Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

We Have Come to Be Danced


We have come to be danced

not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance

We have come to be danced
not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance
the blow the chip off our shoulder dance
the slap the apology from our posture dance

We have come to be danced
not the monkey see, monkey do dance
one, two dance like you
one two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
tearing scabs & scars open dance
the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance’’[‘]’]’’]];.;
;,

We have come to be danced
not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws & tongues dance
the shed dead cells and slip into
the luminous skin of love dance

We have come to be danced
not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance
the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
the mother may I?
yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance
the everyone can come to our heaven dance

We have come to be danced
where the kingdom’s collide
in the cathedral of flesh
to burn back into the light
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
to root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
WE HAVE COME

- Jewel Mathieson
(1958-2020)

[Larry Robinson]

Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge


Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.


- Ursula LeGuin

[Larry Robinson]

The News

The big country beat the little country up
like a schoolyard bully,
so an even bigger country stepped in
and knocked it on its ass to make it nice,
which reminds me of my Uncle Bob’s
philosophy of parenting.
It’s August, I’m sitting on the porch swing,
touching the sores inside my mouth
with the tip of my tongue, watching the sun
go down in the west like a sinking ship,
from which a flood of stick orange bleeds out.
It’s the hour of meatloaf perfume emanating from the houses.
It’s the season of Little League practice
and atonal high school band rehearsals.
You can’t buy a beach umbrella in the stores till next year.
The summer beauty pageants are all over,
and no one I know won the swimsuit competition.
This year illness just flirted with me,
picking me up and putting me down
like a cat with a ball of yarn,
so I walked among the living like a tourist,
and I wore my health uneasily, like a borrowed shirt,
knowing I would probably have to give it back.
There are the terrible things that happen to you
and the terrible things that you yourself make happen,
like Frank, who gave his favorite niece
a little red sports car
for her to smash her life to pieces in.
And the girl on the radio sings,
You know what I’m talking about. Bawhoop, awhoop.
This year it seems like everyone is getting tattoos—
Great White sharks and Chinese characters,
hummingbirds and musical notes—
but the only tattoo I would want to get
is of a fist and a rose.
But I can’t tell how they will fit together on my shoulder.
If the rose is inside the fist, it will be crushed or hidden;
if the fist is closed, as a fist by definition is,
it cannot reach out to the rose.
Yet the only tattoo I want this year
is of a fist and rose, together.
Fist, that helps you survive.
Rose, without which
you have no reason to live.


- Tony Hoagland

[Larry Robinson]

2020 Walk to Salt Water

When they go low, we go high. Michele Obama
How low can you go? Chubby Checker

I.
A spring-loaded clip
unchains the first gate.
Our path heads for
a grey volcanic outcrop,
reminder that this bay
marks the fault line
at our country’s edge.

What relief to leave behind
the morning paper stories
of this small “p” president.
Of how he’s sending troops.
More troops to guard against
assemblies of his citizens
petitioning their government.

No, this afternoon we navigate
the gopher-riddled pasture ground
among pot-bellied angus, huge
quadrupeds that prance away
from us on tiny hooves.
II.
We come to the second gate
encrusted on both sides
by poison oak a well-oiled
green the red is overtaking.
My hand threads around
the post, unhooks the snap
and the gate swings wide.
Buttercups are humming
gold, color of truth.

Unwittingly the mind snags
on the contrast with this
very small “p” president;
he who made the Limbo
the Official White House
Dance by simply standing
there in place and speaking;
he who fabricates alternate facts
repronounced by the invertebrate
and/or blind loyalists he dupes
with nanoscopic honesty;
he who does- or can-
not read and yet rewrote the book
on lies told while in office.
III.
The third gate clip missing
its spring wants fiddling with.
We take note of and sidestep
bobcat or mountain lion scat
and hew to the trail’s contour
along the landscape slope.
A light wind carries my attention
across the field to purple asters,
yes, color of kings and queens.

