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  1. TopTop #301
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mysteries, Yes

    Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
    to be understood.

    How grass can be nourishing in the
    mouths of the lambs.
    How rivers and stones are forever
    in allegiance with gravity
    while we ourselves dream of rising.
    How two hands touch and the bonds
    will never be broken.
    How people come, from delight or the
    scars of damage,
    to the comfort of a poem.

    Let me keep my distance, always, from those
    who think they have the answers.

    Let me keep company always with those who say
    "Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
    and bow their heads.

    - Mary Oliver
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  2. TopTop #302
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Early Spring


    Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
    has replaced the meadows' wintry grey.
    Little rivulets of water changed
    their singing accents. Tendernesses,

    hesitantly, reach toward the earth
    from space, and country lanes are showing
    these unexpected subtle risings
    that find expression in the empty trees.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming)
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  3. TopTop #303
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For the Orchard

    I want to tell you about the apple orchard.
    How in the spring, when I come up over the rise,
    blossom clouds soften the sky with a whisper.
    How on summer afternoons I swim carelessly
    through green shade and shards of light.
    How autumn fills me ripe with desire,
    and I devour stolen fruit as I walk.
    How the winter horizon is sharpened at night
    with unadorned branches pinned to stars.

    This April day I’ll tell you
    how I drew the trees as they lay felled.
    Trunks, connected or not by shred of bark,
    lay on stumps ridged by saw tooth.
    Limbs capsized into impossible tangles
    laced with the season’s new growth.
    Here and there, among the terrible beauty,
    I witnessed, first and last, the blossoming.

    - Christine Walker
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  4. TopTop #304

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Just last week
    as I was driving past the orchards
    all budding open in spring
    I passed one on the south end of Pleasant Hill Rd
    all chopped down and lying in ruins
    and I cried.

    Lilith

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    For the Orchard

    I want to tell you about the apple orchard.
    How in the spring, when I come up over the rise,
    blossom clouds soften the sky with a whisper.
    How on summer afternoons I swim carelessly
    through green shade and shards of light.
    How autumn fills me ripe with desire,
    and I devour stolen fruit as I walk.
    How the winter horizon is sharpened at night
    with unadorned branches pinned to stars.

    This April day I’ll tell you
    how I drew the trees as they lay felled.
    Trunks, connected or not by shred of bark,
    lay on stumps ridged by saw tooth.
    Limbs capsized into impossible tangles
    laced with the season’s new growth.
    Here and there, among the terrible beauty,
    I witnessed, first and last, the blossoming.

    - Christine Walker
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  5. TopTop #305
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Paschal

    Easter was the old North
    Goddess of the dawn.
    She rises daily in the East
    And yearly in spring for the great

    Paschal candle of the sun.
    Her name lingers like a spot
    Of gravy in the figured vestment
    Of the language of the Britains.

    Her totem the randy bunny.
    Our very Thursdays and Wednesdays
    Are stained by syllables of thunder
    And Woden's frenzy.

    O my fellow-patriots loyal to this
    Our modern world of high heels,
    Vaccination, brain surgery—
    May they pass over us, the old

    Jovial raptors, Apollonian flayers,
    Embodiments. Egg-hunt,
    Crucifixion. Supper of encrypted
    Dishes: bitter, unrisen, a platter

    Compass of martyrdom,
    Ground-up apples and walnuts
    In sweet wine to embody mortar
    Of affliction, babies for bricks.

    Legible traces of the species
    That devises the angel of death
    Sailing over our doorpost
    Smeared with sacrifice.

    - Robert Pinsky
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  6. TopTop #306
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Easter Morning In Wales

    A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
    Neglected for years,
    The layers of its soil deep and thick.
    Trees in the corners with branching arms
    And the tangled briars like broken nets.

    Sunrise through the misted orchard,
    Morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs.
    I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
    If I am really seeing, or dreaming,
    Or simply astonished
    Walking toward sunrise
    To have stumbled into the garden
    Where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.

    - David Whyte
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  7. TopTop #307
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Oceans

    I have a feeling that my boat
    has struck, down there in the depths,
    against a great thing.

    And nothing
    happens!
    Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .

    - Nothing happens?
    Or has everything happened,
    and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

    - Juan Ramon Jimenez
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  8. TopTop #308
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Saint Francis And The Sow

    The bud
    stands for all things,
    even for those things that don't flower,
    for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
    though sometimes it is necessary
    to reteach a thing its loveliness,
    to put a hand on its brow
    of the flower
    and retell it in words and in touch
    it is lovely
    until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
    as Saint Francis
    Put his hand on the creased forehead
    of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
    blessing of the earth on the sow, and the sow
    began remembering all down her thick length,
    from the earthen snout all the way
    through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, from the
    hard spininess spiked out from the spine down through the great broken
    heart to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering from the
    fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing
    beneath them:
    the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

    - Galway Kinnell
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  9. TopTop #309
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Close To The Road

    Close to the road we sit down one day.
    Now our life amounts to time, and our sole concern
    the attitudes of despair we adopt
    while we wait. But She will not fail to arrive.

    - Antonio Machado
    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  10. TopTop #310
    RexCasteel
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Only 4 lines - this I can handle. A mere 35 words!

    And what if I spent as much time contemplating "our sole concern..." as I did counting those words?

    I counted them twice, you know. I wanted to be sure that I wouldn't be embarrassed by an inaccuracy.

    And men - "us men" - always seem to be writing about "She."

    I'm sure there is a reason for this. I'm sure this is highly significant...

    - Rex

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Close To The Road

    Close to the road we sit down one day.
    Now our life amounts to time, and our sole concern
    the attitudes of despair we adopt
    while we wait. But She will not fail to arrive.

    - Antonio Machado
    (translated by Robert Bly)
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  11. TopTop #311
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Strut Zones

    Face east -
    Legs folded, lids closed, palms open.
    Breathe in, breathe out,
    Listen.
    Hear a low vibration of bold feathers fanned in a wide half circle, Thrumming,
    Followed by a sharp stop and an eerie bass note.
    The tom struts slowly, majestically,
    Preened and postured he holds open his serious display,
    A precision bouquet of thousands of feathers.
    Seductive.
    Each hollow shaft quivers, placed exactly,
    In specific design, in specific order.
    This brilliant sweep of florescence,
    Flutters for his Jenny’s.
    Revealing-- like cards of a winning hand splayed for examination.
    Tempting-- like an unfolded fan exposing the look of “come hither”.
    Then scarlet and cobalt infusions surround his face,
    His featherless head,
    Highlighting dewlap or wattle,
    Colorizing caruncles.
    An odd proboscis begins to swell
    Then wiggles and dangles,
    Retracts and elongates.
    All in celebration of promiscuity.
    He yelps, then clucks, then cackles.
    She putts, then hoots, then hisses.
    Each morning their yodels of gobbles echo from the tree tops,
    Where they sit,
    Feathers tucked, eyes closed, necks thrust out and up.
    Prayers of thanksgiving are offered to what must surely be
    An irreverent,
    A most excessive,
    And clearly magnificent god.
    I sit, face east,
    Legs folded, lids closed, palms open.
    I practice gobbling.

    - Colleen Werner
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  12. TopTop #312
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Clouds
    *
    All afternoon, Sir,
    your ambassadors have been turning
    into lakes and rivers.
    At first they were just clouds, like any other.
    Then they broke open.* This is, I suppose,
    just one of the common miracles,
    a transformation, not a vision,
    not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
    there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves
    *
    the purpose.* I go on, soaked through, my hair
    slicked back;
    like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.
    *
    - Mary Oliver
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  13. TopTop #313
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Apple Orchard

    Come let us watch the sun go down
    and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
    Does it not seem as if we had for long
    collected, saved and harbored within us
    old memories? To find releases and seek
    new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
    mingled with darkness coming from within,
    as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
    wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
    reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
    which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
    wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
    serve another season's hundred days of toil,
    straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
    but succeeding, even though the burden
    should at times seem almost past endurance.
    Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

    Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
    throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
    committed to one goal: to give yourself!
    And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (translatied by Albert Ernest Flemming)
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  14. TopTop #314
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Orchard

    Three massacres have I witnessed and what can I say? Our older
    one-legged cousins lie mutilated and silent, sprawled on dusty face.

    Yet I hear them.
    I hear them.
    I hear them
    uprooted, weeping, bleeding.
    For one hundred years they faithfully delivered their quenching fruit.
    Commit genocide on the unsuspecting? Not the bulldozer driver repeatedly backing into crunching trees - his kids need clothing and feeding. Neither the compadres hammering stakes and setting irrigation for the new cash crop - they have rent to pay, and obligations back home. Nor the owners, who believe a coastal touch of fog, perfect for these grapes, will soon play upon our lips.

