    For All


    Ah to be alive
    on a mid-September morn
    fording a stream
    barefoot, pants rolled up,
    holding boots, pack on,
    sunshine, ice in the shallows,
    northern rockies.

    Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
    stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
    cold nose dripping
    singing inside
    creek music, heart music,
    smell of sun on gravel.

    I pledge allegiance

    I pledge allegiance to the soil
    of Turtle Island,
    and to the beings who thereon dwell
    one ecosystem
    in diversity
    under the sun
    With joyful interpenetration for all.
    - Gary Snyder
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  31. TopTop #1817
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Praise of the Earth

    Let us bless
    The imagination of the Earth,
    That knew early the patience
    To harness the mind of time,
    Waited for the seas to warm,
    Ready to welcome the emergence
    Of things dreaming of voyaging
    Among the stillness of land.


    And how light knew to nurse
    The growth until the face of the Earth
    Brightened beneath a vision of color.


    When the ages of ice came
    And sealed the Earth inside
    An endless coma of cold,
    The heart of the Earth held hope,
    Storing fragments of memory,
    Ready for the return of the sun.


    Let us thank the Earth
    That offers ground for home
    And hold our feet firm
    To walk in space open
    To infinite galaxies.


    Let us salute the silence
    And certainty of mountains:
    Their sublime stillness,
    Their dream-filled hearts.


    The wonder of a garden
    Trusting the first warmth of spring
    Until its black infinity of cells
    Becomes charged with dream;
    Then the silent, slow nurture
    Of the seed's self, coaxing it
    To trust the act of death.


    The humility of the Earth
    That transfigures all
    That has fallen
    Of outlived growth.


    The kindness of the Earth,
    Opening to receive
    Our worn forms
    Into the final stillness.


    Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
    For all our sins against her:
    For our violence and poisonings
    Of her beauty.


    Let us remember within us
    The ancient clay,
    Holding the memory of seasons,
    The passion of the wind,
    The fluency of water,
    The warmth of fire,
    The quiver-touch of the sun
    And shadowed sureness of the moon.


    That we may awaken,
    To live to the full
    The dream of the Earth
    Who chose us to emerge
    And incarnate its hidden night
    In mind, spirit, and light.


    - John O'Donohue
    Last edited by Barry; 11-28-2013 at 01:06 PM.
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  33. TopTop #1818
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Arms Full of Wildflowers


    Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,

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


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


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


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


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


    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Barry; 11-29-2013 at 01:38 PM.
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  35. TopTop #1819
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Heart's Desire


    The thing that frightens me
    About my heart's desire
    Is that when I get there,
    Or, perhaps, on the way,
    I might have to dance.
    Or improvise some instrument.
    And release some cherished
    resentment, carried years.

    *- Jon Jackson
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #1820
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Flames

    Smokey the Bear heads
    into the autumn woods
    with a red can of gasoline
    and a box of wooden matches.

    His ranger's hat is cocked

    at a disturbing angle.

    His brown fur gleams
    under the high sun
    as his paws, the size
    of catcher's mitts,
    crackle into the distance.

    He is sick of dispensing
    warnings to the careless,
    the half-wit camper,
    the dumbbell hiker.

    He is going to show them
    how a professional does it.*

    -*Billy Collins
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  39. TopTop #1821
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Supermarket in California

    What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
    In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
    What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

    I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
    I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
    I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
    We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

    Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
    (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
    Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
    Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
    Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?


    Berkeley, 1955
    - Allen Ginsberg
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  41. TopTop #1822
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Man Doesn’t Have Time

    A man doesn’t have timeExpand
    To have time for everything.
    He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
    A season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
    Was wrong about that.
    A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
    To laugh and cry with the same eyes,
    With the same hands to cast away stones and to gather them,
    To make love in war and war in love.

    And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
    To set in order and confuse, to eat and to digest
    What history
    Takes years and years to do.

    A man doesn’t have time.
    When he loves he seeks, when he finds
    Her forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
    He begins to forget.

    And his soul is experienced, his soul
    Is very professional.
    Only his body remains forever
    An amateur. It tries and it misses,
    Gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
    Drunk and blind in its pleasures
    And in its pains.

    He will die as figs die in autumn,
    Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
    The leaves growing dry on the ground,
    The bare branches already pointing to the place
    Where there’s time for everything.

    - Yehuda Amichai
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  43. TopTop #1823
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hot December on the Mediterranean

    Furious wind rips at the pines
    below the sheltered terrace.

    Behind the pines, palm fronds, like knives
    flash silver with winter sun.

    A band of swallows
    swoop, defying the weather

    chattering like
    angry housewives. The old men

    gather indoors to read their papers
    and lament La Crisis.

    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Katherine Spiering; 12-04-2013 at 12:44 PM.
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  44. TopTop #1824
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Soil Of My Soul

    To: W.B. Yeats

    Tis my prize those childhood woes live buried inside,
    The soil of my soul of such matter consorted
    And I always return to the same grave to hide
    that inferno of shame, youthful ardor aborted.

