Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Memory

Climbing through a dark shower
I came to the edge of the mountain

I was a child
and everything was there

the flight of eagles the passage of warriors
watching the valley far below

the wind on the cliff the cold rain blowing upward
from the rock face

everything around me had burned
and I was coming back

walking on charcoal among the low green bushes
wet to the skin and wide awake


- W.S. Merwyn

[Larry Robinson]

On Another's Sorrow


Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

And can He who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small bird's grief and care,
Hear the woes that infants bear --

And not sit beside the next,
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near,
Weeping tear on infant's tear?

And not sit both night and day,
Wiping all our tears away?
Oh no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!

He doth give his joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He becomes a man of woe,
He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.

Oh He gives to us his joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan.

- William Blake

[Larry Robinson]

I’m Listening


I'm listening. But I don't know
If what I hear is silence or God.
I'm listening. But I can't tell
If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness
That at the bounds of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.
I only know I walk like someone
Beheld, Beloved and Known.
And because of this
I put into my every movement
Solemnity and Risk.

- Sophia DeMello-Breyner

[REALnothings]

wow, so much said in so few words!

[Larry Robinson]

Looking for Mother


He stands among the white painted racks –
An older man who could be any woman's son.
He is looking for mother in the words and phrases
Penned on the inside of each greeting card.
She is not there.

I wonder – will this be my son
When his time comes to choose?
Will he find me among the Hallmark deities,
Second only to Mary or Mother Teresa?

From what palette of memories
Will he paint my portrait?
Will it be the goodnight hugs, sweet moments of tenderness,
Or sometimes, tears of despair?

Will he select, as this man does,
The blank page on which to write?
Will he remember that I had my own life,
And mother was only one of my names?

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg

[Larry Robinson]

Kaddish for My Mother


Sarah Sarah shtetl child
of peddler Sholem, sheytled Mintzi,
you bore the griefs of history to Brooklyn,
hungry for the taste of liberation
in the cage of a tenement
where you sang your exiled songs.

Sarah of dark curls and heart-shaped face,
what a beauty you were, girl of seventeen
smiling under April blossom trees
with Sam, namesake of your father;
in you he saw the Medina's promised gold.

The litany of your three day labor,
your apocalyptic screams
while Bubbe Sonia muttered in his ear
bad luck to kiss before a birth.

His male hesitation
his fear of uncleanness
The kiss too late.

I was yours, Mother.

Friday sundowns you lit the Sabbath candles,
chanted the prayers with covered head,
cupped fingers beseeching the flame
while I gazed speechless
aching with the sudden beauty that lit the kitchen
to a temple.

Bungalow summers, blackberry picking days,
nights when I lay my head in your lap
feeling your heart beat, your blood flow,
as you sang with the women Yiddish songs
of struggle and yearning.

I'm older now than you would ever be;
sickness stopped your May Day marches
stilled your voice,
stilled your mind.

Sleep now, bride, in the final bed.
Now you are one with your dreams,
perfect, your cells in cosmic silence,
clear and light, an open channel
for the simple forms of nature to pass through
and claim you as their own.

My daughter sings your songs,
keeps the funny dolls you made
with shaky button eyes,
and I, I keep a rain-cap,
travel-kit, gifts you gave,
good for one on a journey.
You knew.

I journeyed to your grave again
sat in the quiet of earth and stones
saw a sparrow land
where you lie as if flying
from the blossom trees of Brooklyn.

- Mara Levine

[Larry Robinson]

The Pact


It was broken before
We arrived, the pact with
Life. Shattered like crystal
Heaved in fearful fury. All our
Lives, we walk across
The sparkling glass
Bleeding out breathing
In the agony of Ages.


How could we know
We came as witnesses?
Our job to see beyond
Even our own cynicism
The pessimism inherited
From millennia and millions.


Our work
Immerse in mourning
Inhale distilled sorrow
Become an alchemist
Convert loss into love.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Leave Me Hidden

I was having trouble deciding
which to watch: Night
of the Living Bloggers, or
Attack of the Neck-Brace People.
In the end I just went for a walk.

In the woods I stopped wondering why
of all trees
this one: my hand
pressed to fissures
and ridges of

bark’s hugely magnified
fingerprint, forehead
resting against it
finally, feeling
distinctly

a heartbeat, vast, silently
booming there deep in
my hidden leaves, blessed
motherworld, personal
underworld, thank you

thank you.

