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  1. TopTop #3991
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To Those Who Have Lost Everything

    crossed
    in despair
    many deserts
    full of hope

    carrying
    their empty
    fists of sorrow
    everywhere

    mouthing
    a bitter night
    of shovels
    and nails

    “you’re nothing
    you’re shit
    your home’s
    nowhere”—

    mountains
    will speak
    for you

    rain
    will flesh
    your bones

    green again
    among ashes
    after a long fire

    started in
    a fantasy island
    some time ago

    turning
    Natives
    into aliens

    - Francisco X. Alarcón
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  3. TopTop #3992
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    December, 2018

    How can it be? so late in the year.
    I feel myself spinning
    in ever increasing speed
    toward the black hole of solstice
    like a piece of discarded meat
    gets spun
    toward the drain and the grind
    of the garbage disposal.

    Bears retreat to caves.
    Makes sense.
    Although the waning light
    brings every remaining yellow and red leaf
    still clinging to the tree
    sharply into focus
    and heightens yearning
    to a fever pitch
    which we translate
    into frenzied purchases.

    All the resolutions of the past year
    are now revealed
    as fantasy
    once again
    I haven’t changed.
    All the money spent on transforming me
    into something else
    is noted in the spreadsheet
    - a fool’s golden attempts.

    So drawn towards sleep
    in this waning light
    which panics me further
    for what nightmares might
    arise and become real enough
    to reach through the screen
    of projected dreams
    and kill me.

    - Barbara Hirschfeld
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  5. TopTop #3993
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Awakened

    In advanced age, my health worsening,
    I woke up in the middle of the night
    and experienced a feeling of happiness
    so intense and perfect that in all my life
    I had only felt its premonition.
    And there was no reason for it.
    It didn’t obliterate consciousness;
    the past, which I carried, was there,
    together with my grief.
    And it was suddenly included,
    was a necessary part of the whole.
    As if a voice were repeating:
    “You can stop worrying now;
    everything happened just as it had to.
    You did what was assigned to you,
    and you are not required anymore
    to think of what happened long ago.”
    The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
    and was connected with the thought of death.
    The happiness on this side was
    like an announcement of the other side.
    I realized that this was an undeserved gift
    and I could not grasp by what grace
    it was bestowed on me.

    - Czeslaw Milosz
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 11 members:

  7. TopTop #3994
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Happiness

    So early it’s still almost dark out.
    I’m near the window with coffee,
    and the usual early morning stuff
    that passes for thought.
    When I see the boy and his friend
    walking up the road
    to deliver the newspaper.
    They wear caps and sweaters,
    and one boy
    has a bag over his shoulder.
    They are so happy
    they aren’t saying anything,
    these boys.
    I think if they could,
    they would take
    each other’s arm.
    It’s early in the morning,
    and they are
    doing this thing together.
    They come on, slowly.
    The sky is taking on light,
    though the moon still hangs pale
    over the water.
    Such beauty that for a minute
    death and ambition, even love,
    doesn’t enter into this.
    Happiness. It comes on
    unexpectedly.
    And goes beyond, really,
    any early morning
    talk about it.

    - Raymond Carver
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  9. TopTop #3995
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Credo

    I cannot find my way: there is no star
    In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
    And there is not a whisper in the air
    Of any living voice but one so far
    That I can hear it only as a bar
    Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
    And angel fingers wove, and unaware,
    Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
    No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
    For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
    The black and awful chaos of the night;
    For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, --
    I know the far-sent message of the years,
    I feel the coming glory of the Light!

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
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  11. TopTop #3996
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Solstice Color

    The other day I looked into my airtight sealed jar of sugar in which
    Little tiny, crystalline, black specks moved in the glacial field of white
    The tiniest ants I’d ever seen.

    If we saw a photo negative of our heart
    Would we see tiny black specks moving about
    In the vast divine field of white light?
    Black holes where our grief and disappointments and yearnings are
    Sucked into a black abyss of silence?
    If we could look deep into those black silences would we see
    Tiny crystalline specs of white light?
    Like the solstice where in the deep, dark winter night
    We light candles and wait for the return of light

    My neighbors have two black sheep and
    Two white sheep with black hoods of fur,
    A black bull with white horns and a black cat with a white left leg and paws
    And a black and white sheep dog
    They roam and eat in a brilliant green field where
    Red autumn leaves fall in the blue sky after gray mornings