What grand irony how this
smallest of all possible “p’s”
president tells the world over
and over that he’s the greatest
creature in the sea of life
when he is but blubber.

Nevertheless, this year again
he’s poisoning the well,
ranting how his opposition
schemes to cheat him out
of his imagined reelection.
Thus he delegitimizes ballots
that could well be delivered
by the US Postal Service
which he works to unravel
and thereby steal the vote.
IV.
The early fog is lifting
off the ridge―sky blue
infinity comes into focus.
We look upon salt water
although I refuse to weep.
Today’s gift of clarity moves me
to ask, with all humility,
O Lord, if one there be:

Grant that this imposter fin-al-ly
be made to go stand someplace else,
anyplace besides the office he holds
down with bogus bone-spurred feet;
Grant that every single eligible
person registers to vote;
and when the time does come
Grant that they do.

- Bill Greenwood

[Larry Robinson]

Waking


Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you now see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you ,
and for you it seems
even then
no cry is louder than yours
and in your own darkness
cries have gone unheard
as long as you can remember.


These are hard paths we tread
but they are green
and lined with leaf mould
and we must love their contours
as we love the body branching
with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.


I know that sometimes
your body is hard like a stone
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
while the voice all around
tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.


But sometimes unawares
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you and you listen strangely caught
as the terrible voice moving closer
halts,
and in the silence
now arriving
whispers


Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.


- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

To Susan B. Anthony on her eightieth birthday






To Susan B. Anthony
on her eightieth birthday
February 15, 1900


I


My honored friend, I’ll ne’er forget,
That day in June, when first we met:
Oh! would I had the skill to paint
My vision of that “Quaker Saint”:
Robed in pale blue and silver gray,
No silly fashions did she essay:
Her brow so smooth and fair,
‘Neath coils of soft brown hair:
Her voice was like the lark, so clear,
So rich, and pleasant to the ear:
The “‘Prentice hand,” on man oft tried,
Now made in her the Nation’s pride!


II


We met and loved, ne’er to part,
Hand clasped in hand, heart bound to heart.
We’ve traveled West, years together,
Day and night, in stormy weather:
Climbing the rugged Suffrage hill,
Bravely facing every ill:
Resting, speaking, everywhere;
Oft-times in the open air;
From sleighs, ox-carts, and coaches,
Besieged with bugs and roaches:
All for the emancipation
Of the women of our Nation.


III


Now, we’ve had enough of travel.
And, in turn, laid down the gavel,—
In triumph having reached four score,
We’ll give our thoughts to art, and lore.
In the time-honored retreat,
Side by side, we’ll take a seat,
To younger hands resign the reins,
With all the honors, and the gains.
United, down life’s hill we’ll glide,
What’er the coming years betide;
Parted only when first, in time,
Eternal joys are thine, or mine.


- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1815-1902)

[Larry Robinson]

A Woman Speaks


Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.


I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.


I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.


- Audre Lorde

[Larry Robinson]

If, On Account Of The Political Situation




If, on account of the political situation,


there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men


Lying about in the countryside neither drunk nor asleep,


If all sailings have been cancelled till further notice,


If it's unwise now to say much in letters, and if,


Under the subnormal temperatures prevailing,


The two sexes are at present the weak and the strong,


That is not at all unusual for this time of year.


If that were all, we should know how to manage. Flood, fire,


The dessication of grasslands, restraint of princes,


Piracy on the high seas, physical pain and fiscal grief,


These are after all our familiar tribulations,


And we have been through them all before, many, many times.


As events which belong to the natural world where


The occupation of space is the real and final fact


And time turns round itself in an obedient circle,


They occur again and again but only to pass


Again and again into their formal opposites,


From sword to ploughshare, coffin to cradle, war to work,


So that, taking the bad with the good, the pattern composed


By the ten thousand odd things that can possibly happen


Is permanent in a general average way.


