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  1. TopTop #2551

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    powerful poem! Thank you!
    brings this to mind (allied in spirit)

    And the breath of God, through the Masters and saints,
    brought the rains and the sun in due season.

    And when floods came or drought,
    they did not huddle in fear or curse the sky,

    but looked into their hearts to find the sin
    and adjusted their sacrifice to the laws of Nature and God.

    (Francis Brabazon, STAY WITH GOD, p. 125)


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  2. Gratitude expressed by:

  3. TopTop #2552
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sympathy


    I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
    When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
    And the river flows like a stream of glass;
    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
    I know what the caged bird feels!


    I know why the caged bird beats his wing
    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
    For he must fly back to his perch and cling
    When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
    And they pulse again with a keener sting—
    I know why he beats his wing!


    I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
    When he beats his bars and he would be free;
    It is not a carol of joy or glee,
    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
    I know why the caged bird sings!


    - Paul Lawrence Dunbar
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  5. TopTop #2553
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Grief


    When you lose someone you love,
    Your life becomes strange,
    The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
    Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
    And some dead echo drags your voice down
    Where words have no confidence
    Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
    And though this loss has wounded others too,
    No one knows what has been taken from you
    When the silence of absence deepens.


    Flickers of guilt kindle regret
    For all that was left unsaid or undone.


    There are days when you wake up happy;
    Again inside the fullness of life,
    Until the moment breaks
    And you are thrown back
    Onto the black tide of loss.
    Days when you have your heart back,
    You are able to function well
    Until in the middle of work or encounter,
    Suddenly with no warning,
    You are ambushed by grief.


    It becomes hard to trust yourself.
    All you can depend on now is that
    Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
    More than you, it knows its way
    And will find the right time
    To pull and pull the rope of grief
    Until that coiled hill of tears
    Has reduced to its last drop.


    Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
    With the invisible form of your departed;
    And when the work of grief is done,
    The wound of loss will heal
    And you will have learned
    To wean your eyes
    From that gap in the air
    And be able to enter the hearth
    In your soul where your loved one
    Has awaited your return
    All the time.


    - John O'Donohue
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  7. TopTop #2554
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ars Poetica #100: I Believe


    Poetry, I tell my students,
    is idiosyncratic. Poetry
    is where we are ourselves
    (though Sterling Brown said
    “Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I'”),
    digging in the clam flats
    for the shell that snaps,
    emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
    Poetry is what you find
    in the dirt in the corner,
    overhear on the bus, God
    in the details, the only way
    to get from here to there.
    Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
    is not all love, love, love,
    and I’m sorry the dog died.
    Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
    is the human voice,
    and are we not of interest to each other?


    - Elizabeth Alexander
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  9. TopTop #2555
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Post time


    What my father loved about the track —

    time compressed into three-minute segments,
    the idea of someone losing his shirt
    or a few bucks, or winning big …

    He loved the last-minute window,
    gamblers tense to place the last winning bet,
    and all the losing tickets he stepped on
    walking to the boy who ran to get his car.

    Once, at ten, sleepless, I carried to his room
    some nameless fear I wanted him to soothe.
    He told me his secret: to lie on one side
    and concentrate to keep away the dread.

    I used to think only of my father’s anger.
    Now I think of his loneliness.
    - Robin Becker
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  11. TopTop #2556
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Enough of This
    Enough of this—names, titles, roles—
    all the bits and pieces
    that shored up this self
    now crumbling beyond repair.
    Let them go.
    Watch the memories
    and moments
    spill like beads
    from a broken string
    too worn to knot again or replace.
    One thing after another,
    once piled up like a barricade
    against who knows what.
    Books, concepts, causes,
    travels or acquired tastes—
    all futile fumblings
    for something to hold on to,
    each a willful distraction
    from what is happening now.
    What matters in this moment?
    Not these words but
    the wind whistling,
    the empty sky, the smell
    and touch of grass,
    and the clear taste
    of water from this glass.

    - Newton Smith
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  13. TopTop #2557
    Eller's Avatar
    Eller
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I enjoy the images and appreciate the sentiment expressed
    However, what if...

    that empty sky now burns,
    the grass crunches below our feet
    and the clear taste of water is befouled?

    Perhaps those causes we fight for are not just futile fumblings or willful distractions...

