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  1. TopTop #4231
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lost

    Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
    Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
    And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
    Must ask permission to know it and be known.
    The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
    I have made this place around you.
    If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
    No two trees are the same to Raven.
    No two branches are the same to Wren.
    If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
    You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
    Where you are. You must let it find you.

    - David Wagoner
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  3. TopTop #4232
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Lost.jpg
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    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Lost
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  5. TopTop #4233
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Kookaburras

    In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
    In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
    to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
    The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
    their cage, they asked me to open the door.
    Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
    no and walked away.
    They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
    They didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
    home to their river.
    By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
    As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
    Nothing else has changed either.
    Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
    The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
    I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

    - Mary Oliver
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  7. TopTop #4234
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bird Bath

    only this
    matters: this ecstatic
    baptism

    this standing on stick-
    thin legs where the singing
    creek pools at the lip
    of the waterfall

    only this
    ruby-feathered
    chest diving to meet
    its reflection

    this beak piercing
    again and again that quivering
    surface, these wings half-
    unfolding, a ruffle

    of joy guiding rivers
    of light a tumble
    of droplets dressed
    in rainbows along your hidden
    spine

    shattering all
    decorum beneath
    blue branches in quiet

    assent.


    - Elizabeth Reninger
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  9. TopTop #4235
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    1969

    The summer everyone left for the moon
    even those yet to be born. And the dead
    who can’t vacation here but met us all there
    by the veil between worlds. The number one song
    in America was “In the Year 2525”
    because who has ever lived in the present
    when there’s so much of the future
    to continue without us.
    How the best lover won’t need to forgive you
    and surely take everything off your hands
    without having to ask, without knowing
    your name, no matter the number of times
    you married or didn’t, your favorite midnight movie,
    the cigarettes you couldn’t give up,
    wanting to kiss other people you shouldn’t
    and now to forever be kissed by the Earth.
    In the Earth. With the Earth.
    When we all briefly left it
    to look back on each other from above,
    shocked by how bright even our pain is
    running wildly beside us like an underground river.
    And whatever language is good for,
    a sign, a message left up there that reads:
    HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
    FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
    JULY 1969, A.D.
    WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.
    Then returned to continue the war.

    - Alex Dimitrov
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  11. TopTop #4236
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Earth from the Hubble telescope,
    rose stem from Sonoma County back yard,
    poem from Boulder's William Rain.

    Name:  Rain-Innocent-World.jpg
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    Last edited by Barry; 07-24-2019 at 04:50 PM.
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  13. TopTop #4237
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wait Without Hope

    I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
    For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
    For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
    But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
    Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
    So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
    Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
    The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
    The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
    Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
    Of death and birth.

    - T. S. Eliot
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  15. TopTop #4238
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    July in Washington

    The stiff spokes of this wheel

    touch the sore spots of the earth.



    On the Potomac, swan-white

    power launches keep breasting the sulphurous wave.



    Otters slide and dive and slick back their hair,

    raccoons clean their meat in the creek.



    On the circles, green statues ride like South American

    liberators above the breeding vegetation—



    prongs and spearheads of some equatorial

    backland that will inherit the globe.



    The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes,

    and die dishevelled and soft.



    We cannot name their names, or number their dates—

    circle on circle, like rings on a tree—



    but we wish the river had another shore,

    some further range of delectable mountains,



    distant hills powdered blue as a girl’s eyelid.

    It seems the least little shove would land us there,



    that only the slightest repugnance of our bodies

    we no longer control could drag us back.

    - Robert Lowell
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  17. TopTop #4239
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Witchgrass

    Something
    comes into the world unwelcome
    calling disorder, disorder—

    If you hate me so much
    don’t bother to give me
    a name: do you need
    one more slur
    in your language, another
    way to blame
    one tribe for everything—

    as we both know,
    if you worship
    one god, you only need
    One enemy—

    I’m not the enemy.
    Only a ruse to ignore
    what you see happening
    right here in this bed,
    a little paradigm
    of failure. One of your precious flowers
    dies here almost every day
    and you can’t rest until
    you attack the cause, meaning
    whatever is left, whatever
    happens to be sturdier
    than your personal passion—

    It was not meant
    to last forever in the real world.
    But why admit that, when you can go on
    doing what you always do,
    mourning and laying blame,
    always the two together.

