Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Repetition, Evolved


The salmon unzip their bodies at last:
stomach, liver, intestine spilling forth
into an ocean of egg possibilities.


Upstream, the river warns with trembling, leafy fingers
as the fish turn blind sight and scale
towards yet another phase of moon. But such is the way
of arousal: a path, attractive by its own resistance,
whether bushwhack, gradient, or peak-flows.
And so, journeying evolves.


Given that supernovas hold hematite and carbon
in their fires, absently, as if mid-dream,
and given that feeling is a long cord between mind and slip,
this current that breathes the salmon’s flaming fins
is of course mapped out to them by stars,
some of whose light takes so long to get here
it arrives fallen, extinguished. But the salmon know this,
a sister electric storm holds their minds
to rapt attention, neurons flaring the dark spaces
of backwaters recalled into being.


And so, a young girl returns to her village
where she, a wife, a mother of two,
died seven years before. Her fingers trace
the kitchen cups, her husband's cheeks,
the faucet that ran out of water every morning,
emitting the weak roar of the salmon people.
Mahaseer, she whispers, and means the clothes


that clung to her hip-deep, adult body of the past,
immersed in clear waters where she filled pitchers
of stainless steel, watched the massive fish
tumbling in from the sea like ready, pregnant clouds.


- Maya Khosla

[Larry Robinson]

On Having Two Hands

My right hand is in its early seventies,

maybe older. It is very smart.
My left hand has existed outside of time
all these years.

I feel my way through the world
with my responsible right hand,
but the left, trailing behind,
remembers where I've been.

The right hand holds the reins,
but the left, flamboyant,
celebrates the wild bucking.

When I touch you with my right hand,
I deliver to you all that hand has learned.
The left one, awkward and honest,
gives me away.

- Rita S. Losch

[Larry Robinson]

I Knew a Woman


I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).


How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).


Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).


Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).


- Theodore Roethke

[Larry Robinson]

Earth Changes

what response
can I give
to the universe

for all the mistakes
this mind
and body commit

when I watch
water skippers
on the surface

I am entranced
by all the circles
not just one

- Joyce Pointe

[Larry Robinson]

United

When sleepless, it’s helpful to meditate on mottoes of the states.
South Carolina, “While I breathe I hope.” Perhaps this could be
the new flag on the empty flagpole.
Or “I Direct” from Maine—why?
Because Maine gets the first sunrise? How bossy, Maine!
Kansas, “To the Stars through Difficulties”—
clackety wagon wheels, long, long land
and the droning press of heat—cool stars, relief.
In Arkansas, “The People Rule”—lucky you.
Idaho, “Let It Be Perpetual”—now this is strange.
Idaho, what is your “it”?
Who chose these lines?
How many contenders?
What would my motto be tonight, in tangled sheets?
Texas—“Friendship”—now boasts the Open Carry law.
Wisconsin, where my mother’s parents are buried,
chose “Forward.”
New Mexico, “It Grows As It Goes”—now this is scary.
Two dangling its. This does not represent that glorious place.
West Virginia, “Mountaineers Are Always Free”—really?
Washington, you’re wise.
What could be better than “By and By”?
Oklahoma must be tired—“Labor Conquers all Things.”
Oklahoma, get together with Nevada, who chose only
“Industry” as motto. I think of Nevada as a playground
or mostly empty. How wrong we are about one another.
For Alaska to pick “North to the Future”
seems odd. Where else are they going?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

If It Were Sound

What can compare with the magic
of sunlight on a tree,
edging the leaves
With liquid gold?
Comes a breeze,
they ripple
in a way that,
if it were sound,
would be like tinkling bells
singing the world awake.

