Jellyfish in a Vast Ocean

Birds on a Wire, Camino

—Photo by Katy Brown, Davis

TALE OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL
—B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

Posted on the sky
a body of culled shapes
drifts as long sighs
you read a folk tale
along the tall grass
from sepia heights
of words, mien, imagination
to excite the world.

Here a poet by sea voices
rests long sleeves
on the dunes
entangled in shadows
with Grimm's glasses
on leafy eyes
watching circled birds
overhead with omens
following every myth
and tale logged in nature.

____________________

UBER MEDUSA
—B.Z. Niditch

We're jellyfish
Medusa
in a vast ocean coast
west to east
dangerous water flows
through November
showers,
we're on deck
slow dancing
for sky writers
wanting to paint us
all different 
over rippling rushes
of undercurrent colors
on subterranean space
near time zones
of your lure and lore.

____________________

THIS KID BROTHER
—B.Z. Niditch

This kid brother
of a friend
I saw on a park bench
by Boston Common
in the Sixties
mooching
and mooching off
his girlfriend
which I did not dig
but had indignation
because the woman
deserved better
and liked to hear me
play sax
as the couple became
flower children
and moved out
to Frisco
and I became
in a sense a Beat
and received a letter
from the woman
who sang folk songs
in a club with Joan Baez
saying she had to leave
the guy
who once beat her up
for drugs
and I sent her money
to return
because I worked hard
to earn money
for music lessons
after school
in an ice cream factory
with rubber boots
under my feet
full of water,
the guy had to go
to Nam
and was missing in action
she shortly married
a musician in my band
and last week end
invited me to play
in a gig
when memory
was no fault in my life
and she told the audience
in song and parable
about me.

 Placerville Window
—Photo by Katy Brown

SOME SUNSHINE
—B.Z. Niditch

Some sunshine
when November leaves you
alone at the edge
of the blue lake
by the Savoy jazz club
where you nibble
on memories
of playing sax
when the sound system
rarely worked
and arpeggio notes
return near the swallows
when half of your life
was letting managers
choose what
they want to hear
and you playing along
so you can eat
and have another gig
in the Latin Quarter
when so tired
without the energy
though being twenty
when breath burning
for a new reed
of reddish lips
caused me to blush
from the shore daisies
I brought my first love
during rehearsal.

___________________

VOYAGE DAY, NOV. 11, 2012
—B.Z. Niditch

Shadows flee
our box kite
in the shape
of a monarch butterfly
taking off from the sand
up from Singing Beach
touching the dazzled
wet sky
new life enters me
by the seaweed rocks
in the piratical breeze
as a heavy wind flies
near my sail boat
which clings to me
under the human-shaped
black sun
drawing on the anchors,
losing my appearance
briefly
underneath wavering tides
for a quick swim
concealing my form
as in a mirror
thrashing on sulfur water
on this voyage day
of increasing waves
beating against my body
as I watch six swans
in the slippery lure
pass by us
as the late sunset
covers our reflections

___________________

SATURDAY FISHING
—B.Z. Niditch

Near the shore
of the Atlantic
a poet reels in an eel
on his fishing rod
and he wouldn't leave me
until a big Sicilian man
eager for a Sunday meal
helped me remove
the body of an eel
stuffing the creature
in a straw basket
when time hangs out
on a cold November day
with the cold breath
of harsh waves
nearly washed over me
and the bearded man
invited the poet to dinner.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

A dazzling poem opens our eyes to sharing deep insight.

