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  1. TopTop #4831
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Horizon




    There’s a storm coming
    the air changes subtly
    something inside
    shifts
    turns
    twists toward a new horizon


    Sleepers awake
    change is at our doors
    promising a new deal
    and all our comforts
    wither
    in the misery
    of our reluctance


    Fear anger grief
    calling us
    from our couches and beds
    screens cocktails jobs
    our desperate diversions
    May we find the courage
    each day to welcome
    this new horizon
    even meet with gladness
    whatever strange guest
    may arrive at our door


    No one can rob
    what I have offered
    freely
    No one can strip me
    of what is most essential


    I love what is
    even
    when it’s devastation
    everything made sacred
    by my welcoming


    
- Kay Crista
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  3. TopTop #4832
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In This Place
    (An American Lyric)


    There’s a poem in this place—
    
in the footfalls in the halls
    
in the quiet beat of the seats.
    
It is here, at the curtain of day,
    
where America writes a lyric
    
you must whisper to say.



    There’s a poem in this place—
    
in the heavy grace,
    
the lined face of this noble building,
    
collections burned and reborn twice.

    There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
    
where protest chants
    
tear through the air
    
like sheets of rain,
    
where love of the many
    
swallows hatred of the few.

    There’s a poem in Charlottesville
    
where tiki torches string a ring of flame
    
tight round the wrist of night
    
where men so white they gleam blue—
    
seem like statues
    
where men heap that long wax burning
    
ever higher
    
where Heather Heyer
    
blooms forever in a meadow of resistance.

    There’s a poem in the great sleeping giant
    
of Lake Michigan, defiantly raising
    
its big blue head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
    
a poem begun long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
    
strutting upward and aglow.

    There’s a poem in Florida, in East Texas
    
where streets swell into a nexus
    
of rivers, cows afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
    
where courage is now so common
    
that 23-year-old Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.

    There’s a poem in Los Angeles
    
yawning wide as the Pacific tide
    
where a single mother swelters
    
in a windowless classroom, teaching
    
black and brown students in Watts
    
to spell out their thoughts
    
so her daughter might write
    
this poem for you.

    There's a lyric in California
    
where thousands of students march for blocks,
    
undocumented and unafraid;
    
where my friend Rosa finds the power to blossom
    
in deadlock, her spirit the bedrock of her community.
    
She knows hope is like a stubborn
    
ship gripping a dock,
    
a truth: that you can’t stop a dreamer
    
or knock down a dream. 



    How could this not be her city
    
su nación
    
our country
    
our America,
    
our American lyric to write—
    
a poem by the people, the poor,
    
the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew,
    
the native, the immigrant,
    
the black, the brown, the blind, the brave,
    
the undocumented and undeterred,
    
the woman, the man, the nonbinary,
    
the white, the trans,
    
the ally to all of the above
    
and more?

    Tyrants fear the poet.
    
Now that we know it
    
we can’t blow it.
    
We owe it
    
to show it
    
not slow it
    
although it
    
hurts to sew it
    
when the world
    
skirts below it.

    Hope—
    
we must bestow it
    
like a wick in the poet
    
so it can grow, lit,
    
bringing with it
    
stories to rewrite—
    
the story of a Texas city depleted but not defeated
    
a history written that need not be repeated
    
a nation composed but not yet completed.

    There’s a poem in this place—
    
a poem in America
    
a poet in every American
    
who rewrites this nation, who tells
    
a story worthy of being told on this minnow of an earth
    
to breathe hope into a palimpsest of time—
    
a poet in every American
    
who sees that our poem penned
    
doesn’t mean our poem’s end.

    There’s a place where this poem dwells—
    
it is here, it is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
    
where we write an American lyric
    
we are just beginning to tell.