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Enough of This
    Enough of this—names, titles, roles—
    all the bits and pieces
    that shored up this self
    now crumbling beyond repair.
    Let them go.
    Watch the memories
    and moments
    spill like beads
    from a broken string
    too worn to knot again or replace.
    One thing after another,
    once piled up like a barricade
    against who knows what.
    Books, concepts, causes,
    travels or acquired tastes—
    all futile fumblings
    for something to hold on to,
    each a willful distraction
    from what is happening now.
    What matters in this moment?
    Not these words but
    the wind whistling,
    the empty sky, the smell
    and touch of grass,
    and the clear taste
    of water from this glass.

    - Newton Smith
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  14. TopTop #2558

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    wow, love this esp!:
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Let them go.
    Watch the memories
    and moments
    spill like beads
    from a broken string
    too worn to knot again or replace.
    One thing after another,
    once piled up like a barricade
    against who knows what.
    Books, concepts, causes,
    travels or acquired tastes—
    all futile fumblings
    for something to hold on to,
    each a willful distraction


    - Newton Smith
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  16. TopTop #2559
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Could I Ever Forget That Flash

    How could I ever forget that flash of light!




    In a moment, thirty thousand people ceased to be,
    The cries of fifty thousand killed
    At the bottom of crushing darkness;
    Through yellow smoke whirling into light,
    Buildings split, bridges collapsed,
    Crowded trams burnt as they rolled about
    Hiroshima, all full of boundless heaps of embers.
    Soon after, skin dangling like rags;
    With hands on breasts;
    Treading upon the broken brains;
    Wearing shreds of burn cloth round their loins;
    There came numberless lines of the naked,
    all crying.
    Bodies on the parade ground, scattered like
    jumbled stone images of Jizo;
    Crowds in piles by the river banks,
    loaded upon rafts fastened to the shore,
    Turned by and by into corpses
    under the scorching sun;
    in the midst of flame
    tossing against the evening sky,
    Round about the street where mother and
    brother were trapped alive under the fallen house
    The fire-flood shifted on.
    On beds of filth along the Armory floor,
    Heaps, and God knew who they were?
    Heaps of schoolgirls lying in refuse
    Pot-bellied, one-eyed, with half their skin peeled
    off bald.
    The sun shone, and nothing moved
    But the buzzing flies in the metal basins
    Reeking with stagnant ordure.
    How can I forget that stillness
    Prevailing over the city of three hundred thousands?
    Amidst that calm,
    How can I forget the entreaties
    Of departed wife and child
    Through their orbs of eyes,
    Cutting through our minds and souls?
    - Mitsuyoshi Toge


    Mitsuyoshi Toge, born in Hiroshima in 1917, was a Catholic and a poet. He was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 6, 1945, when he was 24 years old. Toge died at age 36. His firsthand experience of the bomb, his passion for peace, and his realistic insight into the event made him a leading poet in Hiroshima. This poem is from Hiroshima-Nagasaki: A Pictorial Record of the Atomic Destruction (1978).
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  18. TopTop #2560
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hiroshima

    How vast the seas of destruction,
    the horror!
    How ever could our countries speak again?
    How could there be another spring?
    The depth of such pain,
    The unimaginable resilience
    of this world!

    Is there within us the
    same?

    - Scott O'Brien
    Last edited by Barry; 08-07-2015 at 02:01 PM.
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  20. TopTop #2561

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    beautiful! man, did you grab me with this!


    Is there within us the
    same?
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  21. TopTop #2562
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode To Gaiety

    Go gloom
    Begone glum and grim
    Off with the drab drear and grumble
    It's time
    its pastime
    to come undone and come out laughing
    time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets
    and feed them to the sourpusses

    Come frisky pals
    Come forth wily wags
    Loosen your screws and get off your rocker
    Untie the strait lacer
    Tie up the smarty pants
    Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw
    Share quips and pranks with every victim
    of grouch pomposity or blah

    Woe to the bozo who says No to
    tee hee ho ho and ha ha
    Boo to the cleancut klutz who
    wipes the smile off his face
    Without gaiety
    freedom is a chastity belt
    Without gaiety
    life is a wooden kimono

    Come cheerful chums
    Cut up and carry on
    Crack your pots and split your sides
    Boggle the bellyacher
    Convulse the worrywart
    Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds
    Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead
    at the guillotine of the mindless

    Be wise and go merry round
    whatever you cherish
    what you love to enjoy what you live to exert
    And when the high spirits
    call your number up
    count on merriment all the way to the countdown
    Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle
    Long live gaiety
    for all the laity