—B.Z. Niditch

__________________

—Medusa

—Photo by Katy Brown

Fortunes Still Unfolding

—Photo by Caschwa

I dyed my hair today
to cover brown with gray
ever since those cuts in pay
I need that senior discount

had to hock my crown
and rhinestone royal gown
I cried when stepping down
from king to just a viscount

I enjoyed the ride of course
atop the graceful force
of the world's best breed of horse
it's sad to have to dismount

—Caschwa, Sacramento

____________________

LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SKELETAL REMAINS
—Caschwa

Teenage girls and boys
relinquish toddler toys
in favor of skull and crossbones

advancing the agenda of pirates
and garment industry profits
are the skull and crossbones

"We are your worst fear
threatening all you hold dear"
silently shouts the skull and crossbones

fine art faces and statuary, too
missing eyes of brown and blue
now skull and crossbones

worse than any great depression
unable to ever change expression
eternal skull and crossbones

they can't give a farmer seed
or comfort those most sorely in need
lousy skull and crossbones

"Till death do us part"
has gotten a head start
with gifts of skull and crossbones

when aliens land their UFO
huge brains won't let them ever know
why all the skull and crossbones?

—Photo by Caschwa

Displaced
too stunned to feel
or to cry for help

one grain of sand
in the celestial hourglass
blind to time

—Caschwa

—Photo by Caschwa

Take away preconceptions
and behold the sleepy
face of someone who
wasn't there before

resting softly on a hard pillow
looking quite content
to bathe you in mystery

—Caschwa

—Photo by Caschwa

On the back of a playing card
is fixed the image of a child
who has not yet blossomed

her fortune still unfolding
driven by unknown forces
drawing poker stares from all

this is more than a game

—Caschwa

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

WHAT SAY
—Michael Cluff, Corona, CA

When I lift
this pen
or fingers
to this paper
or this keyboard
it will astound, shock, surprise, flabbergast
bollocks me.

It hasn't been done
yet.
 

_____________________ 

—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Cluff for the LittleNip, and to Carl Bernard Schwartz (Caschwa), who has been doing some ekphrastic writing (each poem is inspired by the photo that it appears beneath), for the poems and pix!

Try to park in the shade
—Caschwa

Whimsy-Flags and Sombreuils

Fencebreaker Creek

—Photo by Taylor Graham

STORM-BOOTS

—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Oh, the reluctance of rain,
May to November,
as if it lived such an expanse of miles
from here, it would never arrive
in time. And now
it comes in sheets down the cobbled
alley, sending shoppers
scurrying; and on the outskirts,
gouging gullies into bare-slope knolls;
slaloming down
in the rain and ever more
rain, splashing into our little creek,
clogging the culverts
with what used to be treasures;
trash overflowing
so rainfully joyous the road.

____________________

ANIMALS OF TRANSFORMATION

—Taylor Graham 

The vole in the owl's talons becomes
winged, and in that flight—
the tearing apart of sky, in its lighting
again—the vole becomes owlet.

The owl, in turn, turns underground.
Instructed by the mouths
of maggots, grubs, and worms,
the owl learns these blind secrets.

Our human words crawl along
the surface, imagining transformation
into pure idea,
a species that might last forever,

even as we prepare
the study-skins for museum;
the mummies for crypt and temple;
as we bury the dead.

But did you notice a chromatic
change, an accidental;
the nuance of her eyes, dying?
An owl-ray

plummeted silent
through rainclouds, morning sun-
beam bearing her away. Wind in her
body. Wings.

___________________

A FLOOR UNSCRUBBED
—Taylor Graham

Is this life just its sum
of chores? Oh, how they hum
their should's and must's. They're a drag
on morning. If she thinks
about it, the sun sinks
under housework. She'll use her rag
to wipe the window bright
so she can gather light
and fly it like a whimsy-flag.

___________________

TRASH TALK
—Taylor Graham

Two-hour drive to the airbase.
Grab my pack and dog,
lock the car, head for that big bird
touching down on the runway.
But first, find a strip of grass.
“Hurry up!” I tell my dog.
She knows that means business.
She squats to pee. “Toot suite,”
I add, language hardly
mattering as long as words-talk
makes sense to dog. I might
as well say “yakety-yak, take out
the trash,” she'd know
what I mean. Our taxi's waiting—

that C-130 on the tarmac.
My dog's greatest
pleasure: we're on a search!