    What do I want with the sun, why would I show my face,
    Give me the moonlight and a forest path to walk alone
    With the wild mustangs and the paths they trace,
    Our nostrils flare, breathing ancient air into bone.

    The warriors, old Celts, knew well this potent rage,
    In the lovers of old Eire ran the sap of rowan and oak
    The modern man lives in a zoo, in a civilized cage,
    And lost is the marriage that human to divine may yoke.




    - Brian McSweeney
    Last edited by Katherine Spiering; 12-05-2013 at 12:34 PM.
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  46. TopTop #1825
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In memory of Nelson Mandela:

    Invictus


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


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


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


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

    - William Ernest Henley
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  48. TopTop #1826
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Madiba (Nelson Mandela)


    Lord take these lines
    to the old lion, Madiba
    oh how his eyes still shine
    so full of life and I,
    seem to be wasting mine
    see, by the time he was my age
    he had already written the next page
    in the story of his nation's great future
    for so many years he was caged
    a mere beast would've choked on rage
    but not the noble lion Mandela... Makana...
    Madiba!
    Great Father!
    lift your tattered mane once again!
    cross the savannah!
    loose your mighty roar to the wind!
    shake the heart of the earth mother!
    and if she calls you in
    break not your stride
    you leave us with pride
    indeed inside, I am a part of that pride
    the tribe, of man,
    blind to black or white...
    red, gold and green
    are the only colors we see
    and the only fealty we feel
    is to the standard of the Lion
    so mighty Lord...
    please... take these lines
    or better yet take the nine lives
    of these false cats wasting time
    and give them instead to the humble lion...
    Madiba!...
    Kukuza kuka Nxele
    the journey is never over!

    - Oliver Sherman
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  50. TopTop #1827
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sunday Morning
    Verse VII

    Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

    Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
    Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
    Not as a god, but as a god might be,
    Naked among them, like a savage source.
    Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
    Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
    And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
    The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
    The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,
    That choir among themselves long afterward.
    They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
    Of men that perish and of summer morn.
    And whence they came and whither they shall go
    the dew upon their feet shall manifest.

    - Wallace Steven
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  51. Gratitude expressed by:

  52. TopTop #1828
    Bird Watcher's Avatar
    Bird Watcher
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Sunday Morning
    Verse VII

    Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

    Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
    Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
    Not as a god, but as a god might be,
    Naked among them, like a savage source.
    Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
    Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
    And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
    The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
    The trees, like seraphim, and echoing hills,
    That choir among themselves long afterward.
    They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
    Of men that perish and of summer morn.
    And whence they came and whither they shall go
    the dew upon their feet shall manifest.

    - Wallace Steven
    Wallace "Stevens" -- (sorry, just had to correct. One of my favorite poets.)
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  54. TopTop #1829
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Those Winter Sundays


    Sundays too my father got up early
    And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
    then with cracked hands that ached
    from labor in the weekday weather made
    banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.


    I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
    When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
    and slowly I would rise and dress,
    fearing the chronic angers of that house,


    Speaking indifferently to him,
    who had driven out the cold
    and polished my good shoes as well.
    What did I know, what did I know
    of love's austere and lonely offices?


    - Robert Hayden
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  56. TopTop #1830
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Monk on the Mountain
    “Picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly”

    Who is that wild-haired monk,
    That recluse, hermit,
    Living all these years in his cave on the mountainside?

    Does he light incense? No.
    But he breathes in the dawn mist, heavy with pine scent.

    Does he bow to Buddha? No.
    But the broken branch of a tree reminds him of suffering and the brevity of life.

    Does he chant a sutra? No.
    But, every day, at first light and at twilight,
    His thick fingers caress his prayer beads.

    Prayer beads?
    Does this fellow dangle dainty pearls or stroke glossy little globes adorned with silken tassels?
    No. His beads are crude, chunky nuts,
    Eighteen of them,
    Foraged from among fallen leaves and
    Strung onto hairs from the tail of an itinerant ox.

    And as he fingers the bumpy surface of each nut,
    His fingers trace hard edges, soft hollows,
    Shapes that rise, fall, disappear
    As his breath rises, falls, disappears

    So who is this wild-haired monk?
    A man like any other, he walks and sleeps,
    Eats and shits and goes about his business,
    Balancing on the edge of life and death.

    Who is this man?
    Who is that pine tree?
    That drifting cloud?

    - Nina Mermey Klippel


    (Notes: This poem was inspired by a bracelet of Chinese prayer beads of unknown date, made of lithocarpus, the nut of the stone oak tree, which was exhibited at the Rubin Museum in New York City. The crudeness of the beads brought to mind the character of the wild-haired monk, from a parable in a text by the 13th century Zen master Dogen called Dotuku (Expressions).
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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