Falling Into the Stars

—Poems and Photos by Martie Odell-Ingebretsen, Sacramento

TO DREAM OF HONEYED CLOVER

I walked on callused road
following a curling thought
and I was drenched
my breath a torch
for I knew where I was going
thus far and my faith leaped
across the precipice
and then caught me firm and growing

How tall I seemed
so wrapped in the moon
and then kneeling
into the dirt of meadow
shimmering with fragility
caught in questioning
one small blade of grass

and indeed there were enchants
a heaven of diaphanous clouds
and one of them holding a rainbow
so dainty and perfectly colored
with no beginning or end
only this pure now

and still I chased some majesty
that called my name
and it was filled with words like stars
and it dripped sound
that found me and pierced my thirst
with honeyed clover
and spread me out
and I let it have its way with me
and plant this fertile place
with ancient harmony

and I thought this is the place
where I was born and will die
and then I was awake
and so caught in this delicious memory
that on my hands I held the fragrance
of the dark and loamy earth. 

IN SEARCH OF DESTINY

I can see the path turning,
though beyond is hidden
by a cliff of delicate fern,
with plume and grace
they reach in knowing
and peek with curling greenness
around the bend and nod,
ah, so that is the way.
And what does it matter
to this purpose which is now
just this dappling of sun
and the damp delicious earth?

Oh, but this fleeting butterfly life
feels whispers,
begging delicate urgent go,
find the music to the dance
then dance for love dance,
this blossoming has numbers
and idle wings cannot fly.

Take these words and all this paper,
these printed exclamations of feeling,
this intelligent question,
this tale of light and laughter,
all these marvelous and exploding tears
and build a tree you see,
to jump from
and see around and over this tedious trail,
to glaze the surface of this day
with delicious and glorious gleaning.

Return to midnight and stars slow circling
and release your full blooming,
for sure each small movement
is a changing thing that alters,
if only the leaf you cling to,
and dawn will seep into the dark valley
with the reverent and worthy color of hope.

FALLING INTO THE STARS IN DAYLIGHT

Falling into the stars
in daylight
I hold my skin
knowing my heart
is too open
my surface cannot hold
keep it safe
from this giant leap
that questions who I am

Still I would jump
across this mote of doubt
leap into this intimate meaning
give spur to the pounding race
across the plain
in search of destiny
if I could but know
an answer
that survives the tumbling

This dangling has me drenched
breathes me a purpose
that keeps me mighty
in ropes of words
for I am
falling into the stars
in daylight

 
Today's LittleNip:

TO SLEEP WITH STARS

If I could paint a place to go
it would be a twisted trail
bending bough and shadow dwelt
with slanted masts of sun’s inhale

I’d dwell in turning curving world
moving over sand dune’s face
with a hand held out to blowing warmth
the fleeting moments movement’s trace

In springtime sweet peas' tenderness
I’d find the way to evening sky
and dim the meadow of lantern light
to sleep with stars in hushaby

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Martie Odell-Ingebretsen for today's delightful Kitchen fare, and a reminder that The Poetry Night Reading Series launches a new edition of The Blue Moon Literary and Art Review tonight at 8pm at The John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street, Davis. See www.poetryindavis.com for more info.

And a very happy birthday to Sacramento poet Joyce Odam, who turns 90 today!!

Tough As Old Boots

Garden

—Photo by Taylor Graham

DROUGHT LOG
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

Tough as old boots, the cabbages
and bitter pears. I stir
a smoked chipotle smolder into the beans
to soothe the heat.
Here’s no Indian summer. Dry
ice feels like the slowly melting edge
of a frozen sea.

Wild-grape sallows to yellow.
Below the steep north hillside, valley oaks
are turning bronze. As if it were fall,
as if they’re giving up.

Votive candles in every whispered
color of the mind. She lights a prayer
for November rain in August.
Dreams of flowing water,
its green voices. A succession of prayers
for the familiar curve of seasons.
Still no rain.    