    - Amanda Gorman

    (Amanda Gorman is America’s first Youth Poet Laureate. This poem was written for the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith at the Library of Congress.)
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  5. TopTop #4833
    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
    Last edited by Barry; 01-20-2021 at 11:56 AM.
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  7. TopTop #4834

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You've outdone yourself today, Larry old boy!
    THANK you!
    THANK you, Maya Angelou!
    (THIS is what the Silence is saying!
    THIS IS our salvation!
    This is the cure for all our ills,
    I do believe!)
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  9. TopTop #4835
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Hill We Climb

    When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?

    The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.

    We braved the belly of the beast.

    We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.

    And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

    Somehow we do it.

    Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.

    We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.

    And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.

    We are striving to forge our union with purpose.

    To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

    And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.

    We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.

    We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.

    We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

    Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.

    That even as we grieved, we grew.

    That even as we hurt, we hoped.

    That even as we tired, we tried.

    That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.

    Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

    Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.

    If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.

    That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.

    It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.

    It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.

    We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.

    Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.

    And this effort very nearly succeeded.

    But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.

    In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.

    This is the era of just redemption.

    We feared at its inception.

    We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.

    But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.

    So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

    We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.

    We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.

    Our blunders become their burdens.

    But one thing is certain.

    If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

    So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.

    Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

    We will rise from the golden hills of the West.

    We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.

    We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.

    We will rise from the sun-baked South.

    We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.

    And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.

    When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

    The new dawn balloons as we free it.

    For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.

    If only we’re brave enough to be it.

    - Amanda Gorman
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  11. TopTop #4836

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Amanda Gorman is rightly the "poet of the day", this post-Inauguration Thursday, but I want to share a Comment under my re-posting of Maya Angelou's masterpiece on my Facebook page yesterday (as I often do with Larry's poems):
    My friend Douglas wrote:
    "One of the greatest poems ever written on the earth. I have read it, and explored the meaning of it’s vast and multi-layered words, three to four hundred times, with my drug-treatment and mental health patients"
    And I replied, "I agree 100%!"

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
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  13. TopTop #4837
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Inaugural

    We were told that it is dangerous to touch
    And yet we journeyed here, where what we believe
    Meets what must be done. You want to see, in spite
    Of my mask, my face. We imagine, in time

    Of disease, our grandmothers
    Whole. We imagine an impossible
    America and call one another
    A fool for doing so. Grown up from the ground,

    Thrown out of the sea, fallen from the sky,
    No matter how we’ve come, we’ve come a mighty
    Long way. If I touch any of you, if I
    Shake one hand, I am nearer another

    Beginning. Can’t you feel it? The trouble
    With me is I’m just like you. I don’t want
    To be hopeful if it means I’ve got to be
    Naïve. I’ve bent so low in my hunger,

    My hair’s already been in the soup,
    And when I speak it’s just beneath my self-
    Imposed halo. You’ll forgive me if you can
    Forgive yourself. I forgive you as you build

    A museum of weapons we soon visit
    Just to see what we once were. I forgive us
    Our debts. We were told to wake up grateful,
    So we try to fall asleep that way. Where, then,

    Shall we put our pains when we want rest?
    I don’t carry a knife, but I understand
    The desperation of those who do,
    Which is why I am recounting the facts

    As calmly as I can. The year is new,
    And we mean to use our imaginations.
    One of us wants to raise George Stinney
    From the dead. One of us wants a small vial

    Of the sweat left on Sylvia Rivera’s
    Headband. Some want to be the music made
    Magical by Bill Withers’s stutter.
    Others come with maps and magnifying

    Glasses and graphite pencils to find
    Locations beside the mind where we are not
    Patrolled or surveilled or corralled or chained.
    I, myself, have come to reclaim the teeth

    In George Washington’s mouth and plant them
    In the backyards of big houses that are not
    In my name. My cousins want to share
    A single bale of the cotton our mothers

    Picked as children. I would love to live
    In a country that lets me grow old.
    I long. I long for that. We are otherwise
    Easily satisfied. Where do we get

    Tangerines for cheap? Can we make it
    There on the Metro? How hot is the fire
    Fairy blister of chocolate chipotle sauce,
    And will you judge me if I taste it? But now,

