Illusions Are Everywhere

Time Without Hours

—Poetry and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

A NIGHT OF SILVER

Boats on the grass.
Houses floating on air.
A white fence in the darkness.

A shining upon everything
as though phosphorescent,
or maybe painted with silver.

A hover of trees
holding back the vague sky.
A reason to stare.

However else we are to
imagine this is not clear,
though the disproportionate

effect is entirely correct,
and correctly balanced.
The illusions are everywhere.

 Spacing

FOUR TREES IN AUTUMN SUNLIGHT
After Four Trees by Egon Schiele

This is the story of four trees,
aligned on a rolling ground

—above, the layered sky,
the fierce red sun—

the four trees turned to fire
in the churning light—

ablaze in fiery vertigo
as the panoramic sky pulls by,

and the red sun sinks into the
old blue hills that wait to bury light,

and the four trees change back
into familiar silhouettes.

                                   
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 9-23-09)

 Duration of Blue

UNKNOWN HOUR OF WHEN

Time has brought me here—unknown hill
and sky—unknown hour of when.

An only tree looks familiar. I walk toward it.
Uphill. Downhill is too dark.

How can this be morning—there is no clock.
I am thrust into timelessness.

I listen for birds in the tree.
Clouds hang still.

The tree rustles its leaves.
A voice-sound forms a question.

Ask and ask—I turn from my direction,
look down at the tops of trees.

A forest,
tightly held together by the silences.

I shout for an echo—call out,
call out—no echo in the density.

I have been asleep, and I have wakened.
Where is the sleep tunnel?

__________________

IT IS THE TIME OF CHANGING TREES

Now there are flecks of yellow in the leaves
and flutters of rust in a damping breeze
in a motion of green made nervous by the
hour that is coming faster now to sundown; 

and a blue presence is being felt in some new
awareness that pulls swiftly at the sad remark
of some love that has died a bit with the summer,
but was here and now is gone—but when? when

did it go? was it this moment that describes itself
too late and all the power is being pulled into a
demanding darkness?  Night is the answer to
questions such as this, or morning when it comes

again to variegating trees.  “Two sorrows make
an answer,” is what you told me when I asked
an easy question of your eyes that were too full
of me, and, like the season, had begun changing.

 Entanglements

NIGHT-WOUND

I was the one made of tears
but they were not for you.

I went toward shadows to be real.
In the night-wound, I was the sea.

You were the mock horizon.
I never reached you.

                    ~~~

 . . . I have not wept for years.
I am the dry sound in the trees . . .

You are the diminishment that I feel
shrouding me like regret.

You thrash and howl—beat every-
where and die.  Now I will cry.

_________________

FOR THE TEN OR TWELVE OR TWENTY POPLARS
      After “The Binsy Poplars, felled 1829"
                            by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Grieving these trees, these green leaves,
these branches that reach, and beg,

these trees that sway in the currents of the day
and at night when the moon glows

and nothing knows the grieving
of these trees;

how we link the air with
so much stricken care

that cannot
release—

that must ever
reach and reach

to here
from the razing of these trees,

how no words can save
what life would crave of itself

and continue to be alive
in the wondering air,

so stunned at the loss—
at the merciless loss, of these trees.


(prev. pub. in Song of the San Joaquin, 2015)

 Aim of Direction

MAN WALKING A LONG THIN ROAD
BETWEEN POPLARS
After The Road with the Poplars by Vincent Van Gogh

This long road diminishes behind itself in a
mirage of distance. Only the poplars keep it

from vanishing out—closely rooted to each
side—passing their shadows back and forth

across the way where a plod-footed man
tries to reach the other end. But this is a

slow road. The late thin light of a flat white
sky tries to wash it out—the man faceless in

this dwindling hour—losing detail. But he
does not hurry, this cross-hatch road is familiar

to him, and some house may let him in before
the last light goes, and some warbler may yet

break the gray monotony and echo down and
through this gauntlet of his day, and the trees

will press their tips together, and the road will
close upon itself, and perhaps the moon come out.  

 Night Music

NIGHT EASE
         “The black oyster of night opens
             to release a white moon…”
                      From “Desolation” by
                   Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

The countless stars spill freely from the sky. The
white moon stares after them. The cold darkness
pulsates as the sea accepts the stars that pulsate
with sensation as the stars touch the water. There
is nothing lost from the sky—nothing to prove of
this.

Children at bedroom windows recite their prayers,
then sleep under the restive sky. The sea makes a
hollow singing that sounds like the wind. The moon
is a luxury tonight—a white wish for those who used
to be sailors.

The sky takes back the moon with a slow gathering
of dark clouds. In city trees, nightingales are easing
the hours of the sleepless.

                                                                       
(prev. pub. in Poets' Forum Magazine)

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

OH, SLEEPING MOON
—Joyce Odam

Red sky of sunset    fiery with light    afloat in a dream
transformed from one image to another

You have become a curve of shadow
white birds are asleep in the tree tops

The red glow stays
a whirlwind forms beneath you

Your dream betrays you
you open your hand to a last piece of burning light

____________________

Today Joyce Odam has chosen to talk to us about trees and love and pain and illusion—some of her favorite subjects, and our thanks to her for it!

Our new Seed of the Week is another Ekphrastic one:

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 more about Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni (1888-1970), see encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/rosa-zagnoni-marinoni-1705/.

____________________

—Medusa

"...and nothing knows the grieving of these trees..."

—Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

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.