Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

To The Collector of Taxes, City and County
of San Francisco


No, there is no dog, terrier, male, dog's name Pedro
at this address. Pedro is in San Anselmo.


So I do not owe you the $4.00 license fee
(raised by the Supervisors to $5.00) I wish I did.


Is the point of being a poet to clean your plate,
use up things, make every loss valuable?


And when the last loss has been made valuable
disappear like night into the crouching wood?


I like you because you are such a plain image. You seem to say
if I pay my tax there is something I can own


for another year. There's nothing. There's no dog.
But thank you for even suggesting that there is.


- William Dickey

[Larry Robinson]

A Music


I employ the blind mandolin player
in the the tunnel of the Mètro. I pay him
a coin as hard as his notes,
and maybe he has employed me, and pays me
with his playing to hear him play.


Maybe we're necessary to each other,
and this vacant place has need of us both
––it's vacant, I mean, of dwellers,
is populated by passages and absences.


By some fate or knack he has chosen
to place his music in this cavity
where there's nothing to look at
and blindness costs him nothing.
Nothing was here before he came.


His music goes out among the sounds
of footsteps passing. The tunnel is the resonance
and meaning of what he plays.
It's his music, not the place, I go by.


In this light which is just a fact, like darkness
or the edge or end of what you may be
going toward, he turns his cap up on his knees
and leaves it there to ask and wait, and holds up
his mandolin, the lantern of his world;


his fingers make their pattern on the wires.
This is not the pursuing of rhythm
of a blind cane pecking in the sun,
but is a singing in a dark place.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

The Reckoning


All profits disappear: the gain
Of ease, the hoarded, secret sum;
And now grim digits of old pain
Return to litter up our home.


We hunt the cause of ruin, add,
Subtract, and put ourselves in pawn;
For all our scratching on the pad,
We cannot trace the error down.


What we are seeking is a fare
One way, a chance to be secure:
The lack that keep us what we are,
The penny that usurps the poor.


- Theodore Roethke

[Larry Robinson]

The Great American Poem


If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train
or a young girl on a swing by a farmhouse.


And as the pages turned, you would be told
that it was morning or the dead of night,
and I, the narrator, would describe
for you the miscellaneous clouds over the farmhouse


and what the man was wearing on the train
right down to his red tartan scarf,
and the hat he tossed onto the rack above his head,
as well as the cows sliding past his window.


Eventually—one can only read so fast—
you would learn either that the train was bearing
the man back to the place of his birth
or that he was headed into the vast unknown,


and you might just tolerate all of this
as you waited patiently for shots to ring out
in a ravine where the man was hiding
or for a tall, raven-haired woman to appear in a doorway.


But this is a poem, not a novel,
and the only characters here are you and I,
alone in an imaginary room
which will disappear after a few more lines,


leaving us no time to point guns at one another
or toss all our clothes into a roaring fireplace.
I ask you: who needs the man on the train
and who cares what his black valise contains?


We have something better than all this turbulence
lurching toward some ruinous conclusion.
I mean the sound that we will hear
as soon as I stop writing and put down this pen.


I once heard someone compare it
to the sound of crickets in a field of wheat
or, more faintly, just the wind
over that field stirring things that we will never see.


- Billy Collins

[Larry Robinson]

The Mystery


Some come at it
with weights and measures,
some waving a sieve.


Some sing to it,
ballads and carols,
hoping to coax forth
its hidden center,
unwind the sheath
of who it is.


Some tap on it
or deal heavy blows
with hammers,
trying to smash
its thick shield
force it to bow down.


some seek ways to clamber in,
explore its hidden vaults
and chambers.


Some lie down beside it,
breathe its cool scent,
become its own self.


- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

The Nobodies

We are not, but could be.
We don't speak languages, but dialects.
We don't have religions, but superstitions.
We don't create art, but handicrafts.
We don't have culture, but folklore.
We are not human beings, but human resources.
We do not have faces, but arms.
We do not have names, but numbers.
We do not appear in the history of the world,
but in the police blotter of the local papers.
The nobodies, who are not worth
the bullets that kill them.


- Eduardo Galeano
(from The Book of Embraces)

[Larry Robinson]

Spring Azures


In spring the blue azures bow down
at the edges of shallow puddles
to drink the black rain water.
Then they rise and float away into the fields.


Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy,
and all the tricks my body knows―
the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps,
and the mind clicking and clicking—


don’t seem enough to carry me through this world
and I think: how I would like


to have wings—
blue ones—
ribbons of flame.


How I would like to open them, and rise
from the black rain water.


And then I think of Blake, in the dirt and sweat of London—a boy
staring through the window, when God came
fluttering up.


Of course, he screamed,
and seeing the bobbin of God’s blue body
leaning on the sill,
and the thousand-faceted eyes.


Well, who knows.
Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness.


Anyway, Blake the hosier’s son stood up
and turned away from the sooty sill and the dark city—
turned away forever
from the factories, the personal strivings,


to a life of the the imagination.




- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

The Discovery Of Daily Experience


It is a whisper. You turn somewhere,
hall, street, some great even: the stars
or the lights hold; your next step waits you
and the firm world waits - but
there is a whisper. You always live so,
a being that receives, or partly receives, or
fails to receive each moment's touch.


You see the people around you - the honors
they bear - a crutch, a cane, eye patch,
or the subtler ones, that fixed look, a turn
aside, or even the brave bearing: all declare
our kind, who serve on the human front and earn
whatever disguise will take them home. (I saw
Frank last week with his crutch de guerre.)


When the world is like this - and it is -
whispers, honors or penalties disguised - no wonder
art thrives like a pulse wherever civilized people,
or any people, live long enough in a place to
build, and remember, and anticipate; for we are
such beings as interact elaborately with what
surrounds us. The limited actual world we successively
overcome by fictions and by the mind's inventions
that cannot be quite arbitrary (and hence do reflect
the actual), but can escape the actual (and hence
may become art).



- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

I Remember The People

High above the roaring Klamath
in quiet meditation under the forest roof,
sitting on a river stone massively heavy
a round stone carried there by strong men
to make a circular stone foundation
to form a circular shelter
to create a circular village
to live a circular life
under the circles of eagle and osprey
under the circles of sun and moon.

Time circles the place I sit.
The forest and all its living things
continue making circles
covering and concealing
taking back to the earth
taking back to the river
the work of generations
of The People.

Scooped circles in the earth
and massively heavy stones
all that mark their passing.

One day, the stones too
will disappear.
Even now, In memorial
a circular tear
disappears from my bare leg.

- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

Oatmeal


I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put steamed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if someone eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal--porridge, as he called it--with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual
willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion,
and he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as wholesome as Keats claims, still you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode To a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it--those were his words--"Oi'ad a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home, he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some
sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in the pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, and then
lay itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move forward with God's own reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known about any of this except for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer much of a story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just harvested oat field got him started on it.
And two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him--drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into its glimmering furrows, muttering--and it occurs to me:
maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of amnions tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I am going to invite Patrick Kavanaugh to join me.


- Galway Kinnell

[Claire]

Oh, that is wonderful!
Thank you from the bottom of my lonely bowl of porridge.

Oatmeal


I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put steamed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if someone eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal--porridge, as he called it--with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unusual
willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal must never be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion,
and he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as wholesome as Keats claims, still you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode To a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it--those were his words--"Oi'ad a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home, he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they made some
sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in the pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up and peer about, and then
lay itself down slightly off the mark, causing the poem to move forward with God's own reckless wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known about any of this except for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer much of a story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just harvested oat field got him started on it.
And two of the lines, "For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him--drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into its glimmering furrows, muttering--and it occurs to me:
maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of amnions tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I am going to invite Patrick Kavanaugh to join me.


- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

Rivers

both my mother & I
were born at 6th & I Sts.


this river ebbs
& flows
ebbs & flows
gets dredged for silt
so boats can come up from the bay
I remember
being young, under 10
crossing the highway
(now boulevard)
with my cousin (now dead)
walking down to the bend
where the freeway overpass
now crosses the river
we were sneaking away
in search of hoboes
—an exotic breed of adult
we found an old campfire
with cans opened, charred
by the river
this abandoned campsite
—proof
I sat on a log there
my blood flowing faster
it was the first time
I saw the river
(it was called "the river" then)
wild


this river runs salty
reflects this town
clearly
it can't help it
something about the sun's magic
as salt crystals pick up mooncasts
we hear croaking frogs
chirping crickets
birds, boats, barges
trucks with their hay bales piled high
honk as they turn onto the boulevard
at the top of the bay


the tide rises
the tide falls
& though this river has no inland source
old Heraclitus' principle
still applies here
—the constant motion
equally at home in the town at its margins