    I don’t need your praise
    to survive. I was here first,
    before you were here, before
    you ever planted a garden.
    And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
    are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

    I will constitute the field.

    - Louise Glück
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  19. TopTop #4240
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Working Together

    We shape our self
    to fit this world

    and by the world
    are shaped again.

    The visible
    and the invisible

    working together
    in common cause,

    to produce
    the miraculous.

    I am thinking of the way
    the intangible air

    traveled at speed
    round a shaped wing
    easily holds our weight.

    So may we, in this life trust

    to those elements
    we have yet to see

    or imagine,
    and look for the true

    shape of our own self,
    by forming it well

    to the great
    intangibles about us.

    - David Whyte
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  21. TopTop #4241
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Light Hoofed

    What if we enter each day
    so silently, so seamlessly
    the birds don't sound alarms and dart away,
    our minds so well released from fits of thought
    we are kin to all that breathes,
    like grazing deer
    hidden in dapples of green

    O how we would walk then
    light hoofed and elfin eyed, even on crowded days,
    each trembling leaf a welcome
    Silky beating wings
    would cool our errant fevers of mind
    would keep us filled with awe
    and kind


    - Cynthia Poten
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  23. TopTop #4242
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America


    It's a day when all the dogs of all
    the borrowed houses are angel footing
    down the hard hardwood of middle-America's
    newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors,
    and the world's nicest pie I know
    is somewhere waiting for the right
    time to offer itself to the wayward
    and the word-weary. How come the road
    goes coast to coast and never just
    dumps us in the water, clean and
    come clean, like a fish slipped out
    of the national net of "longing for joy."
    How come it doesn't? Once, on a road trip
    through the country, a waitress walked
    in the train's diner car and swished
    her non-aproned end and said,
    "Hot stuff and food too." My family
    still says it, when the food is hot,
    and the mood is good inside the open windows.
    I'd like to wear an apron for you
    and come over with non-church sanctioned
    knee-highs and the prettiest pie of birds
    and ocean water and grief. I'd like
    to be younger when I do this, like the country
    before Mr. Meriwether rowed the river
    and then let the country fill him up
    till it killed him hard by his own hand.
    I'd like to be that dog they took with them,
    large and dark and silent and un-blamable.
    Or I'd like to be Emily Dickinson's dog, Carlo,
    and go on loving the rare un-loveable puzzle
    of woman and human and mind. But, I bet I'm more
    the house beagle and the howl and the obedient
    eyes of everyone wanting to make their own kind
    of America, but still be America, too. The road
    is long and all the dogs don't care too much about
    roadside concrete history and postcards of state
    treasures, they just want their head out the window,
    and the speeding air to make them feel faster
    and younger, and newer than all the dogs
    that went before them, they want to be your only dog,
    your best-loved dog, for this good dog of today
    to be the only beast that matters.

    - Ada Limón
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  25. TopTop #4243
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Coming to Know Silence

    30 miles west of Ketchum
    In the heart of the Sawtooths
    I came to know silence.
    It tiptoed in shyly
    Following the belated curtain call of the sun,
    As it eased into the maw of the mountains.

    Slowly the cranes packed up their raucous squawks,
    The ground squirrels ceased their alarming squeaks.
    The wind, which whipped the pines fiercely all afternoon,
    Dropped to a library whisper,
    Then nothing at all.

    I knew the night was alive with deer and elk,
    Antelope and sheep,
    But they seemed to walk in stocking feet.

    I felt like the trail horse
    Swiveling my ears to the window
    Hearing a nothingness as vast as an Idaho valley,
    As wide as the Western sky.

    Deep beneath an alpine quilt,
    I listened
    And listened
    And listened
    To that most holy silence.