    We’ve put our hunger down for the time it takes
    To come and reconcile ourselves to the land
    Because it is holy, to the water
    Because it swallowed our ancestors,

    To the air because we are dumb enough
    To decide on something as difficult
    As love. If no one’s punishment leads to
    My salvation, then accountability

    Is what waits. It moves citizens, mends nations.
    That’s for us to prove. That’s the deed to witness.
    That’s the single item on the agenda
    Read in Braille or by eye, ink drying like blood

    Spilled this American hour of our lives.
    - Jericho Brown
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  15. TopTop #4838
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Greet You On This New Morning
    Moment by moment,
    like the resurrection of the gods!
    New Sun, New day, new opportunity!

    If we don't get it right,
    there will be another,
    and another,
    but let us be here now
    to usher in this one
    while the Light is full upon us,
    new wind filling
    the sails of our hearts!

    And if there are any
    who shrink from this sight,
    let their eyes be cleansed
    until they see the glory
    of human brother-and-sisterhood,
    the union of soul and soul,
    the opening of time,
    the way we need to be...
    hearty, smiling, pointing the way forward
    to the Realizationof our Pledge:
    With Liberty and Justice for ALL!

    Sail on, sail on,
    Oh mighty ship of state!
    Oh, farther!
    Oh, farther, farther still!



    - Max Reif


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  17. TopTop #4839
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light


    Blessed are you
    who bear the light
    in unbearable times,
    who testify
    to its endurance
    amid the unendurable,
    who bear witness
    to its persistence
    when everything seems
    in shadow
    and grief.


    Blessed are you
    in whom
    the light lives,
    in whom
    the brightness blazes
    your heart a chapel,
    an altar where
    the deepest night
    can be seen.
    The fire that
    shines forth in you
    in unaccountable faith,
    in stubborn hope,
    in love that illumines
    every broken thing
    it finds.


    - Jan Richardson
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  19. TopTop #4840
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Winter’s Tale


    Even from my study at the back
    of the house I can hear an orange drop
    upstairs, one of the last to grow


    on the dwarf tree you bought me
    thirty years ago. When it tried
    to overtake the window frame


    we cruelly lopped side branches and still
    it blossomed and bore its bitter progeny
    the size and wrinkle of walnuts.


    Repotting, we tore the roots apart,
    vermiculite clinging like hatchlings
    of silverfish to its tendrils. It thrived,


    for years you harvested a pint or more.
    But as it aged the fruitage thinned
    and hoping to replace it, you soaked


    handfuls of seeds. Three consented to sprout.
    They shot straight up like pole beans,
    greedy underlings sucking in


    all the light at the front of the house.
    Of course they were sterile.
    Today, when I hear an orange drop


    I don’t let myself think back to the winters
    when you’d pick a crop of twenty, thirty
    oranges at once, cut each


    one open, force the seeds out, add
    enough sugar to make my teeth ache,
    and boil and boil until the mass


    congealed, sheeting off the spoon
    in the drear of February while rain
    fell on snow, making little pockmarks


    like mattress buttons in the pasture
    outside the steamy kitchen window,
    and life was bleak and sweet and you


    made marmalade


    - Maxine Kumin
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  21. TopTop #4841
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Facts of Life 


    That you were born
    and you will die.


    That you will sometimes love enough
    and sometimes not.

    That you will lie
    if only to yourself.


    That you will get tired.

    That you will learn most from the situations
    you did not choose.

    That there will be some things that move you
    more than you can say.

    That you will live
    that you must be loved.

    That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of
    your attention.

    That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg
    of two people who once were strangers
    and may well still be.

    That life isn’t fair.
    That life is sometimes good
    and sometimes better than good.

    That life is often not so good.

    That life is real
    and if you can survive it, well,
    survive it well
    with love
    and art
    and meaning given
    where meaning’s scarce.