- Franz Wright

[Larry Robinson]

The Stream of Enough


After decades of meandering hither and yon,
like a sleep-deprived pilot with neither destination nor flight plan,
attaching tentatively wherever I landed,
as you learn to do when you grow up with your bags packed,
searching for more,
yearning for more,
sometimes strategically, sometimes artfully,
mostly haphazardly,
I wandered awhile back, almost by chance, into contentment.

I feel settled now,
remembering afresh the sweet dreaminess of being four,
lying on the grass, idling timelessly,
nothing to do, nowhere to go,
staring happily at white clouds floating in a Pennsylvania blue sky,
rowing my mental boat gently down an untroubled stream
for which I have, at long last, found a name:
enough!

- Bill Dickinson

[Larry Robinson]

Care

My 16-month old daughter wakes from her nap and cries. I pick her up, press her against my chest and rub her back until my palm warms like an old family quilt. “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Here is the island of Oʻahu, 8,500 miles from Syria. But what if Pacific trade winds suddenly became helicopters? Flames, nails, and shrapnel indiscriminately barreling towards us? What if shadows cast against our windows aren’t plumeria tree branches, but soldiers and terrorists marching in heat? Would we reach the desperate boats of the Mediterranean in time? If we did, could I straighten my legs into a mast, balanced against the pull and drift of the current? “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. But am I strong enough to carry her across the razor wires of sovereign borders and ethnic hatred? Am I strong enough to plead: “please, help us, please, just let us pass, please, we aren’t suicide bombs.” Am I strong enough to keep walking even after my feet crack like Halaby pepper fields after five years of drought, after this drought of humanity. Trains and buses rock back and forth to detention centers. Yet what if we didn’t make landfall? What if here capsized? Could you inflate your body into a buoy to hold your child above rising waters? “Daddy’s here, daddy’s here,” I whisper. Drowning is the last lullaby of the sea. I lay my daughter onto bed, her breath finally as calm as low tide. To all the parents who brave the crossing: you and your children matter. I hope your love will teach the nations that emit the most carbon and violence that they should, instead, remit the most compassion. I hope, soon, the only difference between a legal refugee and an illegal migrant will be how willing we are to open our homes, offer refuge, and carry each other towards the horizon of care. - Craig Carlos Perez

[Larry Robinson]

Anniversary


The day will come

when you’ll be dead longer
than alive—thankfully

not soon.
There are of course years

long before, without you
breathing—and your years

without me even
an idea. Then there are those

infant months, when I knew
your voice, your bearded

face, not your name—
at least to speak

it aloud. And in the night,
father, I cried out

and in the day—
like now.

- Kevin Young

[Larry Robinson]

Clouds


My brother is a birder.
He has a life list
and when he adds new birds
it’s considered polite
to feign excitement.
And I am excited
for him.


But I’m a cloudspotter.
So far this is a much less
legitimized pasttime.
When I remark on a cool cloud
or a sky phenomenon,
and there are lots—
halos, coronas, glories, sun dogs,
cloud iridescence, virga, fallstreak holes—
cumulus, stratus, cirrus
and their genus and species and varieties—
it tends to make people self-conscious.
Or silent.
Or bored.
Kinda like when I used to
quote Shakespeare to my kids.
They hated it.
Still do.


What’s wrong with Shakespeare?
Doesn’t anybody look up?


One of these days
The Cloud Appreciation Society
will have a meet in the US.
Like minds
who like clouds.
On that day
Earth’s water atmosphere
will get its due.


No frenetic birds flitting from branch to branch,
but slow-moving arabesques
of water vapor and droplets
and ice crystals.


Which remind us
as the stars do at night
that life
is sometimes


miraculous.


- Kerry Lichlyter

[Larry Robinson]

The Sun Underfoot Among the Sundews

An ingenuity too astonishing
to be quite fortuitous is
this bog full of sundews, sphagnum-
lined and shaped like a teacup.

A step
down and you’re into it; a
wilderness swallows you up:
ankle-, then knee-, then midriff-
to-shoulder-deep in wetfooted
understory, an overhead
spruce-tamarack horizon hinting
you’ll never get out of here.

But the sun
among the sundews, down there,
is so bright, an underfoot
webwork of carnivorous rubies,
a star-swarm thick as the gnats
they’re set to catch, delectable
double-faced cockleburs, each
hair-tip a sticky mirror
afire with sunlight, a million
of them and again a million,
each mirror a trap set to
unhand unbelieving,

that either
a First Cause said once, “Let there
be sundews,” and there were, or they’ve
made their way here unaided
other than by that backhand, round-
about refusal to assume responsibility
known as Natural Selection.