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

BUCKET SALE
—Taylor Graham

I’m waiting as if forever in line with two rat
traps in my pail, hoping they work on ground
squirrels. The bait station didn’t; I found
poisoned grain dragged out and scattered, and
still more devastation to my garden. Deep-teal
thirsty zucchini leaves untouched but, by dawn
or dusk or midnight stealth, all its new growth
clipped off short; every cucumber blossom.
One tomato, pale greenish-white as an unborn
cut from its vine; not one tooth-mark on what
would have been fruit. Maybe it’s not ground
squirrels, but some other beast or bird famished
in another season of drought. Yesterday our
garden-well ran dry. What’s more reliable than
the water-table, or the green woven cloth of
grass unfolded over a field? Things conceived
in the matrix of years, underground and open-
air, in breaks and crevices we don’t even know
about; how to manage, or what to call them.

________________________

FLOATING
—Taylor Graham
 
How can you hold on to splashing water,
the greening hills, a brightly feathered bird?
You’ve named clouds and wind-songs,
overheard the symphony of sylvan hollow
at dusk. But now the years come short
and every season hotter, the lake gone dry,
the thirst herds passing in a cloud of dust
their hoof-beats stirred. What’s left you now
except a memory floating over words? 

   —Photo by Taylor Graham

MAKING A MUSIC
—Taylor Graham

I may have heard before but not
on the stereo—fresh as wind through
an open window foretelling rain. A delicate
hide-and-seek of bell and brushes when
the sober instruments pause, absentminded
about the score. And then, a flute
and harp at play, a breeze at twilight I’ve
met by chance, just at close of day.

__________________________

SUMMERS ON THE ROAD
—Taylor Graham

If she had a toy box, it was a Ford—
four wheels threading a course over country
roads that somehow found their way, like paths
through an enchanted forest, from one coast
to the other; mosquito-whine between kapok
sleeping bag and the watchful but changeable
August moon; maps of foreign countries like
Nebraska, Yukon, Badlands, whose names
she learned to spell—road-maps snuck from
racks at filling-stations patronized by travelers
buying postcards and fizzy Nehi in ice-chill
strawberry, orange, or grape; a pueblo built into
a cliff of sand; a rusty beaver-trap; a single
arrowhead she found under a wall of crumpled
clay. Didn’t every child grow up that way?

 —Photo by Taylor Graham

PROXIMATE SMOKE
—Tom Goff, Carmichael
 
Wind drift may carry smoke and moreover seed fire,
implant flame embryos in the dry world’s-womb.
We know the Javanese volcano boomed
and darkened the wide world, shrouding night-desire
in deeper, more sensual secrecy, perhaps.
The ash-contagion ruffles and bristles the air
with pumice’s dead mementos of outflare,
yes, but with what charred dogs, what burnt mothers’ laps?
Even so, I want to enloin with your lap, your soft place;
let me adore it in the not-black, the not-gray,
let us gaze on our rapturous join while the false day
liquors and flickers the long night, foxfire-laced
where the mountain-spasm shoots and suspires in skies.
Let us savor our little death while eruption dies.

Still another more faraway smoke, your distant salt,
now stings me with ashen tears…was this my fault? 

 —Photo by Ann Privateer

SUNFLOWER LOGIC
—Ann Privateer, Davis
 

Sunflower heads shake yes
then no, dropping an anniversary
of seeds at night when an eclipse
might last all of October as other
sunflowers chat up the night, up
until harvest, then, no moonlight.

________________________

DECOMPRESS LESS
—Ann Privateer

your organic ego emerges
whips your mind's wilderness

easy symmetry forgives
dense froth, unencumbered

to become numb, more
like mind hemlock, more

palatable than hot fudge
on Sunday.

________________________

COMICS IN THE TOYBOX
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove
 
Nobody much wanted to play
With me when I was a child.
I think this happens a lot
To people who grow up
To become English professors.
Something about the scent
Of damp tweed in all seasons.
So I’d bribe neighborhood
Kids with things from
My toybox.  A handful of
Tin soldiers here, a top
Or a yoyo there could fill
A couple of hours on
A summer afternoon.