—Photo by Taylor Graham

MY SOMBREUIL
—Tom Goff, Carmichael

Flower I’ve seen in my own silent garden,
my slip from a Sombreuil rose, petals white
and fingertip-soft as white chocolate, but otherwise
holding soft gold notes, high-climbing and ardent.

Yet you linger somewhere between near and apart.
Do you know your own blush? Are you trying to hide
like a compromised thing in dark green and bright red?
Your shade of soft white should color my heart.

For there is a blush too, not outer but inner,
like snowdrift within you yet keen as that fire
an Irishman once called the kiss of desire:
the cream-tinted rose’s deep delicate center.

These colors, the white of sun-filtering petals,
the dark green leaf-shadow you hide behind,
all that bright red edged like a sundown wind,
that blush mingled with gold, as when flame blends two metals:

Yours are the colors I want for my banner.
Oh, under these stripes I could ride out to battle,
proclaim your name high in the heat of the turmoil.
My secret, I clasp you harder and deeper than honor.   

_____________________

THE EGOTIST

—Maddie Emery, Davis

I once met a man who had swelled up so much that he became an obstacle in everyone’s path, as encumbering as a blood clot, puffed up more than a clogged pore, his swollen cranium an impediment on all around him, like an infected scab, a congested sinus, a stale chunk of meatloaf caught in your throat, sock lint and toe jam wedged in your nail bed, solidified oatmeal and coffee grinds plugging the garbage disposal, he, a saturated heap of garbage in a river which stagnated and polluted the flow of life and language, the human equivalent of constipation, a lump of earwax, and yet still so proud and in love with himself, in love with a man who was nothing more than the calcified soap and hairballs you find clogging the shower drain.

A parasite of creativity, he slurps up praise wherever he can find it, however he can get it, digging through the gutters, licking it off the bottom of people’s boots, and sometimes even purging himself, regurgitating his past feasts so he can lap them up and try to remember the taste. Fat and thick as he may be, he will always be hungry so long as he tries to fill a vessel substantiated only by hot air and stale bile. Stick a pin in his fat head, and I think he will ooze puss, which comes from deep within him and leaks from that raw and swollen wound in his heart, ripped and infected further with his every empty meal and calls itself “helplessness,” though he, ever the non-listener, silences this fear with his cries of bravado and grandeur, louder and louder, to drown it out. I feel sorry for him. He puffs himself up so proudly that his swollen appearance that so obtusely obstructs my mind’s eye is often the obstacle I beat my head against, but this is a wall that can be torn down. Shout as he may, loud as he can, he will be forever overpowered by a whisper that betrays him, and says softly, “I am so, so small, I may never stand eye to eye with my fellow man.”

_____________________

SNOW
—Charles Mariano, Sacramento

Took this morning off to drive to Auburn for my son’s latest court date.  I feel like that movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps reliving the same scene over and over.  On the bright side, I always smuggle a pen and pad inside to scribble notes.  The cast of characters in front of the judge and in the stands, never dull. 

A few years ago, a different judge, different room, he swore up and down, this time things were good, the terrible, troubling wounds, healed.  Even wrote…the last courtroom, in my notepad, with a sense of relief.   

Auburn is up in the hills about forty miles from here.  Nice drive.  As usually happens, because our last name is in the M’s, went all the way to 10:30 and still a no-show, so the judge took a break.  I stepped outside and found the parking lot covered in snow.  Thick, heavenly flakes floated down.  I opened my mouth and made a natural snowcone.  Maybe that’s a good sign. 

2 years, 4 months…a white Christmas

_____________________

Thanks to today's contributors, old friends and new, including newcomer Maddie Emery, who D.R. Wagner sends us from his students at UCD.

Speaking of students, normally I don't write reviews if I can help it, but over this rainy weekend I came across a used copy of Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, and it's such a charmer that I thought I'd pass the word along if you haven't heard about it. Creech calls this book a novel, but it's actually a little book of sequential poems supposedly written by a young boy—coerced in the beginning, actually, by his teacher—that show his evolution into a poet as he works through the death of his beloved dog. Along the way, he makes some pithy observations, such as:

…Maybe the wheelbarrow poet
was just
making a picture
with words
and
someone else—
like maybe his teacher—
typed it up
and then people thought
it was a poem
because
it looked like one
typed up like that.

