Time's Bells

 

The Way Through Winter

—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam, 

Sacramento, CA

—Photos by Robin Gale Odam

  

 

IT'S GRAY OUT
—Joyce Odam

This day's gray, the air cold and
bleary, time slowing through dripping
air to find its way through, slowing—

slowing for the fog spreading over white
houses fading back and fog-walkers peering
for headlights and shadow-sounds                       

brushing back into time as wary as caution—
everything shifting forward, finding
the way through winter . . .

____________________                                              

TONIGHT THE STARS
—Joyce Odam

tonight the stars turn into holy bells
the distance spreads beyond the glow of time
clouds can be touched through the eyes of wonder
and the horizon wears a rim of gold

 

 

 

Beyond The Glow Of Time

 

THE BELLS
—Joyce Odam

In memory, sounding far, just as they
are—the time between that waits forever,
as forever is.

That far, that old, when time will listen
back again. There is a difference, something
I know again—how it fades.

The bells compare the difference, I want to know
whose memory we are—the tones entreat my
memory, claiming us as theirs. I brace to remember.

The bells, as time's bells, touch the cold air of winter,
there and here and I am sad to lose them though I still
can hear them—faint, now and again, when sound is
farther as it is and I am just as far.

 

 

 

The Bell Tolls

 

 

ONE DREAMY NIGHT
—Joyce Odam

One dreamy night
when I was a dreamer of my
dreams I strolled a cold night's

fantasy—a child of course,
a child of an unnumbered age.
The air was glistening with sound,

a slow night when I was only half
of being me but looking for my
inner self, younger or older.

I took my tears along for all the tiny
tear-birds I had saved—the night was
only half awake for me, halfway to the

middle where I could hear the tiny bells
of birth and dying calling me again,
this time a choir of notes I could not

remember but I hurried to them
with my wisdom—life time softened
around me and I held them in my mind,

my heart opened with love and time—
"I don't know" I whispered as always,
and they softened their fears and found

their little tears and I felt myself given
back to all my frightened life where
questions to my weeping lied.

 

 

 

When I Was A Dreamer Of My Dreams

 

GENERIC
—Joyce Odam

Generic and real? What complies . . .

To such appeal? The real and the almost,
conjurious . . .

If truth is right and still be broke? How mend
one to the other . . .

If 'perfection means' and 'metaphor means'
begets a quarrel? Then the absolute becomes
right and always right and wrongness is never
wrong begets a quarrel . . .

__________________

GRAVEN
—Robin Gale Odam

No other gods before me
graven into stone . . . the heart of
stone, the deaf ear, the fabrication in
earnest, the zealous appetite of the artist
at the gallery—the palate of the starving
and the thirst of fishes sipping at mud—
no, none.

__________________

THE DREAM IS DARK
—Robin Gale Odam
After Pablo Picasso, Self Portrait, 1971

I will paint my portrait in this hour
before I fully wake. I choose the line
of dark night for separation, the flick of
green for eulogy, and ochre for my mouth,

for the earthy kiss. The prominent nostril
is for the drawing of a breath, twilight blue
for pondering, and the crown of crimson
for the glaze of sun behind the horizon.

The trace of stubble is from the
night I leave behind. I do not recall
the color of my eyes. The dream is dark.

___________________

DRAFT
—Robin Gale Odam

Breathless, the poet scribbled
with sharpened pencils—breathless
in the turning of the hour, in the hour of
gleaning, in the placing of the flourish.

Fragile curls of pencil lead and broken
points lay scattered over pages of
endings.

                       
(prev. pub. in Brevities, 2018 and
Song of the San Joaquin, Fall 2018)

 

 

 

The Cold Winter 

WINTER BELL
—Robin Gale Odam

. . . fog over morning
the shortest day    mirror
reflection or mere reflection

or the one glimpse of the remnant
of a dream    the low whisper of the
one winter bell . . .
                        
____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

DARK SOLSTICE
—Robin Gale Odam

. . . after the night
out of the shortness of
days into the length of time . . .

____________________

Joyce and Robin Odam have joined us again today as Joyce’s fractured hip continues to heal. She and Robin are writing (mostly) new poems for us—what a joy!

And speaking of Joy, our new Seed of the Week is “Joy”. So much talk of depression and fear and hopelessness these days! Let’s turn it around and find some joy in the world around us. 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

 

 

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












 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For upcoming poetry happenings in
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