Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

The Times They Are A-Changin


Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'


Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'


Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'


Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’


- Bob Dylan

[Larry Robinson]

unwritten summer poem




digs underground to five feet, skirts a 33-degree Fahrenheit aquifer and turns
left at a mole crossing


hides in mushroom-and-lichen-lined tunnel where millipede and ferret
wrestle, disturbing the peace


probes northwest where three badgers and a chipmunk make competing
offers on groundhog two-bedroom


questions decision to stay below for the long haul


does a 180 to upward trajectory in hope that air will give clarity


breaks into open and implores convocation of irises to suggest an identity:
sonnet? villanelle? haiku? other?


they request 11 unrhymed lines, the longest having 35 words and the
shortest, two -- oh, and five question marks


knows writing is hard enough without those absurd requirements


burrows down again to rest and think: travel all the way to earth's core where
silence should be complete and poetry unneeded or rise again to surface and
in spite of everything get to work?


heads up again to chance


the light.


- David Beckman

[Larry Robinson]

None Can Breathe

In Memory of George Floyd

Murdered by those hired to protect him: May 25, 2020


When any one of us can’t breathe
None of us can
When the knee crushes the neck
We are all crushed by tyranny
The knee is the clapper stolen from
Freedom’s bell

His cry, I can’t breathe
Is your own wretched cry
See Me
Hear Me
Love me for who I am
Love my soul for that is
All that I am

His call for Mama, Mama
Is your own cry for Mama
Mama Gaia, Pachamamaå
Hold us, support us
Mama Ishtar, Isis,
Kuan Yin, Kali,
Bast, Brigid
Protect us
Mama Shekinah
Be with us always
Mama Tara
Free us

Mama, help me breathe
You have 8 minutes and 46 seconds
Before it’s too late
Blow breath into the blue
Lips of the baby

Blow breath into the
Broken hearted mamas whose
Children have died at the rope,
The baton, the gun, the knee
Blow breath into every closed
Blue uniformed heart

Don’t think it can’t
Be your neck
And don’t you dare believe
It can’t be your knee
We all have within us
Illumined wisdom
And wounded souls

For all of us
All that our aggrieved souls
Need are just two words
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I am so sorry!

If it is not said to you
When you need it most
Take your own tender heart
Into your hands
And whisper
I’m sorry my heart
I’m sorry my friend
Please Forgive
Please Love
Please

- Sally Churgel

[Larry Robinson]

We Who Dream Know There Are No Borders

“ . . . my cells, which are my stars . . .” Frida Kahlo

Spring Lake, Santa Rosa, CA

Haloed by redwoods, a vulture sky,
and plump, comical geese,
the soul-body of Guadalupe shimmers.

North on our backs, around our necks,
in our skin, snuggled in suitcases,
constant in cages, flowing underground.

With September’s feathered heat and bountiful
barbeques. Tunneling cold tickles
our legs through the water’s massage.

Girls and boys play-fight for swan, burger, and
unicorn floats. Reborn in dream-water
lovers cradle one another, kids scream.

Late afternoons a breeze from the Pacific.
Geese gabble in, splash down with cartoon faces.
Without wings we made it. Lost a few. Lost a lot.

Among thorns roses, food trucks, vineyards,
hoodies woven with sweat and song, spirit-
water blessings, fresh sweet miracles,
we who dream know there are no borders.

- Gwynn O’Gara

[Larry Robinson]

Acres of Ancestry


For the descendants of Africans living in the USA pursuing justice for 1.5 million acres of Black-owned land.
As long as I have a pig and garden, no one can tell me what to do.
—Fannie Lou Hamer


Mine our lineages
You will find fortitude and insistence
I grew up on Heirs Property
A family blessing and a United States problem


Took 15 years for me to come back down
My granddaddy’s dirt road and see
His wild green field free
And Black like me


Secretly purchased marshland
From his father who was born a sharecropper
My daddy tells me how my grandma and granddaddy
Turned a swamp into firm land for a house


Hogs, cows, vegetables, broom grass, and chickens
How Granddaddy Silas did this with mental
And soul injuries on brown and Pall Mall since age 13
How Grandma Lizzie listened to neighbor stories on the porch


How her children and granddaddy watched fields reap
How she prayed over our family
How they knew the land like God
Now


I’m thinking about the Combahee River Raid and Ma Tubman
How she kept saying:
My people ARE free
Now


My mind is jumping loops of Grandma Thelma boiling pine


“Trust a doctor for who?”


