That Promised Love

 

A Simpler Time

—Poetry and Photos by Joyce Odam,

Sacramento, CA

TIME-SCAPE  

At dusk the slow airplane ascends and is crossing
the small square of window-sky, as slow as the
tedious clock that stays on its slow time as if to
alter time’s own measurement.

Something is muffling the world : is it the thought,
or the hour? Every small rustle complains that it
can’t be heard. I am unnerved by the hum of my
own time-held distraction.

The plane is halfway across the window. It has
shrunk to the size of a disappearing bird—too early
for an owl, too late for any other, yet it has not
moved. The plane can’t get by.

I have not changed position and its wing-lights
keep blinking to alter the perspective—yet it
continues to hang in this small window-square
of dusk in the confines of the window-frame. 

 

 

 

The Private Meaning

 

EVERY EXIT IS A WORD—

followed by a long red hallway
muffled by a gray silence;
some escape by following

the blue map of their lives,
past all the numbered doors
down the one-way stairs—

ghost-mingled and musty
with trapped shadows.
My hand follows a wall

for balance—reaches an end,
then another end—to a lobby
where inhabitants

look out of windows to the
blurry rain—so beautiful under
the streetlights—

in the rain-light
that pours down my face
in reflection on the inner side of

the window by the door where others
enter and leave and emphasize
my deepest loneliness.

_____________________

EVERY ANNUAL MORNING

and I awoke
to children in my yard again
locking my eyes with theirs
when I went to the window,

pale children
without words or motion
waiting for what my heart
would offer.

They stood like blighted flowers
in the beaded grass,
rooting and growing there
in a sad profusion

as they have
every annual morning
of this desolation.

I did not ask them
what they wanted—I knew.
The did not ask me to give.
They knew I would not.

                             
(prev. pub. in Simbolica, 1967)

 

 

 

Olden

 

EACH YEAR SHE VOWED

She knew what it was to sorrow by degrees,
the thin extending shadows of her years,

the blank look in the mirror of her eyes.
Oh, she was sad enough to specialize

in winter’s puny light—that tone of gray
that January brings. Each year she vowed

to lift the house with light—to have it
glow and penetrate the winter—still—
 
she hangs onto her angers like a duty.
She knows what it is to sorrow by degrees.

                                            
(prev. pub. in Hidden Oak, 11-24-04)

 

 

 

 Opus

 

THE PROMISED LOVE
“The clearest way into the universe is
through a forest wilderness.”—John Muir

Follow the music of the trees.
Follow the music of the birds.
Follow the music of the
ever-deepening winds
that pull you deeper
into the waiting universe
of mind, and heart, and soul,
to where the promised love is.

__________________

IT WAS LOVE,

in the guise love always takes, so good to look upon
with eyes that can’t refuse. And the mouth—the 

mouth with its lies, so beautiful to hear, like com-

pletions of the self. And the hands—the hands with 

their tremble. How you loved those hands. And 

remember how you danced together, body to body, 

perfectly. The music loved you. Oh, it was wonder-

ful, this beginning, the competition, the surrender—

which to which. Where draw the line that is an 

answer. True, love had its moments—love, the
survivor of itself—and even when it’s finished—

all those memories . . . 

 

 

 

 Complexity

 

EVERY LIE BELIEVED

Somewhere new, somewhere old, somewhere
blue—like the blue of winter—where it is
longer than time, like an unfamiliar
rhyme (slipped in) on the map
of nowhere—
why would we care,
and
when
have we ever
abandoned ourselves
to any ransom that
demands us,
where
there
is
more
room
to
grieve
than room
to grieve failings—
love is always the last to yield . . .
poor cripple of surrender,
one crutch broken.

 

 

 

 Autumn Will Find Us

 

LIKE SOMEONE ALWAYS CRYING
After Grigory Soroka, 1823-1864

As if love again is sacrifice
and time has finally escaped.
It’s all real—

the hesitations in the wrong moment,
the way light creeps
along lonely dark places,

the way sound echoes
into its own dimension
as if sadness wins,

as if love is caught in this same dimension,
the mirror echoing behind them,
or is it the doorway

that finally reveals itself as promise.
How still they are in vertical greenness
of wall paper and carpet;

in sheen of white
that crumples toward them.
Is it night? midnight? winter?

What has wakened them
into this otherness?
They look at each other like strangers,

before they met, before they loved,
before they had this decision to make,
together or alone.

____________________

EVERY DISTANCE

The time of the birds
has come and gone.

We no longer symbolize each other
in flight or song.

We have left silences
and agonies of listening.

We have left
every distance folded in the wing.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 8-01-2017)

 

 

 

And Thus Believed

 

THE NOTHING AND THE EVERYTHING
THAT MATTERED

We made it from moonlight and cold shadow
We made it from sinister winds
that tore through our worn-out barriers

we made it of every
remembered thing
we could not bear

dangerous laughter made of crying
that flood of tears from years
and moments of confrontation

we made it out of love
that was tired
of loving

we scattered words like epithets
coated with black-sugared innuendos
straight from the cauldrons we stirred

and stirred
until the air
could no longer breathe

there was nothing sacred
from our rage—enemies at last
our mouths bitter from kisses, threats

and promises—only shreds
of dissatisfaction left to deal with—
I would not (could not) love for all of that . . .

____________________

IT ALWAYS ENDS THIS WAY

Your smile is tight on your face now,
your eyes in a stare beyond me.

Your arms are folded.
The pulse at your temple throbs.

A shadow twitches
at the corner of your mouth.

Your wristwatch catches a glimmer of light.
I stare at it. You move your wrist.

If our eyes connect,
something will break—the heartbeat—

the breath—
the delicate tension of the air.

In a moment one of us will speak,
It will be the wrong thing to say. What then?

 

 

 

To Almost Know

 

THE GLOW

It was always the rain
it was always the late wet gray
it was always this time of day—
the way it all combined
to draw them shadowing back
through the figment to the real
of this ancient swirling atmosphere,
to almost know why they came.

 

It was always the sound 

that carried through the air,

it was always the thin damp smell

and the feel of the night

and the way their faces would lift

with a signature of tears

into the vanished, offered years.

 

Oh, where did it go . . . they

would say when the scene was gone,
when the streets were empty again,
except for them . . .
Oh, where is the power of yesterday,
they would mourn,
with its pace,
with its charm,
with the who we were
and the who we might have 

been . . .                                        
Oh, where.

And the rain was only rain again.
And the gray was only gray
and the hour was only the hour
that was there
when the wisp of yesterday withdrew,
when the shining glimpse of memory
faded back into its simpler time
and the mind’s sweet pain.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

HER LIFE IN MINE
—Joyce Odam

My mother, my little skeleton,
in her tiny grave somewhere

beyond my comprehension,
my life contains her—

so what is death that we
hold it back—

that death has no power over
love, when one life can hold

another life
for as long as forever . . .

___________________

We’re talking about Forever today, our recent Seed of the Week, and many thanks to Joyce Odam for her fine poems and photos as she contemplates it all! Our new Seed of the Week is “Smartphones”. 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. And see every Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Muir Woods, California
“The clearest way into the universe is
through a forest wilderness.”—John Muir

 

For upcoming poetry events in
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