Volti Subito

Seadragon

—Illustration by N.C. Wyeth

“CAN’T HELP LOVING THE SEA”
                                 ...Medusa
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

(for Kathy Kieth)
 

What is loving the sea? To go to her
Whenever she called, mount her huge body,
Ride her huge body into forever?

Dreaming or not dreaming, arguing with
Its winds, sliding into the water when it
Was full of Summer and her denizens
Full around us, swimming with her
Dolphins and puffer fish, with her whales
White and right and blue, her graceful rays
All light slanted, speech rumbled through
Their body as grunts deep whistling,
As elephants rumble and whistle.

Her monsters great and small, the angler
Fish with its long and piercing teeth
Dangling a luminous worm before it
In the blackest of her depths. The sharks
Never still but for moments discovered
In sea caves where they loiter,
Their teeth unfolding constantly like
Pocket knives opening continuously.
The long muscles of eels and tentacles
Of squid and octopuses twisting and
Unfolding, guardians of secrets.

We can never stay long. We must breathe
The air above the sea, beneath the realm
Where she keeps birds and forms the waves
That have as many forms as all else.

To love the sea. To go down to her.
To watch her. To be transformed by her.
To travel around the earth upon her.
To be the thrall of her endlessness.
To be enthralled of her presence and
Insistent voices, the heaping of waves,
Her terrors and her glassy eye against
Our fair sun such a beautiful blue.

We lose our names in her crashing.
We lose our lives in her liquid body
And still we love her, for she
Is more than all of land to us,
Mother, goddess, bringer of dreams,
Harbinger of all things.
All things safe in you dear sea.

____________________

WHAT WE'RE SEARCHING FOR
(A Google Poem)
—Cynthia Linville, Sacramento

lost art
lost bets
lost city of Atlantis
lost driver’s license
lost ending
lost friendship
lost golf balls
lost horizon
lost indoor cat
lost jury summons
lost kingdom and keys
lost luggage and love poems
lost memory
lost news
lost opportunity
lost planet and passport
lost questions
lost river
lost sinners
lost tribe
lost unemployment check
lost valentine
lost wallet
lost Xbox
lost years
lost zipper pull

____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, including D.R. Wagner for his poem based on my comment last week that, despite her recent behavior, I still love the sea. And to Cynthia Linville for this "found" poem with a repeated word at the beginning. Heck, let's make that our Seed of the Week: A "Google" Poem, as she called it. After all, ALL poems are "found" poems, and it puts a fun twist on it to start every line with the same word. So Google up your Muse and send the results to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726—or dig around in the back of Calliope's Closet (see b-board on the right) and come up with a SOW of your own—no deadline on these puppies.

While you're scrolling around on the b-board, check out the new issue of Canary; a very topical poem about the 50 workers at the nuclear plant in Fukushima by Linda Watanabe McFerrin leads off the issue. Many of Medusa's recent contributors of tsunami poems have mentioned, by the way, that their thoughts were begun by Michelle Kunert's poem last week. Thanks, Michelle!

And now for something completely different... Here's hoping the Japanese will be able to turn these awful pages quickly.

____________________

VOLTI SUBITO
—Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

VS (Volti Subito) as those
schooled in music know
means turn the page quickly,
you mustn’t be too slow.

Since it was simply not
practicable to put VS on
each and every page of a
flip book, a sort of
“Well, you know”
mentality developed that
left it up to the reader to
figure that out on their own.

Then there are some other
“Do I have to say it?”
moments that may actually
be enhanced by a VS:

It is time for your TV show
to begin while you are still
looking for the listing. VS

The teacher approaches as
you look at the test answers
on the back of your “blank”
scratch paper. VS

The choir and congregation
have begun singing while
you are still halfway
through the prayer. VS

Your minor child strolls by
as you are perusing some
reading material you have
forbidden them to touch. VS

You would rather be enjoying
some verse with meter and
rhyme. VS

____________________

My Dad notices, while jogging around Cresta Park,
that the same lone heron once again appears
as he often did last year
on rainy days on the soccer field
The bird gazes into muddy lawn puddles
acting as if wishing fish will suddenly appear
instead of just those drowning worms
Perhaps he is too hopeful in his persistence

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

They say spring has come
and the sky is filled with mist,
yet on the mountains, no flowers, only snow.

—Ryokan (trans. from the Japanese by John Stevens)

____________________

—Medusa

Please welcome Chibi-San to the Kieth household; 

that blur is where his tail is supposed to be.