And maybe
that's the same thing
that happened with
Mr. Robert Frost.
Maybe he was just
making pictures with words
about the snowy woods
and the pasture—
and his teacher
typed them up
and they looked like poems
so people thought
they were poems…

As the book progresses, the boy takes on a hero (Mr. Walter Dean Myers) and develops the self-respect and the courage to write about his dog, developing his voice along the way. Creech doesn't call this a children's book, but I suppose it could be, especially as a teaching tool. See www.sharoncreech.com/books/love-that-dog for more about the book and about Creech's other work as a novelist and teacher.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

 It's storm season again in Sacramento
   I guess it could be worse if there were snow
   but the wind does uproot trees
   with the soil watered down from the flooding
   the streets' gutters get plugged with leaves and debris
   and when the streets become shallow bodies of water
   you might want to wear "waders" even if you don't fish

   —Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

___________________

—Medusa, with our condolences to Katy Brown for the loss of her beloved dog, Emily

—Photo by Taylor Graham

Only Joy

WE CATCH THE BALL OF LIGHT       

We catch the ball of light
under the twelve stars
of some mysterious sky-symbol

and throw it to each other with
such skill that it shines in the air
leaving after-streaks of motion.

Blue was never this kind,
not even the soft blue of twilight,
not even the cool blue of dawn.

Auras of silver surround us,
guide us over the wet sands
by this phosphorescent ocean.

Whispers muffle around us—
those presences again.
Our hands are the

deliberate hands of dancers;
our bodies follow, and we
cannot be silent about our joy.

The hours have more measure
than the moments.
We know a moment of pure religion.

We are bodiless…   Sexless…
Mindless even…
in this simplicity of movement,

this participation
in the surreality of thought…
this fanciful abandon…   This play.


(first pub. in Interim)

_______________________

MIND-STRUGGLE   

Tonight, in the tweak of time, life enters
like a thief, taking what I am. Never mind

the hours waiting for my dreams,
the sweet hours of morning with their

energies
and schemes.

I am not willing,
though I doze, and nod, and waken

at moments—lost—and not of counting, 
which is odd. I have a clock and calendar,

I have plans, small as they are,
not like tireless sands of sleep,

mindlessly drifting—over and over,
through the same container that I am.

I free the night,
I free the weightlessness.

_______________________

THE BOAT OF LIGHT

Lovers, lie back
in that filtered boat of light
that swirls about you.

Dip your fingers in the darkness
as into the supporting depth of water
under the drifting boat.

Rock to the floating rhythm.
Let the ripples of light move around you
      like curiosity,
let the dark blend you together.

Be the melting.
Be the curiosity.
Be the imaginary boat on the imaginary
     water.

Light is everywhere and is not imaginary.
Darkness supports the light
and is its substance.

You are in the boat of air upon the emotion 
     of water.
You are in a lake of happiness,
these first moments will last you forever.

THIS SAMPLE JOY

As thin as Oriental paper—or a white rose—anything sheer—not melting—not even for loss.

As far away as memory—not to be hurt—like an albino wing that must not be touched, no matter how soft the intention.

Don’t we know how damage happens!

Any mirror will do, as long as we can see what we want—

like now—the kiss you send me—the surprise of it—your shining mouth, sensation of glass.

                                             
(first pub. in Tule Review, 2001)

________________________

THE NATURE OF BEING
Only if the moving waters calm down—Rumi

out of thought-range
eyes closed against interruption

holiest of moments,
self in deep repose

a soft sway—a listen to
far away words of music

who knows what they say
music of mind

swirl of stillness
all forces surrendered

the patient dove releases itself
from your darkness

your small world resumes
original scale

only the feeling of  joy,
only joy.

________________________

Our thanks to Joyce Odam for today's poems and pics, riffing on our Seed of the Week, Tiny Moments of Great Joy.

