Rick Larios

@ricklarios

Book lover. Democracy lover. Dad. New York City raised and resident. Married to Cara. Picture taker. Scribbler. Doodler. Pronouns: he, him, us

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Rick Larios@ricklarios· Jul 4

And a couple for you...

Photo of several summer roses on a bush three of the roses are pink and one is white and pink. White fence and part of a house are visible behind the rose bush and its branches, blooms, and leaves.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Jun 19

Early voting continues today! Also, celebrating Knicks NBA championship & World Cup! Vote! Vote! Vote!

Photo of two I Voted stickers, one featuring a basketball in New York Knicks colors; the other, a soccer ball for the 2026 Men's World Cup.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· May 8

Damn fine book of poems by Margaret Gibson (LSU Press, 2014). BROKEN CUP. :: "Do you know your mind today," I asked, impatient and you replied, "It's talking to the wind." #poetry #MargaretGibson @lsupress.bsky.social

Photo of a book of poems, BROKEN CUP, by Margaret Gibson. Cover has a white border with an image of a cup on its side with its handle in two pieces beside it.
The image is a painting by Carol Chaput. The cup is white with blue leaf motifs. It's on an orange table against a deep blue background. Title in blue lettering appears above the image; author in orange lettering appears below the image.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Apr 23

Espn called it this afternoon.

Screenshot of ESPN website post on tonight's Twins v Mets game from this afternoon. Circled text headline reads "Mets to break losing streak in match up with the Twins"

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Apr 17

Philip Fried's latest book of poems is out, published by @salmonpoetry.bsky.social . Couldn't wait to get the book and couldn't wait to start it. Fried's voice, craft, and perspective is uniquely brilliant. Will share some favorite poems when I have finished reading. #poetry #blueskybooks

Photo of Philip Fried's newest collection of poems, to be and not to be, newly published by Salmon Poetry. Cover, a photograph by Lynn Saville, is a partial view of a street intersection. A woman, lit by street light, stands next to stop sign at the base of a upward sloping road at twilight. Red-brick buildings and line of trees. The book's title and author appear in drop-out white type in all lower case letters.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Apr 15

Cherry blossoms in the neighborhood. Brooklyn, NY.

Close up of a branch of cherry blossoms, vibrant pink in light and shadow. Small patches of blue sky here and there behind the blloms.

Close up of a spray of cherry blossoms on a thin branch. Behind the branch and blossoms is a partial view of a building wall and window with a blue sign with white numbers, an obstructed phone number. The blossoms are in shade.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Mar 23

Jaro the Wonder Dog...

Photo of Jaro (part black lab, oit bull, etc ) relaxes on sofa, sporting a green baseball cap with the words Terrace Books on it. Jaro is making eye contact with you.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Jan 17

Snowing beautifully in Brooklyn right now.

Snowy street scene, a view from my window, a couple walking down the street.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Jan 13

Happy to get this collection of poems by Jane Zwart, ODDEST & OLDEST & SADDEST & BEST (Orison Books, 2026), in the mail today. Enjoyed each and every poem of Zwart's that I have encountered in the wild. Love the Cornell box cover, too.

Cover of Jane Zwart's book of poems, ODDEST & OLDEST & SADDEST & BEST (Orison Books, 2026). Cover photograph shows a Joseph Cornell box assemblage titled "Restless Mood," translated from the French language title "L'Humeur Vagabonde."
The assemblage has four boxes in four rows. Each box has an object: a cup, a bottleneck, a small stoppered bottle with stones in it, a tiny antique book, coverless & held together with rubber bands, a metal fragment, a white goblet, a white ball or ornament with swirled colors, etc. The box itself is white metal with what looks like decorative clasps on intersections of horizontal and vertical rows. A wooden frame surrounds the box. Title & author are surprised on the brown wooden frame in white type. A blurb from Publisher's Weekly praises the book.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Jan 1

This was not what I expec

Screenshot of post by Merriam-Webster's post where words are spinning and you take a screenshot and the word captured is your word of the year. Mine was the word mid.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Dec 29

"Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, sound garden, or alice in chains" Moving beyond a narrow range... Jimmy Scott's All the Way--a moving on so many levels...