    Their black and white coats amid the grand scheme of color
    Makes me wonder if the way through our darkest nights
    Is not through the dark, or the light, but
    Though the noisy, chaotic cacophony of color that is our life
    The red sorrows, the yellow bliss, green yearning, turquoise love

    In the duel nature of our lives, the myriad black and white choices
    That we face daily are not separated by gray nuances
    But filled and connected by brilliant luminescent color

    Like baking white sugar and flour and black chocolate chips
    Into a sweet delicacy that gives us colorful delight


    - Sally Churgel
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  13. TopTop #3997
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Noel

    When snow is shaken
    From the balsam trees
    And they’re cut down
    And brought into our houses

    When clustered sparks
    Of many-colored fire
    Appear at night
    In ordinary windows

    We hear and sing
    The customary carols

    They bring us ragged miracles
    And hay and candles
    And flowering weeds of poetry
    That are loved all the more
    Because they are so common

    But there are carols
    That carry phrases
    Of the haunting music
    Of the other world
    A music wild and dangerous
    As a prophet’s message

    Or the fresh truth of children
    Who though they come to us
    From our own bodies
    Are altogether new
    With their small limbs
    And birdlike voices

    They look at us
    With their clear eyes
    And ask the piercing questions
    God alone can answer.

    - Anne Porter
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  15. TopTop #3998
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
    And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,
    Where little children age before their time,
    And life wears down the edges of the mind,
    Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
    While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
    Where fear companions each day's life,
    And Perfect Love seems long delayed,
    Christmas is waiting to be born:
    In you, in me, in all mankind.

    - Howard Thurman
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  17. TopTop #3999
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Of Virgin Births

    Smile upon your child Mary, Jewish woman of Nazareth. You gave birth to Jesus, remained a
    virgin, and rose to be worshiped by his followers. Your son was born at the death of the year. His
    coming brought light to the world.

    Smile upon your child Coatlicue, earth mother of Mesoamerica, worshiped by the Aztecs. You
    gave birth to Huitzilopochtli god of the sun, who brought light to the world, and you remained a
    virgin.

    Ride Balthasar, ride Melchior, and Gaspar. Follow the star to the manger baring your gifts for
    the god-child.

    O priest of Huitzilopochtli raise your obsidian knife and bring it down onto the chest of the
    sacrificed. Extract his heart with swift skill, that this gift will please and continue to bring the
    sun.

    And Jesus died a bloody and torturous death that his followers may know life.

    Rise over the horizon Huitzilopochtli and bring sun that your followers may grow maize to
    sustain themselves. And rise Jesus, rise from the dead, and give of your body and blood that your
    followers may sustain themselves.

    - Armando García-Dávila.
    Last edited by Barry; 12-26-2018 at 11:47 AM.
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  19. TopTop #4000
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Another Christmas Story


    What if Mary was María
    dark skinned and tired
    trudging through the desert
    pregnant and far from home?


    What if Joseph was José
    and there was no donkey
    but the burden of fear weighed the same?


    What if there was no money
    for Joseph or José,
    and what if the birth pangs grew sharper
    for Mary or María?


    What if there were no beds
    for any of them,
    no shelter, no warmth,
    only dust and cold stars glittering above?


    What if Bethlehem was Texas?


    What if the baby was born
    in a manger
    or a detention center
    this Jesus, this Jesús
    this child of God?


    Would he be revered
    or ripped from his mother’s arms,
    this Jesus, this Jesús
    this child of God?


    Wouldn’t the angels rejoice
    at this divine spark
    born into the world?


    Would we?


    - Lisa Shulman
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  21. TopTop #4001
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Way It Is

    There is a thread you follow. It goes among
    things that change. But it doesn't change.
    People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
    You have to explain about the thread.
    But it is hard for others to see.
    While you hold it you can't get lost.
    Tragedies happen; people get hurt
    or die; and you suffer and get old.
    Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
    But you don't ever let go of the thread.

    - William Stafford
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  22. TopTop #4002

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Way It Is

    There is a thread you follow. It goes among
    things that change. But it doesn't change.
    People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
    You have to explain about the thread.
    But it is hard for others to see.
    While you hold it you can't get lost.
    Tragedies happen; people get hurt
    or die; and you suffer and get old.
    Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
    But you don't ever let go of the thread.