Richard Hansen the Other sent me a poem entitled "Trash and Treasure", which we'll post along with a feature of him next week. (Yes, there used to be two Richard Hansens in Sacramento, although I suspect you may have heard that Richard Hansen of The Book Collector fame has very recently moved to San Diego. See his Facebook page for more info about that.)

Anyway, let's steal our new Seed of the Week from Richard the Other and write about Trash and Treasure, which reminds me of Christmas, actually—the gifts we buy, the food we eat, the exchanges we share with others… What will your holiday season be like? Too much trash, not enough treasure? What kinds of things are you seeing around you? And is it too late to change them? Send your poems on this SOW to kathykieth@hotmail.com No deadline on SOWs—and no deadline on changing trash to treasure, every day of the year.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

MOMENTS ~

flurry of snowflakes
    flutter of motioning leaves
         single drops of rain-light

all of these . . .


—Joyce Odam

______________________

—Medusa
 

Howling Wolves & Superglue

Nicole Taylor

WILD WOMEN AND HOWLING WOLVES

—Nicole Taylor, Eugene, OR


Cheryl and I went to listen


to Whiskey Priest at


the Coffee House Café.

We learned of the $5 cover.
I watched one or two others
walk away also.

We met Natalie and
her friend Faith with
her own faith journey.

Another friend Beth and I
went on similar journeys to this but
she was on a journey for a love.

Cheryl, Natalie, Faith and I went to
Safeway and bought chicken strips,
Chocolate bars, parmesan Cheetos, and
“vitamin water for Cheryl’s health.”


I ate M &M's or
raw cookie dough with
her young daughters. Beth
complained,
worried of the raw eggs.

We sang of
Lucy in the sky with diamonds.
I thought of
Moon shadow…
I'm being followed by a moon shadow,
but forgot the words.

Beth and I sang how do you
hold her close to where you are?
how do you talk to an angel?

Faith drove us through
Mount Angel, Gervais, and St. Louis,
past my old friend Carrie’s neighborhood,

stopping in the road, chasing a bright quarter moon,
playing leap frog with the vehicle ahead and howling like wolves.

Sixteen, seventeen years ago
my friend Beth paid
for our cover and our cocktails
between dancing, rocking out,
between dancing to a Rooster song and
we were singing at Bart's or the Brass Rail,

Yeah they come to snuff the rooster.

________________________

SIMULATION CHARACTERS

—Nicole Taylor

Young nephew Alec
and I walk
the Devil's Lake beach.

He tells me about
the fantasy characters
he writes.

He tells me about
the SIMS game characters
and their lives
and the female suitors.

It is so easy
to get married

in the game,
he tells me.

________________________

MORE NEIGHBORHOOD ANNOYANCES

—Nicole Taylor

Snoopy, the adorable but sometimes
    yappy neighbor's dog.
The lonely pit bullish neighbor's dog.

The pinkish metal door slams downstairs.
High heels on low steps.

Squawky city black crows perching
    nearby on a lamp on a lamp or fir branch.

Noisy sirens of emergency vehicles
    racing up 12th, a City of Salem Fire Department truck.
Four beeps for a neighboring vehicle's broken alarm.

The laying of horns, loud and rude.
Forgotten summer plums among the bark dust.

Forgotten wind tossed jack pine branches
among snow and ice. We hope for the return of
a City of Salem Parks Department truck.

_______________________

ENGLISH IVY AND WILD CUCUMBER
(Hedera helix and Marah oreganus)

—Nicole Taylor

Hedera helix and Marah oreganus
is the Latin for the invasive English Ivy and
Wild Cucumber. Four hours I widely prune
English Ivy that is killing the several Douglas Firs
in this yard, plus pruning some wild cucumber
plant and soda cans.

“I want you to cut my ivy and you can write about it,”


she tells me, Helen, my brother in-law Pete’s mom
weeks earlier at our combined family Mother's Day party.