Eventually the toybox
Would get emptied—nothing
But comic books left
In the bottom.  “Okay,”
Some kid would finally
Say, “I’ll play with you
For fifteen minutes for
Two Batmans and
A copy of Superman.”
“All I got left are some
Archies and a Richie Rich.”
“This play-date is finished.”
I think they’re still there
At the bottom of the box.
I haven’t looked lately.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

IN AND OUT
—Ann Privateer

Take me to the ball game.
Take me to the video parlor.
Take me to the summer scene.
Take me into the bold sky yelling
            and clapping thunder.
Take me into your huddled heart.
Take me into excitement.
Take me into all the memorabilia.

Take me every day and every night
            and we won't keep score.

______________________

—Medusa

 —Photo by Ann Privateer

Bring Me a Wild Strawberry

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

 FAIRY TALE FOREST

This is Fairy Tale Forest, opening slow,
with a winding sunlit path leading into it.

The warm light dances on leaves and makes
golden-reflections on the flickering ground.

The children see the sunlit path—hear the
deep singing birds, and follow the temptation.

The children will enter because it is
their destiny to risk becoming lost.

The air is sweet with the soft singing
of the forest birds—deep in its interior.

The forest keeps expanding, no danger
at its edges, no clue to its illusion.

How long can the forest hold its shape of
innocence, the soft warmth of its seduction?

The children are enchanted.  They are curious.
They go in . . . their very own wilderness.

_____________________

MOSAIC
(after “Deer in Forest”, a painting by Franz Marc)

In a continuing moiré of shadows, the forms
emerge, the soft blue animals, alert and huddled
together in a safe mosaic wilderness. Greens and
reds blend easily together. Ah! There an eye.
There an ear. The browns and dull blacks define
and separate until touched by a glow of rose:
there a curved back, a folded leg; there a lit, gold
shoulder in a filter of mauve. And the forest
closes in. The animals watch quietly together in
blue shadowings of motionless breathing—barely
felt in the vibrant quiet—this sanctuary of painted
forest, the blent and burrowing deepness, going
even deeper; the vast sympathy that controls this
place; the unity of its heartbeat; its pulse; its dark,
unclosing eye.
 

OF THIS PLACE

Out of the harsh landscape comes
the lone shadow, out of the gray stone

of this place—out of the gray hour—
the vanishing sky, comes the bodiless

shadow—so lost there is no place
for it, only this desolation,

this astounding wilderness
with no creature or vegetation—

no line of horizon, or relief of water—
nothing here but the slow shadow,

displaced from its life, or its dream, or
only created for the duration of this poem.

______________________

BLUE FIRE AND RED SKY

—as trees through blue fire sputter
and moan, their branches tangling,
their roots in a lessening hold,
grasping for blue, which may be

sky or dream—blue fire and red sky—

oh fiery love and loss—held together

through all destruction—what have you

got to lose but life and its memory—

wild music rushing through like wings

—beating in sudden joy and madness—
nothing is so pure or useful to love’s
balance in all its harmony and discord
—like all that music never written

CYPRESS
(Asilomar, 2004)

Gnarled tree, I fell in love with you today
—the glowing way you held the
morning moon in the structured curve

of your rough branches
—the tender way you waited
for her to slowly dim and vanish

—the sharpened way the quiet
morning light outlined you against
the wilderness setting of Asilomar

—among the hundreds more
like you—but of them all,
you are the one I love

—the way you simply
compel my look to linger
as I walk past—tenacious there

—against all forces,
shaped by the sea-winds,
bent in their one direction

—on this October day,
I love you with such a reverence
that I want to address you as Thou

—though you are beyond
such affectation. Old tortured tree,  
You,   Thou,   have altered me.

WITHDRAWN

Today I shall not be pleased.
Don’t praise me.

Your words are straw
for a dry earth.

Bring me a river to follow;
bring me a wild strawberry
from a mountain.

I want your eyes to say
something to my heart.
I want your hands to pray for
the soft, erosive earth
of my body.

I want you to touch my mind
with easiness.

I am so tired.
I have been through such places.