    - Melissa Kelley
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  27. TopTop #4244
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Confess

    These days I think too much
    about assassination, and let me just say
    I have come down against it every time,
    swatting it away, a plague-ridden fly
    in my otherwise mild and law-abiding imagination,
    and that I do not accept the legal argument
    that targeted killings are a country’s form
    of self-defense, regardless of whether the target
    will ever see the inside of a detention center,
    and be faced with deciding, like thousands
    of seven-year-olds, whether the assigned Mylar blanket
    goes over or under on the mud-caked concrete floor.
    Every time, I rise up on the right side of the question
    though I have gone so far as to research the word:
    From the Arabic, hashshashin, the Assassins of Persia,
    perhaps so-named for the necessity of getting high
    before slipping in the blade. (In private,
    some Border Patrol agents consider migrant deaths
    a laughing matter; others are succumbing to depression,
    anxiety, or substance abuse.)
    How, with or without the name, the act
    is older than our ability to write it down.
    How way back in the Old Testament,
    there it was alongside the begetting and begats.
    How in the Roman Empire, strangling in the bathtub
    was the method of choice for murdering one’s king,
    while, as you might expect, in Japan it was the sword.
    Here in the U.S. we, as always,
    prefer the gun, and let me just say,
    I do not and will not own one.
    I confess only to the image in my mind
    of the mongrel dogs of history lapping at the wound.

    - Pauletta Hansel
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  29. TopTop #4245
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What Changes


    My father’s hopes travel with me

    years after he died. Someday

    we will learn how to live. All of us

    surviving without violence

    never stop dreaming how to cure it.

    What changes? Crossing a small street

    in Doha Souk, nut shops shuttered,

    a handkerchief lies crumpled in the street,

    maroon and white, like one my father had,

    from Jordan. Perfectly placed

    in his pocket under his smile, for years.

    He would have given it to anyone.

    How do we continue all these days?

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  31. TopTop #4246
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Elder of the Sea



    We gather, reverently rooting shapes into the soft sand.

    You rise and bow, filling the sea with gratitude

    Your profoundly deep and moist breaths echo inside our silent hearts

    And the full spectrum of your body sounds

    Shake the undulating tides toward shore.

    You silently speak in many tongues so each of us can hear

    the Truth inside our own and eager hearts.

    We listen with unbroken intent.

    Nothing is missed, no one is forgotten.

    After many breaths, you breathe your ancient counsel:

    I carry my young through these sacred waters that have

    Known many births.

    One day my calf will travel alone and carry her own message

    In the tongue of the Great Mother.

    Your own young already travels the Great Sea and

    Listens before her time.

    You belong to this timeless knowing

    And now free to live among your own sacred waters.

    Swim your way Home now,

    Swim your way Home now,

    You will always find me living in the Great chamber

    of your own heart.


    - Shirley C Gillotti
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  33. TopTop #4247
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Things About The Sun


    Any time the sun
    touches our part of the earth
    we say the sun shines.

    Sometimes dogs bark at the sun,
    but I don’t mind it.

    There are flowers the sun never sees.

    Many times I have said to it,
    “Wait!” And it waited.

    With the sun, it will be all right
    after I’m gone.

    Where it can, the sun endlessly
    examines things, nothing too large
    or small for long, long attention.
    When I walk I would view
    like that -- all: rich, poor, young,
    old, near, far. And I’d save a report
    for whenever the sun does.

    Mornings when it looks
    at me, for an instant there are
    all those other times.

    - William Stafford
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  35. TopTop #4248
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Questionnaire

    How much poison are you willing

    to eat for the success of the free
    market and global trade? Please
    name your preferred poisons.

    For the sake of goodness, how much
    evil are you willing to do?
    Fill in the following blanks
    with the names of your favorite
    evils and acts of hatred.

    What sacrifices are you prepared
    to make for culture and civilization?
    Please list the monuments, shrines,
    and works of art you would
    most willingly destroy

    In the name of patriotism and
    the flag, how much of our beloved
    land are you willing to desecrate?
    List in the following spaces
    the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
    you could most readily do without.

    State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
    the energy sources, the kinds of security;
    for which you would kill a child.
    Name, please, the children whom
    you would be willing to kill.