    That you will learn to live with regret.
    That you will learn to live with respect.

    That the structures that constrict you
    may not be permanently constraining.

    That you will probably be okay.

    That you must accept change
    before you die
    but you will die anyway.

    So you might as well live
    and you might as well love.
    You might as well love.
    You might as well love.


    - Padraig Ó Tuama
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  23. TopTop #4842
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What will the dead say . . .

    to those who mourn the restless souls
    who died alone and drowning
    hands held by surrogates—

    free us from these chains of neglect
    and abuse by the many who fostered
    deceit and chaos, our spirits like birds
    trapped in nets of confusion

    hear our calls as we haunt the memories
    of the living who choke on tears
    flooding hearts broken open to grief
    and regret over how and why

    stop now and listen as we sound the wind and
    shroud the moon our souls drawn to the light
    cast between then and forever

    release us with your wailing
    let us go without asking and
    find us in the warmth of the sun
    hear us in the waves as they break toward shore
    lay us to rest in the still beating heart

    - L.L. Stamps
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  25. TopTop #4843
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    As You Have Done for Me




    There is treasure in you.
    Joi Sharp



    If you were here

    I would put my hand

    on your heart

    and hold it there

    until our breaths

    became a single tide,

    hold it there until

    I could feel the moment

    when you remember

    your infinite value.

    It¹s so easy to forget

    we are treasure.

    So easy to lose track

    of our own immeasurable worth.

    The chest rusts shut.

    We think we are empty.

    Amazing how easily

    we are fooled into believe

    we¹re paupers.

    Sometimes it takes another

    to remind us

    we have always been

    not only the treasure

    but also the key.

    Though the hinges

    are a metaphor,

    the treasure is not.

    We were made to open,

    to share our priceless gift,

    to press our hands

    to each other¹s hearts

    until we all remember.


    - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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  27. TopTop #4844
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How to Climb a Mountain


    Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical.
    Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
    but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you’re lucky, a hawk will
    coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you’re lucky,
    a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
    a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
    perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
    eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
    your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
    Level your gaze to the trail you’re on, and even the dark won’t stop you.


    - Maya Stein
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  29. TopTop #4845
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hymn to Matter


    Blessed be you harsh matter, barren rock; you who yield only
    to violence, you who force us to work if we would eat. Blessed
    be you, perilous matter, violent sea, untamable passion: you who
    unless we fetter you, will devour us. Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible
    march, reality ever new born; you who by constantly
    shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further in our
    pursuit of the truth. Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable
    time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations;
    you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards of
    measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.


    - Teilhard de Chardin
    (Translation by Bernard Wall)
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  31. TopTop #4846

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    this powerful poem led me to find another lovely one by this great modern Christian mystic;
    AND a cool photo of him twirling an umbrella.

    https://alifesworkmovie.com/2015/05/...rd-de-chardin/
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  33. TopTop #4847
    M/M's Avatar
    M/M
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Chardin's Matter reminds me of Rilke's allusion to Jacob and the Angel:

    The Man Watching
    I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
    so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
    that a storm is coming,
    and I hear the far-off fields say things
    I can’t bear without a friend,
    I can’t love without a sister.

    The storm, shifter of shapes, drives on
    across the woods and across time,
    and the world looks as if it had no age:
    the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
    is seriousness and weight and certainty.

    What we choose to fight is so tiny!
    What fights with us is so great!
    If only we would let ourselves be dominated
    as things do by some immense storm,
    we would become strong too, and not need names.

    When we win, it is with small things,
    and the triumph itself makes us small.
    What is extraordinary and eternal
    does not want to be bent by us.
    I mean the Angel who appeared
    to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
    when the wrestler’s sinews
    in the struggle, elongated like metal strings,
    he felt them under his fingers
    like chords of deep music.

    Whoever was beaten by this Angel
    (who often simply declined the fight)
    went away proud and strengthened
    and great from that harsh hand,
    that kneaded him, as if to change his shape.
    Winning does not tempt that man.
    This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
    by constantly greater beings.

    ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
    translated by Robert Bly


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by REALnothings: View Post
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  35. TopTop #4848
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poem to COVID

    I´d turn right away from you
    wherever I crossed you in the street
    and as you came towards me
    I´d quickly go the other way.
    Until one day you made it quite clear:
    there was nowhere I could go where you wouldn´t be.
    Despite all the washing.
    And the sanitizing.
    And the spraying.
    When you finally had me cornered
    I was forced to soften and let you in.
    Into my lungs, my veins,
    my blood and my beating heart.
    Now everything I touch inevitably becomes you.
    Every breath an exhalation of your voracious self.
    And I start to get a hint
    of what it felt like to be kept away
    isolated, excluded, shut off, sent back
    and why you decided to go ahead
    and jump over the fence with the “no trespassing” sign
    into my virgin immunity.
    -so much for fences.
    You are running rampant in me now
    And I am not planning to stop you.
    You´ve made my limbs slower
    and my breathing heavier.
    My thoughts have condensed into dark formations
    and my emotions turned oddly dull.
    So I decided to become a playground
    for you to go wrecklessly wild in.
    All rides freely open for you!
    Climb me, swirl through my veins,
    turn round in my joins and slide down my bones,
    bungee-jump from my head to my feet
    -what the heck
    Let´s turn this body into a viral funfair!
    And once you´re done feasting over me
    will you please accept the humble offering
    of my body-mind,
    and spare my soul?


    - Virginia Francisco

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  37. TopTop #4849
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    There Is A Road Always Beckoning



    There is a road
    always
    beckoning.

    When you see
    the two sides
    of it
    closing together
    at that far horizon

    and deep in
    foundations
    of your own
    heart

    at exactly
    the same
    time,

    that’s how
    you know
    it's where
    you
    have
    to go.

    That’s how
    you know
    it’s the road
    you
    have
    to follow.

    That’s how
    you know
    you have
    to go.

    That’s
    how you know.

    It’s just beyond
    yourself,

    it’s
    where you
    need to be.


    - David Whyte

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  39. TopTop #4850
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Metaphor To Action


    Whether it is a speaker, taut on a platform,
    who battles a crowd with the hammers of his words,
    whether it is the crash of lips on lips
    after absence and wanting : we must close
    the circuits of ideas, now generate,
    that leap in the body's action or the mind's repose.


    Over us is a striking on the walls of the sky,
    here are the dynamos, steel-black, harboring flame,
    here is the man night-walking who derives
    tomorrow's manifestoes from this midnight's meeting ;
    here we require the proof in solidarity,
    iron on iron, body on body, and the large single beating.


    And behind us in time are the men who second us
    as we continue. And near us is our love :
    no forced contempt, no refusal in dogma, the close
    of the circuit in a fierce dazzle of purity.
    And over us is night a field of pansies unfolding,
    charging with heat its softness in a symbol
    to weld and prepare for action our minds' intensity.


    - Muriel Rukeyser
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  41. TopTop #4851
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You Darkness


    You Darkness, from which I come,
    I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.


    Because the fires make a circle of light
    so that no one can see you any more.


    But the Darkness holds it all.
    The shapes, the animals,
    The flames and myself.


    How it holds them.
    All power, All Strength


    And it is possible, a great energy is breaking into my body.


    I have faith in the night


    - Rainier Maria Rilke
    (translation by Robert Bly)
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  43. TopTop #4852
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Why I Urge You to Do What You’re Passionate About


    When Rilke travelled through Russia
    and studied Saint Francis
    and fell in love with the married Salomé
    and wrote poems for The Book of Hours,
    he could not have known
    that over a century later
    a woman on another continent
    would find herself wrestled by darkness
    and find in his poems encouragement
    to lean even deeper into darkness
    until she could fall in love
    with what she feared most.
    He could not have known she would
    tattoo his words into her memory
    and scribe them into her blood
    so whenever she walked or lay in the dark
    she would have his words ever with her,
    and they made her not only more brave
    but more wildly alive than she’d been before.
    And what if, as his parents had pushed,
    Rilke had joined the military
    and turned his back on poetry?
    And what if he had not gotten himself expelled
    from trade school so he could go on
    to study literature and art?
    What would have become of the woman
    a hundred years later
    had she not found his poem
    and learned from him to love the dark?


    - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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  45. TopTop #4853

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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  46. TopTop #4854
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Modest Love






    The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall,

    The fly her spleen, the little sparks their heat;

    The slender hairs cast shadows, though but small,

    And bees have stings, although they be not great;

    Seas have their source, and so have shallow springs;

    And love is love, in beggars as in kings.



    Where rivers smoothest run, deep are the fords;

    The dial stirs, yet none perceives it move;

    The firmest faith is in the fewest words;

    The turtles cannot sing, and yet they love:

    True hearts have eyes and ears, no tongues to speak;

    They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break.


    - Edward Dyer

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  48. TopTop #4855
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Swan

    Across the wide waters
    something comes
    floating--a slim
    and delicate

    ship, filled
    with white flowers--
    and it moves
    on its miraculous muscles

    as though time didn’t exist,
    as though bringing such gifts
    to the dry shore
    was a happiness

    almost beyond bearing.
    And now it turns its dark eyes,
    it rearranges
    the clouds of its wings,

    it trails
    and elaborate webbed foot,
    the color of charcoal.
    Soon it will be here.

    Oh, what shall I do
    when that poppy-colored beak
    rests in my hand?
    Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

    I miss my husband’s company--
    he is so often
    in paradise.
    Of course! the path to heaven

    doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
    It’s in the imagination
    with which you perceive
    this world,

    and the gestures
    with which you honor it.
    Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those
    white wings
    touch the shore?


    -Mary Oliver
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  50. TopTop #4856
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Surfeit of Swans

    Floating on the river Rhine somewhere
    between Amsterdam and Cologne
    confronted by this surfeit of swans
    do not have a clue what to do with them
    as a group when one in a painting
    at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum
    appeared so snarlingly huge that
    it was said to portray a creature
    whose wings could shatter
    the legs of a grown man like me
    were I to dive now into their midst,
    open myself to a melee of wind-whipping murder.


    - Ed Coletti
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  52. TopTop #4857
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted


    When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
    Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
    Then all the unattended stress falls in
    On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,


    The light in the mind becomes dim.
    Things you could take in your stride before
    Now become laborsome events of will.


    Weariness invades your spirit.
    Gravity begins falling inside you,
    Dragging down every bone.


    The tide you never valued has gone out.
    And you are marooned on unsure ground.
    Something within you has closed down;
    And you cannot push yourself back to life.


    You have been forced to enter empty time.
    The desire that drove you has relinquished.
    There is nothing else to do now but rest
    And patiently learn to receive the self
    You have forsaken for the race of days.


    At first your thinking will darken
    And sadness take over like listless weather.
    The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.


    You have traveled too fast over false ground;
    Now your soul has come to take you back.


    Take refuge in your senses, open up
    To all the small miracles you rushed through.


    Become inclined to watch the way of rain
    When it falls slow and free.


    Imitate the habit of twilight,
    Taking time to open the well of color
    That fostered the brightness of day.


    Draw alongside the silence of stone
    Until its calmness can claim you.
    Be excessively gentle with yourself.


    Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
    Learn to linger around someone of ease
    Who feels they have all the time in the world.


    Gradually, you will return to yourself,
    Having learned a new respect for your heart
    And the joy that dwells far within slow time.


    - John O'Donohue

    This will be my final post of Wacco. I offer profound thanks to Barry for the opportunity to share my love of poetry with this community. If any of you wish to continue to read the daily poems, you can send me an email at [email protected] and I will add you to my daily poem list serve. Many blessings to you all!
    Larry
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