Cover image of jazz singer Jimmy Scott's 1990s album ALL THE WAY. Black and white photo of the singer in a tuxedo at a mic stand, a dark curtain down behind him, a spotlight on him, chess board stage floor. Light and shadow with a noir-ish undertone. Title and singer name appears to the left on the cover, stacked, all lower case.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Nov 21

Gorgeous afternoon in Prospect Park today. Past peak colors but still vibrant. Saw two hawks as well.

Fall colors in Prospect Park today. Treeswith lemon & lime leaves in foreground and shades of red, yellow, and orange in background.

Young maple with flaming orange leaves still on its branches with blanket of leaves covering grass below.

Wooden bridge over mirroring stream and trees receding in distance.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Nov 21

Happy Weekend to you! Just got this from the Brooklyn library...listening to Regina Carter's Southern Comfort and Laura Nyro, watching end of season 3 American Diplomat

Photo of the book True Nature, The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen by Lance Richardson with cover photograph of biography subject, writer Peter Matthiessen.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Nov 2

Lovely moon over Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn this afternoon.

Skyscape with powder blue sky, small oblong clouds, and a white line of jet exhaust. Also a wide branched tree with a sparse population of orange leaves and the top of a stone obelisk.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Oct 13

Tanaya Winder's poem as prayer, as gratitude, as life purpose, concludes with the simplest of commandments: Be a good relative--to all people, all life. @poetryfoundation.bsky.social #indigenouspeoplesday

[Text of poem Being by Tanayrelative.

Wake up, greet the sun, and pray.
Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage--
sacred herbs to honor the lives we've been given,
for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time.
Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,
think about those who stand beside you, next to, and with you.
Your ancestors are always in your corner, along with your people.
When we enter this world we are born hungry,
our spirits long for us to live out our traditions
that have been passed down for generations.
Prayer, ceremony, dance, language--our ways of being.
Never forget you were put on this earth for a reason--
honor your ancestors.
Be a good telative.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Sep 1

Day 31 of the #SealeyChallenge wrapping up with the dynamic duo of Rumi and translator Haleh Liza Gafori, for the second time: WATER (2025). I have only just begun, but it has the same magical clarity and seductive music of GOLD (2022). @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Photograph of the paperback book cover of WATER, a selection & translation of Rumi poems by Haleh Liza Gafori. The cover image is a painting of the moon rising over a seascape, called "Humboldt Current," by Max Ernst from 1951-52. White moon rises up from the horizon in a black sky. Below the horizon is a blue ocean divided by black and white lines bending like a road or wave, perhaps representing the Humboldt Current. As with all NYRB books, WATER'S Title, author, and translators names are contained in ruled box at the covers center.

[Text for the poem beginning 'My Heart breaks when I look out'

MY HEART breaks when I look out
on the old turning wheel of the world--
the trickery, snares, and deception.

My heart breaks when I see pain
planted in the soil.
What will it yield but more pain?

What the world has called work,
I work hard not to do.

[Text of the poem 'IF YOU don't know what Love is'.]

IF YOU don't know what Love is,
ask the desolate night,
ask unkissed lips and a sallow face
what they miss.

Still water tells stories of the moon and stars.
Bodies give body to intellect and soul.

Schoolwork can't teach us
what Love teaches us--
grace, warmth, civility,

Their countless ways.

[Text of the poem ' SELFLESSNESS IS sky'.]

SELFLESSNESS IS sky.
The bird of the heart
flies nowhere
but there.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 31

Day 30 of the #SealeyChallenge & reading HAPAX (2006) by A. E. Stallings, classical scholar & poet. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social Two lines in two poems underscore past is present: First: "Or have we always stood on shakey ground?" Second: "But only old men made it home from Troy."