    - Wendell Berry
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  37. TopTop #4249
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    August 6

    can we forget that flash?
    suddenly 30,000 in the streets disappeared
    in the crushed depths of darkness
    the shrieks of 50,000 died out

    when the swirling yellow smoke thinned
    buildings split, bridges collapsed
    packed trains rested singed
    and a shoreless accumulation of rubble and embers - Hiroshima
    before long, a line of naked bodies walking in groups, crying
    with skin hanging down like rags
    hands on chests
    stamping on crumbled brain matter
    burnt clothing covering hips

    corpses lie on the parade ground like stone images of Jizo, dispersed in all
    directions
    on the banks of the river, lying one on top of another, a group that had crawled to
    a tethered raft

    also gradually transformed into corpses beneath the sun's scorching rays
    and in the light of the flames that pierced the evening sky
    the place where mother and younger brother were pinned under alive
    also was engulfed in flames
    and when the morning sun shone on a group of high-school girls
    who had fled and were lying
    on the floor of the armory, in excrement
    their bellies swollen, one eye crushed, half their bodies raw flesh with skin ripped
    off, hairless, impossible to tell who was who
    all had stopped moving
    in a stagnant, offensive smell
    the only sound the wings of flies buzzing around metal basins

    city of 300,000
    can we forget that silence?
    in that stillness
    the powerful appeal
    of the white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return home
    that tore apart our hearts
    can it be forgotten?!

    - Toge Sankichi (translated by Karen Thornber)

    Toge Sankichi (1917 – 1953) was a Japanese poet, activist and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  39. TopTop #4250
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Aerial Photograph Before the Atomic Bomb


    Why did such terrible events
    catch my eye? After Hiroshima,
    I turned the picture in Life around
    in circles, trying to figure out this huge
    wheel in the middle of the air, how it turned,
    like a ferris wheel, its lights
    burning like eyes.
    The atom spinning
    on course over the sleeping
    vulnerable planet. I turned it the way one might
    turn a kaleidoscope or prism. Even then I
    knew about the town lying under,
    like a child sleeping under the
    watchful gaze of a rapist, before the spasm of
    stopped breath, the closure at the
    scream of the throat, before the body is awakened
    along its shocked spine to bursting
    light, the legs closing, the arms,
    like a chilled flower. That eye, that spinning eye

    seeking the combustible.
    This was a heat
    I had felt already in our house on Norwood.
    Everything
    looked green, placid as a green field,
    predictable as machinery — an antique clock.
    This was the instant
    before destruction,
    the fiery atom stuck
    as if under the control of the artist
    before it spilled and became irretrievable.
    Could it be sucked back
    in its lead bag, the doors of the underbelly slammed,
    and those men who would go on to
    suicide and madness, go on instead
    to become lovers, priests, Buddhist
    smilers and scholars, gardeners in the small plots
    of contained passion?

    - Toi Derricotte
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  41. TopTop #4251
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Who Are We, Anyway?


    July is our month for ducklings.

    The first weeks I'll see 6 to 10,
    once 12 !
    wondrous
    ducklings
    paddling in the creeks and ponds
    on the trails I hike
    in early mornings.

    Then,
    as our predators,
    coyote, fox, turtle,
    egret, heron, raccoon,
    once an osprey,
    owl at night,
    hawk during the day,
    feed on the little ducks,
    I'll see the parents with fewer kids:
    4, then 2,
    then sometimes 1,
    and, for many:
    none.

    I say "Life," to myself.

    This morning
    though
    it wasn't so easy.

    I saw a single duckling
    paddling at the pond's edge,

    and I hurt for it.

    My heart went south,
    to our border,
    where we separate
    hundreds !
    of little kids
    from their desperate parents.

    Coyote, heron, raccoon,
    I understand.

    I don't understand us,
    we Americans:
    who are we ?

    I don't understand.

    Who are we, anyway ?

    - Trout Black
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #4252
    american dream's Avatar
    american dream
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I share the poet's sorrow for the ducklings, though, around here, the ducks' predator is more likely a well-fed domestic cat!
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  45. TopTop #4253
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prayer of the Unconceived

    Men and women who are on Earth
    You are our creators.
    We, the unconceived, beseech you:
    Let us have living bread
    The builder of our new body.
    Let us have pure water
    The vitalizer of our blood.
    Let us have clean air
    So that every breath is a caress.
    Let us feel the petals of jasmine and roses
    Which are as tender as our skin.

    Men and women who are on Earth
    You are our creators.
    We, the unconceived, beseech you:
    Do not give us a world of rage and fear
    For our minds will be rage and fear.
    Do not give us violence and pollution
    For our bodies will be disease and abomination.
    Let us be wherever we are
    Rather than bringing us
    Into a tormented self-destroying humanity,

    Men and women who are on Earth
    You are our creators.
    We, the unconceived, beseech you:
    If you are ready to love and to be loved,
    Invite us to this Earth
    Of the thousand Wonders.
    And we will be born
    To love and to be loved.

