Thorned, And Petaled Soft

Golden Thirst

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

QUEST

To begin this odyssey, we gave away all we owned,
kept our map in a secret place, and memorized what
we could of it to dispel our growing terror at the
thought of thieves. The Spirit of the Self seemed
far away, but we had to find its shrine which filled
the empty place of our imagination and desire. The
village faded behind us with all our old connections.
I could not relinquish everything. I kept a souvenir-
cup from when I was a child—later we would drink
from it and use it to scoop and portion with. At last
we reached the shrine of our long seeking—a small
place, really—not what we expected—set way back,
with all its windows broken, the path to it overgrown.
But something told us this was it. Though worn-to-the
heart with weariness and dried-up tears, we stayed—
content at last, to repair its damages, hack its weeds.

 As You Are

ON PERFECTION

I have marred the page with my pencil,
made a rude mark
and reached for an eraser.

Now there is flaw and rectification.
Now there is penance and smug solution.
How easily we repair our damages :

a pencil mark of carelessness—
a pen
would have been fatal.

But the page leaves a scar,
wears a smudge of reproof.
I put a bookmark there.

The bookmark is a stare. It knows I am guilty,
will not let me get past this point of reading.
How careless I have become.

 Flower Within Flower

SNOWFLAKE
“To you I send a single snowflake, beautiful,
complex and delicate: different from all the others.”
             —Louis Jenkins (“Too Much Snow”)


Snowflake
I wish to steal—
so beautiful in that
poem I read by another—
mine now.

______________________

FOR ROSES

Thorned, and petaled soft,
the marvel of their scent—
their wonder is enough.

For science and intention,
for all that intervention,
all is moot—

that something of the mind
can alter what is there,
will alter what is truth.

Thorned, and petaled soft—
with lack of scent—how can
the sacrifice of roses be enough.

 Deeper Than Now

OLD MIRROR

What quarrel is this that I have
with the unremembered self
that derives in fragments.
Dare I say again what I say to it,
that it could have saved me,
which it denies.
And we go round again
in our game of truth
and our game of lies,
which each says
the other is.
What is
this dark exchange
that envelops like a shroud :
metaphor of fear, that void, 
that grave, that crumbling year,
as if life did not exist, except in
burrowings, returning as we do
to the old battleground of self against self—
unrecognized—unyielded to—wearing the
skin-shiver of the other in an old exchange,
the mirror entered, locking both of us inside.

 Blue Echo

IMPORTANCE

the song of the keys
as he walks
swinging away from his body
clanking against him
many-toned
rhythmic to his
powerful unlockings

_____________________

HUNGRY—HUNGRY FOR WHAT

For what is hunger if not interpretive yearning—
not a reason, not the quest through madness,
that state through mind-rebellion,
the first birds singing in the trees.

Morning again. The night sleepless.
The birds singing. I would sing.
Tears are easy. Moaning is harsh.
Night is full of useless pain.

Suffer. Suffer.
The house goes silent,
the cat stares, looks at you,
you and the cat, suffering together.

This is new.
This is not.
It’s all shamble.
The house shudders. A block of silence

waits to burst. We are not through with this. 
There is no solution.    
Bear it.   Bear it.    Let it continue.
In and out of sleep. 

Mind is mirage.
In silence now, confusion caught
in mind’s trap.
Its door open. No key. How it is.

 Flower Prayer

ON RIDDLES AND SOLUTIONS
(After "Frangipani Grove" by Cindy St. Onge)

What stays was never here.
What’s gone returns.
Riddles are solved and nothing
learns what one should learn.

Ambition burns the way it should.
Something portends to spoil the joy.
Rhythm adheres to discord.
All is pleased without an ear to care.

The eye assumes what balance learns.
Hold still and wait till balance holds.
Don’t press for what the miracle denies.
The secret knows, and you must solve—

but only when you die—to die is to
begin—but different now—somewhere
you do not know—too far to measure back.
Fear not. There is no measurement for that.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TAMPERING WITH DIRECTION
—Joyce Odam

What if
someone changes
the arrow—stealing our
direction, while we ask, Which way?
Which way?

                                  
(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine)

_____________________

Thank you to Joyce Odam for her smooth poems and photos in the Kitchen today!

Our new Seed of the Week. contributed by Carl Schwartz, is Just a Masquerade. Send your poems, photos & 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.

For up-coming poetry events in our area, scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

______________________

—Medusa, who is indeed thorned, and petaled soft ~ well, sort of…

 —Anonymous Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.