—Photo by Joyce Odam
THE IRRATIONALITY OF
DESIRE
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento
They
leave her standing at the win-
dow, translucent and yearning after
them, or staring
at the moonlight,
the gray lake lapping at the night
with silver flickerings.
It
is not even a goodbye. The board-
walk echoes with the lonely sound of
footsteps
where even the shadows
seem to make a sound—the window
candle burning down—the
receding
men but slow depictions of each other.
The
men walk away from her in the
moonlight, into the perspective that
disappears
before they do. Their blue
shadows lag behind. They pass another
lighted window
and look in.
A
lone chair on the boardwalk faces
backward. Someone left it there—to
be
empty—be a mystery. It sits on its
shadow with no thought or memory.
No meaning.
It is only a chair.
The
night is only as old as it remem-
bers. Everyone is young. The quiet
lake lies
silver and green and moves
closer and closer to the boardwalk.
The
conjured nude at the window
reaches out her hand toward the
opalescent moon and
watches the
men enter the fading eloquence of
their desire.
__________________
SPIRIT-BOY
—Joyce Odam
Cruel-Kind boy . . .
Indifferent boy . . .
who walked with me all
over summer,
who sat—bored—across from
me
in the apartment hallway
and kept
flicking burned-out
matches against
my bare legs. And I kept
saying,
stop, as we just sat
around,
waiting for the next thing
to do.
He walked me out to the
end of the
long dark pier on pounding
ocean nights
to watch the water smash
against
the pilings, then swirl
against the shore.
And we would stand there,
silent, feeling
the roar and swaying of
the world,
and I felt helpless, but
trusting.
That summer is full of
him—a child—
a moody friend—a
man-to-be,
whose thoughts I could
never read—
a spirit boy who held my
hand in essence
and took me through the summer.
_________________
UNDER THE PIER
—Joyce Odam
Cool here.
Musty smelling.
Irregular sloshing sounds.
Shadows move against each other.
Sounds swill, and muffle, and recede.
Flashings of color glint and then disappear.
There is an eerie oneness that owns this place.
The dark pilings seem to move, yet do not move.
The air narrows, confuses, gets locked under
the pier. The slow, gray churning seems
to make ready for the sea, which
bides—until it swells and
reaches—backs off,
and all begins
again.
(first pub. in Senior
Magazine, July 2009)
—Photo by Joyce Odam
THE OLD MAN AND THE GULLS
—Joyce Odam
He probably just wants to
be
left alone to jog back and
forth
along the small stretch of
beach,
flexing his skin against
the air—
sky-chesting—
old as the sea itself,
leaving his small pile of
clothes
folded upon the sand
to run with his crooked,
old-man
run down the narrow
distance.
And when he turns his head
the gulls are there in a
possessive
flurry—surrounding him.
And he sits on a throne of
sand
among them—cross-legged—
turning bronze—the gulls
making small cries of beg
before moving off to the
sloshing water’s edge,
muddy with effort to make
a tide.
_________________
THE WHITE ISLAND
—Joyce Odam
You are the white island I
see in the dream—
the dot in the
distance—the sea calm,
white breakers
striking the beach with no
sound.
I want to go there, but
distance always
recedes—pulling farther
away.
Then sea birds cry
and I waken.
________________
WE WALK
OUT TO THE END OF THE PIER
—Joyce
Odam
We walk
out
to the
end of the pier.
The sea
is wild and loud.
The
writhing water swells
and
breaks against the pilings.
We lean
out
to watch
the force
and feel
the vertigo,
the
hampered water
loud and
terrible to hear.
We chill,
the
thrill repelled,
the
magnitude become too much.
We shiver
back
to where
ground holds—
to where
perspectives fit again
our
smaller scope,
our
separate selves
returned
to each—
as late
as time, as safe as love.
________________
Today's LittleNip:
Poets are like jam, what preserves.
—B.Z. Niditch
________________
—Medusa
This week's Seed of the Week is about Firsts: first day of school, first love, first job, first poetry reading. Send your poems about Firsts to kathykieth@hotmail.com—and remember, there are no deadlines on SOWs.
This week's Seed of the Week is about Firsts: first day of school, first love, first job, first poetry reading. Send your poems about Firsts to kathykieth@hotmail.com—and remember, there are no deadlines on SOWs.
—Photo by Joyce Odam