Front cover of HAPAX, Poems, by A.E. Stallings. A medieval or later icon or book manuscript illustration called "The Harrowing of Hell," which depicts Jesus's visit to hell after his crucifixion but before his ressurection. The sky is gold. Two angels hover above. Jesus is in the center, with two sets of figures on either side of him, with him taking a hand of two nearest figures who have just emerged from their coffins. Jesus stands on the lids of the two coffins, which cross beneath his feet. The collections title and author's name and the image appear on a white background.

[Text of the poem Aftershocks.]

We are not in the same place after all.
The only evidence of the disaster,
Mapping out across the bedroom wall,
Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster--
A new cartography for us to master,
In whose legend we read where we are bound:
Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster.
Or have we always stood on shaky ground?
The moment keeps on happening, a pendulum
That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound,
We fall mute, as when two lovers come
To the brink of the apology, and halt,
Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.

[Text of the poem Visiting the Grave of Rupert Brooke, Island of Skyros, Greece.]

Rupert, this was where, I'm sure you knew,
The sea nymph Thetis took Achilles to,
And hid him, with his smooth cheek and gold curls,
Among the royal retinue of girls,
As any mother might, to save her son,
From war and death, by arrow or the gun.
Odysseus, recruiting, in disguise,
Set out for sale a range of merchandise,
Stuffs no princess easily resists--
Fine brocade, and bangles for the wrists,
All manner of adornment, silver, gold,
And set a blade among them, brazen, cold--
A simple trap that might catch any boy.
But only old men made it home from Troy.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 30

Day 29 of the #SealeyChallenge with Marie Howe's NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (2024). The new poems are fine but revisiting the others too, particularly from What the Living Do...wow! @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Photo of the cover of Marie Howe's New and Selected Poems. A simple deep blue cover without any images. The author's name appears in the centered lines in all caps. Below it appears the title in three lines all caps except for the word "and." The gold lettered words are contained by a thin rule, also gold. A center rule separates author name and title.

[The text for the poem The Letter, 1968.]

That he wrote it with his hand and folded the paper
and slipped it into the envelope and sealed it with his tongue
and pressed it closed so I might open it with my fingers.
That he brought it to the box and slipped it through the slot
so that it might be carried through time and weather to where
I waited on the front porch step.

(We knew how to wait then--it was what life was, much of it.) So, when the mailman came up the walk and didn't have it
he might have it the next day or the next when it bore the mark
of his hand who had written my name, so I might open it and read
and read it again, and then again, and look at the envelope he'd sealed
and press my mouth to where his mouth had been.

[Text of the poem The Copper Beech.]

Immense, entirely itself,
it wore that yard like a dress,

with limbs low enough for me to enter it
and climb the crooked ladder to where

I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone.

One day, I heard the sound before I saw it, rain fell
darkening the sidewalk.

Sitting close to the center, not very high in the branches,
I heard it hitting the high leaves, and I was happy,

watching it happen without it happening to me.

[Text for the poem The Last Time.]

The last time we had dinner together in a restaurant
with white tablecloths, he leaned forward

and took my two hands in his and said,
I'm going to die soon. I want you to know that.

And I said, I think I do know.
And he said, What surprises me is that you don't.

And I said, I do. And he said, What?
And I said, Know that you're going to die.

And he said, No, I mean know that you are.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 29

Day 28 of the #SealeyChallenge with Jericho Brown's THE NEW TESTAMENT (2014). So good. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social

Photo of front cover of Jericho Brown's poetry collection THE NEW TESTAMENT. Inset against a dark brown background is a painting by Leon Bonnat (1833-1922), titled "Le Barbier negre a Suez" The barber of the title is standing behind a man sitting cross-legged on a carpet. The barber is leaning over the man with his left hand holding the man's head while his right hand holds a straight razor to the man's chin. The customer is wearing a light blue robe with both his hands gripping his left foot. His eyes are half-closed. The barber is wearing only a pair of white shorts. Behind them is a yellow wall with golden light on it. The author's name in yellow and the book's title in light green appears above the painting.