I remember
the whale who visited Petaluma
in my mother's last week
people were trying to turn it back to sea
no, the whale wanted to see
to make this connection
before it died
& it did
& it disappeared the day she died
I always suspected my mother's complicity
having been her Jonah


- Bill Vartnaw

[Larry Robinson]

The 66th Apple Blossom Parade, 2012


The whole town seemed over-exposed in bright
new sunlight on the day of the Apple
Blossom parade. We stood four-thick watching
our children in uniform marching bands
pass by, the shined up fire trucks throwing
handfuls of bright candy, and the old men,
who continually ride their old tractors
or apple sprayers down the parade route.
Arcs of water spray out of old machines
that once carried lead and arsenic to
keep an orchard clean of unwanted pests
and the hot parade watchers beg for it.


All along the parade route the alate
woman appears. She spreads her golden wings
and dances next to the marching band. Then,
re-appears in front of the fire truck.
We laugh at her. Shoo her off. Think her a
fool. But she returns, dancing and smiling.


When the parade stops, we gather children.
The streets are swept. We go home to fallow
fields still freckled with unpruned trees still warm
from sunburns, still thinking of what’s passed us
by as the fog rolls in and sedates us.


- Iris Jamahl Dunkle

[Larry Robinson]

Weathering

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face
catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes
with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well:
that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young for ever to pass.

I was never a Pre- Raphaelite beauty,
nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy
men who need to be seen with passable women.
but now that I am in love with a place
which doesn’t care how I look, or if I’m happy,

happy is how I look, and that’s all.
My hair will turn grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken,
and the years work all their usual changes.
If my face is to be weather-beaten as well

that’s little enough lost, a fair bargain
for a year among lakes and fells, when simply
to look out my window at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what
my soul may wear over its new complexion.

- Fleur Adcock

[Larry Robinson]

Ode to the Artichoke


The tender-hearted
artichoke
got dressed as a warrior,
erect, built
a little cupola,
stood
impermeable
under
its scales,
around it
the crazy vegetables
bristled,
grew
astonishing tendrils,
cattails, bulbs,
in the subsoil
slept the carrot
with its red whiskers,
the grapevine
dried the runners
through which it carries the wine,
the cabbage
devoted itself
to trying on skirts,
oregano
to perfuming the world,
and the gentle
artichoke
stood there in the garden,
dressed as a warrior,
burnished
like a pomegranate,
proud,
and one day
along with the others
in large willow
baskets, it traveled
to the market
to realize its dream:
the army.
Amid the rows
never was it so military
as at the fair,
men
among the vegetables
with their white shirts
were
marshals
of the artichokes,
the tight ranks,
the voices of command,
and the detonation
of a falling crate,
but
then
comes
Maria
with her basket,
picks
an artichoke,
isn't afraid of it,
examines it, holds it
to the light as if it were an egg,
buys it,
mixes it up
in her bag
with a pair of shoes,
with a head of cabbage and a
bottle
of vinegar
until
entering the kitchen
she submerges it in a pot.
Thus ends
in peace
the career
of the armored vegetable
which is called artichoke,
then,
scale by scale
we undress
its delight
and we eat
the peaceful flesh
of its green heart.


- Pablo Neruda
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)








Oda a la Alcachofa por Pablo Neruda


La alcachofa
de tierno corazón
se vistió de guerrero,
erecta, construyó
una pequeña cúpula,
se mantuvo
impermeable
bajo
sus escamas,
a su lado,
los vegetales locos
se encresparon,
se hicieron
zarcillos, espadañas,
bulbos conmovedores,
en el subsuelo
durmió la zanahoria
de bigotes rojos,
la viña
resecó los sarmientos
por donde sube el vino,
la col
se dedicó
a probarse faldas,
el orégano
a perfumar el mundo,
y la dulce
alcachofa
allí en el huerto,
vestida de guerrero,
bruñida
como una granada,
orgullosa,
y un día
una con otra
en grandes cestos
de mimbre, caminó
por el mercado
a realizar su sueño:
la milicia.
En hileras
nunca fue tan marcial
como en la feria,
los hombres
entre las legumbres
con sus camisas blancas
eran
mariscales
de las alcachofas,
las filas apretadas,
las voces de comando,
y la detonación
de una caja que cae,
pero
entonces
viene
María
con su cesto,
escoge
una alcachofa,
no le teme,
la examina, la observa
contra la luz como si fuera un huevo,
la compra,
la confunde
en su bolsa
con un par de zapatos,
con un repollo y una
botella
de vinagre
hasta
que entrando a la cocina
la sumerge en la olla.
Así termina
en paz
esta carrera
del vegetal armado
que se llama alcachofa,
luego
escama por escama
desvestimos
la delicia
y comemos
la pacífica pasta
de su corazón verde.

