Cupboards of Worry

How It Is

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA 

FROM THE BOOK OF ANIMAL TALES

                          —Illus. by Arthur Rackham

 
Framed within a likened border—
a convergence—Old White Owl

in a huddle of listeners
and fidgeters—

something is being
revealed—

apprehension builds . . .
a worried tremble of wings . . .

Rooster knows
and Parrot knows,

Duck and Pelican know, as does
hulking old vulture and

Wee
Sparrow—

Old White Owl, in all his
pomp and seriousness, has told them.

___________________

THE GUEST LIST

Who is Felicia—and who is Albert—
those two who always seem to be there

when the party ends,
holding their empty glasses

with the small dregs of unfulfillment.
They can always be found

leaning against the last shadow of the night,
blending into the tapestry of yearning.

You may have to ask them to go—
or ask them to stay to broaden the night

which is still young enough to allow a further
blur of earnest conversation.

They, too,
are non-existent in this story—

conjured by your love of loneliness.
You love no one.

You cannot sleep
without the ant-like trail of thoughts

that trail into your cupboard of worry.
Alone now, you pick up

the old book you always read
and begin again to plod toward the ending.

 What Next

LOVE AS AN ABANDONED BUILDING

Here is where we lived.
Here is where we loved.
Here is where we left.

And now the old shed
of a house stands gaping,
stricken with neglect.

Trees guard it still,
but wearily.
Weeds overtake, then quit.

An upper window stares,
devoid of glass. The inner walls
still hold the ceiling up—

but barely. The outer walls ?
They’re gone, as are the steps.
The pathway, too.

Only dry sounds linger here,
mutter about themselves,
worrying the air.

And all we share of this
is how we lived here—loved
awhile—then left.

 Gray

SAVOIR FAIRE

Is there a fragment somewhere
left of love—
that old wound that keeps on wounding;

dare I let memory persist
with its ragged edge that I kept mending
with little scissor-snips—

that worry-edge that wants to bleed;
how can I want to soothe
that old remorse

with kind forgiveness,
myself at least—my better self—
that could always put everything in perspective

 Through All of This

REALISM AND IMAGINATION

Pink doorway, made of shadow
dismal curtains hanging
from a bent rod
at a dark window
too many winds
blowing there
winds of terror
echo winds
moaning winds
how the shredding light
staggers against
the ceiling—
lowering year by year
toward suffocation
(only thought of this . . .
only thoughts . . . )
but there is the hallway
made of turnings,
and all the footsteps,
heavy and slow,
just like yours now,
pacing,
worrying the rug,
which is deep as sad memory—
all its restrictions, all you cannot let go.

_________________

To speak of hands,

considering
their look,
their use,
their effectiveness;
considering their connection
to will of mind—
I'll not go on to list the probabilities—
imagination can make its own connective

(note how I leave a clue
to build upon, or argue with)

no
matter.

hands
have no choice—
hands have not yet
disobeyed reflex or
retrievable decision
(though sometimes
I worry about my own
such urgings as I become strange
to myself in some fit of anger or despair,
to feel my hands, testing my mind,
resisting, but not always in time….

 Smoke and Fire

 

STUDY
After “Three Worlds”

         —Photograph by Clifton Albergotti

 
Depiction :
three worlds :
earth . water . air
(Where the occupant?)
motion . stillness . depth

light and substance reconciled.
(Where the intrusive, changing eye?)
No eye must worry this tremulous light,
unsteady substance. What least is most?
Whose faith reaches here? Whose doubt?

Nothing will ever change for the frozen moment.
Everything will change for the penultimate moment.
Extreme to extreme—awe—and what is missed—
word swallowed by no sound—silence that disturbs.
All this is to memory is what it reveals, what it troubles.

Barely Enough

 

TIDAL

Look what the sea has done—those
shadow lines
light touched and cast into striate patterns
for the relentless winds to worry

and try to change. But the persistent sea
will return and change it all again—
will suck away the trace

of all other touchings. This is mine, claims
the sea, and it will return again and again
to wrinkle the sand with

its ebbing, for always it must draw back
into its great heaving self—
like a breathing.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

YOU
—Joyce Odam

let me become the fragment—you—
the one I remember as collage—
the one made of this and that of life.

Let me be that texture, that wing,
that disappearing thought.
Feather.   String.   Worry-stone.   Cloth.

___________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam today for tackling our current Seed of the Week, Worry, from all sides, with her usual skill and grace. Our new Seed of the Week is “Adrift”. 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.

___________________

—Medusa

 “Owl … has told them.”
“Old White Owl” Illustration by Arthur Rackam

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