    - James Broughton
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  23. TopTop #2563
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Word That Is a Prayer


    One thing you know when you say it:
    all over the earth people are saying it with you;
    a child blurting it out as the seizures take her,
    a woman reciting it on a cot in a hospital.
    What if you take a cab through the Tenderloin:
    at a street light, a man in a wool cap,
    yarn unraveling across his face, knocks at the window;
    he says, Please.
    By the time you hear what he's saying,
    the light changes, the cab pulls away,
    and you don't go back, though you know
    someone just prayed to you the way you pray.
    Please: a word so short
    it could get lost in the air
    as it floats up to God like the feather it is,
    knocking and knocking, and finally
    falling back to earth as rain,
    as pellets of ice, soaking a black branch,
    collecting in drains, leaching into the ground,
    and you walk in that weather every day.


    - Ellery Akers
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  24. TopTop #2564
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blackberries

    It must be August.
    Brambles have taken over the roads,
    have conquered the verges
    and now invade the rest.
    The long fingernails of blackberry canes
    run down the blackboard of my car.
    "Sweeeeeeeet!" they shriek,
    "Sweet, sweeeeeet,"
    until I am driven mad with lust,
    abandon the vehicle,
    heedless of clothing or skin
    and plunge into Sleeping Beauty's barrier,
    a briar hoard of juice.

    Drunk with sugar,
    rival to hornets and wasps
    I bumble from berry to berry,
    wade in, then back out
    against an ebb tide of claws.
    Stigmata bloom: my blood or the plant's?
    Perhaps a blend of both.
    Later, at home, consuming crumble or tart,
    I wonder at fine red road maps
    etched on forearms and shins;
    sweetness purchased at a price
    I did not know
    I was paying at the time.

    It must be August.
    Endings and beginnings
    stand back to back.
    Harvest's gloss eclipses
    winter's pending loss,
    and tangled caverns of seasons past
    buttress this moment's bounty;
    when Then and Yet-to-Be mingle--
    dead cane and subtle seed--
    and haunt the sweet sharp syrup
    of this summer's day seduction.

    - Jane L. Mickelson
    Last edited by Barry; 08-11-2015 at 01:49 PM.
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  26. TopTop #2565
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Green Apples


    In August we carried the old horsehair mattress

    To the back porch
    And slept with our children in a row.
    The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
    Telling me something:
    Saying something urgent.
    I was happy.
    The green apples fell on the sloping roof
    And rattled down.
    The wind was shaking me all night long;
    Shaking me in my sleep
    Like a definition of love,
    Saying, this is the moment,


    Here, now.


    - Ruth Stone
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  28. TopTop #2566
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Starfish


    This is what life does. It lets you walk up to

    the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
    stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
    your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
    down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
    the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
    is this a message, finally, or just another day?


    Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
    pond, where whole generations of biological
    processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
    speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
    they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
    enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
    There is movement beneath the water, but it
    may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.


    And then life suggests that you remember the
    years you ran around, the years you developed
    a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
    owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
    genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
    become. And then life lets you go home to think
    about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.


    Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
    who never had any conditions, the one who waited
    you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
    you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
    so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
    were born at a good time. Because you were able
    to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
    stopped when you should have and started again.


    So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
    late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
    then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
    while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
    with smiles on their starry faces as they head
    out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.


    - Eleanor Lerman
    Last edited by Barry; 08-13-2015 at 01:41 PM.
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  30. TopTop #2567
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ancestors & Angels

    I write words to catch up to the ancestors
    An angel told me the only way
    to walk through fire
    without getting burned
    is to become fire.
    Some days angels whisper
    In my ear as I walk
    Down the street and I fall in love
    With every person I meet,
    And I think, maybe this
    Could be a bliss
    Like when Dante met
    Beatrice.
    Other days all I see
    is my collusion
    with illusion.
    Ghosts of projection
    masquerading
    as the radiant angel
    of love.
    You know I feel like
    the ancestors
    brought us together.
    I feel like the ancestors
    Brought us here and they
    Expect great things.
    They
    expect us to say what
    we think and
    live how
    we feel and follow the hard paths
    that bring us near joy.
    They expect us
    to nurture
    all the children.

    I write poems to welcome angels
    and conjure ancestors.
    I pray to the angels of politics
    and love.
    I pray for justice sake
    not to be relieved of my frustrations,
    at the same time burning sage
    and asking for patience.
    I march with the people
    to the border
    between nations
    where
    everything stops
    except
    the greed of corporations.