[Larry Robinson]

To be of use


The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.


I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.


I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.


The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.


- Marge Piercy

[Larry Robinson]

Fish On


The lure contains the barbed hook.
No fish in his right mind would ever take that bait.
But the hook is hidden, that's how it works.
To satisfy some unmet need we take the bait.
In the watery world of the heart,
even when the near invisible line is seen,
we can't quite see it or grasp it for what it is.
The illusion is so subtle; we get lead down a path.
We're drawn away from the river of being present
towards something that appears to be nourishment, relief, distraction and
in our hungry desperation we go unconscious and bite.
Astonishingly, we return for more, over and over.


We travel with the hook set in our jaw or our gut without even knowing it.
No initial drag, just the illusion of satisfaction.
Until the drag on the line causes resistance,
then we thrash,
we go down deeper into the water.
No true understanding,
rather a reactive flight away from the consequences of our mistake.
Maybe I can break free if I make a run for it down stream,
or jump and twist with righteous indignation.


Slowly possibility and necessity insist on our breaking the habit of taking the bait.
To remove the hook we must tear the fragile false flesh of shame and pride and, as D.H. Lawrence says,
free ourselves from the endless repetition of the mistake.


To be conscious of the hook, line and lure we must see with different eyes and we must be willing to endure the pain of removing the hook.
We can get help, but our own hands must grasp the hook and pull it free.


To feel, oh to feel, all of it, every twist and bend in the trap of the barbed hook.
To alter our fishy habit of taking the bait takes skill and courage.
The culmination of years of learning, in this all too human school for fish on a line.
Fish on!




- Alan Cohn

[Larry Robinson]

The People Of The Other Village

hate the people of this village
and would nail our hats
to our heads for refusing in their presence to remove them
or staple our hands to our foreheads
for refusing to salute them
if we did not hurt them first: mail them packages of rats,
mix their flour at night with broken glass.
We do this, they do that.
They peel the larynx from one of our brothers’ throats.
We devein one of their sisters.
The quicksand pits they built were good.
Our amputation teams were better.
We trained some birds to steal their wheat.
They sent to us exploding ambassadors of peace.
They do this, we do that.
We canceled our sheep imports.
They no longer bought our blankets.
We mocked their greatest poet
and when that had no effect
we parodied the way they dance
which did cause pain, so they, in turn, said our God
was leprous, hairless.
We do this, they do that.
Ten thousand (10,000) years, ten thousand
(10,000) brutal, beautiful years.

- Thomas Lux

[Larry Robinson]

Olives


Sometimes the taste of these strong olives cured slowly in oil,
with cloves of garlic, bay leaves and chillies and lemon and salt,
conjures a whiff of a bygone age: rocky crannies,
goats, shade and the sound of pipes,
in the tune of the breath of primeval times. The chill of a cave, a hidden cottage
in a vineyard, a lodge in a garden, a slice of barley bread and well water.
Your are from there. You have lost your way.
Here is exile. Your death will come, and lay a knowing hand on your shoulder.
Come, it’s time to go home.


- Amos Oz

[Larry Robinson]

Double Bubble

I’m here to find a buyer for this house.

I open the door to the garage to see
Piled in a contemptuous heap
Children’s stuff, a basinet
Tiny clothes and Fisher-Price plastic

A little pink sock with a ruffle
That once wrapped a tiny foot
A crib, the necessaries of caring
For a stripling, a baby, to be cherished
And protected until she can stand strong.

Abandoned.

The house is tortured. Beat up,
Demolished and demoralized.
The toilet, lights, electrical wire
Removed.
Door handles, drawer handles
Wall sconce holders for candles
Gone.

The sad and obvious choice was made
Steal everything from the house
Fill the truck
Pack a bag for the baby

Crawling through the wreckage of other people’s life
I patch together the money I need
That keeps me from being one of them.

