Poetry
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Starlight Stay
Here’s a link to my poem Starlight Stay, currently appearing in The Adirondack Review. I wrote this in the middle of the night, up late writing, reading, listening to music, feeling vividly awake and energized. It’s pretty out of character for me to stay up into the wee hours, though, and I remember longing for… Continue reading
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Look No Further
…I have some good news, but only for a few more hours. Add a splash of color, no obligation. Enrollment time is now. What are you doing to protect what matters most to you? Last chance to join, last chance to win. Abs in 30 days……this is true! Get the loan you need before it’s… Continue reading
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Stanley Kunitz’s Poem “The Layers”
The Layers By Stanley Kunitz I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my… Continue reading
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Carl Sandburg’s Poem”Wilderness”
“Wilderness” by Carl Sandburg There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There… Continue reading
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No Small Wonder
It’s those unexpected details in life that can astonish you sometimes, like little thieves waiting for an unwary tourist around a corner. Ants coming out two days before it rains. Burro dung holding up adobe walls for two hundred years. A hummingbird’s heart beating over a thousand beats per minute. A blue whale’s tongue weighing… Continue reading
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Dharma Wonderland
Kennedy, King and Lennon. Public squalor, private wealth. What is this strange country, the United States of America? It is the dog that – when left unattended – discovers everything on the table is within reach, the pleasure and the poison, and devours both. There are times I feel socially homeless among some of my… Continue reading
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Pilgrimage
All day long, I see things a painter would paint. What is there to complain about? Even my own pain has been endured by thousands before me, and depicted by master sculptors. Pilgrimage, penance, failure, learning to hold one’s self tenderly, in friendship – all these have relevance to my experience of life. Honoring the… Continue reading
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Basho’s Traveling Companion
On the jade-colored plate, yellow fruit. Between the window and folding screen, a bed, some clothing. In the stillness of the forest, water flowing. On the mountainside, plum blossoms. In the rain and mud, wild horses. From a bowl in the hermit’s shelter, steam rising. In the iron stove, embers glowing. At the edge of… Continue reading
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Big Sur
A whale spouted by and I dreamt of the story my life could tell. I remembered many loved and lost, I received the world, had a conversation with the cosmos. A whale spouted by, the vastness deepened. I sat, hands in lap, left over right, palms up, thumbs touching. A whale spouted by, I smelled… Continue reading
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Dragon Gates
While drinking cold tea from a glass jar and dividing your thoughts between Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Neruda, you cut a kiwi in half the long way and consider the oval ring of black seeds at its heart. You always see Our Lady Of Guadalupe there, proving that eating a piece of fruit can be… Continue reading
C.M. Rivers 