Daily Gifts of Beauty
Daily Gifts of Beauty
Sebastopol poet Larry Robinson has published a Poem for the Day for 25 years. Three years ago he added a new practice: a daily photo of the ever-changing Laguna
For the past 25 years, Sebastopol poet Larry Robinson has been publishing a poem for the day to a loyal readership. Some read it on his Facebook feed, others via his email list of more than 2,000 poetry lovers worldwide.
Some of the poems are by famous poets, others by up-and-coming poets or local Sonoma County poets—and every now and then he’ll put up one of his own poems.
“More and more people are sending me their chapbooks or their poems. So I'm discovering all kinds of wonderful new poets this way, and I want to introduce them to the world,” he said.
“I spend some time with poetry every morning,” Robinson said. “So the poem that speaks to me the loudest in any given day is the one that I share.”
I’ve always thought of Robinson’s Poem for a Day as a daily gift of beauty that he gives to Sebastopol and the world. Then he added another one: his daily Laguna photo, which appears on his public Facebook page.
Almost every morning, before dawn, he rises and goes out into the Laguna de Santa Rosa to await the sunrise. And then he takes a photo—and, wow, what photos.
He thinks of his laguna excursions as a kind of spiritual practice.
“I’m walking the same paths and getting familiar with the same trees and animals. But every day is different, and it just continues to amaze me,” he said.
Most of the year, he walks out the Joe Rodota Trail to Llano Road—a four-mile trip up and back. In summer, once the seasonal bridges go up, he’ll switch it up and walk Laguna Regional Park trails.
He says he doesn’t necessarily go looking for the perfect shot.
“My eyes are open when I'm walking, and I've got my iPhone with me. Years ago, I gave away all my old camera equipment because it was getting in the way of seeing,” he said. “Having a good camera available in my iPhone means that when something just leaps out at me, I can take that photo,” he said.
“Then at some point, I started posting one a day on Facebook—the one that struck me the most—and it's usually having something to do with a sunrise, because sunrise and sunsets are the two most numinous times of the day.”
Robinson calls his experience of a daily walk in the laguna “transformative.”
“My life has just really slowed down,” he said. “I used to ride my bicycle everywhere in town. And now I'm walking a lot more because I realized there's no hurry. I can get to Fircrest with my bicycle within five minutes and now it takes me 10 minutes on foot. I just notice a whole lot more by walking.”
And happily, he shares what he notices with all of us.
If you’d like to sign up for the Poem for the Day email list, write Larry Robinson at Lrobpoet@sonic.net and request to be put on the list. See his laguna photos on his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/larry.robinson.123829.
HOMETOWN TREASURE IS HE!
Thanks Larry for the poems and the beautiful photos. I much prefer your news of the area to any other!