Water

Photo by Katy Brown, Davis


On the rushwood gate
instead of a lock—
one snail
—Issa

***

The snail goes to sleep
and wakes up
just as he is
—Issa

***

Like some of us,
he looks very important
— this snail
—Issa

***
While I ponder
a snail
passes me by
—Anonymous

___________________

Thanks, Katy, for the great photo! Be sure to look for more of Katy Brown's poetry and photography in the new issue of Rattlesnake Review (#17), available at The Book Collector in Sacramento—not to mention her "Snake Eyes" column. She also has a beautiful SnakeRings SpiralChap, The Quality of Light, for sale there (see our new, expanded bookshelf!) as well as A Poet's Book of Days, our Rattlesnake HandyStuff perpetual calendar. And now, coming in April, watch for the first of Katy's blank (well, not really) journal of photos and poetry prompts, Musings.


This weekend in NorCal poetry:

•••Today (Friday, 3/14), 11 AM: Poetry Out Loud State Finals: This year marks the third time the California Arts Council has produced the Poetry Out Loud competition, a contest that encourages high school students to learn about poetry through memorization, performance, and competition. The competition will take place at the Secretary of State Auditorium, 1020 "O" Street, Sacramento. Members of the public are invited to attend. At stake: $200 and the chance to compete for the over $20,000 available at the national finals. The competitors: high school students from 20 counties throughout California. The tools: as Shakespeare said, "words, words, words." And the contest: Poetry Out Loud. In case you are in the neighborhood and want to stop in, check out the CAC website: http://www.cac.ca.gov/artsnews/whatsnewdetail.php?id=19/.
It has links to more info about the program, which was started by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation.

•••Saturday (3/15), 4 PM: The Central California Art Association and the Mistlin Art Gallery announce a poetry reading, reception and book signing in the gallery 1015 J Street downtown Modesto. Three readers from Sixteen Rivers Press, a writing collaborative based in San Francisco, will be at the podium: Terry Ehret from Sonoma county and author of Lucky Break, Dan Bellm from San Francisco and author of Practice, and our very own Gillian Wegener from Modesto and author of The Opposite of Clairvoyance. You can sample their poems and read their bio's and endorsements at www.sixteenrivers.org/.

•••Also Saturday (3/15), 11 AM-3 PM: Help Woodland celebrate the beauty of trees with poems at Woodland's Arbor Day Celebration, The Gibson House Museum, Gibson Road, Woodland. Either write a poem or find a good one to share, and either email it to damasa@pacbell.net or mail it to Tree Poems, 42 Clark Court, Woodland, CA 95776. Indicate whether you'd be interested in reading your poem at the event, or whether you'd prefer to have it displayed. For questions, contact Marjorie Brown at 530-662-2124 or Chris Gray at 530-661-3311.

•••Also Saturday (3/15), 7-9 PM: Random Abiladeze, Carla Fleming and the BME tour. Underground Books, 2814 35th St., Sacramento. $3. 916-208-7638.

•••Sunday (3/16), 2-4 PM: Women's Writing Salon (Men Welcome!): Come to the Spring Celebration reading of poetry and prose penned by six Nevada County women writers, including Liz Collins, Jan Fishler, Donna Hanelin, Judie Rae, Lesley Schneider, and Loraine Webb. It’s a great time to hear the literary voices of our own Foothills community of women. Rhythms Music Café, 114 W. Main Street, Grass Valley. Admission is free! Food and beverages available at the Café.