    - Raphael Block
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  15. TopTop #315
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Opening of Eyes

    That day I saw beneath dark clouds
    the passing light over the water
    and I heard the voice of the world speak out.
    I knew then as I had before that life
    is no passing memory of what has been,
    nor the remaining pages in a book waiting
    to be read.
    It is the opening of eyes long closed.
    It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold
    It is the heart after years of secret conversing
    speaking out loud in the clear air.
    It is Moses in the desert, fallen to his knees
    before the lit bush.
    It is the man, throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven
    and finding himself astonished, opened at last,
    fallen in love with solid ground.

    - David Whyte
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  16. TopTop #316
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This will be my last poetry post until May 14. I apologize for the interruption of the stream. Blessings to you all.
    Larry


    The Source

    There in the fringe of trees between
    the upper field and the edge of the one
    below it that runs above the valley
    one time I heard in the early
    days of summer the clear ringing
    six notes that I knew were the opening
    of the Fingal's Cave Overture
    I heard them again and again that year
    and the next summer and the year
    afterward those six descending
    notes the same for all the changing
    in my own life since the last time
    I had heard them fall past me from
    the bright air in the morning of a bird
    and I believed that what I had heard
    would always be there if I came again
    to be overtaken by that season
    in that place after the winter
    and I would wonder again whether
    Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere
    far to the north that many years ago
    looking up from his youth to listen to
    those six notes of an ancestor
    spilling over from a presence neither
    water nor human that led to the cave
    in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave
    going out and the falling water
    he thought those notes could be the music for
    Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone
    all but his name for a cave and for one
    piece of music and the black-capped warbler
    as we called that bird that I remember
    singing there those notes descending
    from the age of the ice dripping
    I have not heard again this year can it
    be gone then will I not hear it
    from now on will the overture begin
    for a time and all those who listen
    feel that falling in them but as always
    without knowing what they recognize

    - W.S. Merwin
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  17. TopTop #317
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I am not I

    I am not I. I am this one
    Walking beside me whom I do not see,
    Whom at times I manage to visit,
    And whom at other times I forget;
    The one who remains silent when I talk,
    The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
    The one who takes a walk where I am not,
    The one who will remain standing when I die.

    - Juan Ramón Jiménez
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  18. TopTop #318
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Any fool Can Get Into An Ocean

    Any fool can get into an ocean
    But it takes a Goddess
    To get out of one.
    What's true of oceans is true, of course,
    Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
    Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor's seaweed
    You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
    To get back out of them
    Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
    Out in the middle of the poem
    They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
    water hardly moves
    You might get out through all the waves and rocks
    Into the middle of the poem to touch them
    But when you've tried the blessed water long
    Enough to want to start backward
    That's when the fun starts
    Unless you're a poet or an otter or something supernatural
    You'll drown, dear. You'll drown
    Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
    But it takes a hero to get out of one
    What's true of labyrinths is true of course
    Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

    - Jack Spicer
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  19. TopTop #319
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prayer In April


    -- For Millie and Orrin

    And can there still be any doubt when just this morning,


    right as we clamored off to school,


    in the driveway, the bird--


    that startled baby bird...


    He was so frightened he'd lost his voice;


    his little feather head became more yellow


    with his quivering.


    We three took turns holding him.


    The complicity of our awe


    is what strikes me now


    and I hope I'll always remember it:


    how we dropped to our knees,


    how we took turns cradling him;


    how, the moment that he flew


    we lost our voices, too.

    - Lisa Starr


    Lisa Starr is Rhode Island’s poet laureate as well as an inn-keeper, mother, and basketball coach. As Poet Laureate, Starr is generating a statewide poetry pen-pal system between student and elderly writing circles, and has established poetry circles in hospitals, homeless shelters, the state prison, and agencies for children with severe mental and physical disabilities. Her other collections of poetry are Days of Dogs and Driftwood and This Place Here.
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  20. TopTop #320
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Beginning With Me

    The war
    that was raging inside me
    has ceased.

    Is this the path
    that opens all
    to peace?

    One by One
    we lay down the arms
    we bear against ourselves

    and embrace life.