Till lately we knew of no other, and between us we seemed


To have what it took -- the adrenal courage of the tiger,


The chameleon's discretion, the modesty of the doe,


Or the fern's devotion to spatial necessity:


To practice one's peculiar civic virtue was not


So impossible after all; to cut our losses


And bury our dead was really quite easy. That was why


We were always able to say: "We are children of God,


And our Father has never forsaken His people."


But then we were children: That was a moment ago,


Before an outrageous novelty had been introduced


Into our lives. Why were we never warned? Perhaps we were.


Perhaps that mysterious noise at the back of the brain


We noticed on certain occasions -- sitting alone


In the waiting room of the country junction, looking


Up at the toilet window -- was not indigestion


But this Horror starting already to scratch Its way in?


Just how, just when It succeeded we shall never know:


We can only say that now It is there and that nothing


We learnt before It was there is now of the slightest use,


For nothing like It has happened before. It's as if


We had left our house for five minutes to mail a letter,


And during that time the living room had changed places


With the room behind the mirror over the fireplace;


It's as if, waking up with a start, we discovered


Ourselves stretched out flat on the floor, watching our shadow


Sleepily stretching itself at the window. I mean


That the world of space where events reoccur is still there,


Only now it's no longer real; the real one is nowhere


Where time never moves and nothing can ever happen:


I mean that although there's a person we know all about


Still bearing our name and loving himself as before,


That person has become a fiction; our true existence


Is decided by no one and has no importance to love.


That is why we despair; that is why we would welcome


The nursery bogey or the winecellar ghost, why even


The violent howling of winter and war has become


Like a juke-box tune that we dare not stop. We are afraid


Of pain but more afraid of silence; for no nightmare


Of hostile objects could be as terrible as this Void.


This is the Abomination. This is the wrath of God.


- W.H. Auden

[Roland Jacopetti]

Hi, Larry. Thanks for the Auden.
Roland

[Larry Robinson]

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]

The Inheritance


around the table
each taking a turn
they described how everything was lost
when the fire roared through


speaking last, the 74 year old grandmother ...
well, that fire did me a favor
those lousy kids of mine
didn't want that house or my stuff
four generations of it
so
the fire saved me
a lot of trouble trying to figure out
what to do with it


hate to say it
but those three of mine
turned out to be
mean insensitive people
and they can go to hell


i've already moved into a furnished apartment
and am doing quite well
but when i think back to watching it burn
my god, it still hurts yes. it does.


- Richard Retecki

[Larry Robinson]

What We Packed at 3 A.M.



The dog

the drugs


The cash

the cards


The elder neighbors who couldn’t drive


We packed our fear

though it couldn’t be contained


We crawled in our cars

as the fire raced


through its feast

of everything


of everyone

or everyone’s dreams


Everywhere we looked

RED RED


We called friends in the hills

No answer


We cried Jesus Christ!

No answer


The fire jumped and morphed

and ate some more


Garage doors wouldn’t open

Trees blocked the roads


The red sky

grew wider and taller


and shot its off-springs

into the air


to ignite their own

smorgasbords


We unpacked our prayers

to all the gods


we don’t believe in

And when we reached safety


we watched our phones

(we packed those, too)


for news and it

wasn’t good.


Yes, we had each other.

Yes, we were alive.


But our world,

our beautiful Sonoma County world


What we packed

wasn’t the mountains


wasn’t the deer

the coyotes, the quail


wasn’t the mountain lions

or mountain lakes


wasn’t Willi’s

or Fountaingrove


wasn’t Coffey Park

or the field of larks


or the knowledge

it would take two weeks


to get back home

or that home would still


be there

or that the gorgeous golden grass


just outside our windows

would change overnight


into candles waving

their virgin wicks


- Katherine Hastings

[Larry Robinson]