[The text of the poem Colosseum.]

I don't remember how I hurt myself,
The pain mine
Long enough for me
To lose the wound that invented it
As none of us knows the beauty
Of our own eyes
Until a man tells us they are
Why God made brown. Then
That same man says he lives to touch
The smoothest parts, suggesting our
Surface area can be understood
By degrees of satin. Him I will
Follow until I am as rough outside
As I am within. I cannot locate the origin
Of slaughter, but I know
How my own feels, that I live with it
And sometimes use it
To get the living done,
Because I am what the gladiators call
A man in love--love
Being any reminder we survived.

[Text of the poem 1 Corinthians 13:11.]

When I was a child, I spoke as a child.
I even had a child's disease. I ran
From the Doberman like all children
On my street, but old men called me
Special. The Doberman caught up,
Chewed my right knee. Limp now
In two places, I carried a child's Bible
Like a football under the arm that didn't
Ache. I was never alone. I owned
My brother's shame of me. I loved
The words "thou" and "thee." Both meant
My tongue in front of my teeth.
Both meant a someone speaking to me.
So what if I itched. So what if I couldn't
Breathe. I climbed the cyclone fence
Like children in my street and went
First when old men asked for a boy
To pray or to read. Some had it worse--
Nobody whipped me with a water hose
Or a phone cord or a leash. Old men
Said I'd grow into my face, and I did.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 27

DAY 27 of the #SealeyChallange, but I missed Day 26, alas, but resume here with Saskia Hamilton's first collection of poems, AS FOR DREAMS (2001). It is a superb collection of poems about death, dying, and dreams. Moving and mysterious. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Photo of the front cover of AS FOR DREAMS, poems by Saskia Hamilton. The cover features a full bleed of a painting by Piero Della Francesca, Italian Renaissance artist and mathematician. The painting is a detail of The Dream of Constantine, depicting the sleeping emperor in a canopied bed, guarded by two armored soldiers and an aide or servant, sitting on the frame of the bed, his left elbow resting on the mattress, his hand holding his head up as he regards the soldier to his right. Constantine is asleep, covered by a white sheet and crimson blanket. The book title and author name are in white letters.

[Text of the poem Reverence.]

Your silence is so complete, I can hear it pull me from one end of the century to the other.

The geese call themselves together for the journey.
The bells ring past the hour; they urge us on.
There is no alphabet for that sound.

If I said it right and deposited it in the whorl of your ear.
Do not echo so, do not echo thus.

What of it? Why do I trouble myself?
There is nothing left to be learned from those letterings.
Close the book. Winter is on its way, the city is waking.
Gray and surprisingly warm today.

Thirty-seven leaves left on the tree outside
and a whole day to make use of.

[Text of the poem Late Winter, the first of two poems with that title.]

Very strange, yellowy light this morning.
The sky absolutely white.

A storm is gathering that I try to keep from gathering in my house.

I don't know how to relate my longing
or tell a story so you'll see.

What I say is not true and you should not trust me.

When I have found it you will be able to tell
from the breath inside the language.

I used to think it was the cunning of sickness.
Now I think it is the cunning of love.

[Text of the poem Listen.]

The swallows rose from the fields and flew east from every
direction. Flight patterns as efficient as the mind's.

--

I have the ingredients of the dream in my hands in the morning.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 26

Day 25 of the #SealeyChallenge and Rita Dove's classic 1999 collection ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS. From the long poem "Cameos" to the poems in the final, title section. It is richly rewarding and provocative, with moments of sweetness and wonder. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Photo of the cover dust jacket of Rita Dove's Poems, ON THE BUS WITH ROSA PARKS. Ther is a black and white from the inside of a bus somewhat obscured by design elements, which look like wallpaper, which take up the lower two thirds of the cover.

[Text for the poem The First Book.]

Open it.

Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well...maybe a little.

More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.

You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.