How one day the police pulled up the drive and I watched
With eight-year-old eyes as granddaddy said, “Get the Hell
Off this land” No blink


How my kin and the Earth ground me
Make me ask what’s 12
When I’m seeing 20/20
And the neon sign of stars read:


Sankofa: The Land says return to me
Sankofa: The Land says return to me
Sankofa: Mine your lineage for fortitude


I insist


Ain’t nothing wrong with us
But we been contortin’ and bendin’ Black
To earn our way to freedom
But these days


The little one and I are outside
Growing squash and sage in grandma and granddaddy’s field
We watch the birds
We sway with the pine


Seem like every time
I go outside I find
An artifact
Smooth blue glass, oyster shells, and brick


The USDA got rules and regulations
We mine our lineages for fortitude and insistence
In this place of European land grants
Black codes and unjust generational wealth


We are a listening people
Who know without having to speak
And we don’t mind watching the wind do work
Clear as day, in a vision, my Granddaddy Silas comes to me:


Chile, who you asking for freedom?
Don’t you know how to aim?
How to grow?
Don’t you know you Black as God
As the dirt all green grows up out of?
Don’t you know buildings go up and down every day?
Nature can takeover all dem ting dem folk
Worshippin’ and you ain’t a thing beggin’ to be seen, chile, BREATHE
You was born free


- Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul

[Larry Robinson]

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.


A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.


Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.


- Sheenagh Pugh

[Larry Robinson]

Hymn To Time


Time says “Let there be”
every moment and instantly
there is space and the radiance
of each bright galaxy.


And eyes beholding radiance.
And the gnats’ flickering dance.
And the seas’ expanse.
And death, and chance.


Time makes room
for going and coming home
and in time’s womb
begins all ending.


Time is being and being
time, it is all one thing,
the shining, the seeing,
the dark abounding.


- Ursula K. Le Guin

[Larry Robinson]

The North Star


When ritual bonds fracture,
handshakes endanger;
When veneer peels, reveals
the sudden care
for the jailed, the homeless,
as mere self-protection;
When our rulers rule clueless,
no skill but deception,
jockeys for advantage
regard-less, care-less,
while their murdochs*
disgrace the fourth estate;
When factions war
in the uncivil twilight
like fissured siblings
at their father’s funeral;


When our economic engine
of consumer consumption
lurches us sputtering
down the bouldered cliff,
while, all out
of touch,
mad men at the wheel
scheme to give us
the business
as usual,
Hit the gas raving “Go Go Go!”—
that’s all they know—


What will we do?
What will it take, this obscure future
that abruptly demands us?
Where should we start but to find
our own center, deeply in touch,
One by one. Together.



- Paul DeMarco


*Murdoch - a Scottish term for describing a man who is “a selfish old beast”

[Larry Robinson]

Waiting on the Mayflower


“what, to the american slave, is your 4th of july?”—Frederick Douglass



i. august 1619

arrived in a boat, named
and unnamed, twenty, pirated

away from a portuguese
slaver, traded for victuals.

drowned in this land of fresh,
volatile clearings and folk

with skin like melted
cowrie shells. soon shedding

servitude. soon reaping
talents sown on african soil.

after indenture, christians,
colonists. not english, but

not yet not-white. antoney
and isabella, whose marriage

stretched the short shadows
of america’s early afternoon

into the dusky reaches of evening,
whose conjugal coitus spent

first the choice coin of africa
on rough virginian citizenship,

baptized their son, william,
into the church of england.