- Nina Mermey Klippe

[Larry Robinson]

Mistral in the Bastille

Censers swing like pendulums, near madam’s barred window.
Cinnamon and vanilla waft through shutters, blown apart by a strong mistral.
A magpie scouts for items to primp his nest, during mating season.
The sweet incense lures him onto madam’s cluttered vanity:
A tortoise shell brush tangled with strands of chestnut curls,
a silver tube of lipstick, gems and ornate broaches,
surround a small bouquet of gilded petals.
“May our lives be like flowers in the sight of God.”
Her distant lover wrote on a forget-me-not note
ribboned around the waist of crystal vase.
The mistral whistles a solemn tune, through the crack beneath her door.
The magpie lands in a hollowed tree,
Ribbons a bed to entice and protect
his soon-to-come mate
from the mistral that threatens to keep her away.

Madam laces her boots,
ties back her untamable locks,
clings to the knap of creviced rocks,
climbing up the mountain’s unmarked trail.
High above the thatched-roofed village, dotted with flickering flames
wood fires are stoked, not for the sake of heat or something to eat,
but for the daily rhythm of ritual itself.
Fishermen paddle the length of lake, farmers shake the soils from tools
and the rheumy eyed elders sit upon three legged stools,
while mothers comb through rows of the natty headed kids,
who chew then spit the cud of canes,
into the white coal flames.
Beneath a rocky outcrop, comes the swish and swagger of crocodile.
Monkeys scurry and scream, spring and snarl,
to dodge the open jaws, hunting for it’s next meal.

Madam feels the pangs from a love torn asunder;
sharp as a reptile’s hunger
vacant as the eyes of a motherless child.
An overbearing wind grows stronger, day by day.
Yet the needy gnaw on her heart and suck every last morsel of care.
It keeps her in this bastille of beggars, hooked on handouts.
Boys, able as oxen, seduced by street candy and tossed coins.
Girls, graceful as gazelles, sedate as zoo animals.
Both have learned to cower from the wilds.

The mistral carries seeds and scraps onto the far shores of tomorrow,
where Fisherkings and Flamingos sort precious pinks from borrowed blues.

Everyday the strong and feeble help each other
carry the burden of their grinding stone,
by sharing the unexpected generosity of a smile.

Madam hears a message more friendly than fierce,
“Who will help?, Who will help?”, the magpie screeches.
She hears the question that pumps the muscle of care.

Brilliant bougainvialla, perky pansies and fragrant frangipani,
flourish in red clay soils, fields of dry grass and rotting canoes.

The rhythm of ritual, the lapping of lake,
the lightening that splits a ten ton boulder in two,
the 800 year old Baobab burnt beyond recognition in moments.

Over sahara sands and ocean waves the mistral howls,
“GO!, GO!, before time snaps its jagged jaw.”

The magpie croons for his mate,
“Love’s the root of desire.
Love’s the scent that remains,
long after blossoms have waned.”

Madam’s feels no division or distinction from the love of the one above,
who carries her away on a strong north-westerly wind.

Tonight, her lover will wear her frangipani perfume
and a vase of sunflowers will brighten their room.

A forget-me-not note is tied to their hearts;
“Love’s the promise and prayer
for a world that has known
too much hunger and despair.”

- Emily Marie Bording

[Larry Robinson]

How do you make peace with a bad ending?

How do you make peace with a bad ending?
When all you fought for is going south
And domination tramples
What was that old saw?
The rich get richer….
Who says he wasn’t a visionary?

When bad ideas are taken as guidance
The sacredness, the preciousness
Of lives lived
Is preferred less than
Killing those who don’t believe
Or are in my way
Or with whom I don’t agree

When the bewitching of minds
The creation of false desires
Is even more successful
Battered into alignment with bad tv
Stupid and petty desire making
Cultures that are not cultures--
Just masking the profit machine
The buffoon Mussolinis arising
Like pins on a Mercator projection

And the consequences are obvious
Planet as we don’t know it
Nuclear run by idiots
Put in power--as if there can be any trust
Or insulation from their wills.

It should have been obvious
A great victory at hand--
Domination and discrimination
Of all sorts
Creates only more misery and fractured
Dismembered lives and spirits
Or simply obliterates those in the way.