Sure, it's hard to get started;
remember learning to use

knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never reach bottom.

It's not like it's the end of the world--
just the world as you think

you know it.

[Text for the poem Singsong.]

When I was young, the moon spoke in riddles
and the stars rhymed. I was a new toy
waiting for my owner to pick me up.

When I was young, I ran the day to its knees.
There were trees to swing on, crickets for capture.

I was narrowly sweet, infinitely cruel,
tongued in honey and coddled in milk,
sunburned and silvery and scabbed like a colt.

And the world was already old.
And I was older than I am today.

[Text for the poem For Sophie, Who'll Be in First Grade in the Year 2000.]

No bright toy
this world we've left you.
Even the wrapping
is torn, the ribbons
grease-flecked and askew.
Still, it's all we have.

Wait a moment before
you pick it up. Study
its scratches, how it
shines in places. Now
love what you touch,
and you will touch wisely.

May the world, in your hands,
brighten with use. May you
sleep in sweet breath and
rise always in wonder
to mountain and forest,
green gaze and silk cheek--

dear Sophie,
littlest phoenix.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 25

Day 24 #SealeyChallenge W.S. Merwin's THE RAIN IN THE TREES (1988) @sealeychallenge.bsky.social I am coming to Merwin late in my reading life uncertain why it took me so long. So much brilliant lyricism, elegant language and narrative, so much natural engagement with the world.

Cover of W.S. Merwin's 1988 collection THE RAIN IN THE TREES. The cover photograph by J.D. Griggs, "Mist in Ohia Forest, Hawaii National Park" (1988), shows a stretch of Hawaiian rain forest, narrow blue-white trunks of tree rising on a mountainside surrounded by leafy bushes. The title and author name over-printed in yellow type.

[Text of the poem Late Spring.]

Coming into the high room again after years
after oceans and shadows of hills and the sounds of lies
after losses and feet on stairs

after looking and mistakes and forgetting
turning there thinking to find
no one except those I knew
finally I saw you
sitting in white
already waiting

you of whom I had heard
with my own ears since the beginning
for whom more than once
I had opened the door
believing you were not far

[Text for the poem Empty Water.]

I miss the toad
who came all summer
to the limestone
water basin
under the Christmasberry tree
imported in 1912
from Brazil for decoration
then a weed on a mule track
on a losing
pineapple plantation
now an old tree in a line
of old trees
the toad came at night
first and sat in the water
all night and all day
then sometimes at night
left for an outing
but was back in the morning
under the branches among
the ferns the green sword leaf
of the lily
sitting in the water
all the dry months
gazing at the sky
through those eyes
fashioned of the most
precious of metals
come back
believer in shade
believer in silence and elegance
believer in ferns
believer in patience
believer in the rain

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 24

On Day 23 of the #SealeyChallenge sharing a second book by Anna Swir, FAT LIKE THE SUN (1986),a British edition of her selected poems: poems of love, lust, marriage, childbirth & motherhood, fidelity & betrayal, aging, women's bodies, etc. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Photo of the cover of Anna Swir's FAT LIKE THE SUN, published by The Women's Press, aka The Raving Beauties.
Cover image is a highly stylized image of the sun, with a smiling face.

[Text for poem titled First Madrigal.]

That night of love
was as pure
as an ancient musical instrument
and the air
around it.

It was as sumptuous
as a coronation feast.
As carnal
as a pregnant belly.
As abstract
as a number.

It was only a moment of life,
yet it wanted to be the culmination of life.
A transient moment,
and it wanted to master the meaning of the world.

That night of love
had ambitions.

[Text of the poem TwovOld Women.]

The two of us sit in the doorway,
chatting about our children and grandchildren.
We sink happily
into our oldwomanhood.

Like two spoons
sinking
into a bowl of hot porridge.

[Text of the poem A Dream of My Dead Mother.]

Last night
I held my mother close to me.
We were dancing
on the soft turf.

My body dissolved
like mist
in the soft sunlight of her love.

