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  1. TopTop #2821
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love Poem

    Let me have just one more day,
    let me have this day and let it not be my last.
    Let me have just one more day to feel the sap in the stems,
    to hear the language of birds and the wind,
    one more day of light, one more day of turning,
    one more day balanced on the precipice, one more day
    to bask and revel, one more day of the exquisite pain,
    one more day to risk a bit more, just one more day
    to feel the tide’s pull, to be swept and tossed,
    to fear the loss, one more day to empty and be bereft.

    Let me have one more day that I might find you and
    find myself in you, to allow the wonder of the dance,
    one more day to reveal and conceal, one more day
    without words to say what I can not tell you, one more day
    to be willing, to allow time’s victory and defeat,
    one more day carried on the upwelling, my body
    salt in the tears, some kind of habitation, some kind of crystallization,
    some kind of membrane between.

    I don’t mean to be trite but
    I love you like water loves gravity, like lungs love oxygen,
    like the grasses with the breeze, like the torrents over the rocks.
    I’m serious here. My gaze wants to linger longer on you.
    I have not had enough of your demands. I have more of laughter to learn.

    Nothing have I to offer but failing as best I can.
    I rely on what I can not know.
    This being should not be, for how can it be,
    but given its apparentness, let it continue with me just one more day.

    - Tim Hicks
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  2. TopTop #2822
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stone

    Go inside a stone
    That would be my way.
    Let somebody else become a dove
    Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
    I am happy to be a stone.

    From the outside the stone is a riddle:
    No one knows how to answer it.
    Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
    Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
    Even though a child throws it in the river;
    The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed,
    To the river bottom
    Where the fishes come to knock on it
    And listen.

    I have seen sparks fly out
    When two stones are rubbed,
    So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
    Perhaps there is a moon shining
    From somewhere, as though behind a hill -
    Just enough light to make out
    The strange writings, the star-charts
    On the inner walls.

    ​​​Charles Simic
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  3. TopTop #2823
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Stone-Poem-Simic.jpg
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    Photo taken in St. Peters Village, PA.
    Attached Files
    Last edited by Barry; 03-14-2016 at 12:53 PM.
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  5. TopTop #2824
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems


    Every revolution needs fresh poems
    that is the reason
    poetry cannot die.
    It is the reason poets
    go without sleep
    and sometimes without lovers
    without new cars
    and without fine clothes
    the reason we commit
    to facing the dark
    and
    rein ourselves, regularly, to the possibility
    of being wrong.
    Poetry is leading us.
    It never cares how we will
    be held by lovers
    or drive fast
    or look good
    in the moment;
    but about how completely
    we are committed
    to movement
    both inner and outer;
    and devoted to transformation
    and to change.

    - Alice Walker
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  7. TopTop #2825

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At first I thought No, not a stone. But if there's moonlight inside & I could be used to make sparks fly, then I'm with it!
    Many thanks, Larry.
    Janet

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

    Go inside a stone
    That would be my way.
    Let somebody else become a dove
    Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
    I am happy to be a stone.

    From the outside the stone is a riddle:
    No one knows how to answer it.
    Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
    Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
    Even though a child throws it in the river;
    The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed,
    To the river bottom
    Where the fishes come to knock on it
    And listen.

    I have seen sparks fly out
    When two stones are rubbed,
    So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
    Perhaps there is a moon shining
    From somewhere, as though behind a hill -
    Just enough light to make out
    The strange writings, the star-charts
    On the inner walls.

    ​​​Charles Simic
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  8. TopTop #2826
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    More Than You Gave

    We have the town we call home wakening for dawn
    which isn’t yet here but is promised, we have
    our tired neighbors rising in ones and twos, we have
    the sky slowly separating itself from the houses
    to become the sky while the stars blink a last time
    and vanish to make way for us to enter the great stage
    of an ordinary Tuesday in ordinary time.

    - Phillip Levine
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  9. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  10. TopTop #2827
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cure At Troy

    Human beings suffer,
    They torture one another,
    They get hurt and get hard.
    No poem or play or song
    Can fully right a wrong
    Inflicted and endured.

    The innocent in gaols
    Beat on their bars together.
    A hunger-striker's father
    Stands in the graveyard dumb.
    The police widow in veils
    Faints at the funeral home.