We got the one-year-old Chibi at the Placerville Shelter 
last Saturday. Why the Japanese name 
(Cheebee-Sahn: Mr. Cute Little Thing) 
for a Mexican (Chihuahua)/Scottish (Jack Russell) cross? 

It just seemed like a small-but-appropriate way to 
commemorate all those animals that must've been 
swept out to sea last week.

So far Chibi is a very bright spot in what is the largest 
snow dump we've ever had in the four years 
we've lived up here.

(See "Life in Pollock Pines" on the b-board for 
another dreary photo.)

The Subtle Shiftings

Red Wing Blackbird

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

WINTER DETAIL
Detail from "The Magpie"—Claude Monet, ca. 1868-1869
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

What is winter
if not

one lone bird
sitting on

an icy gate
surrounded by bare trees

and blue snow
under dead white skies—

and waiting there,
perhaps to sing,

of find a crumb—or,
life willing—signs of spring . . .

____________________

EDGE OF SPRING
—Joyce Odam

Now feel
the balancings—
all the subtle
shiftings—the changing light,
shadows quickening—music
of the rain.

___________________

SECOND DAY OF SPRING IN THE CITY
—Joyce Odam

I will be the source of your discovery.
Come find me:

I am sitting at a small round table
with a white tablecloth.

I am waiting for a white cup
of house-blend coffee to cool.

I inhale its steam
and close my eyes.

I drift away from the moment
and wait for you.

____________________

THE TURNING HOUR: 5:00 a.m. Vernal Equinox
—Joyce Odam

In the full-moon night of morning
of this first full-day of spring,
I feel the moon ignite the
dark with a fierce quiet
as I rise from my dream
and go to the window
to find the powerful
square of light—
so near—out-shining
the street lamps, and the
porch lights, and the first few
headlights of the morning, and I
stand there awhile in the stillness
and begin to map my day which, in
this clear, shimmering moment, I own.

____________________

Today's LittleNip: 

SPRING’S FEVER
—Joyce Odam

Spring says
Look, I will play a trick on you:

I will make you love.
And when you have loved,

I will make you regret your love.
See how powerful I am.

____________________

—Medusa (with congrats to Joyce Odam, Danyen Powell, Carol Frith and Judy Halebsky for wins in the Berkeley Poets Contest last Saturday. By the way, Judy was recently nominated for a California Book Award for her most recent book of poetry.)

Field

—Photo by Katy Brown

Nyi Roro Kidul

A popular story in Java tells of a queen, Nyi Roro Kidul,

who from time to time sends ashore a large wave that carries

people out to sea. Occasionally the queen returns a few of them

alive to tell of her existence.

____________________

GREEK MISTAKE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Did the Greeks mistake, was Atlas born giant
in order to shoulder, not heaven or earth
or firmament, but the vast underneath?
Can one shrug—his—let slip such dogs
of subcontinental drift?

What part of this Japan-wounding havoc,
in Cerberus-speak, means these exact
savage barks? What three-headed whelp’s
chain-jerk from Avernus
must each anguished seismic yelp be like,
to so hurt us?

Rift after rift in the people-crested crust:
from quake to tsunami to meltdown,
a last gargantuan aim stun
vents atomic cloud steam,
sent jet-stream;
and all this from the slip
of an underworld’s inch,
what amounts, in earth-terms,
to an understammer.

As with Atlas’ drink (was his fumble
a drunk one?), is hubris the cup slipped us
on the abysmal lip? Does our ledge,
or our no-ledge, crumble?

What must our next worst lapse
cost us? To our sorrow,
cost fallible us our error (perhaps) must,
but in fate, love, or rubble?

___________________

IN A WILDERNESS OF RODS
—Tom Goff

This is the smoke that doesn’t burn the eye,
except the internal one (“where the meanings are”)?
—this forest fire no forest ranger spies.

A burning dark, invisible as lies,
can scorch a wilderness of rods like stars.
This is the smoke that doesn’t burn the eye,

exposing cores no pool can soothe or quiet
though chill as glacial Himalayan airs.
No forest ranger spies this forest fire

high in a tower, neighbored by tree-sighs.
Long alarms waft on soft steam: distant shofars.
This is the smoke that doesn’t sting like lye,

that bloods no cloth or liquid with its dye,
nor spots the dyer’s hand with instant scars.
Such fires, passing tracelessly forest-wide,

with hurricanes and firestorms will not vie:
yet this thing burgeons like Dresdens, boiling not far
offshore, this fire whereby folk slowly, subtly die.
The news of it smoke-reddens the eye.