ii. december 1638

fear must have shuddered
into boston on the backs

of true believers—men and
women of an unadorned god—

deep in the heavy black fabric
of their coats and dresses like

a stench. black a mark of
pride they wore as if branded,

never dreaming they could
take it off. envy anticipated

their advent. glittered at them,
settling in, from the knife

blades of the massachusetts.
seeped like low-pitched

humming from the fur
lining the natives’ warm

blankets. but desire docked
in 1638. in from the harbor

flocked a people whose eyes
sparked like stars, even near

death. whose hair promised
a mixture of cotton and river

water and vines, a texture
the fingers ached for. who

wholly inhabited a skin the
midnight color of grace

that clarified the hue of the
pilgrims’ woolen weeds. fear

and envy claimed pride of place,
put desire’s cargo to good use.


iii. march 1770

that night, crispus attucks
dreamed. how he’d attacked

his would-be master and fled
in wild-eyed search of self-

determination. discarded
virginia on the run and ran

out of breath in salt-scented
boston. found there, if not

freedom, fearlessness. a belief
in himself that rocked things

with the uncontrolled power
of the muscular atlantic, power

to cradle, to capsize. awoke
angry again at the planter

who’d taken him for a mule
or a machine. had shouldered

a chip the size of concord
by the time the redcoat dared

to dare him. died wishing he’d
amassed such revolutionary

ire in virginia. died dreaming
great britain was the enemy.


iv. july 4th: last
but not least

17-, 18-, 19-76 and still
this celebration’s shamed

with gunpowder and words
that lie like martyrs in cold

blood. africa’s descendents,
planting here year after year

the seeds of labor, sweating
bullets in this nation’s warts,

have harvested the rope,
the rape, the ghetto, the cell,

the fire, the flood, and the
blame for you-name-it. so

today black folks barbeque
ribs and smother the echoes

of billie’s strange song in
sauces. drink gin. gladly

holiday to heckle speeches
on tv. pretend to parade.

turn out in droves for distant
detonations, chaos, controlled

as always, but directed
away from us tonight. stare

into the mirror of the sky
at our growing reflection,

boggled by how america
gawks at the passing pinpoints

of flame, but overlooks the vast,
ebony palm giving them shape

- Evie Shockley

[Larry Robinson]

Antilamentation


Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.


- Dorianne Laux

[Larry Robinson]

What We Need Is Here


Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.


- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Darkness and Light, Dueling


Jimmy Santiago Baca examines shades of darkness.
Perhaps those who christened the mourning cloak
butterfly saw hope in that glowing yellow hem.
I always had my own interpretation for the classic
terra cotta heart, determinedly sprouting
blooms and new growth, despite being wrapped
in pain. We are formed from star stuff –
how could we not be filled with light?
Tender in this uncertain time, we dart uneasily
between the loneliness of the darkest woods and
the intermittent and blinding bright lure of hope.


The differences, degrees of loss, of angst, are
pored over. Penned and parsed. The difficulties
are infinitely more daunting for some,
with inequalities shamefully unmasked.
That annoying salvo that “We are all in the same
boat.” causes fury that from your grand yacht,
you don’t have to see those struggling
for a grip on a piece of driftwood.
None of these dialogues or diatribes may matter.
Hopefully, they will galvanize some into action.
Even we optimists will allow for some fear,
as well as an excruciating deep sorrow.
The cost of so many souls. And then the anger
stockpiled by generations of ancestors.
Prayers for timely antidotes.


- pamela warren williams

[Larry Robinson]

Antidotes To Fear Of Death

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.

And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:

To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.

- Rebecca Elson

[Barry]

[Larry Robinson]

'Colored’


The Spanish cognate ‘colorado’
looks like it means ‘colored’
but in reality means ‘red’
and triggers images of love,
perhaps, maybe of blood.
Applied to the skin this color
used to mean, ‘an Indian’,
another racist designation that
has fallen out of use which now
means ‘a person born in India’.

Native Americans did in fact
come here from Asia, an origin
that until recently could get
them classified as ‘yellow peril’,
understood to be referring
to ‘people from the Far East’,
actually, from here, far West.

Some original indigenous
tribes migrated farther south
into the world we know
as Latin America, although
the language this implies
is not what’s spoken there
by the inhabitants called ‘brown’
—by some, ‘the noble race’—
indeed, ‘people of the earth’.