    History says, don't hope
    On this side of the grave.
    But then, once in a lifetime
    The longed-for tidal wave
    Of justice can rise up,
    And hope and history rhyme.

    So hope for a great sea-change
    On the far side of revenge.
    Believe that further shore
    Is reachable from here.
    Believe in miracle
    And cures and healing wells.

    Call miracle self-healing:
    The utter, self-revealing
    Double-take of feeling.
    If there's fire on the mountain
    Or lightning and storm
    And a god speaks from the sky

    That means someone is hearing
    The outcry and the birth-cry
    Of new life at its term.

    Seamus Heaney's translation of
    "The Philoctetes," by Sophocles
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  11. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  12. TopTop #2828
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Psalm

    Lord, there are creatures in the understory,
    snails with whorled backs and silver boots,
    trails beetles weave in grass, black rivers
    of ants, unbound ladybugs opening their wings,

    spotted veils and flame, untamed choirs

    of banjo-colored crickets. and stained-glass cicadas.
    Lord, how shall we count the snakes and frogs
    and moths? How shall we love the hidden
    and small? Mushrooms beneath leaves

    constructing their death domes in silence,

    their silken gills and mycelial threads, cap scales
    and patches, their warts and pores. And the buried
    bulbs that will bloom in spring, pregnant with flower
    and leaf, sing Prepare for My Radiance, Prepare

    for the Pageantry of My Inevitable Surprise.

    These are the queendoms, the spines and horns,
    the clustered hearts beating beneath our feet. Lord
    though the earth is locked in irons of ice and snow
    there are angels in the undergrowth, praise them.

    - Dorianne Laux
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  13. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  14. TopTop #2829
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Ballad of Father O’Hart

    Good Father John O'Hart
    In penal days rode out
    To a Shoneen who had free lands
    And his own snipe and trout.
    In trust took he John's lands;
    Sleiveens were all his race;
    And he gave them as dowers to his daughters.
    And they married beyond their place.
    But Father John went up,
    And Father John went down;
    And he wore small holes in his Shoes,
    And he wore large holes in his gown.
    All loved him, only the shoneen,
    Whom the devils have by the hair,
    From the wives, and the cats, and the children,
    To the birds in the white of the air.
    The birds, for he opened their cages
    As he went up and down;
    And he said with a smile, "Have peace now';
    And he went his way with a frown.
    But if when anyone died
    Came keeners hoarser than rooks,
    He bade them give over their keening;
    For he was a man of books.
    And these were the works of John,
    When, weeping score by score,
    People came into Colooney;
    For he'd died at ninety-four.
    There was no human keening;
    The birds from Knocknarea
    And the world round Knocknashee
    Came keening in that day.
    The young birds and old birds
    Came flying, heavy and sad;
    Keening in from Tiraragh,
    Keening from Ballinafad;
    Keening from Inishmurray.
    Nor stayed for bite or sup;
    This way were all reproved
    Who dig old customs up.

    - William Butler Yeats
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  16. TopTop #2830
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bleeder

    By now I bet he’s dead which suits me fine,
    but twenty-five years ago when we were both fifteen
    and he was a camper and I a counselor
    in a straight-laced Pennsylvania summer camp
    for crippled and retarded kids, I’d watch

    him sit all day by himself on a hill.
    No trees, or sharp stones: he wasn’t safe to be around.
    The slightest bruise and all his blood would simply drain away
    It drove us crazy – first to protect him, then to see it happen

    I would hang around him, picturing a knife or pointed stick
    wondering how a small cut you’d have to make, then see the expectant face
    of another boy watching me, and we each knew, how the other would like to see him bleed.

    He made us want to hurt him so bad so much we hurt ourselves instead:
    sliced fingers in craft class, busted noses in baseball, then joined at last mass wrestling matches beneath his hill, a tangle of crutches and braces, hammering at

    each other to keep from harming him. I’d look up from slamming a kid in the gut and see him watching
    with the empty blue eyes of children in sentimental paintings, and hope to see him frown or grin.
    But there was nothing: as if he had already died.