Landscapes of difficulty
are everywhere.
They impede me.
They change into wilderness.

Not that wilderness
displeases me
for its own sake,
but I will not be pleased today.


(first pub. in Negative Capability)

___________________________

YOU : IN TRANSITION

I feel you floating-out upon
the universe—your arm creates
a new horizon—your body
translates into something sacrificed.

Yet you sing with your impossible,
silent voice—all the way
to the next syllable of confusion—
which you will not honor.

Your shadow upon the mountain
of this transition is heavier than
your eloquence—you almost appear—
you almost return to your own meaning.

When will you leap into sorrow as rain,
as great earthquakes mentioned in newspapers,
as winds that damage everything with their furor?

WINDOW IN THE WILDERNESS

When the world is loved, and love is rain,
and glass is the name of truth and fantasy—
both sides—out and in—and light goes through;
and glass receives, returns, reflects itself. And
time is soft—personified—in what it holds,
as memories made real again, or kind forgetful-
ness; as shift of shadow, changed by dark; or
simple stare—imagination’s pose.  Perhaps
the world is what it is—ordained, or changed,
or just a myth of love’s sad claim. 

           The world wants, and wants again—
with old relentless faith that will persist—with
eloquence, or awkwardly.  How best sustain a
thought like this?  One hardly knows which way
to hold the night, or hold the day—to let the glass
be what it is—transparent shield, on which the
rain can see but not get through—the body’s light,
the body’s dark—the mind, protective of the heart—
the soul untouched, or touched too much.  Why put
a window in the way of what the poem has tried
to say.

_______________________

Today's LittleNip:

Muse, in my woeful condition,
right arm in a sling—my mind
helpless in its loss for words

—how will you find me in
such a pitiful state?
left-handed now, and garbling...

________________________

—Medusa, thanking Joyce Odam for today's heavenly fare, and noting that our new Seed of the Week will be The Toy Box. Send your poetry, photos and artwork about the same to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs, though.

Hearts of Wildfire

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Wildfire Photos by Katy Brown, Davis

A POET'S CAUSE

You set out
with implications
you cannot fathom
for the future
as you begin
your first draft,
excited by phrases
apprenticed for an existence
perceived mostly in silence
with your hands on policy
of writing for
yourself, others or God,
choosing a finite focus
for the day's labors
with stalking words as proofs,
being nature's reflection
in a paradoxical universe,
having the only profession
of exploring day dreams
for a body of thought
which leads to a mirror
of language shadowing
to follow you
in your newly apprised verse
being mature at your age
from a lettered reason
for infallible proverbs,
with an imminence rising
as a rapture in your words
of turned-on phrases
that relates to another soul
given a life sentence
with untenable conviction
hiding in front of concave lines
surfacing above
the weight of time
with the synapse part of our cells
reaching our connected speech
informing us
about our own survival.

WILDFIRE GRIEF

Astonished eyes
in your labyrinth of suffering
of seasonal refugees from
inhospitable journeys
at critical moments
of mistreatment
by greedy traffickers
carrying the young
in trucks, boats and planes,
children with wrists twisted
by rope for weeks
through mountain passes
and ghostly deserts
heading to another home
the coyotes cutting corners
for extra money
in days of hunger
here in the prospects
of good and plenty
as noticeable cries
from panic and rage
behind back-deals
are made
over walled transports
with young passengers
sick in wildfire grief.

OUR HEARTS OF WILDFIRE

Our hearts of wildfire
are in poems covered over
from flashbacks of love,
with the liberty
in our eye and soul
we start with a desire
for free art
to fill the streets
which may still trouble us
until we reach our goal,
we will soon
know what lasts
in speech or drawing
or what is merely à la carte
true from the past,
then we will dash off
paintings in red and blue
dancing or sing words
on mean streets
for the city Beat,
we make our play
having its double parts
with many roles to choose,
no matter what takes its toll,
as Juan de La Cruz says
in his Flame of Love,
our poet's spirit will not
give up in defeat.  