•••Monday (3/17), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Black More at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Blake More resides along the tree, ocean, and character-lined vistas of the not-so-lost Mendocino coast. Engaged in many creative expressions, Blake’s work spans the spectrum from poetry, fiction, to non-fiction, to plays and performance pieces, to theatrical costume and mixed media functional art pieces, assemblage sculpture and wildly painted poetry art cars. The author of three full-length books (New Age Anonymous: 12 Steps for the Recovering New Ager, The Photon Energy Diet, and How To Heal Your Headache Naturally) and five books of poetry (Lingua Franca, Late-Eve(all) Woman In Paradise, I Scribble; Therefore I Am, postcards from the sun, and godmeat), Blake’s work has also appeared in magazines and journals worldwide (including Utne Reader, Yoga Journal, Alternative Medicine Digest, Japan International Journal, Nippon View, Tokyo Today, and Tokyo Time Out). Her original solo performance pieces and ensemble plays have appeared on streets and stages in New York, Tokyo, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Los Angeles, Marin, Sonoma, and the Mendocino coast. She has worked with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Bay Area Video Coalition, The Marsh Theater, The Arena Theater, Gualala Arts, California Poets In The schools, Laughing Squid, KZYX Radio, KTDE Radio, SF Liberation Radio, and Radio Amsterdam. She coordinates a monthly poetry series and an annual poetry and jazz event on the south coast of Mendocino County. Blake’s newest book, godmeat (Beatitude Press, January 2008), is a collection of poetry, prose and color artwork and includes a poem movie compilation DVD. To learn more about godmeat, go to www.godmeat.com/. To explore Blake’s many other creative endeavors, please go to her website: www.snakelyone.com/.

___________________

RAIN
—Wendell Berry

It is a day of the earth's renewing without any man's doing or help.
Though I have fields I do not go out to work in them.
Though I have crops standing in rows I do not go out
to look at them or gather what has ripened or hoe the weeds from

the balks.

Though I have animals I stay dry in the house while they graze in

the wet.

Though I have buildings they stand closed under their roofs.
Though I have fences they go without me.
My life stands in place, covered, like a hay rick or a mushroom.

Photo courtesy of Fotosearch

A WET TIME
—Wendell Berry

The land is an ark, full of things waiting.
Underfoot it goes temporary and soft, tracks
filling with water as the foot is raised.
The fields, sodden, go free of plans. Hands
become obscure in their use, prehistoric.
The mind passes over changed surfaces
like a boat, drawn to the thought of roofs
and to the thought of swimming and wading birds.
Along the river croplands and gardens
are buried in the flood, airy places grown dark
and silent beneath it. Under the slender branch
holding the new nest of the hummingird
the river flows heavy with earth, the water
turned the color of broken slopes. I stand
deep in the mud of the shore, like a stake
planted to measure the rise, the water rising,
the earth falling to meet it. A great cottonwood
passes down, the leaves shivering as the roots
drag the bottom. I turn like an ancient worshipper
to the thought of solid ground. I was not ready for this
parting, my native land putting out to sea.

___________________

THE SPRINGS
—Wendell Berry

In a country without saints or shrines
I knew one who made his pilgrimage
to springs, where in his life's dry years
his mind held on. Everlasting,
people called them, and gave them names.
The water broke into sounds and shinings
at the vein mouth, bearing the taste
of the place, the deep rock, sweetness
out of the dark. He bent and drank
in bondage to the ground.

_____________________

WATER
—Wendell Berry

I was born in a drouth your. That summer
my mother waited in the house, enclosed
in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,
for the men to come back in the evenings,
bringing water from a distant spring.
Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.
And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul. Fear
of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.
I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

___________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com).


SnakeWatch: News from Rattlesnake Press

Coming in April, we will mark the Snake’s fourth birthday by throwing the Fourth Annual Birthday Bash at The Book Collector on Wednesday, April 9, including a buffet at 7 PM, followed by a reading at 7:30 PM. That night, there will be three history-making releases: Ann Menebroker’s new chapbook (Small Crimes); Ted Finn re-emerges with a new SnakeRings SpiralChap of his poetry and art (Damn the Eternal War); and Katy Brown inaugurates her blank (well, not really) journal series for our HandyStuff department with her MUSINGS: Photos and Prompts For Capturing Creative Thought. Please join us to celebrate four years of [your] poetry with fangs!