Our two bodies, two mists,
mingled in bliss
like before I was born.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 23

Day 22 of the #SealeyChallenge: THEOPHANIES, very, very fine debut collection by Sarah Ghazal Ali. @alicejamesbooks.bsky.social @sealeychallenge.bsky.social Man, the ending "I've learned to cull / from wait, / to walk until water appears."

Cover of Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali, featuring a full bleed cover image by the late graphic artist Dan Hillier. The image features a human figure kneeling in a prayerful pose over a flowering bush that has light or energy flowing upward into the figure's face, which is completely hidden behind the strongly defined column of light. The figure has long hair and is wearing a full length flowing robe with wide sleeves. The figure's arms are crossed at the wrists, palms against chest. Title is at the top, author at the bottom.

[Text of poem Mother of Nations:]

By now it's almost boring: the peal
of Sarah's bewildered laugh.
The sidelined matriarch, barren
until she wasn't. I pretend

not to hear Sarah's bewildered laugh.
How does a barren tomb sound? Waiting
until she wasn't. I pretend to be honeycomb
sucked clean, scraped raw.

The sound of a barren tomb: waiting
each month for the inevitable wilt
of a cervix sucked clean, scraped raw.
Hajar had it easy--until she didn't--

sprouting, spared the inevitable monthly wilt.
Sarah's throat plumed right in God's face.
Hajar had the easy job until she didn't.
But enough. It's boring--watching faith peel.

[Text of the poem Ghazal on the Day of]

Like God, I'll create in my image. Go on, pass judgment
--like I'm not already waiting for judgment,

like I don't tease, don't taunt to turn His eye my way.
Like I'm not expiring, short-sticked by a judgment

foretold in unreachable, spiraling math. Each sky's
bloated yolk barrels toward the day of judgment

Seeded, I take seeds to stifle my soil's waiting green.
I liken my name to apology. I wield judgment

like a snapped beak and shovel night from my abdomen.
Are you watching, O corkscrew calamity, O decree,

O closer than jugular? Come for this constellating mess.
I'm sorry for laughing, O giver, not for taking, so judge.

[Text for the poem Epistle: Hajar.]

Agate, alyssum, apricot--simple pleasures
I can still pronounce in this desert.

Love's only dominion, the clear
well-walked path to drinkable water. I hesitate

to ask for answers, remembering the others
forsaken in a basket, garden, well.

There's no one left to write to
but I'd tell of the tree, its sweet shade

at high noon. The untorn snakeskin I found
while digging for wetness in the sand.

Against the crude mountains, his turned back
whittled down by my calls.

I've learned to cull want
from wait,

to walk until water appears.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 22

#SealeyChallenge Day 21 POEMS OF THE NIGHT by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Efrain Kristal with various translators. Poems of the night, of dreams and insomnia, of light and darkness, mystery and magic. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social #night #poetry #JorgeLuisBorges

[Text for the poem The Young Night.]

And now the lustral waters of night absolve me
from the many colors and the many forms.
In the garden, birds and stars exalt
the longed-for return of the ancient norms
of sleep and shadow. Darkness is sealing
the mirrors which copy the fiction of things.
Goethe said it best, "everything near becomes far."
Those four words capture the entire twilight.
In the garden, roses cease to be roses;
they wish to be the Rose.

[The poem was translated by CM. Christopher Maurer.]

[The text for the poem The Gift.]

In a page of Pliny we read
that in all the world no two faces are alike.
A woman gave a blind man
the image of her face
without a doubt unique.
She chose the photo among many;
rejected all but one and got it right.
The act had meaning for her
as it does for him.
She knew he could not see her gift
and knew it was a present.
An invisible gift is an act of magic.
To give a blind man an image
is to give something so tenuous it can be infinite
something so vague it can be the universe.
The useless hand touches
and does not recognize
the unreachable face.

[Translated by CM, Christopher Maurer.]

[The text for the poem The Forging.]