How can it only be obvious to some?
It seems so clear.
Aggression, hate, rebounds
Read Shantideva.
Study the Bodhicaryāvatāra,
Feel the cost of your own anger and aggression.
If you know it
you can know your own misery and aggressiveness
Work it out
Or let it go
Move on.
Treasure your own clarity and
Spread it by example.
Humbly
Recognizing
Truly how stupid
I can be—at times

However bad it is out there
I am still capable of independence
And examination
Of an ethical life
Of love and fun
Of nurturance and sharing.
This belongs to me!

Remember Mandela surviving
Robin Island
Emerging with compassion
Integrity
And guts.
Admire those who are admirable--
Accepting that we all have
Some clay in our feet.

Please pardon my wistfulness--
I still hope for the bad ending
To turn
To let me turn to mold
As happy manure
Feeding another generation
And wishing them well
My son, my friends.
All the great good ones
Trying to figure out how to live
Loving, thoughtful lives
Respecting others
And having fun while
Marching and misbehaving.
Breaking the rotten eggs
Militant for what is now
And will always be true.
We are connected
And we can do a lot with knowing that.

Happy Trails!

- Phil Wolfson

[Larry Robinson]

Tree of Life Grandparents

Our olive tree when I was growing up:
an icon in our Jewish neighborhood,
easily a hundred years old,
with rough-barked branches shading the entire yard.

Women in modest dress
stopped to harvest the olives,*
not so much to save money
as to remind them of home.

Under this tree of life
passed my Jewish grandparents
when each came to visit.

Ida was old country,
her parents from Poland,
her old smells and
old Yiddish expressions
foreign to my growing interest in
The Twist,
Mr. Tambourine Man,
a*nd protests against The War.

Edna and Irv had left their heritage behind,
hosting us on Christmas,
not Hanukkah,
and wearing hippie beads to
a “happening” in the park.

One morning I walked the family dog
past a neighbor’s lawn.
A cross had been burned
into the grass the night before.
It stared at me every day
until new seeds grew in the spaces.

Soon after, I sat under our olive tree
filling out a college application
that asked my religion.

“Should I mark ‘none’?”
I asked my mother.

“You have to put ‘Jewish’,”
she said.

“Put Jewish, or else
people will think you are
trying to hide it.”


- Matt Witt

[Larry Robinson]

For the Anniversary of My Death

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

- W. S. Merwin
September 30, 1927 - March 15, 2019

[Larry Robinson]

An Elegy To Dispel Gloom
(After the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone
and Supervisor Harvey Milk in San Francisco, November 1978)


Let us not sit upon the ground

and tell sad stories
of the death of sanity.
Two humans made of flesh
are meshed in death
and no more need be said.
It is pure vanity
to think that all humanity
be bathed in red
because one young mad man
one so bad man
lost his head.
The force that through the red fuze
drove the bullet
does not drive everyone
through the City of Saint Francis
where there's a breathless hush
in the air today
a hush at City Hall
and a hush at the Hall of Justice
a hush in Saint Francis Wood
where no bird tries to sing
a hush on the Great Highway
and in the great harbor
upon the great ships
and on the Embarcadero
from the Mission Rock
to the Eagle Cafe
a hush on the great red bridge
a hush in the Outer Mission
and at Hunter's Point
a hush at a hot potato stand on Pier 39
and a hush at the People's Temple
tries its wings
a hush and a weeping
at the Convent of the Sacred Heart
on Upper Broadway
a hush upon the fleshpots
of Lower Broadway
a pall upon the punk rock
at Mabuhay Gardens
and upon the cafes and bookstores
of old North Beach
a hush upon the landscape
of the still wild West
where two sweet dudes are dead
and no more need be said.
Do not sit upon the ground and speak
of other senseless murderings
or worse disasters waiting
in the wings.
Do not sit upon the ground and talk
of the death of things beyond
these sad sad happenings.
Such men as these do rise above
our worst imaginings.