    Then after a week, they sent him home. Too much responsibility, the director said.
    Hell, I bet the kid had skin like leather.
    Even so, I’d lie in bed at night and think
    of busting into his room with a sharp stick, lash

    and break the space around his rose petal flesh,
    while campers in bunks around me tossed and dreamt with this his pleasure: To make us cringe beneath

    our wish to do damage? But then who cared?
    We were living children, he the ghost
    and what he gave us was the pleasure of being bad together.
    He took us from our private spite and offered our bullying a common cause:

    which is why we missed him, even though we wished him harm. When he went, we lost ours hared meanness and each of us was left to snarl his way to a separate future, eager to discover some new loser to link us in frailty again.

    - Stephen Dobyns
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  18. TopTop #2831
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Beauty of Things

    To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things - earth, stone and water,
    Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars -
    The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
    And unhuman nature its towering reality -
    For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
    And water and sky are constant - to feel
    Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
    Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
    The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
    The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

    - Robinson Jeffers
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  20. TopTop #2832
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Elemental

    Is the word the work
    Of someone who tills the blue field,
    Unearths its dark plenitude
    For the tight seed to release its thought
    Into the ferment of clay,
    Searching to earth the light
    And come to voice in a word of grain
    That can sing free in a breeze,
    Bathe in the yellow well of the sun,
    Avoid the attack of the bird,
    And endure the red cell of the oven
    Until memory leavens in the gift of bread?

    - John O’Donohue
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  22. TopTop #2833
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Agrigento Road

    There a wind remains that I recall afire
    within the manes of horses as they slanted
    their way across the planes, a wind that chafes
    the sandstone and erodes the very hearts
    of derelict caryatids cast down
    Onto the grass. Soul of antiquity
    Gone gray with age and rage, turn back and lean
    into that wind, breathe of the delicate moss
    clothing those giants tumbled out of heaven.
    How lonely what is left to you must be!
    And worse: to break your heart to hear once more
    that sound resound and dwindle out to sea
    where Hesperus already streaks the dawn:
    a sad jew's-harp reverberating through
    the throat of that lone cartman as he slowly
    ascends his moon-cleansed hill again through dark
    murmurings of the Moorish olive trees.

    - Salvatore Quasimodo

    All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking happiness for others.
    - Shantideva
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  24. TopTop #2834
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Well of Grief

    Those who will not
    slip beneath the still surface
    on the well of grief,
    turning down through its black water
    to the place where we cannot breathe
    will never know the source
    from which we drink the secret water,
    cold and pure,
    nor find in the darkness, glimmering,
    the small round coins thrown by those
    who wished for something else.

    - David Whyte
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  26. TopTop #2835
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Allegiances


    It is time for all the heroes to go home
    if they have any, time for all us common ones
    to locate ourselves by the real things we live by.

    Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
    strange mountains and creatures have always lurked:
    elves, goblins, trolls and spiders - we
    encounter them in dread and wonder,

    But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
    found some limit beyond the waterfall,
    a season changes and we come back, changed
    but safe, quiet, grateful.

    Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
    while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
    we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
    where we are, sturdy for common things.

    - William Stafford
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  27. TopTop #2836
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Song of the Lark

    The song begins and the eyes are lifted
    but the sickle points toward the ground
    its downward curve forgotten in the song she hears
    while over the dark wood, rising or falling
    the sun lifts on cool air
    the small body of a singing lark.

    The song falls, the eyes raise, the mouth opens
    and her bare feet on the earth have stopped.

    Whoever listens in this silence, as she listens
    will also stand opened, thoughtless, frightened
    by the joy she feels, the pathway in the field
    branching to a hundred more, no one has explored.

    What is called in her rises from the ground
    and is found in her body,
    what she is given is secret even from her.

    This silence is the seed in her
    of everything she is
    and falling through her body
    to the ground from which she comes
    it finds a hidden place to grow
    and rises, and flowers, in old wild places
    where the dark-edged sickle cannot go.

    - David Whyte

    _______________________________________________
    PoetryLovers mailing list
    [email protected]
    https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/poetrylovers
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  29. TopTop #2837
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In My Father’s Garden

    “Unwatch’d, the garden bough shall sway..."
    - Tennyson


    The unusual blue hyacinth came into bloom

    unnoticed, and now the apple tree surprises me:
    already in full flower.
    The daffodils he planted here last fall
    have all come up, bright gold in the March dusk.
    He has had to leave his home, go
    elsewhere to be cared for, and I’ve
    come back here to look in on his garden.
    Does the camelia care there’s no face at the window?
    Do the birds in the branches miss the one who watched them?
    Does it matter to the tulips that they opened up, then
    faded, unappreciated and unseen?
    For fifty years, his eyes admired this garden, every flower;'
    I might expect to find their imprint on these petals.