Like the blind man whose hands are precursors
that push aside walls and glimpse heavens
slowly, flustered, I feel
in the crack of night
the verses that are to come.
I must burn the abominable darkness
in their limpid bonfire:
the purple of words
on the flagelated shoulder of time.
I must enclose the tears of evening
in the hard diamond of the poem.
No matter if the soul
walks naked and lonely as the wind
if the universe of a glorious kiss
still embraces my life.
The night is good fertile ground
for a shower of verses.

[Translation is again by Christopher Maurer.]

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 21

Day 20 of the #SealeyChallenge and, for a change of pace, the inspiration is not a particular book but a walk on the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail in Ripton, Vermont. The trail has Frost poems posted along its walk. #RobertFrost

Screen shot of Vermont Trail Guide for the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail , which includes a photo of the meadow that the trail loops around.

[Text for the poem The Pasture.]

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear. I may):
I shan't be gone long.--You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone ling.--You come too.

[Text for poem The Secret Sits.]

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the secret sits in the middle and knows.

[Text for the poem Something for Hope.]

At the present rate it must come to pass,
And that right soon, that the meadow- sweet
And steeple bush, not good to eat,
Will have crowded out the edible grass.

Then all there is to do is wait.
For maple, birch, and spruce to push
Through meadowsweet and steeple bush
And crowd them out at a similar rate.

No plow among these rocks would pay.
So busy yourself with other things
While the trees put on their wooden rings.
And with long-sleeved branches hold their sway.

Then cut down the trees when lumber grown,
And there's your pristene earth all freed
From lovely blooming but wasteful weed
And ready again for the grass to own.

A cycle we'll say of a hundred years.
Thus foresight does it and laissez faire,
A virtue in which we all may share
Unless a government interferes.

Patience and looking away ahead,
And leaving some things to take their course.
Hope may not nourish a cow or horse,
But *spes alit agricolam* 'tis said.

* spes alit agricolam means "hope sustains the farmer"

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 20

#SealeyChallenge Day 19, Linda Pastan's INSOMNIA (2015), beautifully wrought poems of life, craft, mortality, and simple moments looming large. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social

Cover of Linda Pastan's 2015 collection INSOMNIA, featuring a painting by Arthur G. Dove, "Me and the Moon" from 1937. The image is trippy, non-representational composition of orange, yellow, brown, and blue on a black background. There is a yellow circle that could be said to represent the moon if you wanted to press that point.

[Text of the poem, The Gardener.]

He's out rescuing his fallen hollies
after the renegade snowstorm,

sawing their wounded limbs off
quite mercilessly (I think of the scene

in King's Row, the young soldier waking
to find his legs gone).

He's tying up young bamboo--
their delicate tresses litter the driveway--

shoveling a door through the snow
to free the imprisoned azaleas.

I half expect him to tend his trees
with aspirin and soup, the gardener

who finds in destruction
the very reason to carry on;

who would look at the ruins
of Eden and tell the hovering angel

to put down his sword,
there was work to be done.

[Text of the poem IN THE ORCHARD.]

Why are these old, gnarled trees
so beautiful, while I am merely
old and gnarled?

If I had leaves, perhaps, or apples...
if I had bark instead
of this lined skin,

maybe the wind would wind itself
around my limbs
in its old sinuous dance.

I shall bite into an apple
and swallow the seeds.
I shall come back as a tree.

[Text for the poem ELEGY.]

Our final dogwood leans
over the forest floor

offering berries
to the birds, the squirrels.

It's a relic
of the days when dogwoods

flourished--creamy lace in April,
spilled milk in May--

their beauty delicate
but commonplace.