MY MUSE'S WILDFIRE

Being a Beat
for thirsty years
when I roamed
the deserts of the earth
composing oracles
and music for liturgies
like a metallurgic monk
searching among rocks
and ancient stones
in my archaeological digs
wanting my Muse
to come out of the sky
or earth
to embrace me
in the back waters
of abysmal angelic poverties
with an abjection to live
like Flaubert's St. Anthony
wading by waters
of baptismal spirit
for a poet
in the hottest sun.

JULY JOGGING, 2013

High with expectation
with new running shoes
from a Japanese athlete
on trial for the Olympics
who sends me her own selfie
of her jumping on a trampoline,
watching a measureless giant flight
of a bald eagle landing on sea sand
once trying to cross each mile
of the blushing red sky
with my partner
at my left shoulder
waving or going
on the wrong roadside,
remembering doing this run
once before
but wishing to be
years younger,
trying to dial for dollars
to help others
in a health crisis center
feeling as once when a surf
go-go boy in a club
to raise money
for a school play I wrote
on four hours of sleep,
running for my life here
as charity is the greatest love,
as I'm covering miles over moss
and wildfire grassland
from my worry beard and beads
and less than moving heartbeat,
as the high heat effaces me
swearing off the sweat
from my forehead and chest
as I spy my partner
falling in the dusty trail
near branches
of nesting bluebirds
giving him mineral water
to quench his trembling thirst.

OUT OF CONTROL, JULY 2010

Like a Bacchante
in wild fire
with a chant,
I drank red wine
in crowded avenues
uninterrupted by desire
to have my inner music
composed for tonight
on the black and white keys
until I'm fine
with my review
for playing the ivories
at the Lighthouse Cafe
with my fans sustaining me
hundreds wait outside the club
for my autograph
writing on my knee
they're in tears with a laugh.

________________________

Today's LittleNip:

ERNEST DOWSON'S DAY

Dowson composes the line
"Days of Wine and Roses",
a decadent who drank wine
and on the bar dozes.

He was an elected Decadent
and a Romantic rejected by a lover,
died in a Catholic cemetery
sick and in poverty we discover.

_______________________

—Medusa, thanking today's contributors on this uncomfortable subject, and noting that Nature loves a wildfire—that the burn areas near our house from last year are almost undetectable now, and the wildflowers are more beautiful than ever.

Recovering

To Drink The Moon

Hungry Ghost Mural Painting in 

Pemayangtse Buddhist Monastery 

in Pelling, Sikkim

ADAM'S COMPLAINT
—Denise Levertov

Some people,
no matter what you give them,
still want the moon.

The bread,
the salt,
white meat and dark,
still hungry.

The marriage bed
and the cradle,
still empty arms.

You give them land,
their own earth under their feet,
still they take to the roads.

And water: dig them the deepest well,
still it's not deep enough
to drink the moon from.

_____________________

—Medusa

Outlands of the Heart

Surface Prism

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke

A FEW OF THE TALES THE TRAVELERS
TOLD US ABOUT THINGS THEY HAD SEEN

The little palaces where the
Children stop to drink.

Gabrielle understands the
Splashing and noises of water
As language and tells us the stories
Water tells her as we sit along
The grasslands of the creek bank.

Annalesa knows the secret
Names of every cloud and can
Sing all the songs of the winds.

Many of us have seen dragons
In their far places.

The nameless rooms of sleep.

The great halls where dreams
Wind themselves into the long
Hair of the night.

Sylvan hollow where twilight assembles
Its cloak of whispered colors.

The feathered courts the birds maintain.

Highways in the air.
The curve of the seasons.

Symphonies of fish, garments
For the waters of the lakes and rivers,
Jewels of the streams and ponds,
Living within the body of water
As water lives within our bodies.

_________________________

A BLUE FLOATING

I will name it
After a person.
It will stab
Me in the heart.

She was a cloud
When she spoke.

Various is the night and cold.

Her legend was so large
It cracked along the edges,
Burst away from its telling
And flooded the space
As a burst water pipe might have
Done.  She loomed over our conversations
Recalling for us the presence of a bear
Discovered inside a car
As she begins to leave
The deepest of forests.   