    - Carolyn Tipton
    Last edited by Barry; 03-26-2016 at 06:16 PM.
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  31. TopTop #2838
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Remember


    That to have the eyes of an artist,

    That can be enough,

    The ear of a poet,

    That can be enough.

    The soul of a human

    Just pointed

    In the direction of the Divine,

    That can be more than enough.

    I tell you this to remind myself.

    Every gesture is an act of creation.

    Even empty spaces and silence

    Can be the wings and voices of angels.

    - Michael Linfante
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  33. TopTop #2839
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Becoming


    Nowhere is it the same place as yesterday.
    None of us is the same person as yesterday.
    We finally die from the exhaustion of becoming.
    This downward cellular jubilance is shared
    by the wind, bugs, birds, bears and rivers,
    and perhaps the black holes in galactic space
    where our souls will all be gathered in an invisible
    thimble of antimatter. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
    Yes, trees wear out as the wattles under my chin
    grow, the wrinkled hands that tried to strangle
    a wife beater in New York City in 1957.
    We whirl with the earth, catching our breath
    as someone else, our soft brains ill-trained
    except to watch ourselves disappear into the distance.
    Still, we love to make music of this puzzle.


    - Jim Harrison
    (1938-2016)
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  35. TopTop #2840
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Would Live In Your Love
    I would live in your love as the
    sea-grasses live in the sea,
    Borne up by each wave as it
    passes, drawn down by each
    wave that recedes;
    I would empty my soul of the
    dreams that have gathered
    in me,
    I would beat with your heart as
    it beats, I would follow your
    soul as it leads.
    - Sara Teasdale
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #2841
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Threshold

    It has happened.
    You thought you had some control
    of your life
    and that you were in a place
    you understood
    in a time that moved
    from a past you knew
    to a future that followed
    in a more or less straight line.
    But here you are at the edge
    of a shore, the shallow waves
    washing over your feet
    taking the sand you stand on
    away and suddenly you wonder
    if all the ground beneath you
    is disappearing.
    You have stepped through the threshold.
    The door closed and locked behind you.
    You are on the other side.
    You try to forget it, distract yourself,
    but nothing works.
    You check your messages.
    The doctor’s office left a number
    on your phone.
    Is it is a blood test result,
    survival rate for treatment,
    or days left to live?
    Now you are alone.
    After the panic subsides you stand there
    looking around.
    Everything is fresh,
    colors are vivid,
    you can smell scents,
    even subtle ones,
    and your hearing is sharp.
    You feel the breeze on your skin
    and the tickle of hairs moving
    across your brow.
    You are pierced through
    with the inexplicable joy
    at having nothing.
    [if !supportEmptyParas] [endif]
    The sand forms around your foot
    and the water wipes out all traces of your path.
    Everywhere you turn there is something new
    and the space around you
    holds you gently
    as it spills out and becomes
    a part of the expanding world.
    So many things are remarkable now.
    Here is the freedom that always frightened you.
    You have forgotten your name
    and it does not matter.

    - Newton Smith
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  39. TopTop #2842
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Who By Fire

    And who by fire, who by water,
    who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
    who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
    who in your merry merry month of may,
    who by very slow decay,
    and who shall I say is calling?
    And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
    who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
    and who by avalanche, who by powder,
    who for his greed, who for his hunger,
    and who shall I say is calling?

    And who by brave assent, who by accident,
    who in solitude, who in this mirror,
    who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
    who in mortal chains, who in power,
    and who shall I say is calling?

    - Leonard Cohen
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  41. TopTop #2843
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On the Pulse of Morning


    A Rock, A River, A Tree
    Hosts to species long since departed,
    Marked the mastodon,
    The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
    Of their sojourn here
    On our planet floor,
    Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
    Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

    But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
    Come, you may stand upon my
    Back and face your distant destiny,
    But seek no haven in my shadow,
    I will give you no hiding place down here.

    You, created only a little lower than
    The angels, have crouched too long in
    The bruising darkness
    Have lain too long
    Facedown in ignorance,
    Your mouths spilling words

    Armed for slaughter.
    The Rock cries out to us today,
    You may stand upon me;
    But do not hide your face.

