—Photo by Joyce Odam
ADMIRER, ROSE, AND RAIN—
A TRIANGLE
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento
She is bending to smell a rose.
Will it allow her nearness?
Which is the most beautiful
to any admirer—
self to self—
or rose to rose?
Does the rose open fully?
Do her eyes close?
Will it dare to rain
and ruin her hat—fill the rose
with sudden raindrops
to hasten her away—splat, splat . . . ?
______________________
ENIGMA
—Joyce Odam
Follow the thread of light to the forest.
Listen for the bird
with the white wing
caught in the web
in the eye of the
watching thing
that is
jealous
and deep
in the green time.
Follow until you
feel the thread tighten.
Do not struggle lest you break
the chance to free the web of its desire.
_____________________
—Photo by Joyce Odam
THE FIGUREMENT
—Joyce Odam
In the rich-blending odours
of the garden
where flowers vie for preference . . .
In the stimulations of the mind
for the immaculate view of white birds
ascending into a white sky . . .
In the icy feel of water on the hand
from a flowing stream where tiny fish
dart through your fingers . . .
How a taste will linger
beyond the
hunger for a food—as with a kiss . . .
How love only listens
for what it wants
despite the resistance of another . . .
How hard is this to realize
when all is nothing at the end of being
— a profanity to the mind
that cannot comprehend the sorrow
of the soul—or the figurement
of whatever god it needs and refuses. . . ?
_________________________
REMEMBERING THE OLD PLUNGE
(Long Beach, California—Circa
1935)
—Joyce Odam
The smell of the chlorine
water.
The fountain in the middle.
The walkway around.
Chairs and benches on two
levels.
The way voices grew wet
and echoed into humid tones.
And how warm it was in the
winter,
enclosed,
in the blue and white tile,
and the streaming walls,
and lights that refracted
everything
to a shimmering surreality.
And
the wading men and women who
strolled in the shallow end
together,
bending to splash themselves
in a slow ballet.
And some would swim out to
the fountain
to sit on the ledge-circle
under the pouring water.
And even those who did not
wade or swim
but only watched,
leaning from the railing, or
from chairs
on the first or second level,
felt the calmness that was
never quite the same . . .
the world was here,
in timelessness, suspended,
insular.
the world was here . . . I
don’t recall
if there was every any music
or just the sound-absorption
of the people
in quiet seriousness . .
. spellbound . . .
by this closed atmosphere
of just watching
and just being there
________________________
THESE BLUE WAVES BREAKING
—Joyce Odam
These blue waves lift forever
to the shore
as if practicing time in suspension.
They pull in from the eternal
horizon;
the dark rocks wait for their fall.
The sound of their breaking
is just about
to be released.
The turbulence of blue churns
with impatience;
the layers of wet light glow upon the sand.
The smell of the sea air comes through the
tang of memory.
The gulls have just lifted
away with their
harrowing cries.
The sky’s last light is slipping
and slipping
into time’s darkness.
And in that darkness, the
waves finally
and silently break across the picture
frame,
right up the tangible edge of
my wet shoes.
________________________
Thanks to Joyce Odam for today's sensory delights! Mother's Day is coming up; let's celebrate it with poems about Mom's Jewelry Box. You know you sneaked a peek or two in that cache of her hidden treasures; what secrets did you uncover? Anything you didn't know about her already? Write us a poem or three about Mom's Jewelry Box and send them to kathykieth@hotmail.com
________________________
Today's LittleNip:
And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often
than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the
flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they
could not plainly read.
—Alice Walker
________________________
—Medusa