    Thoughts like comets
    calculating the complexity
    of the complicity.

    There is so much noise in the oceans
    the whales can’t hear each other.
    We’re making them crazy,
    driving dolphins insane.
    What kind of ancestors
    are we?

    Thoughts like comets
    leaving craters
    in the landscape of my consciousness.

    I pray to the ancestors and angels.

    Meet me in the garden.
    Meet me where spirit walks softly
    in the cool of the evening.
    Meet me in the garden
    under the wings of the bird
    of many colors.
    Meet me
    in the garden
    of your longing.

    Every breath
    is a pilgrimage.

    Every
    breath
    is a pilgrimage
    to you.

    I pray
    to be
    a conduit.

    An angel told me:

    The only way
    to walk through fire—

    become fire.
    - Drew Dellinger
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  32. TopTop #2568
    Sara S's Avatar
    Sara S
    Auntie Wacco

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hate to take lines out of context, but these few are sooo great:

    Sara

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Ancestors & Angels

    ...
    I march with the people
    to the border
    between nations
    where
    everything stops
    except
    the greed of corporations.
    ...
    - Drew Dellinger
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  34. TopTop #2569

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    takes me there! thanks for the wings! \/
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  36. TopTop #2570
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Search of the Very First Seed


    It is time to tend the garden again.
    It is wise not to wait too long.
    I have learned my lesson,
    But it wasn’t easy!
    For I have been bloodied clearing the bramble of neglect.

    Sometimes I think I know what I am doing
    and the garden laughs, “Ha you silly soul!”
    I was lulled by the pause of darkness,
    I grew fat and lost my way
    But the garden is still there...waiting.

    It is time to tend the garden again.
    Its a dirty, filthy...lovely job.
    I’d get help but everyone has their own garden to tend.
    I thought my garden was a mess, then I saw others
    and had to reconsider.

    It is time to tend the garden again.
    I am in search of the very first seed -
    I think it came from the vapor like everything else.
    I wonder - is LIFE a specialty of condensation?
    I think my garden will teach me.

    - Jeff Rooney
    Last edited by Barry; 08-15-2015 at 06:20 PM.
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  37. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  38. TopTop #2571
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Pride


    If I claim I was a terrible, horrible,
    Evil no-good person,
    It would be a lie, and it would be
    Wanting always to be the best or the worst.
    So now I’m destined to wander,
    My bag full of pride a lot lighter,
    And if I say I am done
    With whatever ails me,
    That would also be a lie.
    I am not done, will never be done
    Till the day I die,
    But I am content to be human,
    Naked and shaking with love
    At the moment, and the next moment,
    I just can’t say.


    - Noelle Kocot
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  40. TopTop #2572
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Peach

    Having endured the annual descent into bleak November

    and winter – even a California winter –
    with its diminished imagination of the edible,
    the monotonous shuffle of apples and tasteless bananas,
    I long to hear from those messengers
    from the Other World of summer.

    Asparagus appears first, quickly reserving a space on the grill
    for its partner, the fresh salmon (once the price comes down).

    Later on I’ll thrill to the advent of vine-ripe tomatoes,

    especially the black crims that go so well in Greek salad,

    and those glorious red peppers.

    But when July announces mid-summer,
    Sweet Jesus, the peaches arrive!
    A joyous procession of yellow peaches, white peaches,
    miniature peaches, peaches with every kind of exotic name.

    I admire them, kiss and fondle them,
    check them every few hours until they reach that fine line
    between ripe and overripe.

    I like to make a sliced peach, almond butter and cream cheese sandwich, with really dark, French roast coffee, cream, no sugar!

    Call me silly, call me compulsive, say, “Get a life!”
    I call myself peach lover, peach aficionado,
    devotee of all things round and pink.
    Oh great apparition of the mother-goddess herself!
    I prostrate myself to you 108 times.
    I have lived another year.

    - Barry Spector
    Last edited by Barry; 08-17-2015 at 01:15 PM.
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  42. TopTop #2573
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Moment


    And not once,
    but many times over,
    again and again,
    how we disappeared
    into that deep well
    of darkness, shuddering beneath that load of silence,
    clinging to our narrow ledge.


    Yet the darkness, sometimes,
    unfolded as light.
    Our atoms dissolved in it,
    each separate molecule opening
    into a radiant disk of feeling.