with sorrow and respect for the Japanese people, 3/18/11

____________________

THE FISH GRABBER
—Chris Piper, Napa


(“. . . preceding a tsunami strike, the sea often
recedes temporarily from the coast. Around
the Indian Ocean, this rare sight reportedly
induced people, especially children, to visit the
coast to investigate and collect stranded fish
on as much as 2.5 km (1.6 mi) of exposed
beach, with fatal results.” Article: 2004 Indian
Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, Wikipedia)


Soft morning light on softer waves
that lazily caress the shore,
the island and embracing sea
at drowsy lover’s play,
the sunrise birds cacophony
like children’s happy laughter . . .

Dull morning lingers on the strand
declining to become the day;
quick sprites of light dance pirouettes
across a blue-gray becalmed sea;
warm, humid breeze plays in the trees,
and then, the birds are silent.

A rustling of wings, the birds
take flight for harbor inland,
a hush breathes from the sea
and falls across the pastel beach—
the sounds like faintly whispered words
survivors will recall in dreams
that wake them with night terrors.

The sea recedes, the sea recedes,
the sea recedes by feet and yards,
and only that low haunting hush
tells of its cruel withdrawal.
The sea recedes two thousand yards
and gathers in reflection.

Bright colored fish bereft aground
in harsh unfiltered sunlight glare,
they spasm gasping in the air,
and village boys rush eagerly
to grab them up to sell or eat—
an unexpected bounty on
an unexpected sunlit morn.

The scene is painted in the mind,
a still life of a mystery—
the sun, the shore, bare ocean floor,
astonished faces wondering
has somewhere Moses raised his staff
and God displaced the waters.

And in the distance waits the sea,
beneath white clouds and hazy sky
dispassionately gathering.
The mind would hold this image still,
but no amount of human will
could slow the forces working there.

Not sound but shadow makes them pause—
a shape, a movement barely glimpsed.
The sea, as if an edifice
of shimmering translucent stone,
appears to rise and rise some more,
and then it starts to move to shore;
with growing speed, it moves to shore.

There should be sound, some dreadful sound—
a rumbling, a crack of doom,
or Gabriel’s bright golden horn
resounding with the end of days;
but there is none until the cries
of those unlikely fisher boys.

They scramble, scuttling like crabs
across a rocky wet terrain,
still struggling with squirming fish
as if they cling to hope itself;
some stumble headlong, trip and fall,
none makes a pace to match the sea.

There should be sound, horrendous sound,
not terrifying silent calm
through which the sea, not like a wave
but like a growing wall, comes on;
and then there’s sound, but not the kind
the mind would conjure for the scene.

The moving wall displaces air,
an exhalation loud and long,
as if God sighs with grief to see
such things played out in providence.
The wall of water climbs the coast,
reclaiming its domain and more.

The fish grabbers are overcome,
submerged and tumbled helplessly;
they spasm gasping in the sea,
and all their hope, released, swims free.
The ocean surges onto land,
a crestless unrelenting force.

                   _______

The dead are mute; the living grieve
with wailing or with quiet tears
or cursing God for what He did
or didn’t do or should have done;
and others speak of miracles
they witnessed or experienced.

A story makes the evening news
in cities far around the world
about a boy found in a tree
some thirty feet above the ground,
alive, but just, and clinging to
an uhu fish as big as he.

Among the plots of loose-packed soil,
small plain white stones mark unturned earth—
the empty graves of landlubbers
who, at their daily enterprise
and solidly on stable ground,
disappeared, went lost at sea.

A low and careless morning surf
beneath a yawning cloudless sky
rolls unremarkably along
a distant peaceful pastel coast,
and even landlocked Iowa
knows the guilt of survival.

(Written in 2005 in response to the
Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami
of December 2004.)


____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Jets tic-tac-toeing
over the nuclear plant
fear should be grounded

—Michael Cluff, Highland, CA

____________________

—Medusa

A Collection of Shadows

Fallen Petals

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

THE FIELDS AT 5:00 AM
—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

I crane my neck and pretend
I understand the quiet
In the night. The empty
Rooms stretching out toward
Dawn but somehow never catching it
As it turns on its heels,
Changing clothing as it declares
Its surprise at being afraid to open
The packages left in the fields
Of six a.m. and five a.m.

