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  1. TopTop #241
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Come, come, whoever you are.
    Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
    It doesn't matter.
    Ours is not a caravan of despair.
    Come, even if you've broken your vow
    a thousand times.
    Come, yet again, come.

    - Jelalludin Rumi
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  2. TopTop #242
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    There is a community of the spirit.

    Join it, and feel the delight*
    of walking in the noisy street*
    and being the noise.

    Drink all your passion
    and be a disgrace.*

    Close both eyes*
    to see with the other eye.

    Open your hands,*
    if you want to be held.

    Sit down in this circle.

    Quit acting like a wolf, and feel*
    the shepherd's love filling you.

    At night, your beloved wanders.
    Don't accept consolations.

    Close your mouth against food.
    Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

    You moan, "She left me."** "He left me."
    Twenty more will come.

    Be empty of worrying.
    Think who created thought!

    Why do you stay in prison
    when the door is so wide open?

    Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
    Live in silence.

    Flow down and down in always
    widening rings of being.
    *
    -*Jelalludin Rumi*
    *
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  3. TopTop #243
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Creek

    I want to live my life the way a creek
    runs faithful to the land and the seasons.

    I want to rest in deep pools
    rich with algae and fish,
    tranquil under the sun and moon.

    I want to rush wide awake in rapids
    tumbling over rocks and branches
    In the hidden depths,
    fearless in my gravitational pull to the sea.

    I want to feel that utter surrender
    when the creek runs dry
    giving myself to cloud
    waiting in stillness and silence
    to flow again

    I want to race wildly reborn
    swelling the banks
    with my endless devotion to returning

    And in all these expressions of the One,
    I want to – BE
    in the most ordinary of ways.
    Grateful to be water,
    rock, cloud, sun, moon – reflecting
    all this beauty back to itself.

    - Kay Crista
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  4. TopTop #244
    RexCasteel
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thank you for sharing this one, today, Larry.

    I was stunned by this poem last night (at the Rumi night). And now I'm stunned again to find that Kay was reciting her own poem.

    Thank you, Kay, where ever you are.

    And thank you, Larry (and all the rest), for another unforgettable night.

    - Rex

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

    I want to live my life the way a creek
    runs faithful to the land and the seasons...

    - Kay Crista
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  5. TopTop #245
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Exercise

    First forget what time it is
    for an hour
    do it regularly every day

    then forget what day of the week it is
    do this regularly for a week
    then forget what country you are in
    and practice doing it in company
    for a week
    then do them together
    for a week
    with as few breaks as possible

    follow these by forgetting how to add
    or to subtract
    it makes no difference
    you can change them around
    after a week
    both will help you later
    to forget how to count

    forget how to count
    starting with your own age
    starting with how to count backward
    starting with even numbers
    starting with Roman numerals
    starting with fractions of Roman numerals
    starting with the old calendar
    going on to the old alphabet
    going on to the alphabet
    until everything is continuous again

    go on to forgetting elements
    starting with water
    proceeding to earth
    rising in fire

    forget fire

    - W.S. Merwin
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  6. TopTop #246
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Beloved

    I used to love certain things ….
    Like the way sun's light slants bright in the
    Dark of redwood grove;
    Like the sound of river water growling
    Over submerged stone;
    Like the dark blue of sky - so much darker
    And so much bluer after
    The season's first true snow ….
    I used to love
    The sharp smelly tang of wet ocean beach
    As the tide turned low ….
    I once loved the soundless sound of water
    Dripping from lifted paddle on a stretch of
    Quiet water ….
    I once loved the sensation of a deep
    Belly laugh, rising uncontrollably and
    Ending in tears of joy ….
    I used to love the velvet black of
    Sky, suddenly and unexpectedly split
    By the explosion of an ancient falling star;
    I used to love the smell of puppy breath,
    The bright round eyes of a curious kitten,
    Or the contented sounds of a well-kept
    Horse munching on breakfast hay ….
    I once loved the way dawn would sometimes
    Sweep in with vivid crimson and iridescent
    Gold….
    Or in the far North how dusk would linger
    On and on and on and on until night seemed like
    An afterthought ….
    But now, I realize, what could I possibly
    Have known about loving?
    Because of you, I am so opened and
    So full, that every note of every song
    Only now has meaning.
    - Michele Cruz
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  7. TopTop #247
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How to See Deer

    Forget roadside crossings.
    Go nowhere with guns.
    Go elsewhere your own way,

    lonely and wanting. Or
    stay and be early:
    next to deep woods

    inhabit old orchards.
    All clearings promise.
    Sunrise is good,

    and fog before sun.
    Expect nothing always;
    find your luck slowly.

    Wait out the windfall.
    Take your good time
    to learn to read ferns;

    make like a turtle:
    downhill toward slow water.
    Instructed by heron,

    drink the pure silence.
    Be compassed by wind.
    If you quiver like aspen

    trust your quick nature:
    let your ear teach you
    which way to listen.

    You've come to assume
    protective color; now
    colors reform to

    new shapes in your eye.
    You've learned by now
    to wait without waiting;

    as if it were dusk
    look into light falling;
    in deep relief

    things even out. Be
    careless of nothing. See
    what you see.

    - Philip Booth
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  8. TopTop #248
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The deer lay down their bones

    I followed the narrow cliff side trail half way up the mountain
    Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, flinging itself
    Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling water
    Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clambered down the steep stream
    Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
    Hung like a bird's nest on the precipice brink a small hidden clearing,
    Grass and a shallow pool. But all about there were bones lying in the grass,clean bones and stinking bones,
    Antlers and bones: I understood that the place was a refuge for wounded deer; there are so many
    Hurt ones escape the hunters and limp away to lie hidden; here they have water for the awful thirst
    And peace to die in; dense green laurel and grim cliff
    Make sanctuary, and a sweet wind blows upward from the deep gorge.--I wish my bones were with theirs.
    But that's a foolish thing to confess, and a little cowardly. We know that life
    Is on the whole quite equally good and bad, mostly gray neutral, and can be endured
    To the dim end, no matter what magic of grass, water and precipice, and pain of wounds,
    Makes death look dear. We have been given life and have used it--not a great gift perhaps--but in honesty
    Should use it all. Mine's empty since my love died--Empty? The flame-haired grandchild with great blue eyes
    That look like hers?--What can I do for the child? I gaze at her and wonder what sort of man
    In the fall of the world . . . I am growing old, that is the trouble. My children and little grandchildren
    Will find their way, and why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-seven, ten years more or less,
    Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf
    Who has lost his mate?--I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision: who drinks the wine
    Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment
    New discovery may lie. The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
    bones: I must wear mine.

    - Robinson Jeffers
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  9. TopTop #249
    RexCasteel
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I know that smell exactly. I came across it night after night, on a forest trail, a couple of months ago.

    On occasion, a vulture would make a spectacular liftoff as it sensed me.

    Finally, I went wading into the ferns and thickets and natural cacophony that keeps us mostly on the trails. I went looking for the bones.

    I couldn't find them, but it was near a stream. And now I know that is not coincidence...

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The deer lay down their bones

    I followed the narrow cliff side trail half way up the mountain
    Above the deep river-canyon...

    The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
    bones: I must wear mine.

    - Robinson Jeffers
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  10. TopTop #250
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Notice

    This evening, the sturdy Levi's
    I wore every day for over a year
    & which seemed to the end
    in perfect condition,
    suddenly tore.
    How or why I don't know,
    but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
    A month ago my friend Nick
    walked off a racquetball court,
    showered,
    got into his street clothes,
    & halfway home collapsed & died.
    Take heed, you who read this,
    & drop to your knees now & again
    like the poet Christopher Smart,
    & kiss the earth & be joyful,
    & make much of your time,
    & be kindly to everyone,
    even to those who do not deserve it.
    For although you may not believe
    it will happen,
    you too will one day be gone,
    I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
    for no reason,
    assure you that such is the case.
    Pass it on.

    - Steve Kowit
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  11. TopTop #251
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Marsh Languages

    The dark soft languages are being silenced:
    Mothertongue Mothertongue Mothertongue
    falling one by one back into the moon.

    Language of marshes,
    languages of the roots of rushes tangled
    together in the ooze,
    marrow cells twinning themselves
    inside the warm core of the bone:
    pathways of hidden light in the body fade and wink out.

    The sibilants and gutturals,
    the cave language, the half-light
    forming at the back of the throat,
    the mouth's damp velvet moulding
    the lost syllable for "I" that did not mean separate,
    all are becoming sounds no longer
    heard because no longer spoken,
    and everthing that could once be said in them has
    ceased to exist.

    The languages of the dying suns
    are themselves dying,
    but even the word for this has been forgotten.
    The mouth against skin, vivid and fading,
    can no longer speak both cherishing and farewell.
    It is now only a mouth, only skin.
    There is no more longing.

    Translation was never possible.
    Instead there was always only
    conquest, the influx
    of the language of hard nouns,
    the language of metal,
    the language of either/or,
    the one language that has eaten all the others.

    - Margaret Atwood
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  12. TopTop #252
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    WHILE ATTENDING THE ANNUALCONVOCATION
    OF CAUSE THEORIST AND BIGBANGISTS AT THE
    LOCAL PROVINCIAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, THE
    MAD FARMER INTERCEDES FROM THE BACK ROW

    “Chance” is a poor word among
    the mazes and causes and effects, the last
    stand of these all-explainers who,
    backed up to the first and final Why,
    reply, “By chance, of course!” As if
    that tied up ignorance with a ribbon.
    In the beginning something by chance
    existed that would bang and by chance
    it banged, obedient to the by-chance
    previously existing laws of existence
    and banging, from which the rest proceeds
    by logic of cause and effect also
    previously existing by chance? Well,
    when all that happened who was there?
    Did the chance that made the bang then make
    the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?
    Prove to me that chance did ever
    make a sycamore tree, a yellow-
    throated warbler nesting and singing
    high up among the white limbs
    and the golden leaf-light, and a man
    to love the tree, the bird, the song
    his life long, and by his love to save
    them, so far, from all the machines.
    By chance? Prove it, and I
    by chance will kiss your ass.

    - Wendell Berry
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  13. TopTop #253
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Almond Blossom

    Even iron can put forth,
    Even iron.

    This is the iron age,
    But let us take heart
    Seeing iron break and bud,
    Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom.

    The almond-tree,
    December's bare iron hooks sticking out of earth.

    The almond-tree,
    That knows the deadliest poison, like a snake
    In supreme bitterness.

    Upon the iron, and upon the steel,
    Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow,
    Odd crumbs of melting snow.

    But you mistake, it is not from the sky;
    From out the iron, and from out the steel,
    Flying not down from heaven, but storming up,
    Strange storming up from the dense under-earth
    Along the iron, to the living steel
    In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow
    Setting supreme annunciation to the world.

    Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith,
    Iron-breaking,
    The rusty swords of almond-trees.

    Trees suffer, like races, clown the long ages.
    They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long ages
    Like drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,
    The alien trees in alien lands: and yet
    The heart of blossom,
    The unquenchable heart of blossom!

    Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail,
    Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandon
    From the small wound-stump.

    Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-tree
    Can be kept down, but he'll burst like a polyp into prolixity.

    And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!

    This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, oenochoe, and open-hearted cylix,
    Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees

    Iron, but unforgotten,
    Iron, dawn-hearted,
    Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages.

    See it come forth in blossom
    From the snow-remembering heart
    In long-nighted January,
    In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night.

    Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted Gethsemane
    Into blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour.
    Oh, give me the tree of life in blossom
    And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers!

    Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights,
    Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands,
    So that the faith in his heart smiles again
    And his blood ripples with that untenable delight of once-more-vindicated faith,
    And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds,
    Pearls itself into tenderness of bud
    And in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one stride
    A naked tree of blossom, like a bathing in dew, divested of cover,
    Frail-naked, utterly uncovered
    To the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna's snow-edged wind
    And January's loud-seeming sun.

    Think of it, from the iron fastness
    Suddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust.
    Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling,
    With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion.

    Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one,
    Come forth from iron,
    Red your heart is.
    Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body,
    More fearless than iron all the time,
    And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.

    In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill,
    Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.

    In the garden raying out
    With a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking about
    With such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,
    Sword-blade-born.

    Unpromised,
    No bounds being set.
    Flaked out and come unpromised,
    The tree being life-divine,
    Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the core
    Within iron and earth.

    Knots of pink, fish-silvery
    In heaven, in blue, blue heaven,
    Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied,
    Red at the core,
    Red at the core,
    Knotted in heaven upon the fine light.

    Open,
    Open,
    Five times wide open,
    Six times wide open,
    And given, and perfect;
    And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness,
    Sore-hearted-looking.

    - D.H. Lawrence
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  14. TopTop #254
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    One
    *
    The mosquito is so small
    it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
    Each leaf, the same.
    And the black ant, hurrying.
    So many lives, so many fortunes!
    Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
    down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
    Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
    before the slug creeps to the feast,
    before the pine needles hustle down
    under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.
    *
    How many, how many, how many
    make up a world!
    And then I think of that old idea: the singular
    and the eternal.
    One cup, in which everything is swirled
    back to the color of the sea and sky.
    Imagine it!
    *
    A shining cup, surely!
    In the moment in which there is no wind
    over your shoulder,
    you stare down into it,
    and there you are,
    your own darling face, your own eyes.
    And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
    touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
    and you know what else!
    How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
    how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
    even your eyes, even your imagination.
    *
    - Mary Oliver
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  15. TopTop #255
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Preludes

    I
    The winter evening settles down
    With smell of steaks in passageways.
    Six o’clock.
    The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
    And now a gusty shower wraps
    The grimy scraps
    Of withered leaves about your feet
    And newspapers from vacant lots;
    The showers beat
    On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
    And at the corner of the street
    A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

    And then the lighting of the lamps.

    II
    The morning comes to consciousness
    Of faint stale smells of beer
    From the sawdust-trampled street
    With all its muddy feet that press
    To early coffee-stands.
    With the other masquerades
    That time resumes,
    One thinks of all the hands
    That are raising dingy shades
    In a thousand furnished rooms.

    III
    You tossed a blanket from the bed,
    You lay upon your back, and waited;
    You dozed, and watched the night revealing
    The thousand sordid images
    Of which your soul was constituted;
    They flickered against the ceiling.
    And when all the world came back
    And the light crept up between the shutters
    And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
    You had such a vision of the street
    As the street hardly understands;
    Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
    You curled the papers from your hair,
    Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
    In the palms of both soiled hands.

    IV
    His soul stretched tight across the skies
    That fade behind a city block,
    Or trampled by insistent feet
    At four and five and six o’clock;
    And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
    And evening newspapers, and eyes
    Assured of certain certainties,
    The conscience of a blackened street
    Impatient to assume the world.

    I am moved by fancies that are curled
    Around these images, and cling:
    The notion of some infinitely gentle
    Infinitely suffering thing.

    Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
    The worlds revolve like ancient women
    Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

    - T.S.Eliot
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  16. TopTop #256
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ask Much, The Voice Suggested

    Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.
    Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse
    tied to its tree while the strange noise
    passes over its ears.
    I who in extremity had always wanted less,
    even of eating, of sleeping.
    Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.
    "Want more" --
    a cure for longing I had not thought of.
    But that is how it is with wells.
    Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.
    The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:
    a cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.

    - Jane Hirshfield
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  17. TopTop #257
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Holy Longing

    Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
    because the massman will mock it right away.
    I praise what is truly alive,
    what longs to be burned to death.

    In the calm water of the love-nights,
    where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
    a strange feeling comes over you
    when you see the silent candle burning.

    Now you are no longer caught
    in the obsession with darkness,
    and a desire for higher love-making
    sweeps you upward.

    Distance does not make you falter,
    now, arriving in magic, flying,
    and, finally, insane for the light,
    you are the butterfly and you are gone.

    And so long as you haven’t experienced
    this: to die and so to grow,
    you are only a troubled guest
    on the dark earth.

    - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  18. TopTop #258
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    As we head over this precipice together,
    please remember your original face.
    I know they say
    to talk about it with words
    is to move farther from it,

    But how far away could you ever be
    from that gentleness you were
    before your birth, or from that warm dark Mother
    Who fashioned you of mud and blood,
    Who kissed and pinched your apple cheeks,
    and sent you wide awake
    into this world of ten thousand things?

    Today your original face
    is a soft cricket on the hardwood floor,
    rain coming from the west,
    the green fuse force of leaves and sun,
    and yes, that fear of falling, falling.

    In other words, nothing.
    More or less than
    all of it, exactly as it is,
    alive and with you all the way
    down.

    - Barton Stone
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  19. TopTop #259
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Last Breath

    … just walking
    in the wet light of morning,
    all your joys and heartaches
    shattered by a wind-felled oak

    -- your upturned umbrella
    filling with rain

    - Andrew Zarrillo
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  20. TopTop #260
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ten Years Later

    When the mind is clear
    and the surface of the now still,
    now swaying water
    slaps against
    the rolling kayak,
    I find myself near darkness,
    paddling again to Yellow Island.
    Every spring wildflowers
    cover the grey rocks.
    Every year the sea breeze
    ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
    hidden in the center of the flowers
    as if remembering them
    by touch alone.
    A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
    that frightened me in youth.
    Now their loneliness
    feels familiar, one small thing
    I've learned these years,
    how to be alone,
    and at the edge of aloneness
    how to be found by the world.

    - David Whyte
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  21. TopTop #261
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For the Unknown Self

    So much of what delights and troubles you
    Happens on a surface
    You take for ground.
    Your mind thinks your life alone,
    Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
    Yet it seems that a little below your heart
    There houses in you an unknown self
    Who prefers the patterns of the dark
    And is not persuaded by the eye's affection
    Or caught by the flash of thought.

    It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
    With all your unfolding expression,
    Is never drawn to break into light
    Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
    And misjudge what you do and who you are.

    It presides within like an evening freedom
    That will often see you enchanted by twilight
    Without ever recognizing the falling night,
    It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
    All you do and say and think is fostered
    Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

    It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
    That is not ruffled by disappointment;
    It presides in a deeper current of time
    Free from the force of cause and sequence
    That otherwise shapes your life.

    Were it to break forth into day,
    Its dark light might quench your mind,
    For it knows how your primeval heart
    Sisters every cell of your life
    To all your known mind would avoid,

    Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
    Offering you only discrete glimpses
    Of how you construct your life.

    At times, it will lead you strangely,
    Magnetized by some resonance
    That ambushes your vigilance.

    It works most resolutely at night
    As the poet who draws your dreams,
    Creating for you many secret doors,
    Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

    It has the dignity of the angelic
    That knows you to your roots,
    Always awaiting your deeper befriending
    To take you beyond the threshold of want,
    Where all your diverse strainings
    Can come to wholesome ease.

    - John O'Donohue
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  22. TopTop #262
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

    {My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair;
    Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
    Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
    Upon the breathless starlit air,
    "Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
    Fix every wandering thought upon
    That quarter where all thought is done:
    Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

    {My Self}. The consecretes blade upon my knees
    Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
    Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
    Unspotted by the centuries;
    That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
    >From some court-lady's dress and round
    The wodden scabbard bound and wound
    Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

    {My Soul.} Why should the imagination of a man
    Long past his prime remember things that are
    Emblematical of love and war?
    Think of ancestral night that can,
    If but imagination scorn the earth
    And interllect is wandering
    To this and that and t'other thing,
    Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

    {My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
    Five hundred years ago, about it lie
    Flowers from I know not what embroidery --
    Heart's purple -- and all these I set
    For emblems of the day against the tower
    Emblematical of the night,
    And claim as by a soldier's right
    A charter to commit the crime once more.

    {My Soul.} Such fullness in that quarter overflows
    And falls into the basin of the mind
    That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
    For intellect no longer knows
    Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known --
    That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
    Only the dead can be forgiven;
    But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

    {My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
    What matter if the ditches are impure?
    What matter if I live it all once more?
    Endure that toil of growing up;
    The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
    Of boyhood changing into man;
    The unfinished man and his pain
    Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
    The finished man among his enemies? --
    How in the name of Heaven can he escape
    That defiling and disfigured shape
    The mirror of malicious eyes
    Casts upon his eyes until at last
    He thinks that shape must be his shape?
    And what's the good of an escape
    If honour find him in the wintry blast?
    I am content to live it all again
    And yet again, if it be life to pitch
    Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
    A blind man battering blind men;
    Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
    The folly that man does
    Or must suffer, if he woos
    A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
    I am content to follow to its source
    Every event in action or in thought;
    Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
    When such as I cast out remorse
    So great a sweetness flows into the breast
    We must laugh and we must sing,
    We are blest by everything,
    Everything we look upon is blest.

    - William Butler Yeats
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  23. TopTop #263
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Rain


    All night the sound had
    come back again,
    and again falls
    this quiet, persistent rain.

    What am I to myself
    that must be remembered,
    insisted upon
    so often? Is it

    that never the ease,
    even the hardness,
    of rain falling
    will have for me

    something other than this,
    something not so insistent—
    am I to be locked in this
    final uneasiness.

    Love, if you love me,
    lie next to me.
    Be for me, like rain,
    the getting out

    of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
    lust of intentional indifference.
    Be wet
    with a decent happiness.

    -*Robert Creeley
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  24. TopTop #264
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prescription for the Disillusioned

    Come new to this
    day. Remove the rigid
    overcoat of experience,
    the notion of knowing,
    the beliefs that cloud
    your vision.

    Leave behind the stories
    of your life. Spit out the
    sour taste of unmet expectation.
    Let the stale scent of what-ifs
    waft back into the swamp
    of your useless fears.

    Arrive curious, without the armor
    of certainty, the plans and planned
    results of the life you’ve imagined.
    Live the life that chooses you, new
    every breath, every blink of
    your astonished eyes.

    - Rebecca del Rio
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  25. TopTop #265
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How He Left

    (for John O’Donohue, Who Departed Early)

    He already knew all he needed to know.
    He had plumbed the depths,
    met the strange forms below,
    captured their wisdom.

    When dawn broke,
    the birds caroled
    their knowings
    into his ear.
    He listened,
    and understood,
    meaning behind the sounds.

    The winds carried him
    to unmarked places,
    revelation swept
    over him
    until he was filled
    like a holy vessel
    with radiance
    from the ancient source.

    These gifts found meaning
    in what he gave to others:
    the world was his parish,
    humanity his flock.
    His words fed many.

    When his time came,
    he acquiesced gracefully
    and departed like a bright lantern
    carried upward on the currents
    into the final light
    above.

    - Dorothy Walters
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  26. TopTop #266
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The War-Widows Are Heard, Nepal 2006

    The country where your husband is accused by a debt-ridden neighbor,
    seized in the sun-dried cornfield, is the country no one can escape,
    the country we all live in, encased in smooth walls, clean laundry,
    paper cut-out newsmen and bold-faced fashion fronts.

    Your homespun shawl and burning eyes hold the still point
    for a room of squirming children, a youth old before his time,
    a woman who will never weep again. You travel far to tell
    your story in a place where nobody knows who you are.

    You stand watch behind the woven walls of a house
    while men throw other men into a river like sacks of evidence,
    while men who have nothing to lose push faces underwater
    until they thin out, pale as words coming through two languages

    transparent as tadpoles, though words swim better than men,
    better than we do through two languages, better than your husband,
    who wishes to be a fish, who wishes to slip away
    but gets caught, buckles, floats to a place of blind eyes.

    The men in khaki shorts haul their catch onto tractors,
    water dripping off the bruised and splayed limbs.
    The relevant authorities cannot offer words at all
    in any language, but you speak, you go on speaking.

    - Ann Hunkins
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  27. TopTop #267
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Garden of Love

    I went to my garden of love
    And saw what I never had seen,
    A chapel was built in the midst
    Where I used to play on the green.

    And the gates of the chapel were shut,
    And “Thou Shalt Not” writ over the door,
    So I turned from my garden of love,
    Which had so many sweet flowers bore,

    And saw it was filled with weeds
    And thorns where roses should be,
    And priests in black gowns
    Were walking their rounds,

    And binding with briars
    My joys and desires.