    - Kay Crista
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  21. TopTop #321
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Random Love

    Standing alone
    swaying with the day's residue
    under the gaudy white chandelier
    hoping to spy a friend for company
    before the concert when a very
    old man stooped over his cane
    walks right up to me and asks,
    ‘are you the wild one?’

    I pause with this gesture
    of inquiry, join him like a dream
    and reply, ‘yes, I am one of them,
    there are many of us’
    his eyes aglow and I declare
    ‘I am she.’

    In a spontaneous moment of certainty
    he looks directly into my eyes
    and says, ‘I love you completely!’
    He turns and paddles off to the cookie counter
    as I murmur, ‘I love you too.’

    I know he didn’t hear me
    swallowed in a rapture all his own
    I fumble in my coat pocket
    for my ticket
    the lights flicker for concert signal
    and I shake my head
    hold my heart
    for this random love.

    - Lizbeth Hamlin
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  22. TopTop #322
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Think of Others

    As you prepare your breakfast – think of others.
    Don’t forget to feed the pigeons.
    As you conduct your wars – think of others.
    Don’t forget those who want peace.
    As you pay your water bill – think of others.
    Think of those who only have clouds to drink from.
    As you go home, your own home – think of others
    – don’t forget those who live in tents.
    As you sleep and count the planets, think of others
    – there are people who have no place to sleep.
    As you liberate yourself with metaphors think of others
    – those who have lost their right to speak.
    And as you think of distant others
    – think of yourself and say “I wish I were a candle in the darkness.”

    - Mahmoud Darwish
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  23. TopTop #323
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Heat and Light

    Terrible things have happened.
    So many ruptures and losses...
    and we, who cannot quite register,
    let alone measure
    impact and consequence,
    bifurcating veins and roots
    on this and that path,
    put our hands to our heads
    and open our mouths to scream
    like the stand-in for Everyman
    in Munch’s raw picture.

    Even the Centenarian cherry tree is confused,
    holding her mango saffron leaves
    that in other years she readily released.
    Fallen, brittle and brown,
    they collected in little heaps
    that rose and fell,
    scuttering in a stiff winter wind.
    This year’s leaves still flutter,
    still veil her weathered limbs.

    And I have seen the foolish tulips
    poking through the hardening ground
    and rash acacia beginning to bud in frost.
    What can the rhubarb be thinking,
    presenting enough stalks for a pie
    in December?
    The marigolds that bloomed
    with fennel and lettuce
    are still here.

    In my mind's eye, marigolds signify
    the suchness of things,
    the way everything everywhere
    is in season, in harmony
    before the rhythms of day
    and the rhythms of night
    were confounded by artificial light.

    Plundered, pillaged, sacked,
    spirited away...
    the eternal round,
    the cycles and seasons.
    Who patiently waits for May
    for asparagus and strawberries?
    Who sleeps at dusk
    and wakes at dawn anymore?

    There is a breach in the order of things
    And all the cracks, fractures and gashes
    have left absence in my heart
    and a depression in my mind.

    What awaits us at the close
    of the Calendar?
    What, when solar storms roar?
    Better to slip through the bottle neck,
    take a wooded road at the fork.
    Untangle the knot, unwind the skein,
    carry pistil and stamen and seed.

    Tonight,
    the season of falling leaves
    gives way to winter-tide...
    time to hibernate,
    to dream.
    In the shelter of sleep,
    in the welter of repair
    in the still time of remembering,
    embers await rekindling.
    Who will bring the wood
    and who will light the fire?

    - Carla Steinberg
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  24. TopTop #324
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quiet

    I love when it is quiet
    enough to hear the vase with water
    calling out for flowers.

    Enough to hear my coffee, half-made,
    calling for cream and sugar
    while I head outside with clippers.

    Enough to hear the vase, now with flowers
    arranged, saying
    you can see that this was done with
    one hand making coffee.

    The coffee saying
    you can taste, can’t you, that
    I was made
    with one hand still on the clippers.

    And still, for today, allowing
    that while
    not of one piece,

    this is the coffee I will drink,
    and the flowers which will
    grace
    our table.