    - Laura Huxley
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  47. TopTop #4254
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Keeps

    Sun makes the day new.
    Tiny green plants emerge from earth.
    Birds are singing the sky into place.
    There is nowhere else I want to be but here.
    I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
    We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
    I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
    Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
    Where have you been? they ask.
    And what has taken you so long?
    That night after eating, singing, and dancing
    We lay together under the stars.
    We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
    It is unspeakable.
    It is everlasting.
    It is for keeps.

    - Joy Harjo
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  49. TopTop #4255
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dark Heart Warrior

    What kind of a whack job would wanna head into a dark, cold cave?
    Particularly when you're already ill and bone tired?
    Show me the man who wants to pursue the heart of his fear, who chooses to move into the deeper darkness.
    Rumi tells us to, "invite in the dark thought, the shame, the malice".
    Are you willing to invite in your sadness and fear, consciously choose to hold it and push into your most tender places?
    Seeking the light won't help you now
    You can't find darkness with light
    You need to go dark
    You have to feel into those painful places
    Willing to tolerate the gaze of your own dark eyes
    Trusting that by exploring our suffering we will find salvation
    Dark heart Warrior step forward, take a breath and say the prayer of deep trust
    Let me know if you have something better to do

    - Alan Cohn
    Last edited by Barry; 08-12-2019 at 01:49 PM.
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  51. TopTop #4256
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    section of my painting circa 1959, man and woman in a cave…awaiting the light.
    Name:  Cave.jpg
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    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Dark Heart Warrior

    What kind of a whack job would wanna head into a dark, cold cave?
    Particularly when you're already ill and bone tired?
    Show me the man who wants to pursue the heart of his fear, who chooses to move into the deeper darkness.
    Rumi tells us to, "invite in the dark thought, the shame, the malice".
    Are you willing to invite in your sadness and fear, consciously choose to hold it and push into your most tender places?
    Seeking the light won't help you now
    You can't find darkness with light
    You need to go dark
    You have to feel into those painful places
    Willing to tolerate the gaze of your own dark eyes
    Trusting that by exploring our suffering we will find salvation
    Dark heart Warrior step forward, take a breath and say the prayer of deep trust
    Let me know if you have something better to do

    - Alan Cohn
    Last edited by Barry; 08-13-2019 at 01:30 PM.
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  53. TopTop #4257
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    How Can Goodness Prevail?

    How can goodness prevail in the lockstep of our fears
    and the torments of our othering?
    To tread ever so lightly that we do not injure
    seems a tall order for our troubled psyches
    stepping into the future, blind in a dark room.
    Hate is so easy,
    love so often a kind of unbearable vulnerability,
    the exposure of uncertainty,
    the humility of tolerance.
    Violence is so easy,
    just an afterthought to our cruel certitudes,
    gentleness ill-afforded
    in the bankruptcies of our presumptions.
    We dance as we do,
    but what piper calls the tune,
    which piper do we pay,
    and at what cost?
    The trampling continues,
    the din disturbs deeply.
    No solutions.

    - Tim Hicks
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    M/M
  55. TopTop #4258
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    If you Want to Watch the Perseids

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you have to understand the power of night
    to ice your bones inside the thin fleece jacket.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you have to find a quiet road away from street lamps
    and the moon’s cheesecake grin.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you have to hoard patience like four-leaf clovers
    and swallow words you want to speak.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you have to sprawl across the hood of your car
    and cock you head at an impossible angle.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you have to soft-focus your eyes
    ‘til they sweep the village of sky.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you must be willing to be distracted
    by the courtship of Great-Horned Owls.

    If you want to watch the Perseids
    you must risk disappointment
    and count your gratitude one star at a time.

    - Sande Anfang
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  57. TopTop #4259
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Colossus

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
    "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
    With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


    - Emma Lazarus
    New York City, 1883
    (Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)
    Last edited by Barry; 08-15-2019 at 12:51 PM.
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  59. TopTop #4260
    wisewomn's Avatar
    wisewomn
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Note "the world-wide welcome." The Trumpettes will probably want to excise it, given their "Europeans only" policy.
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