    - William Stafford
    Wow, this one is SO simple, SO succinct.
    It covers God, Intuition, Buddha-Nature, or whatever one might call it or not call it!
    Just don't let go the thread!
    Last edited by Barry; 12-28-2018 at 07:47 PM.
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  24. TopTop #4003
    eddierosenthal's Avatar
    eddierosenthal
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stafford is one of my favorites, especially his "Travelling thru the dark".

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by REALnothings: View Post
    Wow, this one is SO simple, SO succinct.
    It covers God, Intuition, Buddha-Nature, or whatever one might call it or not call it!
    Just don't let go the thread!
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  25. TopTop #4004
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blue Heron Walking

    Not one of Mr. Balachine’s soloists had feet this articulate,
    the long bones explicitly spread, then retracted, even more
    finely detailed than Leonardo’s plans for his flying machines.
    And all this for a stroll, a secondary function, not the great
    dramatic spread and shadow of those pterodactyl wings.
    This walking seems determined less by bird volition or
    calculations of the small yellow eye than by an accident
    of breeze, pushing the bird on a diagonal, the great feet executing
    their tendus and lifts in the slowest of increments, hesitation
    made exquisitely dimensional, as if the feet thought themselves
    through each minute contribution to propulsion, these outsized
    apprehenders of grasses and stone, snatchers of mouse and vole,
    these mindless magnificents that any time now will trail
    their risen bird like useless bits of leather. Don’t show me
    your soul, Balanchine used to say, I want to see your foot.

    - Julie Bruck
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  27. TopTop #4005
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Asking yourself, even the most mundane question, is like throwing the I Ching

    The retreat is noisy

    I walk downhill
    towards the labyrinth and beseech the path
    five times:
    Tell me how an old man reaches
    his authentic self?

    Silently the path replies:
    Your terrain is rocky.
    One plods and plods,
    sleeps and then plods some more.

    Avoid fallen branches, but be sure
    to gaze skyward through the leafless trees
    way beyond the moon--

    where trickster and saint
    embrace in contentious paradox.

    - Barry Denny
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #4006
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    All the True Vows

    All the true vows
    are secret vows
    the ones we speak out loud
    are the ones we break.

    There is only one life
    you can call your own
    and a thousand others
    you can call by any name you want.

    Hold to the truth you make
    every day with your own body,
    don't turn your face away.

    Hold to your own truth
    at the center of the image
    you were born with.

    Those who do not understand
    their destiny will never understand
    the friends they have made
    nor the work they have chosen

    nor the one life that waits
    beyond all the others.

    By the lake in the wood
    in the shadows
    you can
    whisper that truth
    to the quiet reflection
    you see in the water.

    Whatever you hear from
    the water, remember,

    it wants you to carry
    the sound of its truth on your lips.

    Remember,
    in this place
    no one can hear you

    and out of the silence
    you can make a promise
    it will kill you to break,

    that way you'll find
    what is real and what is not.

    I know what I am saying.
    Time almost forsook me
    and I looked again.

    Seeing my reflection
    I broke a promise
    and spoke
    for the first time
    after all these years

    in my own voice,

    before it was too late
    to turn my face again.

    - David Whyte
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  31. TopTop #4007
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To the New Year

    With what stillness at last
    you appear in the valley
    your first sunlight reaching down
    to touch the tips of a few
    high leaves that do not stir
    as though they had not noticed
    and did not know you at all
    then the voice of a dove calls
    from far away in itself
    to the hush of the morning

    so this is the sound of you
    here and now whether or not
    anyone hears it this is
    where we have come with our age
    our knowledge such as it is
    and our hopes such as they are
    invisible before us
    untouched and still possible
    - W.S. Merlin
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  33. TopTop #4008
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen

    I.
    Many ingenious lovely things are gone
    That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
    protected from the circle of the moon
    That pitches common things about. There stood
    Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
    An ancient image made of olive wood --
    And gone are Phidias' famous ivories
    And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.

    We too had many pretty toys when young:
    A law indifferent to blame or praise,
    To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
    Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
    Public opinion ripening for so long
    We thought it would outlive all future days.
    O what fine thought we had because we thought
    That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.

    All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
    And a great army but a showy thing;
    What matter that no cannon had been turned
    Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
    Thought that unless a little powder burned
    The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
    And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
    The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.

    Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
    Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
    Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
    To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
    The night can sweat with terror as before
    We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
    And planned to bring the world under a rule,
    Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

    He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
    Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
    From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
    Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
    On master-work of intellect or hand,
    No honour leave its mighty monument,
    Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
    But break upon his ghostly solitude.