Ashes Among the Remains


My father responded
Just throw them away
I did not nor did I cast them into
ocean or bay where we’d fished
flounder and fluke nor strew them
over the golf courses where he’d hit
multistage rockets rising from half an inch
then to a foot above fairways
to summarily explode
hundreds of yards into the future
other worldly fireworks released
by his elegantly compact fury.
Instead I left them in their box
a golden shiny tin ossuary
next to my mother’s on the top shelf
of my bedroom closet
where I did not have to make decisions
and I incidentally could visit them daily
until our house burned down
in the California wildfires
October Ninth 2017
I don’t intend here to dwell upon
the nightmare that fire is
I will not detail the feelings we had
as we evacuated in one of our cars
along with the family terrier and nothing else
though later we did contemplate
Dad’s and Mom’s remains further
consumed by 1500 degree flames
extending their years-earlier incineration
in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.
Were it not that my parents lived well into
their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74
might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim
to the bottomless jar of all that remains
to the what or the where or the not.


- Ed Coletti

[Larry Robinson]

Letter to My Great-Grandchildren


Dear Chance and Aurora,


Maybe your grandparents
told you about this, maybe not.
When they were a young couple
raising your mom & dad
the world changed overnight.


One day we hiked the yellow hills
danced to jam bands
marched by the thousands in protest.
We lounged in cafes & hugged our friends
just the way you do now.


But the world changed overnight.
It was like a war
everyone fighting the enemy of illness.
We had to stay at home &
walk six feet apart.


The stores were shuttered
& the theaters boarded up.
Restaurants closed because
they couldn’t pay the rent.
The enemy was a virus that knew how to kill.


At first we cried, shocked
with grief & fear.
Then the clocks melted.
We bit our nails & held our children close.
Some folks died, others used words to comfort us.


Gradually, we came to our senses
& did what we could.
We found new ways to visit
read poems to our neighbors
over fences, played music in empty lots.


Though parks were closed, we still went on walks.
Everywhere, there were masked faces.
The dogs thought it funny that humans were muzzled.
The trees sighed deep sighs & the wildflowers
bloomed in shades we’d never seen.


- Sande Anfang

[Larry Robinson]

Kindness


Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Shepherd]

This is a most important poem for our time--extending kindness, even to those whom we disagree with. Larry Robinson is indeed our poet laureate, who must spend much time most days reading poems and then sharing them with us.

[REALnothings]

Always happy to see this poem, and always try to pass it on as much as I can.
I agree it's one of the most important, most universal poems of our time...
the most "Medicine" in a short poem, that I can think of...a gift for literally EVERYONE who sees or hears it.

[Larry Robinson]

Returning to Kindness


I am returning to kindness
a place where I am strong in my softness
I will start by kissing all of my scars
and washing them in rain
collecting dust from long journeys off my feet.

The way they carry weariness

from crossing rivers that should
have had bridges.
I will return to build crossing

paths over waters
that reminded me to

be kind


- Tapiwa Mugabe

[Larry Robinson]

Some Girls


Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,
hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,
tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of their
fury.
I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteor
showers.
And shadowed their secret rendezvous,
walking and flying all night over paths traced like veins
through the deep body of the forest
where they are trying on their new wings,
rising to power with a ferocious mercy
not seen before in the cities of men.
Having survived slander, abuse, and every kind of exile,
they’re swooping down even now
from treetops where they were roosting,
wearing robes woven of spider webs and pigeon
feathers.
They have pulled the living child out of the flames
and are prepared to take charge through the coming
apocalypse.
I have learned that some girls are boys; some are birds,
some are oases ringed with stalking lions. See,
I cannot even name them,
although one of them is looking out through my eyes
right now,
one of them
is writing all this down with light-struck fingers.


- Alison Luterman

[REALnothings]

This is WONDERFUL! It says all I feel and have always felt about "some girls"!