        *

They hauled the thrones
Out of the water.  They were
A curious green, adorned
With rampant dragons,
Great flying birds.

 Across from Mike's

ABOVE THE VALLEY

It was here the hills gave up
Trying to be something other
Than lords of the high places.

They looked out over the valley
Then eased themselves with quick
Rolling undulations through meadows,
Hillocks and small woods to the valley floor.

But here, there was still a place.
Two springs ran parallel across the hilltop.
The oaks opened up for a view that tasted
Distance like a wind does the edge of Spring.

We stayed there for over an hour.
Blue distances, the voices of the streams,
The glaucous oak leaves making confetti
Of the sunlight.  We laid down here.

There was nothing we could not bring back
From this place that could make it more
Real than it had been.  We had lived there,
Made love there.  The place itself was ours.

Years later, I would be reminded of it,
Late at night, after drinking wine.  It
Came like an unannounced season,
Full of all that was ourselves.  I wanted
To tell you about it all over again, see
If you remembered, look for grass
Stains on your elbows, see the valley
Move across the margins of your eyes.

 Succulent

MAKING A MUSIC

Which is stronger,
Glass or stone?
What reflects the morning?
Which is the highest wall?

Why have we come this way?
Time holds a delicate hand
Out to me and begins an intricate
Ritual that stretches far back
Into my own dry and irrevocable past.

I find myself on a high wall
Trying to become a reflection
Seen in the blade of a dagger.
The moments stumble on.
I hear their echo as one hears
Ashes collapse from a burning log.

Here, then, I will weave destiny.
But...I am here between the stars,
Between the shadows,
Between the twilit steps
That ease me to the cliff edge.
Comfort me that I shall be alright,
Show me pictures of my mother,
Tell me I have strength to carry on.

And I will hold these things
As one would a musical instrument,
Lift it close to my ear
And tune it to an inexhaustible chord.

 Duck Wood

THE REVEAL

You’ll call dark
And I’ll call thick.
And you’ll call any player.
But I will have the harp and flute
And you will have the sayer.

You will call the words away
And I will call them closer
And you will parry fire and storm
And I shall be the sorcerer.

I will find you on the white foam sea.
I’ll see you in the tides changing
And you will be the sailing ship
But I shall be the sailor.

And you will find the islands green
And I will find the red ones.
You will build a house of dreams
But I’m the one who treads ‘em.

Now gather at the shore tonight.
We will all join in the dancing
And we will bow to one and all
Then with the tide be leaving.

Here a handful of small bells
Are rung and I will pull back
The corner of your tent flap
And motion you to my side again
And no one will know from nothing.

_______________________

THE STAIRS

Though fog into my heart has come to dwell
I do not care to die and look down the flights
Of stairs and drink the water from my cup,
Listen to my own voice and trust this shadow
Is my own.  But I cannot tell.  I cannot tell.
I expect it this very evening and not seeing
Anyone, plead that it is not far away and that
The one I see and wear is mine.

I play guitar to lose myself, only that I may find
Myself again inside the passageways of music
Where time is strict and rules those fires that fit
Themselves around my throat.  I do not care to die.

I call upon the rings of gold and wear them on my hands.
I trust the words of poets and their colors on the lands.
They do not guide but do appear to divine the moments'
Rush, then move to myth and epic as if in them are trust.

And I go to the West Indies as the place where I may wear
The cloak again as golden, as golden as your hair.
For the fog into my heart has come, though the path
I know it well, I do not care to die and so I’ll move myself
To dwell in raiments born of shadow and trust it is
My own as I walk down the stairs away from here
And come to dwell alone.

 Stuart and Kim in the Garden

UNNECESSARY BOOKS

I have gone far west.
West itself can go no farther.
I was of the seeking.

I had come of my roots sure enough.
I could sing the runes of all the islands
Green and stay over the sea.
Yet, I adhered to the ancient faith.
I have seen the white fever,
Heard the voice from the darkness,
Like a leaping thing that seeks
The outlands of the heart
As if it were played upon
A wild and cunning flute
To charm the blood of whomever
Chanced to hear these queer laments.