Trained to do so by example,
Crouched over a journal
Writing furiously to keep it
Always searching for sleep
In roles of broken promises
Never verbalized until it is
Too late to stop the half
Dreams unloading themselves
To great sighing,

Shoulders bruised from the weight,
From moving through every blessed day
Reminded constantly that
One must not journey,
One must sleep, one must listen
To how the soul tells one
What the body needs, the
Body laughing, lighting candles,
Forcing books open and leaning
Over the hissing of thought
As it passes by dragons,
Its collection of shadows,
Trees waving in the wind,
Tears without cessation,
Glasses full of the moon.

____________________

LAMENTATIONS
—D.R. Wagner

A wandering of the spirit
Clothed like an idiot
In the worst weather, issuing
Sounds that take the heart
Away slowly so one can watch
It leaving through the filtered
Light of the jungle,
Past a small clearing then
Disappearing for a lifetime.

One becomes attached to
Living this way only because
There is little else one can call
Life but the high cries
From the canopy of night.
A Rustling of wings, some beast
Coughing into an even darker
Front where everything must
Be carried away by strangers.

We call loudly for our family,
Our brothers and sisters and the dark
Answers with measured howls and shrieking
They move the soul away from the body,

Expand everything we know toward
A false dawn or a golden moment late
In the day, evening in the mouth
Like rust, teeth clenched trying
To wake the moon to see
If it makes any sense at all;

Elemental traveling such as this,
The things we never get used to doing.

____________________

OVER THERE
—D.R. Wagner

My uncle Elmo caught gas
in him, North of France 1914
and came home a year later
tiny fires in the top
of his head, when we would
rouse him in the morning he
would say that he was dead.

And he would sit smiling
thumbing through the pages
of a Sear’s catalog and
carefully scratching out the eyes
of all the models with a pearl-
tipped hat pin singing:

Over there, where the
woods are open and the
shells are shining in the snow

Over there, where the
stars are shining I wish
to bend the bow of mighty
Aries, soft and low,
watch his dog and black
bird flow.

As to some tune
learned in the north
of France, my uncle Elmo goes.

__________________

HEY DIDDLE DIDDLE
—D.R. Wagner

Sweet lady of death
in her colored balloon
was touched on the heart
by the breath of the moon.

She took it to harbor
and gave it away,
She took it to Satan
to name it a day;
She took it to heaven
to give it a mind,
She wrapped it in heather
and left it behind.

Oh sing, do da day
all parade and dreaming,
O sing, do da, day
My sweet heart she is screaming.

While most quietly the little dog
laughs to see such spite, and as
if from the last view of a great
city, the dish noiselessly lifts
its painted face and taking
the tiniest of hands in its,
runs away with the spoon.

________________

TIGER WAND
—D.R. Wagner
           (for Joseph Raffael)

Frog sounds
in the early morning.
They have voices, move
together to form a great
voice, voice, in the air
we who listen, those who
care, lifting like the spirit
departing the body wearing
six colors and forming
an attitude of giving
with the hands. All this
falling, lifting me
up from the morning coffee
wiping the sleep from my face,
listening to the frogs
and thinking they are other
voices, children moving
in their dreams, those who
don’t come back from sleep
tonight, the breath of a lover
moving in my ears, departing.

____________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

MARCH WETNESS
—Patricia A. Pashby, Sacramento

Dark clouds stretch,
as rain pours convulsively,
greening jaded lawns,
scrubbing brick walls and walkways,
nudging camellia blossoms to the ground,
freshening the breath of spring.
Inside—fresh brown ceiling stains.

____________________

—Medusa
 

Clouds

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Can't Help Myself

Drawn

With the passion of tides

A palette of life

And

A canvas of sand

—Ronald Edwin Lane, Colfax

___________________

DISBELIEVING THE TSUNAMI
—Patricia Hickerson, Davis

you and I
in the sand
like children at play
with pails and shovels
digging through beads of benign water
an ocean waiting at our feet
shells float through the puddles
under the sift of toes
the heat and damp of buried grains
waved in pools of summertime salt
sea in the nose, throat
hiss of saline weather
splash and spread
winking at the brim
steal it against a distant day’s roar
sun at our backs
we finger the foam of a laid back hour
bubble and shine
simmering

and I will be there again
to measure the tides—
with you, yes

_____________________

SHE KNOWS NO OTHER WAY
—Shawn Aveningo, Rescue

I suppose it was a Friday,
just as every other Friday before.
She picked up fresh fish at the market.
The children walked, holding hands, to school.
He took the train into the city.
Grandmother folded the laundry.
Grandfather smoked his pipe.
A young couple argued over money.
A teenage girl discovered she was pregnant.
A boy broke up with a girl.
A girl broke up with a boy.
Two girls kissed for the first time.
A boy kept his secret hidden.
An arborist trimmed the bonsai.
A fisherman tied off his boat.
Forbidden lovers met in the shadows.
A child was born.
A loved one was buried.