[Larry Robinson]

A Prayer for the Post Office


This is a non-partisan prayer
about something as mundane as mail,
as gentle as the swish of a letter
falling to the floor by the door.
This is a prayer
for stamps and stamp collectors,
the quietest of hobbies;
for pen-pals and thank you card writers,
for grandparents who always remember your birthday,
and love letters from the war,
kept at the bottom of a drawer.
This is a prayer
for the quiet dignity of the blue mailbox
standing like a sentinel on the corner,
portal to anywhere, for just the cost of a stamp.
Walking to the mailbox
down the block and around the corner
was my daughter’s first independent adventure,
the responsibility of an envelope,
addressed and ready in her small, serious hand.
Her nervous departure from the front door, alone,
and her triumphant return minutes later.
“I did it mama, I mailed the letter all by myself!”
Do you remember, the wonder of it?
Dropping a letter in one place,
mouth of the box swinging open and shut,
eating the envelope like cookie monster,
only to have that same letter reappear, days later,
in another place?
It is a mundane miracle.
When I was a teenager, learning how to drive
my mother set up garbage cans in front of our house
so I could practice parallel parking.
Our mailman, swinging by from house to house
stopped with a big smile to shout,
“turn the wheel! Cut it hard, that’s right, now straighten it out!”
His brown arm waving in circles
as we both grinned with the joy of it.
A simple thing, feeling like part of something -
a community, maybe - where mail carriers
and teenage drivers were all part of the same world.
I remember how quickly he would run up and down the front steps, even in the hot and humid summer.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
This is a prayer for the carriers on their routes
The clerk at the window
The backroom sorters and the delivery truck drivers
Moving mountains one piece at a time.
Passing along that which was entrusted to them:
Electric bills,
bank statements,
birthday cards
…ballots.
Hear us, God of the taken-for-granted things,
Divine mystery of overnight delivery,
Spirit of Civic Life,
may we preserve this minor magic
of letter and stamp, scale and package,
sorting machine and postbox,
so that our children do not shake their heads
and wonder at all the things we allowed to slip away.



- Rev. Julia Hamilton

[Larry Robinson]

Green Apples

In August we carried the old horsehair mattress
To the back porch
And slept with our children in a row.
The wind came up the mountain into the orchard
Telling me something:
Saying something urgent.
I was happy.
The green apples fell on the sloping roof
And rattled down.
The wind was shaking me all night long;
Shaking me in my sleep
Like a definition of love,
Saying, this is the moment,
Here, now.

- Ruth Stone

[Larry Robinson]

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trash bag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,
But I promise you, I trust the maggots
Who live beneath the floorboards
Of my house to do what they must
To any carcass more than I trust
An officer of the law of the land
To shut my eyes like a man
Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet
So clean my mother could have used it
To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will
Do it the same way most Americans do,
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me. He took
Me from us and left my body, which is,
No matter what we’ve been taught,
Greater than the settlement
A city can pay a mother to stop crying,
And more beautiful than the new bullet
Fished from the folds of my brain.

- Jericho Brown

[Larry Robinson]

Earthseed


There is no end
To what a living world
Will demand of you.



When apparent stability disintegrates,
As it must —
God is Change —
People tend to give in
To fear and depression,
To need and greed.
When no influence is strong enough
To unify people
They divide.
They struggle,
One against one,
Group against group,
For survival, position, power.
They remember old hates and generate new ones,
They create chaos and nurture it.
They kill and kill and kill,
Until they are exhausted and destroyed,
Until they are conquered by outside forces,
Or until one of them becomes
A leader
Most will follow,
Or a tyrant
Most fear.



When vision fails
Direction is lost.


When direction is lost
Purpose may be forgotten.


When purpose is forgotten
Emotion rules alone.


When emotion rules alone,
Destruction… destruction.



Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.


Are you Earthseed?
Do you believe?
Belief will not save you.
Only actions
Guided and shaped
By belief and knowledge
Will save you.
Belief
Initiates and guides action —
Or it does nothing.



Kindness eases Change.


- Octavia Butler

[Larry Robinson]

Anthropocene

Even the word feels claustrophobic
Like endless lines and crowds
Of one color only. A species

Alone without context.
How lonely we have made
Ourselves, how poor.

It is not survival,
But greed that guides, drives
Us, leaves us lonely

On a denuded plain,
Without the container, the completion
Of other life to embrace us.