Like tide wrack that pounds
The ears when heard,
Like a green water voice heard
Far below the ice,
The sound of the cusp of dreaming
That pounds like the dusk of shadow
And fain refuses description.

This is for the hearing then.
When in the haven, I’ll be safe.
The words will be your remembering
In a certain hour of the day of the days.

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

FOR BARB

you pin my night
dreams in yr hair
like small stars
that will never
know the taste
of what we call
death.

The shine.  Oh love
how they shine.

Tripping softly
on the colors
in my mind
I find you
soft inside and
our loving
is Osiris in
his rising.

We are alone now
love, they have left
their buildings empty
and we are alone.

You go from me
in candied words
and I shall never
see you, come
morning, in the sad
supermarkets
buying cabbages
and bitter pears.

_________________________

Our thanks to D.R. Wagner for today's ambrosia, and a note from him that people can buy my new book from Crisis Chronicles Press (www.crisischronicles.com) or Amazon. The release party, signing and music event is August 16 at 6:30pm at The Moon Cafe Gallery on Main St. in Locke. Also offered for the first time: signed, limited edition prints of my needlepoint images: $50 unframed, $100 matted and framed.

—Medusa

Sunset Palms

Sharp Edges of the Night

Phil Weidman, Joyce Odam, Robin Odam

at the "Tough Old Broads" reading

in Sacramento on June 14, 2014

—Photo by Ann Menebroker, Sacramento

GROTESQUE
—Amy Lowell

Why do the lilies goggle their tongues at me
When I pluck them;
And writhe, and twist,
And strangle themselves against my fingers,
So that I can hardly weave the garland
For your hair?
Why do they shriek your name
And spit at me
When I would cluster them?
Must I kill them
To make them lie still,
And send you a wreath of lolling corpses
To turn putrid and soft
On your forehead
While you dance?

_________________________

FROM ONE WHO STAYS
—Amy Lowell

How empty seems the town now you are gone!
   A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls
   Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls
Eery, distorted, as it long had shone
On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.
   The whir of motors, stricken through with calls
   Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;
But all these noises blur to one long moan.
   What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange
That other men still go accustomed ways!
I hate their interest in the things they do.
   A spectre-horde repeating without change.

 Bill Gainer and Patrick Grizzell

at the "Tough Old Broads" reading

in Sacramento on June 14, 2014

—Photo by Ann Menebroker, Sacramento

THE TAXI
—Amy Lowell

When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum.
I call out for you against the jutted stars
And shout into the ridges of the wind.
Streets coming fast,
One after the other.
Wedge you away from me,
And the lamps of the city prick my eyes
So that I can no longer see your face.
Why should I leave you,
To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

________________________

from DRUMS IN WAR TIME
—Amy Lowell

I dug a grave under an oak-tree.
With infinite care, I stamped my spade
Into the heavy grass.
The sod sucked it,
And I drew it out with effort,
Watching the steel run liquid in the moonlight
As it became clear.
I stooped, and dug, and never turned,
For behind me,
On the dried leaves,
My own face lay like a white pebble,
Waiting.

 Laura and Kathryn Hohlwein with B.L. Kennedy

at the "Tough Old Broads" reading

in Sacramento on June 14, 2014.

At the far left are Joyce Odam, Robin Odam, and Carol Frith.

If you look closely in the far center, 

you can see Bill Gainer's hat.

—Photo by Ann Menebroker, Sacramento

Today's LittleNip:

PROPORTION
—Amy Lowell

In the sky there is a moon and stars,
And in my garden there are yellow moths
Fluttering about a white azalea bush.

________________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Annie Menebroker for today's fun fotos!

 Annie also sent this wonderful photo, which I think

was taken in the Central Library, but we can't remember

when or by whom.

Pictured are Sacramento poets 

JoAnn Anglin, Charlene Ungstad, 

Annie Menebroker, Trina Drotar, Sandy Thomas,

and Martha Ann Blackman.