But the sun
underfoot is so dazzling
down there among the sundews,
there is so much light
in the cup that, looking,
you start to fall upward.

- Amy Clampitt

[Larry Robinson]

Declaring Peace


Enough. Say it slow, revel in the eff
disguised as a cough, slide on the E
until you give everything you've got
to WHEE; you're free of anything
coming next. No preference, no
acceptance. No next at all. Just
the chasm between that lonely E
and the expansive tangle
of all those letters making one
sound. Enough. Content.
All my masks in insouciant
disarray on the gleaming floor.


- Patrick Woodworth

[Larry Robinson]

Patience Taught by Nature

‘O dreary life,’ we cry, ‘O dreary life!’ And still the generations of the birds Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds Serenely live while we are keeping strife With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife Against which we may struggle! Ocean girds Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass In their old glory: O thou God of old, Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these! But so much patience as a blade of grass Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[Larry Robinson]

What If We Were Alone?


What if there weren't any stars?
What if only the sun and the earth
circled alone in the sky? What if
no one ever found anything outside
this world right here? -- no Galileo
could say, "Look -- it is out there,
a hint of whether we are everything."


Look out at the stars. Yes -- cold
space. Yes, we are so distant that
the mind goes hollow to think it.
But something is out there. Whatever
our limits, we are led outward. We glimpse
company. Each glittering point of light
beckons: "There is something beyond."


The moon rolls through the trees, rises
from them, and waits. In the river all
night a voice floats from rock
to sandbar, to log. What kind of listening
can follow quietly enough? We bow, and
the voice that falls through the rapids
calls all the rocks by their secret names.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
VIII

What am I to believe? If the angel in his cloud,
Serenely gazing at the violet abyss,
Plucks on his strings to pluck abysmal glory,

Leaps downward through evening’s revelations, and
On his spredden wings, needs nothing but deep space,
Forgets the gold centre, the golden destiny,

Grows warm in the motionless motion of his flight,
Am I that imagine this angel less satisfied?
Are the wings his, the lapis-haunted air?

Is it he or is it I that experience this?
Is it I then that keep saying there is an hour
Filled with expressible bliss, in which I have

No need, am happy, forget need’s golden hand,
Am satisfied without solacing majesty,
And if there is an hour there is a day,

There is a month, a year, there is a time
In which majesty is a mirror of the self:
I have not but I am and as I am, I am.

These external regions, what do we fill them with
Except reflections, the escapades of death,
Cinderella fulfilling herself beneath the roof?

- Wallace Stevens

[Larry Robinson]

Before You Cut Loose,


put dogs on the list
of difficult things to lose. Those dogs ditched
on the North York Moors or the Sussex Downs
or hurled like bags of sand from rented cars
have followed their noses to market towns
and bounced like balls into their owners’ arms.
I heard one story of a dog that swam
to the English coast from the Isle of Man,
and a dog that carried eggs and bacon
and a morning paper from the village
surfaced umpteen leagues and two years later,
bacon eaten but the eggs unbroken,
newsprint dry as tinder, to the letter.
A dog might wander the width of the map
to bury its head in its owner’s lap,
crawl the last mile to dab a bleeding paw
against its own front door. To die at home,
a dog might walk its four legs to the bone.
You can take off the tag and the collar
but a dog wears one coat and one colour.
A dog got rid of—that’s a dog for life.
No dog howls like a dog kicked out at night.
Try looking a dog like that in the eye.

- Simon Armitage

[Larry Robinson]

Ladies With White Hair Seen From A Second Storey Window

Look down with me,
below, upon the heads of these mares.
Their calling-card to death is silver,
white as bone, grey as going mist.
How can you not love them for their courage
to wear the cap of departure,
wear it anyhow, just like anything?

The clouds upon their napes,
this declaration of what’s to come,
neither waited for, denied, nor bragged,

I with my own white hair
glorify the locks that shall unlock
the curls of snow so soon to melt,
declaring their purchase in advance
of the white graves of heaven, which are also white,
whiter than white, whiter than anything.

- Bruce Moody

[Larry Robinson]

Afternoon in Manhattan

Once upon a book
We walked through your Manhattan
While smoke-scented air
Drew cool in our nostrils
We strolled its wasted streets.

Your hand held mine
And I looked into your face –
“There is a man” you whispered to me,
Pointing with your voice
“With all he owns in that paper sack.”
And I knew you knew, but never how.

We paused before a new brick house
Pressed between buildings of crumbling stone.
“There,” you spoke “is where your great uncle lived,
“But his building was old and torn down.”
And I thought I felt your clear eyes cry
For the lost bricks
For those lost dead bricks that you loved.