What will we do when only people
Populate our planet, our poems?
Who will we be

When we’ve forgotten our companions,
The oak, the fox, the prairie grass and
The hen hidden within.

Who will we be when
All around us
Are mirrors and madness?


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Bearing Witness

Sometimes we are asked to stop and bear witness:
this, the elephants say to me in dreams
as they thunder through the passageways
of my heart, disappearing
into a blaze of stars. On the edge
of the 6th mass extinction, with species
vanishing before our eyes, we’d be a people
gone mad, if we did not grieve.

This unmet grief,
an elder tells me, is the root
of the root of the collective illness
that got us here. His people
stay current with their grief—
they see their tears as medicine—
and grief a kind of generous willingness
to simply see, to look loss in the eye,
to hold tenderly what is precious,
to let the rains of the heart fall.

In this way, they do not pass this weight on
in invisible mailbags for the next generation
to carry. In this way, the grief doesn’t build
and build like sets of waves, until,
at some point down the line—
it simply becomes an unbearable ocean.

We are so hungry when we are fleeing
our grief, when we are doing all
we can to distract ourselves
from the crushing heft of the unread
letters of our ancestors.
Hear us, they call. Hear us.

In my dreams, the elephants stampede
in herds, trumpeting, shaking the earth.
It is a kind of grand finale, a last parade
of their exquisite beauty. See us, they say.
We may not pass this way again.

What if our grief, given as a sacred offering,
is a blessing not a curse?
What if our grief, not hidden away in corners,
becomes a kind of communion where we shine?
What if our grief becomes a liberation song
that returns us to our innocence?
What if our fierce hearts
could simply bear witness?

- Laura Weaver

[Larry Robinson]

Ovid in Tears


Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. “In the cities,” he said,
“there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman,” he said.
How like a woman they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn’t read, but still had made a world. About Hagia
Sofia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped, and he fell.
“White stone in the while sunlight,” he said
as they picked him up. “Not the
great fires burning at the edge of the world.” His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”




- Jack Gilbert

[Larry Robinson]

A Day is Coming


A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.
I hear it coming.
A day is coming
in which the
campesino
will gather his children a green spring
and go on vacations.
I believe it.
I see it.
A day is coming
in which a soldier will be
decorated
for helping
instead of killing
his poor brother.
A day is coming
in which lovers
will serve themselves from large bowls
warm love and faithfulness.
A day is coming
in which the Christ who returns
is the Christ who never left.
A day is coming
in which the father will ask the son
for friendship
instead of respect.
A day is coming
in which the student
and a poor laborer
will be half and half.
A day is coming
in which the prisoners
come out
running in the fields and shouting
about their freedom.
A day is coming,
I see it coming.


- Lalo Delgado

[Larry Robinson]

The Field That Prays



Prayer weaves its colorful strands
As we wander around the field
Inside the circle we cast in awe
Of the center where nothing resides.

We imagine our souls go there
After we die alone or perhaps
We land in this empty field
To dream of wild black horses

While we are asleep.
The young ones wonder
If we elders will survive.
Why not? The goddess has plans

For us, even as we stand here
And wait to see what will happen.
This field unites us as we watch
Dry lightning and thunder meet.

The trees dance and the winds
Insist we change. Will the fires
Teach us to walk outside the path
Of amazement? While inside

This field, ancient stones cascade,
Inscribing the events of our tumbling
Lives. All that matters now is

The field’s magnetic force. “This is
My body and my blood,” they say.
“We receive and give to you our all.”
What if this wait is of our own making?

Surely the facts will not lead us out
Of this morass. We are part of something
Far greater than ourselves. Winding around
The field’s edge, we stumble into the realm

Of prayer. Outside the field is the fire,
Inside prayer, the flowing vessel of love.
We wait, engulfed by feelings, the emotions
Not of our own making.

The prayers are making us.



- Patria Brown

[Larry Robinson]

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

- Phillip Levine