    How still we became,
    witness and thing seen,
    spectacle and observer,
    each point admitting an untrammeled flood.
    - Dorothy Walters
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  44. TopTop #2574
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Second Music


    Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
    one below the other, one easier to hear, the other
    lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
    yet always present.
    When all other things seem lively and real,
    this one fades. Yet the notes of it
    touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
    of the names laid over each child at birth.
    I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
    If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,
    the telling is so soft
    that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,
    becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
    to hear the second music.
    I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
    All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.


    - Annie Lighthart
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  46. TopTop #2575
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Learning

    A piccolo played, then a drum.
    Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
    clippety clop, away.

    My mother said, "Don't run -
    the army is after someone
    other than us. If you stay
    you'll learn our enemy."

    Then he came, the speaker. He stood
    in the square. He told us who
    to hate. I watched my mother's face,
    its quiet. "That's him," she said.

    - William Stafford
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  48. TopTop #2576
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To The Reader: If You Asked Me

    I want you with me, and yet you are the end
    of my privacy. Do you see how these rooms
    have become public? How we glance to see if—
    who? Who did you imagine?
    Surely we’re not here alone, you and I.

    I’ve been wandering
    where the cold tracks of language
    collapse into cinders, unburnable trash.
    Beyond that, all I can see is the remote cold
    of meteors before their avalanches of farewell.

    If you asked me what words
    a voice like this one says in parting,
    I’d say, I’m sweeping an empty factory
    toward which I feel neither hostility nor nostalgia.
    I’m just a broom, sweeping.

    - Chase Twichell
    Last edited by Barry; 08-21-2015 at 01:02 PM.
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #2577
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Three Seasons

    In the early seventies
    Greg and I moved back to the land.
    Here, no National Guard, no protests
    on the steps of Bank of America,
    no hash to smuggle into Isla Vista.
    We watched leaves turn copper and vermilion
    while rutting elk bellowed through air so still
    even the aspen refused to quiver.
    The radio played country western.
    The local paper came twice a month.
    Outside, winter drifts swallowed
    fence posts. Inside, I couldn’t feed
    the smoke-stained fireplace enough
    to warm the house and didn’t think
    about the rifle tucked behind
    his Gibson guitar in the bedroom closet.
    Nights shortened, river ice shattered,
    and every morning another newborn calf
    shimmered among rangy herds
    grazing in spring melt.
    With pickax and shovel, Greg
    tilled thawing dirt for our garden
    but never opened the packet of seeds.
    When he told me he wanted to leave this place,
    I thought he meant our home.
    It didn’t occur to me to hide the bullets.


    - Teetle Clawson
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  52. TopTop #2578
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Point Reyes


    Sandpipers at the margin
    in the moon -
    Bright fan of the flat creek
    On dark sea sand,
    rock boom beyond:
    The work of centuries and wars,
    a car,
    Is parked a mile above
    where the dirt road ends.
    In naked gritty sand,
    Eye-stinging salty driftwood campfire
    smoke, out far.
    It all begins again.
    Sandpipers chasing the shiny surf
    in the moon light -
    By a fire at the beach.


    - Gary Snyder
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  54. TopTop #2579
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    So Many Gifts


    There are so many gifts
    Still unopened from your birthday,
    There are so many hand-crafted presents
    That have been sent to you by God.

    The Beloved does not mind repeating,
    "Everything I have is also yours."

    Please forgive Hafiz and the Friend
    If we break into a sweet laughter
    When your heart complains of being thirsty
    When ages ago
    Every cell in your soul
    Capsized forever
    Into this infinite golden sea.

    Indeed,
    A lover's pain is like holding one's breath
    Too long
    In the middle of a vital performance,

    In the middle of one of Creation's favorite
    Songs.

    Indeed, a lover's pain is this sleeping,
    This sleeping,
    When God just rolled over and gave you
    Such a big good-morning kiss!

    There are so many gifts, my dear,
    Still unopened from your birthday.

    O, there are so many hand-crafted presents
    That have been sent to your life
    From God.

    - Hafiz
    Last edited by Barry; 08-24-2015 at 02:52 PM.
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  56. TopTop #2580
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quartz Clock

    The ideas of a physicist
    can be turned into useful objects:
    a rocket, a quartz clock,
    a microwave oven for cooking.
    The ideas of poems turn into only themselves,
    as the hands of the clock do,
    or the face of a person.
    It changes, but only more into the person.


    - Jane Hirshfield
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