Tellingly, however, none
of these groups self-identify
by the colors Europeans
from the other side of Iceland
painted them.
Consider how
our forefathers flee hunger,
persecution, write treatises
and speak sin-cere-ly about
freedom…then found it on
white privilege…whereupon
the shackling roots of slavery
reach deeper into every mind.

In my lifetime ‘black’ people
worked hard to counter many
‘evil’ connotations of their color
and they affirmed it’s ‘beautiful’.
Alas. It keeps on meaning,
‘I can’t breathe.’

But finally today, we are bearing
witness to a moment that our newly
great George Floyd has given us

when Martin Luther King’s content
of character stands forth from its granite
as if quickening his Dream of Promise
so I say here and now to you that

I believe we will get there

to where the knee of justice

on the neck of brutality

breaks the back of racism

with liberty once and for all

thus together let us get to work.


- Bill Greenwood

[wisewomn]

Would you cite your source, please?

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/where-native-americans-come

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.o...americans-come

No, Bill, Native Americans did not come from Asia. Origin stories and research in the past decade has proven that.

[podfish]

No, Bill, Native Americans did not come from Asia. Origin stories and research in the past decade has proven that.

you're going to leave it there ???? where did they come from, then?

[Larry Robinson]

"next to of course god america i


love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh


say can you see by the dawn's early my


country 'tis of centuries come and go


and are no more what of it we should worry


in every language even deafanddumb


thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gory


by jingo by gee by gosh by gum


why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-


iful than these heroic happy dead


who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter


they did not stop to think they died instead


then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"


He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water


- e. e. cummings

[Larry Robinson]

The Real Work


What I would say in one sentence is that, for Americans, the real work is becoming native to North America. The real work is becoming native in your heart, coming to understand we really live here, that this is really the continent we're on and that our loyalties are here, to these mountains and rivers, to these plant zones, to these creatures. The real work involves developing a loyalty that goes back before the formation of any nation state, back billions of years and thousands of years into the future. The real work is accepting citizenship in the continent itself.


- Gary Snyder

[Larry Robinson]

Awakening


the best thinking
in self and others
causes much deliberation
between sisters and brothers
when thinking and feelings
get in the ring
and when they are apart
each does its own thing.


It’s not hard to arrive
at the point of inception
as we weave through the vibes
to avoid frustration
but even when we’re cool and collected
a moment comes – we feel rejected
sparks fly and suddenly
it’s not the expected.


This speaks of the human condition
obsessions, addictions, divisions
we cry for benedictions as we hack.
A tale of being split, that’s our stint
but check the glint in the crack.


All things considered
what is the mission
why do we think, how is it we feel
we’re on the brink of a revolution
in need of a new deal
oh but don’t keel, a wind comes,
the sails move, imagine, create
culture shift – our next meal.


- Jayro Dyer

[Larry Robinson]

School Prayer
In the name of daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder
as an architect of peace.
In the name of the sun and its minors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons of the firefly
and the apple, I will honor all life
wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars


- Diane Ackerman

[Larry Robinson]

This Is What You Shall Do


This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem
and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face
and between the lashes of your eyes
and in every motion and joint of your body.


- Walt Whitman

[Larry Robinson]

The Leap


50 years ago

At age 19
Intoxicated by Kerouac’s
On The Road
We went down to the
Railroad tracks
Behind the University
And the Graveyard
Hopping our first freight

Moving just slow enough
For my buddy to
Grab the ladder
Picking up speed
With me behind
Me barely able to
Catch up and
Grab hold

The momentum scarily
Swinging my legs underneath
Toward the wheels
But mercifully slamming against
The solid axle block

Clambering up the ladder
To the top of the boxcar
Flattened out up there
Our spirits soaring
With the thrill of
Adventure and Freedom
The winter air
A piercing chill
The sky having grown dark
As we’re pulling into the
Wilmington rail yard
Another freight
One track over
Pulling out of the yard

Now the two trains
Momentarily in synch
One slowing down
The other speeding up
My buddy
Crazy with adrenaline
Signals me to jump
From the one to the other
Before I can object
He’s made the leap
To me the gap looks too wide
Yet following his lead
I too make the leap