    - Scott O'Brien
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  25. TopTop #325
    Bird Watcher's Avatar
    Bird Watcher
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This is also with gratitude, but I need to ask, as I've seen Larry post the poet's name before, is this the Sebastopol Scott O'Brien? Singer/songwriter Scott O'Brien? Scott, your works are wonderful. Thank you for these gifts. Thank you to Larry for giving us access to beautiful poetry on a daily basis.
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  26. TopTop #326
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Translating The Book of Serenity in Santa Fe

    I dreamed I found a lost poem of Stanley Kunitz
    on the cover of an old book
    with a lot of white space and black text at angles.
    In the dream I was married and I read the poem aloud over the table at the meal.
    It was about a person who got an interview with God and spoke their question across
    the swirl of hyperspace and night.

    The person said, "What does it all mean, all the…and you… grief… and wanting impossible things?"—the question standing for other questions such as:
     the snow blossoms on the cotton wood trees
     and the thousands of snow geese falling out of the twilight in stages
     while the great sandhill cranes glide underneath,
     each to a precise place in the water shining
     with the last glow of sunset at Bosque del Apache,

    but the translator is holding in memory many things such as
     the lost papyri of the Phoenicians
     and the place where the polar bears are leaving for

    so in the language that crosses the turbulent dark,
    only two words remain:
    the question arrives as, “The dog?”

    God is interested and tries, with the means at hand,
    to show the whole pattern—
    the response travels back through immensity and comes out, “Woof.”
    “Woof,” says God, “Woof.”

    and that will have to do.

    My wife was not convinced by the poem,
    but when I woke up it was still here
    in my chest,
    though most of the words could not cross over into waking.

    - John Tarrant
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  27. TopTop #327
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I am off today for a week's retreat so this will be my last poem until May 30. Again, I must apologize for the interruption of service.
    Larry

    A Thousand Dogs

    Go you your inner kennel
    Where a thousand dogs
    With soft eyes
    Lick at the bars
    And break your heart

    Go ahead
    Adopt the long eared generosity
    You kept caged so long

    Bring home the spontaneous joy
    That some ancient loss
    Abandoned by the side of a lonely road

    Make a soft bed in your home
    For the ragged bones
    Of the weary hound
    Of who you really are

    There are no papers to fill out
    And no shots required

    Just a thousand dogs
    To hitch to your sled
    And pull you all the way home

    - Warren Peace
    (Translated from Canine by Brian Narelle)
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  28. TopTop #328
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Think Continually of Those

    I think continually of those who were truly great.
    Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
    Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
    Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
    Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
    Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
    And who hoarded from the spring branches
    The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

    What is precious is never to forget
    The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
    Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
    Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
    Nor its grave evening demand for love;
    Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
    With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

    Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
    See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
    And by the streamers of white cloud,
    And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
    The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
    Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
    Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
    And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

    - Stephen Spender
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  29. TopTop #329
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Sunset of the City

    Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
    My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
    Are gone from the house.
    My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
    And night is night.

    It is a real chill out,
    The genuine thing.
    I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
    Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

    It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
    The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
    The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

    It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.
    I am aware there is winter to heed.
    There is no warm house
    That is fitted with my need.
    I am cold in this cold house this house
    Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
    I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
    I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

    Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
    Desert and my dear relief
    Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
    And small communion with the master shore.
    Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
    Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
    In humming pallor or to leap and die.

    Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.

    - Gwendolyn Brooks
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  30. TopTop #330
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Gratitude

    What did you notice?

    The dew snail;
    the low-flying sparrow;
    the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
    big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
    the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
    the sweet-hungry ants;
    the uproar of mice in the empty house;
    the tin music of the cricket’s body;
    the blouse of the goldenrod.

    What did you hear?

    The thrush greeting the morning;
    the little bluebirds in their hot box;
    the salty talk of the wren,
    then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

    What did you admire?

    The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
    the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
    the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the
    pale green wand;
    at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid
    beauty of the flowers;
    then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

    What astonished you?

    The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

    What would you like to see again?

    My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
    her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her
    recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her
    sturdy legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

    What was most tender?

    Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
    the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
    the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
    the tall, blank banks of sand;
    the clam, clamped down.

    What was most wonderful?

    The sea, and its wide shoulders;
    the sea and its triangles;
    the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

    What did you think was happening?

    The green breast of the hummingbird;
    the eye of the pond;
    the wet face of the lily;
    the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
    the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
    the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve
    of the first snow—

    so the gods shake us from our sleep.

    - Mary Oliver
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