On we walked
Through the yellowfaced streets of Chinatown
My Chinatown
With paper fans and parasols
And the odor of food spelling CHOW MEIN
In capital letters in the narrow streets.

All that afternoon we were filled with each other
No street looked dirty,
No building old and worn.
All we knew were each other’s joys
Which mingled with our own.
Then, laughing together we rode the slow train home.

- Nan Fuchs

[Larry Robinson]

Last Words
for Harry

I love you, repeated
Four times over
Your daughter, ours
Listening to your breath
Quiet as the moments
Between the chimes
On the Hour.

I love you, you
Told her. I stood
outside your circle
Self-exile of years
Years that allowed us
To love each other
In ways marriage couldn't.

I love you
your gift to her,
To me to know
Your anger, disappointment
Dissipated.

I love you, you said
To who? What?
Four times over.
The penultimate perhaps to Life
The last to Love itself
As you fell into eternity's embrace.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

A Man's A Man for A' That

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Our toils obscure, an a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that.
Their tinsel show, an a' that,
The honest man, tho e'er sae poor,
Is king o men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord,'
What struts, an stares, an a' that?
Tho hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a cuif for a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
His ribband, star, an a' that,
The man o independent mind,
He looks an laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an a' that!
But an honest man's aboon his might -
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!
For a' that, an a' that,
Their dignities, an a' that,
The pith o sense an pride o worth.
Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may
[As come it will for a' that],
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world, o'er
Shall brithers be for a' that.

- Robert Burns

[sandoak]

And it has a lovely tune as well....

A Man's A Man for A' That

...

[Larry Robinson]

Belonging

The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.

Earth changes,
and home
becomes different
places.

You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one
place.

To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more.

You have stars
in your bones
and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
terrain in each eye.

You belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.

- Alla Renee Bozarth

[Larry Robinson]

won’t you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

- Lucille Clifton

[Larry Robinson]

The Mystery of You



If you’re not careful,

you can give your

whole life away


one chapter at a time.

Rarely living your own

wild nature.


Thinking

you will have time

later


to follow that beckoning

inner compass

- Kay Crista

[Larry Robinson]

Ermeo di San Francesco
At the Hermitage of St. Francis in Assisi

If he were to speak to me today, he would smile
slightly, laughing at my concerns about this, about
that. He would extend his hand, opened palm,
inviting me to sit down, to find my spot exactly
where I am. If today he were to speak to me, he
would open his arms to the comforts of life right
here, on this ground where I stand, the sun baking
my back, the cool rock supporting me. Without
words, he would tell me, wherever I am I can lay
my head, wherever I walk is the place to be. He
would point to the sky, the trees, the ground below
my feet, cup his ear to the birds, the breeze, the
words that need not be spoken.

- Clara Rosemarda

[Larry Robinson]

Becoming Bostonian

I hear the music of seven languages
on a four-block stretch of Harvard Square,
see the copper glow of the Hancock
Tower at sunset, feel the familiar
bump of cobblestones under my feet.
Mark Twain said people in New York ask
"How much is he worth?" while Bostonians
ask "How much does he know?" That burning
desire to discover keeps the city humming,
yet we’re grounded in history, too,
still treading on sidewalks made of
baked clay. I stand
one night on Beacon Hill, gaze up at the
few stars city lights allow to shine,
feel myself stretched between past and future
the pull of the earth on which
our forefathers stood, the pull of the moon,
which they could not have dreamed their descendants
would visit. Or perhaps they did.
One historian reports that
"there were books on Beacon Hill while wolves
still howled from the summit." Perhaps some
Englishman closed his book one night and stood
where I stand, dreaming of what we’ve become.

- Lawrence Kessenich

[Larry Robinson]

Disillusion

I would be simple again,
Simple and clean
Like the earth,
Like the rain,
Nor ever know,
Dark Harlem,
The wild laughter
Of your mirth
Nor the salt tears
Of your pain.
Be kind to me,
Oh, great dark city.
Let me forget.
I will not come
To you again.

- Langston Hughes

[Larry Robinson]

The Place for No Story


The coast hills at Sovranes Creek;
No trees, but dark scant pasture drawn thin
Over rock shaped like flame;
The old ocean at the land’s foot, the vast
Gray extension beyond the long white violence;
A herd of cows and the bull
Far distant, hardly apparent up the dark slope;
And the gray air haunted with hawks:
This place is the noblest thing I have ever seen. No imaginable
Human presence here could do anything
But dilute the lonely self-watchful passion.

- Robinson Jeffers