    Across the wall of the world,
    A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
    Come, rest here by my side.

    Each of you, a bordered country,
    Delicate and strangely made proud,
    Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
    Your armed struggles for profit
    Have left collars of waste upon
    My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
    Yet today I call you to my riverside,
    If you will study war no more.

    Come, clad in peace,
    And I will sing the songs
    The Creator gave to me when I and the
    Tree and the Rock were one.
    Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
    And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
    The River sang and sings on.

    There is a true yearning to respond to
    The singing River and the wise Rock.
    So say they Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
    The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
    The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
    The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
    The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
    The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
    They hear. They all hear
    The speaking of the Tree.

    They hear the first and last of every Tree
    Speak to humankind today.
    Come to me,
    Here beside the River.
    Plant yourself beside the River.

    Each of you, descendant of some passed-
    On traveler, has been paid for.

    You, who gave me my first name, you,
    Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
    Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
    Forced on bloody feet,
    Left me to the employment of
    Other seekers--desperate for gain,
    Starving for gold.

    You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede,
    The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
    The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,
    You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
    Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
    Praying for a dream.

    Here, root yourselves beside me.
    I am that Tree planted by the River,
    Which will not be moved.
    I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree
    I am yours--your passages have been paid.
    Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
    For this bright morning dawning for you.
    History, despite its wrenching pain,
    Cannot be unlived, but if faced
    With courage, need not be lived again.

    Lift up your eyes
    Upon this day breaking for you.
    Give birth again
    To the dream.

    Women, children, men,
    Take it into the palms of your hands,
    Mold it into the shape of your most
    Private need. Sculpt it into
    The image of your most public self.
    Lift up your hearts
    Each new hour holds new chances
    For a new beginning.
    Do not be wedded forever
    To fear, yoked eternally
    To brutishness.

    The horizon leans forward,
    Offering you space
    To place new steps of change
    Here, on the pulse of this fine day
    You may have the courage
    To look up and out and upon me,
    The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
    No less to Midas than the mendicant.
    No less to you now than the mastodon then.

    Here on the pulse of this new day
    You may have the grace to look up and out
    And into your sister's eyes,
    And into your brother's face,
    Your country,
    And say simply
    Very simply
    With hope--
    Good morning.


    - Maya Angelou
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  43. TopTop #2844
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Extra, Extra

    All hail the yellow flag of spring waving on the earth,
    the fields striking light against the bell of the sky
    in one triumphant peal announcing revolution.
    Sing hail to the marching band in its rows of thousands,
    hail to the buds on the branches like droplets of milk
    about to bloom in a cup of black tea. Hail breakfast.

    All praise to weeds, to fennel, thistle, miner's lettuce,
    to foxtail and rattlesnake grass, horseradish, duckweed,
    to moss and lichen, to goldenback fern. Praise outlaws.
    Praise their persistence and their disregard for safety,
    the way they pass through fences as if through open doors.
    Praise to the uncountable numbers of their beauty.

    And thanks for nothing. Thank you for this embarrassment
    of useless gifts, this bright paper covering the box
    of earth. Thank you for the fecund grave, the open mouth
    of the river in constant, irresponsible flood.
    Thanks for all that goes to waste, unasked for, unwanted:
    this love, in such profusion, that does not care for us.

    - Yosha Bourgea
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  45. TopTop #2845
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On Clergymen Preaching Politics


    Indeed, Sir Peter, I could wish, I own,
    That parsons would let politics alone;
    Plead, if they will, the customary plea,
    For such like talk, when o'er the dish of tea:
    But when they tease us with it from the pulpit,
    I own, Sir Peter, that I cannot help it.


    If on their rules a justice should intrench,
    And preach, suppose a sermon, from the bench,
    Would you not think your brother magistrate
    Was a little touched in his hinder pate?
    Now which is worse, Sir Peter, on the total
    The lay vagary, or the sacerdotal?


    In ancient times, when preachers preached indeed
    Their sermons, ere the learned learnt to read,
    Another spirit, and another life,
    Shut the church doors against all party strife:
    Since then, how often heard, from sacred rostrums,
    The lifeless din of Whig and Tory nostrums!