And then…
the earth shook.

And for three minutes of eternity
the molecules of all existence
danced their tarantella.
And the people, all people,
young and old,
strong and feeble,
rich and poor,
simply fell to their knees
unable to detect their own trembling
from the shakings of Gaea.

“It’s the End of Days.”
“It’s God’s Wrath.”
“Serves ‘em right.”
“Mother Earth is pissed off now.”
But in reality,
she knows no other way.

And as the wall of water surged,
engulfing everything in its path,
the normalcy of the day merely washed away.

The fish market was gone.
The school was gone.
The train station—gone.
Arguments were forgotten.
Secrets no longer worth guarding.
Bodies floated out to sea.
The baby never learned to crawl.

And one tiny bonsai tree
stood still,
waiting
for tomorrow.

____________________

URBAN SOLACE XXVI:
WINDOW BOX
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

She sat at her table
Smiling
After several gray rainy days
Sunshine had finally returned
Sipping her Sunday morning coffee
She gloried in the reflected warmth
Now from her hopeful planting last fall
In the beginning of the dark days
In the brave little box outside the window
Yellow buds of daffodils were swelling
Soon to bring new gold
To her mornings

___________________

NOBODY LIKES MARCH
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Sly and lightsome
as any trickster
nobody likes March
which takes us
in spring by force,
with catatonic winds
in a long month cycle
earth overturns earth
full of dead branches
leafless in sunshine,
though you may drowse
or disbelieve
March will entwine you
on greensward paths
once luminous with snow.

___________________

CRAZY MARCH
—B.Z. Niditch

Tumbling
on back roads
motors wrench over
noisy minefields
from rushed and happy hours
bewildered from the mirror
as your slippery schitzsu
tears up the back seat
on the mangy rug
you skimmed
off the last shelf
of the soup kitchen
by the charity bazaar.

You can't believe
it's another crazy March
and lost inside Boston
from icy directions
on a nicked map
this full moon night
at a falst prophet's corner
somewhere on A Street
you listen on the ham
to a helpless prediction
of on incoming tornado.

__________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

OFF THE COAST
—B.Z. Niditch

Off the coast
a pure wind waters,
liquid and silent
as the rain,
you can trust
as the last goodbye
from the dock.

__________________

—Medusa (who still can't help loving the sea, despite its recent destruction...)

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

Pigeons Of The Seven Woods

TOM-CAT RETREAT
—Allegra Silberstein, Davis

The robins have come
they are everywhere:
on the lawn
in the trees
on the bushes
feasting on firethorn.

Full and fat
they defy our tom
who slinks away
from ruffled feathers…
so many
ruddy breasts.

___________________

Thanks to today's contributors, and the top o' the morning to ye on this St. Patrick's Day! Lots of readings to go to today and tonight, including Irish lass Lauren Norton with her folk trio, The Souterrain, at John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis—see the b-board for details.

And what better way to celebrate the Green than by heralding spring (which officially starts this Sunday) with our poetry? Our Seed of the Week is Poppies, Robins, and Other Signs of Spring; send your springy poems to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No time like the present....!

___________________

JACK AND NEAL CELEBRATE THE SEASON
—Kevin Jones, Fair Oaks

“I love this time of year,”
Says Neal, “Sun’s shining,
It’s getting warmer. I can
Drive faster and not worry
About getting stuck
In a snowdrift.”

Jack: “But you always
Drive fast. And I’m
The one who
Has to push out
Of the snowdrifts.”

“Somebody’s gotta
Drive. And just look
Around: trees budding,
Flowers blooming. You
Can even see cool
Stuff in the ditches.”

“Mostly trash and
Bottles in the ditches,”
Frowns Jack.

“Not all the bottles
Are empty,” says Neal.

“There’s that.”

____________________

Uncounted thousands; body toll from a Tsunami in Japan
many survivors left homeless in the snowing cold,
hoping to find lost loved ones alive
and trying to figure out how to bury their dead
Meanwhile as the reflux hit the coast of Santa Cruz
its residents showed their concern for the Japanese
by whining "OMG, my yacht is totally ruined..."

—Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

____________________

THE CRONE'S CAPSULES
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

Having outlived
ecstatic sparks which explode
into fire, our elder distills
her libido into golden capsules,
scatters them in gardens,
parks, near ponds and meadows,
on hilltops, at seashore,
wherever lovers embrace.

Believing the capsules hold
exotic seeds or sensual
honey of the gods,
lovers swallow her elixir.
She smiles,
leans back, hopes
their orgasmic peaks will feel
fantastically like forever.

___________________ 

IN THE SEVEN WOODS
—William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

I have heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.

__________________ 

Today's LittleNip: 

Sunday March 13 while opening my car door
cold wind blew in some brown dried leaves
from the yard in front of a church
so close to Spring with flowers blooming
yet so many places seem stuck in the Fall

—Michelle Kunert

___________________

—Medusa

Spring Lambs And Four-O'clocks

A new apricot tree flexes its muscles in spring

—Photo by Carl Bernard Schwartz, Sacramento

OPHIE'S SPRING NEWS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

You gave no sign—
grazed all morning with the others.
Then, four sheep
instead of five. You were gone.
Among rocks, back-side
of the hill, I found you
with your newborn—nudged
into a cubby of stone
mossed with rain.

Such a tiny thing, wrapped
in nubbins of wool.
Shall I call her Tsu,
for Tsunami? That's
the news I was watching—
terrible news
from the far side of the globe—
so I almost missed
your small news,

this lamb with knobs
of ankle and knee,
and legs much too long
to manage.
But look, she's
wobbling
to her feet, she's
nursing. Better late
than no good news at all.

____________________

SIGNS OF SPRING
—Taylor Graham

Windows open all by themselves,
breezing out the winter's depression stew.

Wild-plum bursts into white petal,
miners-lettuce a loaded gun of tiny blooms.

The new lamb concentrates on a blade
of grass. Soon he'll be a robber of roses.

Rain-spatters rattle against the garden spade.
Daffodils golden on the old dogs' graves.

____________________

IN OUR HOUSE HANGS A POPPY PAINTING
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

In our house hangs a poppy painting,
Nora’s watercolor of Jamestown,
Wildflower Train town. In the grass, watery
threads pass needle’s-eye through pools,
licks, puddles: pieces of water, just like
the idiom in Proust. Nourished

on these liquid morsels, poppies, purple
lupine, baby’s breath; countless unpaintable
blossoms too come forth, stain the paper
metaphysical. Memory reawakes now:

near Jamestown, all the country over,
tors, upshoots, outcroppings of rock,
granite, gneiss, and who knows what,
stone-blooms all but guaranteeing this land
inviolate by strip mall forever. Bless
the spring that issues in such running
stalagmites out of cave.

How many times in this life may we return
to this Edenic enclave? Flower and rock,
is this the right instant to invoke
James Wright, step free of body
and into boulder blossom?

_____________________

ALMOST SPRING
—minhocao, Austin, TX

My mornings
change, a second
cup of coffee and
then, I am on my
knees, clearing weeds.
Pulling them one by one
from the garden's fabric,
weaving seed and bulb
and herb into the pattern.

My fingers sort and
pull and plant, numbed
by frost-chilled dew,
while I breathe the
sweet robin-song scent of
white jasmine blooms.
Dreaming already of
summer mornings stitched
neat with the love calls of
doves, of moth-laced
evenings hemmed with
fragrance of four-o'clocks.

___________________

URBAN SOLACE XXV:
NIGHT RIDE
—Mitz Sackman, Murphys

She walked hesitantly down the steps
Chiding herself for her fears
Struggling to keep her game face in place
She repeated her mantra for these rides
I am safe, I have nothing to worry about
She hated taking the train this late
Especially by herself
Without the comforting bustle of people
The platfom for her train was empty
She sighed
Small noises kept getting her to look around
She felt like a deer in the head lights
Finally her train pulled up
She got into a car
Saw someone and almost fled
Looking again, she saw another woman
Thank God she said
Sagging

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

FROM THE TRAVELS
—Joyce Odam, Sacramento

Faded signs would never name the towns. It always rained, and there was no one to give directions. The sole café was sad—like in the movies—or in the Hopper paintings.

A child always stood in the road behind us, bouncing a red ball in the shadows between the few thin trees that stretched toward each other across the lane. A woman always appeared in an open doorway, watching us leave.

______________________

—Medusa

We are sad to report that Piper, one of Hatch and Judy [Taylor] Graham's German shepherds, has passed away after a long and rich life as a rescue dog. Piper was very helpful in the search-and-rescue movement, and he will be sorely missed.

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis