Black Beads in Winter

 Night Bird Sings To The Night II
—Poetry by Joyce Odam and Robin Gale Odam,
Sacramento, CA
—Visuals by Joyce Odam

 

 

SLEEPLESS
—Robin Gale Odam

The fragile mechanics of pain and the
psyche—the gauzy connection to the dark

The wind of thought—the lift, the senseless
grab-and-run, the indiscernible mar of it

Songbird before dawn—caffeine,
dishes in the sink


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/18/23) 

 

 

 

 Staying In

LOSING TIME
—Joyce Odam

It was because this morning’s full white moon
shone in the window and I happened to look
and could not look away.

It was the endangered way a distracted bird
sat on the fence, so close, outside my intrusion,
and did not fly away when I stood there staring.

It was the studied, patient way a long-dead
picture stared back at me
when I was in a reverie and the clock stared, too.

It was the brooding way I could not answer my
own lost self that could not move, for the world
fell back, and time stayed frozen to my thought.

It was the unrelenting way some time-worn
heaviness became a weight that this day made me
wear—like a heavy garment made of grief.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 7/5/11; 4/6/21;
12/5/23) 

 

 

 

 The Secrecy

AWKWARD
—Robin Gale Odam

in the dream of climbing
the air, the awkward importance

of height and the senselessness of
dimension—the indiscernible falling

just before waking into the unex-
plainable measure of daylight

                          
)prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/18/23) 

 

 

 

 Because

BLACK BEADS
—Joyce Odam

I wear black beads in winter.
Am I sad?

I wear the black of ceremony,
dimensionless and closed,

a privacy—
a sentimental flaw—

or just a grief,
too long refused.

 
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/15/12; 3/5/24)

 

 

 

 Where To Go

THE REPEATING

—Joyce Odam 



 

Going as far as pity

they come to the torn place in the earth


look for the seed in the drop of water


see it there


look upward and give thanks.


They are religious now.


Fanatics with a cause.


They have taken


all the death and forgiven it.



 

At night they go out


on rituals of loneliness


and choose up sinners.


(They are not perfect.)


They are ragged from living


her old red dress


with sequined hem dragging


making sparks against the stone

s
he carrying the old weapons he used to use


left over from wars and murders


and self defenses.

 



Going as far as remorse


they tear at the earth with their fingers


dig up


the seed and the drop of water


to give to the ravenous bird


with the amputated wings.


And having done with it all again


they kneel 


in the red moonlight.


Thank you for sorrow, they whisper.  

 

 

(prev. pub. in Cellar Door, 1979;
and in Medusa’s Kitchen, 10/25/11) 

 

 

 

 Yesterday

NECKLACES
—Joyce Odam

I remember the world
of seven to eight—
the Home—

where you left me, Mother,
to redirect our lives
without Father.

I remember the rules
imposed
to fit me in with the others—

abandoned, I thought—
and learning the tics of childhood,
I wet the bed

and was taught by
impersonal punishments to grow shy
and ashamed

and obedient.  I remember the
waiting-hall where I sat on the floor,
to be invisible,

sucking my bottom lip to rawness;
and the long communal tables
of the dining hall

where we ate together,
none sibling to another,
but where one girl

had a bottle of catsup that was
all her own, that she shared
when I asked for some.

And the territory
of the playing-room
with the individual cubicles
                                  
for our individual belongings,
and how I envied one exotic girl
who was Indian, she said,

and who had a coveted box of beads
that she would string
and restring into necklaces.


(prev. pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, Sept. 1996;
and in Medusa’s Kitchen, 3/5/24)

 

 

 

 A Long Letter

SCORE
—Joyce Odam

the way we play
against Death
with all our charms
our arms held out
for holding
how empty they become
the way life moves through us
like a harm
beginning slowly
then all those years
gaining their soft momentum
crying into mirrors
taking pieces of laughter down
time after time
like finished pictures
of precious calendars
oh, we are not to blame
life is blameless
we are all composed of error
used clay reformed
of thought and air
cold in the winter
because winter is so
synonymous with death
we know that
we fit together
in separate misery
betrayed
abandoned
unforgiving
our own error-choices
put away
in little memory boxes
our bones vibrating with effort
shall we dance
oh, what a complicated harmony
we have become
shall we dance
another music has begun


(prev. pub. in Coffee and Chicory, Feb. 1997;
and in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/26/20) 

 

 

 

 Artifice

SO I WHISPER TO THE WORDS
—Joyce Odam

Imploring them,     repeating them,
becoming intimate with their meanings,

though that is not important to know.
I want,    I need,

their texture—
their silent directives.

Old muse of me
hurts to want so much of them,

thinking them necessary to use for language:
that precision,    that tone,    that undertone.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/19/16; 12/5/23) 

 

 

 

Insomnia III

FOR THE SCRIBE
—Robin Gale Odam

Grave is the act of the scribe—
the trembling note for the score,
the restless phrasing in the stanza, the
deepest mark for the indiscernible script.
 

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/18/23) 

 

 

 

 Autumn Will Find Us

THEIR HISTORY
—Joyce Odam

They were lovers, though they had never met.
One was cruel, the other had a heart as soft as

need; their paths would never cross; their
children would be born to others, theirs was

a tragedy that would never happen. Once, they
met in mirrors—a glance that would let itself

be distracted—that would enter other mirrors
and allow them to miss each other. They would

always regret this, would tell it as a sad part of
their lives. They even had a song for it that kept

their love alive—they would look off into the
distance—they even betrayed each other

—and never forgave.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/26/20)

 

 

 

 Rapt


A LOVE POEM
—Joyce Odam

A woman made of snow cannot love a man of fire,
with all the difference that will torture them
with harsh desire.

A man of snow with all his melting ways,
his summer moods, will always blame
a woman without praise, who also broods.

Alas again, for all inequities by which
imbalances betray. Take music, or take silence;
expect of this what words can never say.

The hollow heart will echo till it fails. What has
abandoned it? Why can’t it listen? It gave and gave
and gave, and gave again, and nothing back will give.

How selfish are the sufferers who have no right to woe.
How helpless, too, the inability of sympathy
to ease a single throe.

Words are useless—fire and snow—
a window placed between a love that streams and ends
at last as rain—the tears love comes to know.
                                                        

(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 5/6/20; 02/13/24)

 

 

 

 Better To Have Loved

WHAT SLUMBERS, WHAT RETURNS
—Joyce Odam

For she is loyal to this wild emotion
she remembers…  tells of…

first she will tell you her long love story,
and drift into its ending…

then the lull while she remembers alone
and is gone from you…

     
(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 4/6/21)

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TWILIGHT NOCTURNE
—Joyce Odam
                         
In the mauve grove where twilight falls
soft and fragile, where poems

are born in the souls of birds;
where old trees listen to the songs

of shadows; where everything
comes to rest and be safe—even

the terrors—even the dreams
in the minds of the oldest of children—

even the blamed and wounded loves
who have no reunion. There let us

be—in the minds of all that sylvan
bliss, and speak nothing but prayers.


(prev. pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 8/29/17; 12/24/24)

___________________

Joyce and Robin Gale Odam have presented us with some fine work on the subject of "Stranded", and many thanks to them for that! Our new Seed of the Week is “Chasing poems”. 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’s Kitchen will have its 20th anniversary this May 29, and we will celebrate with poetry, of course. Send a poem that celebrates something—anything—form or free verse—and I’ll post it on May 29. 20 years! Amazing!

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
JoAnn Anglin, Richard Turner  

& Susan Flynn
will read at Twin Lotus Thai
in Sacramento tonight, 6pm.
For future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
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—or get changed!—
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