The scattered ashes of passion
The bubble in a bubble
That once burst, burst twice
Contained the soggy dust
of a dream once lush
like an oasis of hope

The hope abides
The oasis is dry

- Jim Paschal

[Larry Robinson]

Cloud Hidden


This chapter is closed now,
not one word more
until we meet some day
and the voices rising
to the window
take wing and fly.


Open the old casement
to the lands we have forgotten,
look
to the mountains and ridgeways
and the steep valleys,
quilted by green,
here, as the last words fall away,
the great and silent rivers of life
are flowing into the oceans
and on a day like any other
they will carry you again,
abandoned,
on the currents you have fought,
to the place
you did not know
you belonged.


And just as you came into life
surprised
you go out again,
lifted,
cloud-hidden
from one unknown
to another
and fall and turn
and appear again in the mountains


not remembering
how in the beginning
you refused
to join,
could not speak of,
did not even know
you were that
deep
calm
welling
almost forgotten
spring
of eternal presence.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

Missing the Boat


It is not so much that the boat passed
and you failed to notice it.
It is more like the boat stopping
directly outside your bedroom window,
the captain blowing the signal-horn,
the band playing a rousing march.
The boat shouted, waving bright flags,
its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.
But you had this idea you were going by train.
You kept checking the time-table,
digging for tracks.
And the boat got tired of you,
so tired it pulled up the anchor
and raised the ramp.
The boat bobbed into the distance,
shrinking like a toy—
at which point you probably realized
you had always loved the sea.




- Naomi Shihab-Nye

[Larry Robinson]

I was born on a night when the wind


I was born on a night when the wind tore a hole through the sky.

I was raised by goatherds and learned the speech of owls from an old woman
who walked her dogs across the green field.

This explains nothing.

“Look,” the old woman said. “Do you see that ragged place between the branches
of the white pine? That’s the place the wind tore in the night when you were born.”

And so I took to climbing trees. Hardly touched the ground for days at a time. Pressed my skin against their cool, rough skin, smelled the resinous pitch that smeared my arms and fingers, pulled green needles and tucked them in my hair like feathers. Like love tokens.

Caught in the arms of pine or beech or oak, I was an angel, beloved of god. I was a lion in the dappled grass, a bird held in the hand of the lord of the mountain, the fire-eyed maker of mischief, king of the shadows.

- Terry Ehret

[Larry Robinson]

Morning Kitchen Life is too sweet, possibilities too huge. I stand in the morning kitchen stunned. In the last minute (minute!): taste of lemon, Keemun tea, cream (pause to consider how many miracles it took for lemon, tea, cream to end up in my avid hands) weight of dog ear, begging mystery eyes (animals live with us, how astonishing!) silky warm running water over cold hands (running water, enough said) hummingbird’s jeweled head at the feeder (is that her tongue? a hummingbird has a tongue!). Enough with the mystery, the grace. Time to bundle up, get busy, get to work. It is not to be. Lilly enters, simple marvel of daughter, taut with succulent life, sinks me like a stone in a wishing well. But what would I wish for? Nothing but this. - Jennifer Louden

[Larry Robinson]

Another Spring


The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.


The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.


The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.


O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever


Slide unconsciously by us like water.


- Kenneth Rexroth

[meherc]

This poem touched me to the core this day. Thank you for all of your postings. We need poetry. Especially taken by :


"O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever


Slide unconsciously by us like water.

Another Spring


The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.


The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.


The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.


O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever


Slide unconsciously by us like water.


- Kenneth Rexroth

[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 also relieves 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 tender new 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)
(translation by Rebecca del Rio)

La Luna


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 (1926-1999)

[Larry Robinson]

crawl space

when he was led away
his comforters thought
of his steps

in forests of violet rose
& live grenades at his back
& branches random & sharp

pages he wrote in code
hidden & never found


sausage he craved with cheese


& azure pencil with note

remained in his bed of straw

& his hands
like clanging bells

moved with him until death
each finger mottled & soft
more sacred than the last
- Thaisa Frank

[Larry Robinson]

Neighborhood Road Prayer


May the patches in our gravel road
Hold
Through another season.


Filled with road base mixture,
Like an apology,
each one,


For slights imagined or real,
what difference?
Filled to over the brim


More than you'd expect
To be needed,
Tamped solid with full heart


Until at last, that satisfying - Thwack!
And once again it is
seamless


As full
forgiveness.


- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.


- Jack Gilbert