Four hours on cliffs of two residential streets,
cliffs of ivy and fir.

Three fire trucks race across the two branches
of Salem, uniting this west community.

Two pedestrians leave the dark refuge across at
Eola Bird Refuge, where Robins, Starlings and Swifts
sometimes reside, and many homeless.

Three bicyclists race east, toward shopping at Safeway or
Reader's Guide Books.


______________________

COUNTING AND TIMING THE BAND

—Nicole Taylor

At least I arrived early,
with no plans after
a cancelled open-mic event.
I was avoiding another event with
a Valentine's theme. I arrived
before 8 PM, early enough.
I avoided the $6 cover by snacking
and watching from the pizzeria
restaurant, above the bar and
performers. The band arrived
at approximately 8:40 PM,
Mike Dillon's Hairy Apes BMX.
My dinner arrived, salmon fettucini
with a nice pinot noir. The dark red
bass appears from the young man's
bass case, the young man with a
reggae look and "Jamaica" jacket.
Then another musician enters and
the drummer, in his Oklahoma t-shirt,
removes and sets up his equipment.
Then there's the large vibraphone. They
arrange the mic, speakers and many
equipment wires. But repair is needed
on the vibraphone. So they walk up to
retrieve "Super Glue," as indispensable
as duct-tape now. The band started at
10:05, 65 minutes late. The "punk rock" band
who lives in three states and larger cities.
They sing "All Fucked Up on An Acid Trip"
and the Seeing Eye Dog song.

At 10:40 three ladies on the small
wooden floor, barely large enough
for many dancers. I reminiscence.
I think of another Italian restaurant
where I worked, danced and drank
on a designated floor to modern
hard-rock, NW bands.

_____________________

AN OLDER COUPLE WAITING FOR AN AMTRAK BUS

—Nicole Taylor

With her gray bun
in a patterned brown scarf,
she sits on a bench
reading a mystery novel
Killer Hair.

I'm sitting inside on a wood bench, watching
ominous clouds and increasing winds.

He sat beside her
reading geographical quizzes
to us over his striped glasses
matching her other scarf, paisley.

I think of how couples grow
so similar in appearance.

She offers him a piece of a homemade
cookie and smiles at me briefly, peacefully.

She watches him
as he walks to the men's room.

She watches over
their four matching black bags
with pink straps.

I think about a winning poem
of living peacefully.

I think about a sit-com episode,
an Everybody Loves Raymond episode
of the grandparents
eating and arguing peacefully.

    After I notice the luggage I think of two friends asking me
        "What is your favorite color?"

_________________________

Thanks to Nicole Taylor of Eugene, Oregon, where we have several Snake Pals, for today's poetry! Nicole writes that she currently has no MFA's but many hopeful projects, a varieties of styles and a wide variety of subjects. She is an artist, a hiker, a poetry note taker, a sketcher, a volunteer and a dancer, formerly in Salem's DanceAbility.  Her poems have been accepted in BareBack Journal—an online Canadian journal; Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac; Camel Saloon; Cirque Journal; Denali Journal of Lane Community College; recently Eugene's 150th Birthday Poetry Collection Anthology, Four and Twenty Journal; Full of Crow; Gloom Cupboard; Haggard and Halloo; Just Another Art Movement Journal—New Zealand; KenAgain; Kerouac's Dog; Miller's Pond; Outlaw Poetry Network; Pemmican; Sketchbook; Snow Monkey; Symmetry Pebbles; Tiger's Eye; Watercourse Journal; West Wind Review; Yes (an anthology of the Silverton Poetry Association) and others. She has won bookstore gift certificates, workshop scholarships, a small online Beatnik contest, and respect from many Oregon poets. She blogs at facebook.com/ntaylortoo, and at oregonpoeticvoices.org/poet/312, a collection of Oregon poets with written and audio poetry available online through Lewis & Clark College in Portland.

_________________________

Today's LittleNip:

A good poem always translates into heaven.