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[M/M]

Ferlinghetti will be 99 on March 24th :
https://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Ferlinghetti-speaks-out-at-99-his-voice-as-vital-12764802.php

[Ronaldo]

Ferlinghetti 1981:

[Larry Robinson]

I have shared this poem by Seamus Heaney before but, given all that is going on in the world right now, it seems that we can all use some of this good medicine. He wrote this in Northern Ireland in the 1970s during “The Troubles,” a civil war whose end few others could imagine at the time.

The Cure At Troy


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


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


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


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


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


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


- Seamus Heaney’s translation of
"The Philoctetes," by Sophocles

[Larry Robinson]

Ordinary Decency

Now he was old and used a cane most of the time; on public transportation young and old
would offer him a seat. At first, the pride of his physical strength from when he was a younger
man which had remained with him would not allow him to accept these kindly gestures. Gradually
he began to let it go; from time to time he took a seat unless there was a welcomed day when the
strength would return. This grew into an acceptance, a gratitude, and an admiration for the ordinary
people whose simple acts of kindness just sprung naturally.

- Marvin Blaustein

[Larry Robinson]

America, I Sing Back

for Phil Young, my father, Robert Hedge Coke, Whitman, and Hughes

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.

Oh, before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.

My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,

nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason

broke my long held footing sure, as any child might do.

Lo, as she pushed herself away, forced me to remove myself,
as I cried this country, my song grew roses in each tear’s fall.

My blood veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries
circled canyons, while she made herself maiden fine.

Oh, but here I am, here I am, here, I remain high on each and every peak,
carefully rumbling her great underbelly, prepared to pour forth singing—

and sing again I will, as I have always done.

Never silenced unless in the company of strangers, singing

the stoic face, polite repose, polite, while dancing deep inside, polite
Mother of her world. Sister of myself.

When my song sings aloud again. When I call her back to cradle.
Call her to peer into waters, to behold herself in dark and light,

day and night, call her to sing along, call her to mature, to envision—

Then, she will make herself over. My song will make it so

When she grows far past her self-considered purpose,
I will sing her back, sing her back. I will sing. Oh, I will—I do.

America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.

- Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

[Larry Robinson]

Blessing

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their
happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the
darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

- James Wright

[eddierosenthal]

this is another by James Wright

Lying in a Hamock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
--James Wright

[Larry Robinson]

I Am Waiting


I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder


I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder


- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Larry Robinson]

Downhill Side

In my dream
I am a mountain
With high priced homes
Newly constructed
On my breasts
And a strip mall pouring over
On my hips and thighs

And on my downhill side
Someone’s abandoned garden
Fruit trees whose best seasons
Are long past
Thorny vines gone wild
The dried skeletons
Of vegetables not nurtured
Or picked
Overgrown grasses
Nobody wants

Even so
After the rains
It will try again
Sprouts will come forward
Like young, idealistic volunteers
They will compete with the wild overgrowth
Staking out their plots
Choosing their weapons

Relentless optimism
Virtuous and mighty

- Erin Riley

[Larry Robinson]

Fire Owl

Small feathered beacon in the sand
A ring of flame glowing orange on the water’s surface
The heat held barely at bay, as everything beneath the water rolls tighter in the shell
while the fire lays waste to the hillside and moves south

Singed in the flurry upwards, the tempest striking like an unseen match
The owl stares down at a world on fire
flesh beneath feather flaring red the ground shifting
as it melts down to rivers of steel and glass

The landmarks gone
Birds of prey and scavengers alike are wiped from the sky
There is only the rolling black smoke and scorching wind
the crackling, licking flames below swallowing the landscape whole

Then you spot a jagged migration
dropping like a single arrow through the wall of flame
Horses plummeting down a rock strewn canyon
leaving a wayward funnel of dust in their wake

Humans and animals cascading to the sea.
The air off the ocean blowing cool and fine;
a curtain of respite from the hell fire

The sand rises to meet you
as you drop with the prevailing current
your ears flapping in frenzy
while the sun drops through the smoke smoldering gold
and horses thunder onto the beach

Above, the fire hurtles to the highway,
taking everything in its path,
behind it, a long trail of embers rising to the tree line
as you take it all in with an unflinching gaze

An owl’s trauma
To have seen, to have nearly been seared from the sky,
To now be wary while waiting for loft.

To find the way back
to a life now gone.

To forever be reminded of the sand.

- Jane Carpenter

[Larry Robinson]

There’s More


It is enough to know
There’s More.
A universe of galaxies resplendent with creative power,
There’s More.
A rainbow reconciling every ecstasy of color,
There’s More.
A meal that satisfies the need of every living being,
There’s More.
A work that binds up shattered limbs and lives,
There’s More.
A mind that numbers every star and grain of sand,
There’s More.
A tree whose limbs are birds, whose roots are fingers of divinity.
There’s More.
A love that pours its hope through steep ravines of grief.
There’s More.
A life completed in the mercy of our finitude.
Yes, There’s More.
“There’s more,” the subtle body spoke,
and then became the More.


- Bill Everett

[Larry Robinson]

The Things That Return

I've been down this road a time or two. I've seen the green
grass the green grass and the rabbits running and the deer
coming down from the hills to eat the last of the garden's harvest.
I've trained my eyes to catch the gold of sunset,
the silver moon rising, (the silver moon) rising over dry grass
the dry grasses and the leaves that swirl in gusts of surprise
when the tired stars open their eyes wide and dream in 4/4 time.
I've seen the frost slip in without so much as a peep
and leave us wondering where the warm days have fled,
where the warm nights have hunkered down beneath the earth.
Beneath the earth to wait out another winter.
I have closed my eyes and wondered too where the days have gone,
how the days and the nights and the stars of my dreams have blinked out
and left me standing here before that night as black
as the waiting shadow of death - inscrutable as my lover's eyes
the day he said he needed to leave because it was just too hard.
I've waited thinking everything comes around, everything
revolves like the sun and the moon and the tiny round seeds
of the dandelion that rise each spring in my morning garden.
But some things go and never come back.
My darling children's rooms stand empty still.
Empty of them and their yarn tied braids and their lithe
moon spirit bodies shining in their beds at midnight.
And no turnings of the moon's bright face smiling through
veiled windows bring back the tiny fingers and toes,
the endless songs of honeyed childhood soprano.
My love has not returned, not come round through the eternal
revolving door of love's spring scent blossoming pink on cherry boughs.
The things that return it seems are the truths that ring round our cabin doors
ring round our frost-pained windows with each new season of life.
Not the personal grasping for yesterday's love that lies darkening
the fallen leaf, but fresh new petals, a different shade of rose,
a silver hand opening that leads fall toward winter -
that sometimes startles with its clarity as the crisp cold descends,
as the bright leaves flee before it toward their dark beds.

- Diane LaRae Bodach

[Larry Robinson]

A Concerto of Spice

The subtle hint of spice, a symphony in the air
A crescendo of turmeric against mustard, sharp notes
The melodious harmony of cardamom and cinnamon wafting, a waltz
The passion and tang of citrus as fluid as a ballad’s flute,
Ginger as strong as the strum of a bass
The crisp presence of mint like the presence of my mother, the conductor of the
ensemble
She taught me that the perfect hint of lemongrass orchestrates the soothing simplicity of
balance
The heat of paprika strong as the heat of attraction
Tart zest of lemon sharp as the power of speech
The crackle of dried peppers as loud as the laughter of my childhood
The smell mingles about now, I hear it
Her presence dissolving in the wind
Her frail hands stirring the pot, and her voice
Commanding, soothing
Echoing in the shadows of my mind
Her voice calling me into a simpler life
I smell it, and in the silence
The silence, she dissolves into the air around me.


- Zoya Ahmed

[Larry Robinson]

Wrong Kids

Are they back yet, are they back?

Back, who's back?

The children...

Children? What Children?

The Ones at the Border...