    - William Blake
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  28. TopTop #268
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Jailbreak


    It’s time to break out -
    Jailbreak time.
    Time to punch our way out of
    the dark winter prison.
    Lilacs are doing it
    in sudden explosions of soft purple,
    And the jasmine vines, and ranunculus, too.
    There is no jailer powerful enough
    to hold Spring contained.
    Let that be a lesson.
    Stop holding back the blossoming!
    Quit shutting eyes and gritting teeth,
    curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders.
    Lose your determination to remain unchanged.
    All the forces of nature
    want you to open,
    Their gentle nudge carries behind it
    the force of a flash flood.
    Why make a cell your home
    when the door is unlocked
    and the garden is waiting for you?

    - Maya Spector
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  29. TopTop #269
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ode To Walking And Singing

    Someday I'll set off
    walking and singing a Holy Name
    and never come back
    because there's nothing like it,
    small body under a great sky,
    walking stick and hat
    and the path-ribbon stretching out
    as far as you want to go,
    there's no good reason,
    really, to stop

    especially when you sing,
    because the human voice
    is a bird in a cage
    and song allows it to soar,
    and when at the top of its arc the bird
    finds the sky is only another cage
    a plaintive wail enters its voice,
    the longing to go still farther,
    knocking itself
    against the door Beyond.

    Amazing what the human voice can do,
    this bellows of air transmuting longing
    into a golden bird of song!

    You have to walk and sing
    to know what I'm saying.
    Melody is a choice every second,
    and if not a choice, a wild heart-stab;
    timbre and rhythm, all improv, too,
    every step's unique
    signature in the air.

    Sometimes for awhile the eye takes over,
    soothed by green, gathering in spring's sprigs,
    passing them deep to keep
    against future drought;
    or looking at water or distant hills,
    or watching the slow meditation of the clouds
    as they follow deliberately, gracefully
    their invisible shepherd.

    Cares begin to fly off,
    first the ones that always come
    at work or in traffic or even at home,
    those small, silent freeloaders,
    then, after awhile, the bigger cares,
    more deeply buried,
    cranes or geese leaving on migration,

    and one is again the pilgrim
    he was at twenty,
    pack tied on a stick over the shoulder,
    steadying staff in the other hand

    and even the next step
    a letter as yet unwritten
    by the Moving Hand

    - Max Reif
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  30. TopTop #270
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Moon

    The moon can be taken in teaspoons
    or as a capsule every two hours.
    It is a good hypnotic or narcotic
    and can also relieve
    hangovers of those drunk on philosophy.
    A piece of the moon tucked in the pocket
    is a better good luck charm than a rabbit’s foot;
    It works as a love charm,
    to get rich without connections
    and to ward off doctors.
    It can be given as a treat to children
    when they can’t sleep.
    A few moon drops in the eyes of the elderly
    help them die well.

    Put a fresh moon leaf
    under your pillow
    and you will see your heart’s desire.
    Always carry a small jar of moon air
    for when you are drowning,
    And give a key to the moon
    to prisoners and the disillusioned,
    to those condemned to death
    and those condemned to life.
    There is no better tonic than the moon
    given in precise, controlled doses.

    - Jaime Sabines (1926-99), unauthorized translation by Rebeca del Rio

    The Moon

    La luna se puede tomar a cucharadas
    o como una cápsula cada dos horas.
    Es buena como hipnótico y sedante
    y también alivia
    a los que se han intoxicado de filosofía.
    Un pedazo de luna en el bolsillo
    es mejor amuleto que la pata de conejo:
    sirve para encontrar a quien se ama,
    para ser rico sin que lo sepa nadie
    y para alejar a los médicos y las clínicas.
    Se puede dar de postre a los niños
    cuando no se han dormido,
    y unas gotas de luna en los ojos de los ancianos
    ayudan a bien morir.

    Pon una hoja tierna de la luna
    debajo de tu almohada
    y mirarás lo que quieras ver.
    Lleva siempre un frasquito del aire de la luna
    para cuando te ahogues,
    y dale la llave de la luna
    a los presos y a los desencantados.
    Para los condenados a muerte
    y para los condenados a vida
    no hay mejor estimulante que la luna
    en dosis precisas y controladas.

    - Jaime Sabines
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