—B.Z. Niditch

_________________________

—Medusa

Look For Us in the Stillness

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

LIVING IN THE TEMPLE

—D.R. Wagner, Elk Grove

We were living in the temple.
The ring within the bell
That would never be struck.
The rising of a thousand prayers
On their way to protect children,
Heal those with illnesses, quell the fears
That stalk the dark of forests,
Wished upon the stars and could
No longer kiss the lips of lovers
So far away the sea seemed small,
Tender as a kitten and pounding with life.

We were pounding with life,
Were living inside the temple,
Held aloft by incense smoke and chanting.
Om Mani Pad Me Hum, more times
Than the world had turned and we
Had been the ones who turned the world.

Look for us on mornings,
Our throats full of dawn liquor.
Look for us in the stillness
Of the afternoons, in the slow opening
And closing of a butterfly’s wings
Resting on a hyacinth or lilac.

Look for us in the last of evening,
Still within the temple waking
Lavenders and reds, crouching on the edge
Of moving storms, poised to become night,
To be the rain against your windows,
The wind within your body.

We dwell within the temple.
Do not be alarmed that we have
No corporal body.  The light swings
Within us and at long last, at
Long, long last, the voice of the bell
Is ours and is yours as well.

Rise from your simple bed.
Bow to the breath that is your own
And we will bow to you.  Bowing.

______________________

—Medusa

Praise

Household Gods

PRAISE

What is praise that we may
Have morning once again,
That I may wake beside you,
See you there once again?  Speak

Your name and feel your sweet
Breath against me?  Oh yes, surely
This and more, so much that stars
Must be language for it, that flowers
Too must learn to speak, trees also,
Waves upon the oceans, as many as

Grains of sand in its forms and always
More.  One voice cannot tell this
Thing beyond a simple dancing or any
Exultation devised to say about
Such things.  How poor all poetry
Becomes before it.  So every thing

We do must become praise, a
Name of wonder, the light I see
In your eyes, this waking beside
You.  And morning, morning here again.
Praise, praise, praise, all praise.

____________________

BREAKING THE DREAMER

If you stand closer to this edge
You will be able to peer further
Into the spinning wheel that is the morning.

A small flock of yellow birds
Move past us full of tiny sounds
And the blessing of color.

Fog has changed the place.  It rises
To just below the tree tops,
Capturing the entire valley in the dream-
Like quality of the place.

Now, I will tell you about lands
Below the fog.  The children are still
Asleep there.  Perhaps these mists
Rise from their breathing.  Perhaps
They are the dreams themselves.  We
Have no way of knowing
Until we too are among the sleepers.

The fog is a fog of purple horses, barely
Near to having form at all but nevertheless
Beautiful as they completely fill
This land below the fog.

Do we see them?  The plains growing
Pale.  A great dust breaks the dreamers,
Hides them, moves them from
Their supposed destinations.

We see gold, true gold descending
Over them, oblivion blazing away
Like an illusion.  There are no edges.

We push past all we know of art and
The making of glorious things to push
The light just that much further
Past our own vanishing.  We have no
Idea how any of this works,
Just that the fog returns.

Tiny droplets touch the hairs on our arms.
We begin to think of them as the
Planets, their satellites, beauteous.
They quickly disappear.

_______________________

MOON FANCIES

I should not stop to comprehend
How we are led by the moon or why
The journey is so far and distant from the town
Ot that we are transformed by it,

Obedient to its whims.  It comes.
It goes away. We clothe our
Bodies in an imagined bliss,
Find ways home across great water,
Beg ourselves witness the bright air
Filling our lungs with so much
More than we can ever remember.

Always the moon prevails, blows
Across the tremulous sky,
Always impossible.  We may be
Carried by one thousand hummingbirds
To our fine bed, dressed in robes
That angels wear and take residence
With our privilege of being here
With the great nets of our bodies

Moving away from us.
Oh yes, let us go.
I promise I will meet you there
Just before the snows.

And we will make the night cower,
Rename the stars and wear our
Joy like hearts, even as our eyes
Close to feel the hands of sleep,
The immaculate fingers of electricity.

And in these full and celebrated
Garments go back out to the night
And bring the moonlight in.
 

TALKING TO CHILDREN’S POETS

Tonight I will let the moon come
To me.  I will fill my poem with it
And sing into the early blue of night.

I will discuss the gardens
With Stevenson and Yeats,
Talk with Lang and Calvino.

We will speak as if we had all
Of time at our command, coins
Made of love of the stars,
The secrets that release the past
To the imagination only to be taken
Prisoner by words and uncertain
Dawns.  Signs for the animals of transformation
To dance among us and play to deceive
That we then cannot see, then see again
The golden fields near and far away,
The kind of language we must use
When handling the beating hearts of children. 

 

____________________

BIRDS

There were birds here.
One can see where certain
Kinds of grasses have been bent
Down to form places for their
Courting.  There are hollows too

Lined with feathers and nests
Made of twigs and string, of floss,
Bright bits and scraps of paper,
Forgotten by all else except them.

Here too are tracks upon the ground.
Here, a book of soothing gathered
From their shapes and movements
In the sky or by the nature of their calls.

Yet, when we come here now,
There are no birds here at all.  Only
Signs of them remain.  We must

Learn a kind of quiet, a special
Patience too and remain time
Enough for us to see them
With our own eyes, hear their songs.

They are like our own dear souls
In that souls must be regarded
In like kind to reveal and be
Revealed before us, full of colors, voices
Moving through the air, among the trees,
The shrubs, upon the waters too.  Looking
Deep into the heart, toward dreams, toward
Day that may find birds there,
And know them—that may be quite enough.

_____________________

NOT KNOWING ANYTHING

We talk bravely, measuring
The day.  Filling it with things
We must do, places we must go,
People we must see.  As if the
Whole of time were a fabric requiring

Action for each of us to continue.
Wave after wave meets the shore.
Ideas rise and dissipate without
Any consideration from any of us.

Some get noticed.  Some do not.
Ideas wander.  They have no owners.
The most unlikely circumstances
Arrange to generate marvelous

Occurrences.  There is no telling
If you or I may fortuitously
Recognize a particular melodic
Sequence, a chromatic change
In a blood sample, a notion
As unexpected as the sun being
Discovered in the center of our
Solar system as something of
Importance.  I watch a dove
Bobble as it lands on a power line.

This too seems a simple thing.  The bird
Coos in its unique way.  A line of com-
Munication opens up instantly.
I recognize a series of related
Vibrations.  They suggest great
Changes in the way we relate
To one another.  I decide to explore
This for the rest of my life.
 

____________________

THE WAY OF SAYING

             a poem to myself on my 56th birthday

I remain surprised that the ocean
Waves can repeat themselves endlessly
Without losing nuance and particular
Expression; a monologue interesting
Whenever encountered, full of sound
And fury, driven by the weather, its soul.

I remain amazed by love in its myriad
Forms: how it searches for us in music,
Dance, poetry, intimate conversations,
Displays of everything from architecture
To quick glances drenched in meaning,
Things we say to animals, touching.

I remain enchanted by the light moving
Through the afternoon, what it does to
Leaves, how it breathes each month into
Our lives, explaining everything as it does so.

I remain possessed by all of water in its
Forms and manners; for I too am water
As you are and the birds and the flower,
The great fields of grain to the horizon,
The trees themselves and the rivers
And the waterfalls and our poor tears.

I remain in great delight that all these
And more incite refrains, that I may
Know them still, that they have become
Gifts to my memory; allow me to recall,
Feel them as great forces driving every
Day.  All these are forms of grace.
I know this more each day.  May this
Be so my whole of life.  What bliss this be.

____________________

Today's LittleNip:

TIME

‘What do you have over there?’
‘It’s time,’ you said.
‘Well don’t wake anybody up.
It’s late and everybody will want some.’

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to D.R. Wagner, who celebrated his birthday on Thanksgiving, for today's poems and photos!

Undead