    But is there any comfort to be found?
    Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
    What more is there to say? That country round
    None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
    Incendiary or bigot could be found
    To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
    Or break in bits the famous ivories
    Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.


    II.
    When Loie Fuller's Chinese dancers enwound
    A shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth,
    It seemed that a dragon of air
    Had fallen among dancers, had whirled them round
    Or hurried them off on its own furious path;
    So the platonic Year
    Whirls out new right and wrong,
    Whirls in the old instead;
    All men are dancers and their tread
    Goes to the barbarous clangour of a gong.


    III
    Some moralist or mythological poet
    Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
    I am satisfied with that,
    Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
    Before that brief gleam of its life be gone,
    An image of its state;
    The wings half spread for flight,
    The breast thrust out in pride
    Whether to play, or to ride
    Those winds that clamour of approaching night.

    A man in his own secret meditation
    Is lost amid the labyrinth that he has made
    In art or politics;
    Some Platonist affirms that in the station
    Where we should cast off body and trade
    The ancient habit sticks,
    And that if our works could
    But vanish with our breath
    That were a lucky death,
    For triumph can but mar our solitude.

    The swan has leaped into the desolate heaven:
    That image can bring wildness, bring a rage
    To end all things, to end
    What my laborious life imagined, even
    The half-imagined, the half-written page;
    O but we dreamed to mend
    Whatever mischief seemed
    To afflict mankind, but now
    That winds of winter blow
    Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.


    IV.
    We, who seven years ago
    Talked of honour and of truth,
    Shriek with pleasure if we show
    The weasel's twist, the weasel's tooth.


    V.
    Come let us mock at the great
    That had such burdens on the mind
    And toiled so hard and late
    To leave some monument behind,
    Nor thought of the levelling wind.

    Come let us mock at the wise;
    With all those calendars whereon
    They fixed old aching eyes,
    They never saw how seasons run,
    And now but gape at the sun.

    Come let us mock at the good
    That fancied goodness might be gay,
    And sick of solitude
    Might proclaim a holiday:
    Wind shrieked -- and where are they?

    Mock mockers after that
    That would not lift a hand maybe
    To help good, wise or great
    To bar that foul storm out, for we
    Traffic in mockery.


    VI.
    Violence upon the roads: violence of horses;
    Some few have handsome riders, are garlanded
    On delicate sensitive ear or tossing mane,
    But wearied running round and round in their courses
    All break and vanish, and evil gathers head:
    Herodias' daughters have returned again,
    A sudden blast of dusty wind and after
    Thunder of feet, tumult of images,
    Their purpose in the labyrinth of the wind;
    And should some crazy hand dare touch a daughter
    All turn with amorous cries, or angry cries,
    According to the wind, for all are blind.
    But now wind drops, dust settles; thereupon
    There lurches past, his great eyes without thought
    Under the shadow of stupid straw-pale locks,
    That insolent fiend Robert Artisson
    To whom the love-lorn Lady Kyteler brought
    Bronzed peacock feathers, red combs of her cocks.

    - William Butler Yeats
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  35. TopTop #4009
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Twenty Hundred and Nineteen

    Ah, Yeats, whom we had put away
    with the old poems,
    your lines carefully marked from
    our study long ago
    with the indomitable Ms. Elizabeth Drew
    at the summer college
    on the green Vermont hilltop,

    so many lines part of our native tongue.
    we scarcely remember it was you
    who first told us “the center cannot hold.”
    But now, “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen”
    is put down before us
    and we recognize once again
    your prescient genius.

    A century ago. To the year.
    And now we read with new/old eyes

    - Fran Claggett
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  37. TopTop #4010
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Chicken Cosmology

    Neither the chicken, nor the egg,
    (since you asked). What came first was
    the essential emptiness, the chickenless void.
    Then a beak for pecking, followed by a tongue
    for tasting, a gullet for swallowing, eyes for seeing,
    legs and wings for fleeing all that is not-chicken,
    and an anus to excrete it. Then came the chicken brain
    for dividing the world into chicken-friend and chicken-foe.
    Then the humans (at once both friend and foe)
    came to feed the chickens and tend the coops and collect
    the eggs, and wring an occasional chicken neck.
    The humans thought that they came first, but the chickens
    knew that the humans were after the eggs, which were
    before the chickens (which hatched from them). But also
    after the chickens (that laid them). Which for humans
    is a conundrum. But not for chickens, who never ponder
    which came first, because every chicken knows
    that she came first, since everything in a chicken’s
    universe is herself, not excluding the road, (which,
    since you asked) the chicken crosses
    to get to her better side.


    - Richard Schiffman
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  39. TopTop #4011
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Happy New Year

    The party's done, the plastic cups used up -
    the ones we never know whether to wash or throw away -
    thus
    ambivalence follows us
    into the new year
    starting with the cups.
    But the feeling of being
    together the best nourishment.
    Although the food was also good.
    My mother's traditional crab mousse
    so fifties in flavor
    Even the punch
    a throwback to simpler days
    when 3 kinds of sweet liquids mixed together
    did not make us quake
    with fear of the consequences.

    There are of course big resolutions,
    mostly the same
    again and again
    but the real joy comes
    because I am just a bit calmer
    a bit better at riding the waves
    of my own tumultuous inner oceans
    the steady inner core
    like a steel rod liquid channel of awareness
    quicksilver river of my dreams
    is easier to hold onto
    an alabaster bannister
    in the storm of life.

    My teacher brings out the poetry in me
    like a doctor
    extracts the built up fluids under the skin.
    All these words accumulated from years
    of picking at the scabs and neglecting
    to clean old wounds.
    Now they arise as the elixir of life,
    the cream that rises to the top,
    the honey sequestered in the flower
    the scent of sprouted white narcissus on the driveway.
    And I respond to welcome the new year with this poem.

    - Basha/Barbara Hirschfeld

    Basha/Barbara Hirschfeld
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #4012
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Fantasia: Firezone

    In the bedroom
    we awake
    to smokedark
    ceiling cracks
    and walk
    upside down
    to the curtains.

    In the kitchen
    we eat
    burned fennel,
    smoked ham
    and toast.

    In the sink
    we spy two singed
    swans on a raft
    of orange sponges
    then watch them
    fly through open
    patio doors
    toward a horizon
    dulled by ash.

    On the deck
    we take a toy train
    on miniature
    bonerail tracks
    past trolls incinerated
    beneath Lego bridges.

    In the driveway
    we enter
    a blistered bandshell
    where a chorus
    chants that to
    the northeast
    an inferno
    is 10% contained.

    In the garage
    we test the
    air purifier,
    re-inflate
    the zeppelin
    and stock
    firewalking
    boots rated
    at 500 degrees
    Fahrenheit.

    In the airship
    we head west
    to the Pacific
    to join
    a school of
    of fire eels
    and swim
    toward Japan.

    - David Beckman
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #4013
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Affirmation

    To grow old is to lose everything.
    Aging, everybody knows it.
    Even when we are young,
    we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
    when a grandfather dies.
    Then we row for years on the midsummer
    pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
    that began without harm, scatters
    into debris on the shore,
    and a friend from school drops
    cold on a rocky strand.
    If a new love carries us
    past middle age, our wife will die
    at her strongest and most beautiful.
    New women come and go. All go.
    The pretty lover who announces
    that she is temporary
    is temporary. The bold woman,
    middle-aged against our old age,
    sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
    Another friend of decades estranges himself
    in words that pollute thirty years.
    Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
    and affirm that it is fitting
    and delicious to lose everything.

    - Donald Hall
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  45. TopTop #4014
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wall, that vile wall


    "The wall, my wall, he says,
    "We are invaded by the poor,
    the forsaken, the persecuted,
    the children. No matter the cost
    we have to protect our border."
    Set on his wall nothing is more important to him;
    it rises & stretches in his imagination —
    crosses deserts, divides plains & mountains,
    separates parents from children, cuts
    the primordial routes of the deer & the cougar,
    ocelot & coyote, jaguar & wolf — his beautiful wall
    that not even Joshua's trumpets could bring down.
    "My wall, my wall!" he throws a tantrum
    & to get it paralyses the government,
    sinks the economy, sulks like the foolish brat
    he is, obstinate on his wall cost what it may
    in money, in blood, in death, in suffering.
    The wall, that vile wall.

    El muro, mi muro — dice
    — nos invaden los pobres.
    los desamparados, los perseguidos,
    los niños. No importa el costo;
    tenemos que proteger nuestra frontera.
    Terco en su muro nada le es más importante;
    se alza y se alarga en su imaginación —
    cruza desiertos, divide llanos y cerros,
    separa padres de hijos. Corta
    las rutas primordiales del venado y la puma,
    ocelote y coyote, lobo y jaguar — su bello muro
    que ni las trompetas de Josué puedan derribar.
    ¡Mi muro, mi muro! hace berrinche
    y para conseguirlo paraliza al gobierno,
    hunde la economía, se atufa como el mocoso necio
    que es, aferrado a su muro cueste lo que cueste
    en dinero, en sangre, en muerte, en sufrir.
    El muro, ese asqueroso muro.



    - Rafael Jesús González
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  47. TopTop #4015
    pdfender
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Wall, that vile wall


    "The wall, my wall, he says,
    "We are invaded by the poor,
    the forsaken, the persecuted,
    the children. No matter the cost
    we have to protect our border."
    Set on his wall nothing is more important to him;
    it rises & stretches in his imagination —
    crosses deserts, divides plains & mountains,
    separates parents from children, cuts
    the primordial routes of the deer & the cougar,
    ocelot & coyote, jaguar & wolf — his beautiful wall
    that not even Joshua's trumpets could bring down.
    "My wall, my wall!" he throws a tantrum
    & to get it paralyses the government,
    sinks the economy, sulks like the foolish brat
    he is, obstinate on his wall cost what it may
    in money, in blood, in death, in suffering.
    The wall, that vile wall.

    - Rafael Jesús González
    Bravo! Well done
    Last edited by Barry; 01-10-2019 at 10:54 AM.
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  48. TopTop #4016
    pdfender
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bravo!!
    Well done.
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Wall, that vile wall

    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 01-10-2019 at 10:53 AM.
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  49. Gratitude expressed by:

  50. TopTop #4017
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On The Cost of Written Language

    Once upon a time
    we knew the dancers inside water,
    could name each one
    by her seven names.
    We knew the alphabet
    of red sea stars, deer tracks
    in the mud and the curl of Scorpio
    in the August night.

    By what magic
    did such spirit turn to silence?
    what convinced us
    to trade ears for eyes,
    fluid thoughts
    for scratches of ink,
    summer voices
    for black forests bounded
    by rectangular horizons?
    What insect has eaten the green leaves,
    while the newspaper
    spreads its daily silence,
    pages falling softy like snow,
    with a muffled hiss?

    Fascinated we gaze
    endlessly into this mirror we’ve made,
    reflections struggling for breath
    beneath the surface, hiding like coral
    inside the calcified skeletons
    of our ancestors?

    - Arthur Dawson
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

    Dre, M/M
  52. TopTop #4018
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Those who Call themselves Elder

    I dreamt of the gray-haired amongst us
    who carry aloft on long dominant arms
    huge beams of salient energy – cambers of their lives
    congruent and cherished curves
    resting on old-world joists


    Their arms shone as light refracted
    against a hovel of clouds
    like aroused hues captured
    after a long flight
    as the craft descends
    piercing amber and unstable air
    dancing with lift while holding dew and place


    Such light shivers alive
    unaccustomed to being disturbed
    let alone witnessed in beauty
    or in reverence


    I dreamt these gray-haired ones
    spoke far less often
    preoccupied perhaps with
    readying themselves
    for unfamiliar rituals


    Their soft eyes gaze pass the horizon
    landing on new light
    blurred to the vision
    of dragons
    or dragonflies


    Awake now to their prestige of instinct
    awake now to the great unknown

    - P. Gregory Guss
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  54. TopTop #4019
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ripening

    The longer we are together
    the larger death grows around us.
    How many we know by now
    who are dead! We, who were young,
    now count the cost of having been.
    And yet as we know the dead
    we grow familiar with the world.
    We, who were young and loved each other
    ignorantly, now come to know
    each other in love, married
    by what we have done,
    as much as by what we intend.
    Our hair turns white with our ripening
    as though to fly away in some
    coming wind, bearing the seed
    of what we know. It was bitter to learn
    that we come to death as we come
    to love, bitter to face
    the just and solving welcome
    that death prepares. But that is bitter
    only to the ignorant, who pray
    it will not happen. Having come
    the bitter way to better prayer, we have
    the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
    to know you by the signs of this world!

    - Wendell Berry
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  56. TopTop #4020
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sonoma County Winter

    Onward through this wonderfully dreary day
    Gray clouds, low and wind-driven
    speak of things I cannot name.

    Rain drips through bare limbs
    into the greening earth, and
    I am amazed to be cold, wet, and
    so vibrantly alive.

    Let December know
    its cold reach has fallen short.
    Inside, inside . . . spring!

    - Karl Frederick
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