Dancing the Joy of Words

Lamp Shadow on Wall

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

PRAYER OF A LATE SEASON

Come, let us
dance the joy of words,
speak music.

Come, let us enter
the howling house
with its swirling of leaves.

Let us assign ourselves
to each other’s prayer.
Let us kneel and hold each other.

And if the wind stops howling
to hear its own silence,
let us sweep leaves.

______________________

THE GOLD LANDSCAPE

Gold the color of gold; sky the color of sky;
thunder clouds, textural; the strange fierce light.

Soon the sound:
thunder; felt crackle; everything motionless.

Then a sway of blue . . .
not really blue . . . but feeling of blue . . .

The gold light spreads,
refracts; the gold fields start to sway.

A telephone pole shudders.
Creaks.

A long fence trembles and strains.
The huge sky billows and tears itself.

Nothing on the roadways
that form a cross here—no person—no cars,

only the great invisible force of light and the wide
bulging and swaying—the year

torn into another season— the moment charged
with some great ghost of gathered sorrow,

human-like—blent and moaning—wind-howl;
vast gold motion of field after golden field.  Rain.

 Field With Crows, No Dumping

A MOURN FOR MUSIC TOO BEAUTIFUL
TO HEAR

It is the music—
torn shreds of it,
its fragments
remembering back into whole pieces;

or maybe it is the lack of it,      
the wish for music
as perfect
as that . . .

indifferent music, joyous for itself,
forgetting its composer,
its poorest listener,
filling other ears with perfection,

destruction, its cost for the envy:
the torn joy
of listening—
for the ache of it,

emotions
too
small
to hold it,

so, free it,
tear its pages and
mingle them into something larger—
a cacophony to fit the tears.  

 Full Moon

SUNDAY IS ALMOST OVER
   
The hawks are becoming old for me.
They scream against the sky
though their eyes are silent.

They fly lower now,
now that they are heavy
and clouds are weary upon them.

It is an old season after all,
full of dim blue and sadness,
the painter in the field getting chilled,
and the light failing.

_____________________

MONDAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK

Now we go fuzzily into distance. Our glasses
are lost and we must learn to grope—trust

the assisting hands that reach toward us—
gesturing and pulling back. There is no

such thing as loneliness. Time will not
permit. We are ever in the non-revolving.

Music wobbles when we listen for perfection.
Facades are well-structured and have proven

themselves real. How can we believe otherwise? 
There are Sundays we must fill with our own

blessings. Some presence is always there. 
Our souls whisper. Our glasses are pushed back

on our foreheads. We laugh at Monday,
finding us unaware—time blurring up to us,

fresh as a  beginning— and we realize
that we have been living backwards all our lives.

 Trees Against Wall

THE SHORT SEASON

Summer has just begun and now is ending.
Time is not the dream.
_______
   
Reality is forming while we move
through spinning days in a slow malaise.
_______

Oh, why do we trust such rumor—do we know
what will become of us when we are old?

_________________________

LIKE THE SINGING OF MEADOWLARKS

Where we are rich is where some happiness
fills a particular moment without reason or
specialty—only its little change of light
that makes its point at some lift of darkness—
and allows the blessing of gratitude . . . .

Today's LittleNip(s):
 
POEM FOR WONDERING
(After "Poem for Liu Ya-Tzu" by Mao Tse-Tung)

What is deep and what is lonely
if not the waters of the mind,

too deep and shallow
at different times . . .

         * * * * *

IN THE PARKING LOT

I hand you a dollar

and you bless me,

you bless me, you bless me.

_________________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's culinary delights! Say—how much do you know about fog? Around here we know about tule fog, but how about advection fog? Radiation fog? Or how about the mental kind—surely you know plenty about that! Our new Seed of the Week is Laces of Fog. Send your poetic/artistic/photographic thoughts about fog (weather or other kinds)—or any other subject—to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

—Medusa

 Orange Carnations