Which ones, which border?

The Mexican border, the children—are they back—back to their parents?

Someone said some---not all—but some.

That's too long...children can't wait that long. How can that be?

ID...they didn't have IDS.

But surely they had bracelets...in hospitals you always wear IDS.

They didn't know.

Who?

The guards—they didn't know. When the orders came, they said children had to go in another room. No one said anything about IDS.

Where? Where did they take them?

Away. No one knows. There are places. The buildings are not marked.

How could they do this. This is not right.

Don't ask me...there's nothing that can be done.

I will write. Do you know where to write?

No, no one knows these things.

I will write. I will write the Department of Justice.

Better check online...it's tricky...I tried to write...

You did? What happened?

Said it was the wrong address. It was Juvenile Hall...said I got the wrong kids.


- Jean Wong

[Larry Robinson]

Plums Failing Well


So what if plums fall
out of the tree, to lie
squashed and decomposing
on the earth? So what if
the only attention they receive
is from the ants and birds
who find something in them
to feed from still,
all spayed and color changed?
If they could breathe,
do you think they would say
more than so what?
This is good, to live
to the end as something
to get taken. What was
the ripeness for anyhow?
Why should chromosomes blink
and twitch inside the seed,
the pit at the middle, the vast
earth-shaped center of all
of this? So what if we lie
here or there as pith
in the cold night where the owl
hoots at the stirring that will
compute into the dark color
of that calling and the ground
we leak into,
small piece by small piece.


- Linda Gregg
(September 9, 1942 - March 20, 2019)

[Larry Robinson]

hieroglyphic stairway

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I’m riding home on the Colma train
I’ve got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I’m a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I’m riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I’m the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I can’t sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

- Drew Dellinger

[Larry Robinson]

The Coal Shovel

My effortless touch of the wall device
then the whoosh of the furnace’s start
brought my father close this morning
No thermostat or gas heat for him


His was a coal burning hot air gravity furnace
a behemoth in the center of the basement
an octopus with its many asbestos
arms clinging to the basement ceiling


Winter mornings from bedroom to cellar
Dad trudged down worn wooden steps
always hopeful for some remaining fire
in the beast’s hungry gut


A look through the little window
then he’d swing open the sometimes hot
often cold cast iron door
the screech and clang our first hint of morning


Then rattle and shake the massive grate
white ash falling like heavy snow
to the tray below then ah-hah
there a glowing coal from last night’s feeding


Now the massive coal shovel scraped the cement floor
and the sound of that scrape, abrasive and shrill
leaped up the steps and every cold morning
woke us all, young and old


The inferno now safely raging
Dad closed the furnace door with a bang
that bang Mom’s signal to pour his coffee
that clang our last wake up bell


Our call to hot oat meal and flannel shirts
mackinaw jackets and hockey caps
four buckle overshoes and hand knit mittens
and maybe, just maybe enough snow


Enough dry snow for a Saturday morning thrill
sliding and screaming down the neighbor’s hill
on Donnie’s Flexible Flyer sled
with steel runners that curved up the back


If we had the snow but no Donnie
as sometimes happened - flying hell bent
with no control the scoop shovel
found a new life with my brother and I


For a few moments on cold winter mornings
free for a time from my dad’s strong hands
and away from the inferno that started all our days
that battered shovel was the fastest thing in Iowa


- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty


There are those who love to get dirty
and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
beer after work,


And those who stay clean,
just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
and juice at night.


There are those who do both,
they drink tea.


- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

A Jewish Cemetery In Germany


On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer
nor the voice of lamentation is heard there
for the dead praise not the Lord.
Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves
and cheering
each time they find one--like mushrooms in the forest, like
wild strawberries.
Here's another grave! There's the name of my mother's
mothers, and a name from the last century. And here's a name,
and there! And as I was about to brush the moss from the name--
Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave
of a kohen,
his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,
and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berries
that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair
from the face of a beautiful beloved woman.


- Yehuda Amichai