The Turning Seasons
—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA
IN THIS PHOTOGRAPH
I am eight years old. It must be winter. I am wearing my
winter coat and my new hat with the red cherries pulled
down close to my face. I remember that I loved it. I am
turned aside, a little, toward the long-ago camera. My
bangs are too long. I think I am in Seattle. My smile is
very dear to me, even now, to be that young and unused
by life, trusting its path. I don’t remember the day of the
photograph—why I had my coat and hat on. I think it
was one of those four-for-a-quarter picture-booths; perhaps
my mother and I were shopping. Why do I feel such a
pang of loneliness that I don’t know where she is? All of
a sudden I feel very lost and abandoned. This is the first
story.
_________________
DEAR UNKNOWN CHILD,
I found her in an old sand-pile,
such a sad little doll, her eyes
clogged shut, one arm
dangling, her hair still long,
but thin and straggly.
You would want to comb it.
She had a pretty dress on
once, with a pink sash.
I couldn’t find her shoes
though I dug for them.
I wish I could find
where you have gone to
in this stressed-out world.
She stays so silently forsaken
in my arms. She won’t respond
to me. I think she still waits for you.
Cracks in the World
LETTING HER GO
She looks back . . . she looks back . . .
with a slow soft look—not with love,
as you want, but with her own removal.
She has put on a coat of shadow; she has
turned to look back . . . to look back . . .
and waits for your eyes to follow.
_______________
LICENSE TO LEAVE
You have to become the door.
This house is not solid.
You may leave.
The walls will flutter down
like old rose petals.
The roof will lift off
like a hymn.
Your anxieties will no longer
matter to you . . .
open their cages . . .
let them fly from your possession.
Your house will dissolve
in your mind
like an old repetition
finally resisted.
The world is holding out
its carpet for you.
Time is a long blue shadow
that wavers ahead of you
in the brimming moonlight.
(first pub. in Mockingbird, 1999)
Elements
STARING AT TIME
fluttering down from the trees
the little souls of leaves
the life that death believes…
the splintering of bird-songs
the little rights and wrongs
the way it all belongs…
the mental vertigo
the things that stay and go
the tercets in a row…
the souls that wait in stones…
the music in the bones
the casual undertones…
the threes and twos and one
the endings late begun
the black glare in the sun…
Sunrise, Sunset
TODAY WE GO INTO THE MIRRORS
We have been there before, you
remind me. I’m sorry
I repeat this, but it is for the mirrors,
how they need what they need—
something to image;
how they offer their mystery
and their depth;
how they face each other on walls
and still need other than glass.
And we know they will
release us. They have no power.
All we have to do is turn away.
Look, they are faceting.
Do not make me go alone.
They are glowing again.
Sunlight is providing entrance.
How can we resist this?
Spilling
THE WAY
How may we go—slow
as mules—soft as sorrow,
singing our night songs
to each other?
How long must we travel
when the way is grief—
and I, your thief of happiness,
you, praising your emptiness?
*
I saw a flash of bird so rare . . .
and you disbelieved me.
Here is its song.
I have learned it for you.
_________________
LIKE A LOVE
I took to the sorrow like a love,
gave it my illegible promises,
went with it to its loneliness,
where I stayed.
It built a house for me,
made of old wounds,
made of windows filled with tears,
brimming with distortion.
How I loved those views : great refractive
sunrises and sunsets. But it refused me
a door, locked me in with it, to hold
each other as though only we existed.
One day the sorrow abandoned me,
took the windows with it—left me
nothing. There was a small note
on a dissolving table. It said goodbye.
Each night the waves come up
and cover my house, corrode it with salt,
pull back what they want of it, leaving me
this dry beach of combed sand.
(first pub. in Thorny Locust, 2003)
Rain, Not Tears
HOW DOES THAT SORROW GO
Loud and thin.
An imaginary violin.
A silent cry
out of some resounding din.
Well, yes, and well, no.
One of us is wrong.
One of us is remembering
the wrong song.
One of us will be up
all night long.
Why buy more tears. We cried
long ago, and the tears dried.
We forgave and were forgiven,
and still love died.
We took its little life and said,
Oh well, we tried.
__________________
Today’s LittleNip:
OLD SHOES
—Joyce Odam
Somewhere an old shoe
lieth under a bed—
all dusty
and lost
from its other—
lonely as someone
dead
and searching still
for its mate
in a cadaverous closet
and making death
real for the
abandoned shoe.
__________________
A big thanksgiving thank-you to Joyce Odam for today’s poems about abandonment and the sorrow that comes therefrom, and for her purple mandalas with their own particular moods. Taking a cue from Joyce’s LittleNip, our new Seed of the Week is Old Shoes. Send your poems, photos and artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.
—Medusa
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