    'Tis wrong, Sir Peter, I insist upon't;
    To common sense 'tis plainly an affront:
    The parson leaves the Christian in a lurch,
    Whene'er he brings his politics to church;
    His cant, on either side, if he calls preaching,
    The man's wrong-headed, and his brains want bleaching.


    Recall the time from conquering William's reign,
    And guess the fruits of such a preaching vein:
    How oft its nonsense must have veered about,
    Just as the politics were in, or out:
    The pulpit governed by no gospel data,
    But new success still mending old errata.


    Were I a king (God bless me) I should hate
    My chaplains meddling with affairs of state;
    Nor would my subjects, I should think, be fond,
    Whenever theirs the Bible went beyond.
    How well, methinks, we both should live together,
    If these good folks would keep within their tether!


    - John Byron
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  47. TopTop #2846
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Anecdote of the Jar


    I placed a jar in Tennessee,
    And round it was upon the hill.
    It made the slovenly wilderness
    Surround that hill.


    The wilderness rose up to it,
    and sprawled around, no longer wild.
    The jar was round upon the ground
    And tall and of a port in air.


    It took dominion everywhere.
    The jar was gray and bare.
    It did not give of bird or bush,
    Like nothing else in Tennessee.


    - Wallace Stevens
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  49. TopTop #2847
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Happiness


    In the afternoon I watched
    the she-bear; she was looking
    for the secret bin of sweetness -
    honey, that the bees store
    in the trees’ soft caves.
    Black block of gloom, she climbed down
    tree after tree and shuffled on
    through the woods. And then
    she found it! The honey-house deep
    as heartwood, and dipped into it
    among the swarming bees - honey and comb
    she lipped and tongued and scooped out
    in her black nails, until


    maybe she grew full, or sleepy, or maybe
    a little drunk, and sticky
    down the rugs of her arms,
    and began to hum and sway.
    I saw her let go of the branches,
    I saw her lift her honeyed muzzle
    into the leaves, and her thick arms,
    as though she would fly -
    an enormous bee
    all sweetness and wings -
    down into the meadows, the perfections
    of honeysuckle and roses and clover -
    to float and sleep in the sheer nets
    swaying from flower to flower
    day after shining day.


    - Mary Oliver
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  51. TopTop #2848
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Coming Home


    The war came home today,
    the buddy burned to ashes,
    the howling headaches in the night,
    the gun beside us in the bed,
    the wife and daughter turned to ghosts,
    strangers turned to enemies,
    the blood upon the theater seats,
    children zipped in body bags,
    bullets buried in the classroom walls,
    plastic flowers where the garden bloomed.
    I see the shrapnel of my self
    shouting in the silence,
    speechless at the party,
    sleepless lining up the bottles
    in the cabinet
    on the counter
    in the morning at the curb.
    And I come weeping,
    my only home destruction,
    my only hope a stone.
    Beloved come and claim me,
    I’ve come home.


    - William Johnson Everett
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  53. TopTop #2849
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In an Old Book


    In an old book—about a hundred years old—
    I found, neglected among the leaves,
    a watercolour with no signature.
    It must have been the work of a very powerful artist.
    It bore the title “Representation of Love.”


    But “—of the love of extreme sensualists” would have been
    more fitting.


    For it was clear as you looked at this work
    (the artist’s idea was easily grasped)
    that the youth in this portrait wasn’t meant
    for those who love in a somewhat wholesome way,
    within the limits of what is strictly permitted—
    with his chestnut-brown, intensely colored eyes;
    with the superior beauty of his face,
    the beauty of unusual allures;
    with those flawless lips of his that bring
    pleasure to the body that it cherishes;
    with those flawless limbs of his, made for beds
    called shameless by the commonplace morality.


    - C.P.Cavafy
    (Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn)
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  55. TopTop #2850
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    three pears in paris
    (paring it down)


    the poetry lesson


    she wrote a poem about three pears
    and a tangerine in paris
    “it could be pared down”
    they suggested
    then it came down to
    two pears in paris
    without the tangerine
    “maybe pare it down
    a bit more”
    they said
    (yes, of course she thought)
    and then the poem
    came down
    to just
    one
    pear.


    here is the new pared down poem about the pear.


    pear

    - Patricia LeBon Herb
    Last edited by Barry; 04-08-2016 at 03:52 PM.
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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