When I took for granted
that the world would remain

as it was, and I
would remain with it.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 19

Day 18 of the #SealeyChallenge Stephen Dunn's LOOSESTRIFE, Poems (1996), evocative poems of humanity contending with temptation, doubt, hope, and our own susceptibility to weakness and persistence. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @wwnorton.com

Cover of Stephen Dunn's 1996's poetry collection LOOSESTRIFE. The cover image is of a painting by Howard Hodgkin called "Reading the Letter, 1977-80." The painting is abstract shapes in bold colors, dramatic and mysteriously arranged over a red background with motifs you might find on fabrics. The shapes have volume and shadows: green, blue, a gold verticle rectangle, a dark puff of grey-black cloud, etc. In the white pace above is the author's name, book title, and the word poems.

[Text for the poem "After Making Love."]

No one should ask the other
"What were you thinking?"

No one, that is,
who doesn't want to hear about the past

and its inhabitants,
or the strange loneliness of the present

filled, even as it may be, with pleasure,
or those snapshots

of the future, different heads
on different bodies.

Some people actually desire honesty.
They must never have broken

into their own solitary houses
after having misplaced the key,

never seen with an intruder's eyes
what is theirs.

[Text of the poem, "Solving the Puzzle."]

I couldn't make all the pieces fit,
so I threw one away.

No expectations of success now
none of that worry

The remaining pieces seemed
to seek their companions.
A design appeared.

I could see the connection
between the overgrown path
and the dark on the hill.

Something in the middle, though,
was missing.

It would have been important once.
I wouldn't have been able to sleep
without it.

[Text of the poem, "Heaven."

After the extravagent letter came
I remembered how praise
can keep you from belonging to yourself,

and all that afternoon I belonged
to some vagrant, sweet
floating thing. That old daystar, the sun,

turned elsewhere, and the sky darkened
as it must.
I lay awake while a light rain fell--

a drummer brushing his drum and tapping
the rim.
A rain like that comes from heaven,

my mother would have said, who didn't
believe in heaven.
It always made perfect sense,

feeling things at least two ways.
I drifted off
hearing my name sung--just the rain,

really, getting insistent, but by then
I was near that place
dreamers lean into, baffled, becalmed.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 18

##SealeyChallenge Day 17: IF THEY COME FOR US (2018) by Fatimah Asghar, a brilliant and, one can say retroactively, prophetic (see the poem "When the Orders Came") collection of poems that blend family and global history. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social @poetry #truthiswoke

Cover illustration of Fatimah Asghar's poetry collection IF THEY COME FOR US.
Colorful illustration by Shyama Golden showing three young West Asian women sitting cross-legged together wearing colorful clothing surrounded by a floral design.

[Text for the poem "Lullaby," dedicated for Khudeja.]

when the sadness comes
my sister tells me a story--

a man buried in pakistan
a woman buried in new york city

when we sleep they wake
opposite sides of the world

the planet opens a tunnel
where they meet: dirt sky & worm

stars. the lovers dance,
all night, their way back

my father's fingertips
pressing against my mother's

crooked smile. her henna-dyed
hair light the underworld

the mole on his lips left side
winks the dark.

[Text for the beginning stanzas of the poem "When the Orders Came". The final stanza is contained in the next photo & the alt text below.]

"[We are] calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
--Donald Trump's administrative team, December 7, 2015

they shipped us to the sanctuary camps
& we forgot our other countries.

like good schoolchildren we sang
the anthem loud, so loud
until we could hear nothing else.

not the birds delighting
over their young, or the dog's snarl
at our feet, or him on the news

hourly, growling. this is the cost
if looking the other way
when they come for us

I build safety inside you
& wake in cuffs
I'm all mouth. every morning

I whisper "my country my country my country"
& my hands stay empty
what is land but land? a camp

but a camp? sanctuary
but another grave? I am an architect
I permission everything

into something new
I build and build
& someone takes it away

[Text for the last stanza of the poem "When the Orders Came."

into something new.
I build & build
& someone takes it away.

Rick Larios@ricklarios· Aug 17

#SealeyChallenge Day 16: Gary Snyder's DANGER ON PEAKS (2004), a collection of prose and poems, including haibuns about our world and us. @sealeychallenge.bsky.social #poetry #nature #haibun