Driven

 

The Echo of Breathing

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

 

THE POWER OF BLACK THOUGHT
After Approaching Thunder Storm
(Painting by Martin Johnson Heade)

Across the black water, everything is still.
Black clouds have stopped their heavy movement.
A last white sail stays stranded where it is.

This is the stillness of time’s promise,
the last moment that will move
to your awareness—

what your mind creates
out of your will,
your wish

to hold this place
away from all intrusion.
This is where the night will end—

letting the last shudder of light go out.
You alone can stop this, but you are in agreement
with the dark. Such is the power of black thought.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/11/14)

 

 

 

The World in Tantrum

 

OF FURY

I yell at the wind, but the wind is in a tantrum too.
The wind is a howl of fury. I can only beat
my fists at the sky, bracing under the forces
in my insignificance, and scrape
like a thorn against an unflinching thumb.
I can only let the immensity
cover me until I am part of the motion,
my own voice torn into gibberish.
I scrape like a thumb against a thorn.
I think I may be weeping, but my hair
lashes across my face and stings my eyes.
I sway with imbalances; yet I hold,
like a thumb against a thumb.
Colors churn around me,
and I am smeared like a
wet scribble across a wet page.
My wail is received and carried
deep into the wind’s own grief
until my throat aches
with rage and helplessness.
My rage is honored
like a thorn against a thorn.
What has driven us into such a blending—
what realizations of all that must be uttered,
tearing, and released? This howling… this lashing… this
blood? 

 

 

 

Looking Back

 

THE FATEFUL MOONLIGHT
(Celtic folklore) Fateful Moonlight

You hear a cry and sense a shadow—a falcon in the torn
hands of a girl as if one of them is hurt or in danger from
the other, and you note how the moor gives rise to a swirl
of low fog and small circles of whirling light that enhance
the mood—something like a warning.

But you are intrigued, how you simply emerge when the
instant is right. It is night, deepest night, when the moon
is full, but waning. The trees scratch the sky as if this were
the winter edge of the year. You sense a change as of some-
thing remembered long ago—there was a night like this
when your guard was down and your memory was faulty.

But you are driven, and she stands here now—holding the
falcon—grown twice as large as before. You blame the
chill of your mind and go toward her—but the falcon stays
hooded—and her eyes say no.

               
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 7/9/19)

 

 

 

The Mystery of Self

 

OF MY BEING

a shadow, an aura,
shape of an opening wing
held from flight,

am I myself
or am I part of another,
an echo of breathing,

an apparition
of mind
locked to my question,

am I a center then,
am I the soul of my existence—
how can I even think such a thing

______________________

POINTILLISTIC

Sketches. This thing. In this place. Glance.
Quick. Around you. Impression. Whine of
wind. Gurgle of rain. Soft moan of traffic.
Room-light on shadow. Room-shadow under
light. Silence under sound. House cold.
Don’t get up. Feel cold under thought of cold.
Which is real?

 

 

 

Never Your Despair

 

THE PROPENSITY OF THE FOREGROUND  
After The Grave of William Penn
(Painting by Edward Hicks)

The ones in the lead are the ones that hold the eye
first—passing so indifferently by, on such a day,

following their familiar path,
fixing the eye to watch them go     so easily down

the brown trail     alive with sunlight flickerings
through the shady trees     the cattle     and the sheep

and the man with the herding-stick . . .
while beyond all this . . . almost missed
 
a tiny grave    is opening     is staring quietly
at the staring sky    is offering its place to be

the day     is still     in far perspective,
the rural sunlight burnishing the ground

where a group of mourners huddle each to each—
feel time pull the day and slip away into each grief.

 

 

 

Staring Quietly at the Staring Sky

 

LIKE THESE TWO WHALES….
“So often it happens that the time we turn around in
soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in.”
                           —John Ashbery

Like these two whales in their pitiful floundering in
errant waters that we find our own selves caught in
with our risen sympathies—our hearts made tender
again—how helplessly we suffer for them : their huge
condition—the cruelty of nature—the mystery of self
destruction—what we would solve if we knew how.
And now we watch the news of them unfold, wonder
ing how and when they will find their way from river
channels back to huge waters.

Oh, do allow the use of ‘huge’ again to offer them
assistance—our minds too small, too hollow, to find
a way back for them—those driven creatures we newly
love. How can we know what else to do but suffer for
them? We are in the same situation—the same drowning
—life after life of us. We feel that underwater crying.
We answer and answer.

 

 

 

Hearts Made Tender Once Again

 

A PATH OF FADING SUNLIGHT

come to me
but come softly
as a vision

 

I will leave a path of
fading sunlight as I turn from you

even before

I know you are there

you will wait
like a perfection
I will feel you touch me
with your realness
but I will be veiled
in a longer sorrow
than you hear

do not listen
do not leave me
before I find you

oh, I do like
the trail of incense
between us…
ah, you are there
with your ancient perfume
growing faint with waiting

but I am frozen
before a cruel doorway
full of dreams
full of dreams
I must dream them
before I return
to your calmness and patience
                                   
I must not let you see my face
for it is harsh and weeping
it is scarred and old
you must wear gloves
you must wear
a blindfold

                                      
(prev. pub. in Community Endeavor, 11/91)

 

 

 

Healing Incense

 

 

OF HUMAN CRIES

Lest I let my heart be broken by too many truths,
my spirit sullied by lies of the soul,
bewildered by my darknesses,

how let the terrible light be a blinding fact
to my groping—body is proof—
it gropes and limps

through years and centuries
forward and backward
into myths and superstitions—

native to nothing but self—a nomad
of every homeless thought to bless the wondering
that cannot free the mind of murkiness

or clear the eyes from sadness and terror
in such a prison as one can stay imprisoned in
—let me thus resolve myself of all life's grief

 

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 11/15/14)                                                    

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

PATHWAY
(an exchange of thought)

The Architect
of madness and confusion

fathers the embittered mind,
still following some well-worn

trail, as stale as the crumbs
it left behind . . .

—Joyce Odam

______________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam today for powerful poems and beautiful flowers! “. . . a thorn against an unflinching thumb. . .” Her “Of Fury” repeats pain without relief—so why don’t we stop doing that to ourselves? Sometimes it seems like that’s the trap we’re all stuck in these days—a lack of relief. Our job, as Joyce says, is “Hearts Made Tender Once Again” in spite of it all.

Our new Seed of the Week is “Opening Skies”. What would such skies be bringing us? Storms? Sunlight? Redemption? 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.

To see Edward Hicks’ painting, The Grave of William Penn, go to commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Hicks_-_The_Grave_of_William_Penn_-_1958.8_-_Yale_University_Art_Gallery.jpg/.

Joyce’s wee Brevities: Mini-Mag of Minimalist Poems took an editorial sabbatical last year, but has come roaring back with a May-December 2021 issue that is now available for $1.55/copy from 2432 48th Av., Sacramento, CA 95822. Small, but plenty of hot stuff—like Joyce and her co-editor/daughter, Robin!

___________________

—Medusa

 

 Approaching Thunder Storm
—Painting by Martin Johnson Heade, 1859
(commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Johnson_Heade_Approaching_Thunderstorm_ATC.jpg)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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