Now a bright spotlight
From the engine up front
Swings back
Lighting us up and
Our train
with brakes
Squealing
Seemingly stopping
On a dime

Our hands and feet
Barely touch the rungs
As we go flying
Down the ladder
Angry shouts behind us
As we crash onto the midnight
Sidewalks of Wilmington
Hiding behind a dumpster
Hearts thumping mightily in
Our chests
Giving way to relief
Of not being caught

Prior to this
In late night dorm bull sessions
We had talked about The Leap
That most adults never take
Choosing instead safety and
Stultification
We vowed we would make
The Leap
Only years later learning about
The Call to Adventure and
The Hero’s Journey
Embedded in the very
DNA of young males
The imperative to test themselves
Against the rules
Against the boundaries
Against their deepest fears
Against all common good sense

Do not presume such energy
No longer lurks
It can be a dangerous drive
In a dangerous time
Beware of charismatic leaders
Willing to capitalize on the
Vulnerability of youth
For their own ends
For good
or
For evil

- David Van Nuys

[gardenmaniac]

ah, yes:

1964 in Panther Hollow

intoxicated by same
but lacking male DNA

I did little more than
watch and dream ...

The Leap


50 years ago...

[Barry]

[Larry Robinson]

We Need Each Other Now


We need each other now.
In truth, we always have.
But as things disintegrate,
as chaos and disorder reign,
we become like bones,
scattered and
stripped clean of all
that is inessential.
Let’s reassemble ourselves,
the way Isis did with Osiris,
or La Loba with her wolf bones.
Let’s find a new configuration,
this part mine, that part yours –
Perhaps something original
will emerge, or
something ancient.
Let’s light a candle now, friends,
so together we might see


how to begin.


- Maya Spector

[gardenmaniac]

thanks again, Larry - this is spot on!

We Need Each Other Now


We need each other now.
In truth, we always have.
But as things disintegrate,
as chaos and disorder reign,
we become like bones,
scattered and
stripped clean of all
that is inessential.
Let’s reassemble ourselves,
the way Isis did with Osiris,
or La Loba with her wolf bones.
Let’s find a new configuration,
this part mine, that part yours –
Perhaps something original
will emerge, or
something ancient.
Let’s light a candle now, friends,
so together we might see


how to begin.


- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

Death Comes To Town


The church bell tolls 12 times.
A tumbleweed careens down
parched mainstreet.
Where is everyone who said they had my back?
At the intersection
Nemesis
dressed in black.
My feet shuffle forward.
Masked faces press against the saloon windows.
I wonder who betrayed Me?
The waitress who didn't wear her mask over her nose?
The drunk Sacramento couple who wouldn't wear masks?
The boardwalk creaks.
Grit in my mouth.
Unfinished list in my pocket:
regrets
loves
treasures.
A gopher breaks through the hardpan.
Where have all your brave words gone?

Nemesis' ivory face
glints.
A barn owl screams.
It's not over, until it's over.
Guffaw.
Unamused
Nemesis sets up the table
unfurls the chess board
bids me to move.
White pawn to e4.


- Bob Burnett

[Larry Robinson]

Like The Comet

I´d like to sit where rhyme cannot reach me

far from edges and limits, methods and axioms.
Where two plus two is anything but four.
Where fluid self mixes with everything
and nothing remembers what it is.
I´d like to lose myself only to find me again
lying behind sunsets
and let myself die one more time
to follow the comet which, unannounced,
lit up the stunned river of the night
and showed us our original face.





Como el cometa
Quiero sentarme donde la rima no me alcance
lejos de bordes y límites, métodos y axiomas.
Donde dos más dos sea cualquier cosa menos cuatro.
Donde el ser fluido se mezcle con todo
y nada se acuerde de lo que es.
Quiero perderme para volver a encontrarme
tendida detrás de atardeceres
y dejarme morir una vez más
para seguir al cometa que sin aviso encendió
el azorado río nocturno
y nos volvió a mostrar nuestra cara original.

- Virginia Francisco

[Larry Robinson]

The Icelandic Language


In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.


In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.


But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.


The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.


In this language, you can't chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.


Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.


- Bill Holm