Days of Chances

Sisyphus

—Poems and Photos by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

WHY ARE YOU SUCH AN UNDERTOW?

Why are you such an undertow
pulling me downward
through the futilities,
through the
heavy sucking waters
of disparities?
I am no swimmer.
The force
of dying love
is so crushing here
I cannot breathe the anguishes
between us.
I flail
and am without skill
of survival.
Here
in the confusion and
churning effort of my resistance
I meet my own screams
mouth to mouth.

____________________

WATCHING AND WATCHED
                  (After Edward Mycue,
                   Cover Art for Mindwalking)

Black leaves against sky of mottled blue,
small clouds forming—the hour turning
the wrong way on the chalk-white wall—

losing time and meaning, and through the
latticed window an empty face looks down
at the woman outside, fleeing from her dream,

hands held wide with effort to run—pushing
against escape. She turns her head back and
the dream can be seen through her skull—

her head full of bees where the viewed dream
is a black swarm—buzzing  with warning: 
hurry,     hurry,     she is about to waken.

A BLUR OF WEPT IMAGES
             (Portrait of Lola, 1899, Picasso)

She is aware of the night,
the red flares of light that blur like
wept images, as if something out there
is caught like a bird in the
branches of her thought.

She can feel the effort it makes
to pull free—but she, too, is caught
in the blue diffusion of the room
and the red feel of shadow
that gropes across the floor.

“Now let us continue,
woe by woe,”
she says to the night.
And the pulling window answers,
“It is so.”

She leans forward
and pulls out of herself
and feels the air move like a yield
of dream-water. Behind her,
her old space closes and releases.

_____________________

THE DAILY GRIND RECONSIDERED
          "A Good Chord On A Bad Piano"—Weldon Kees

On days like this, endurance is the test;
the hot or cold of life is what we blame;
the good or bad of it is much the same.
As long as there is time left to invest,
how we spend it is what we should claim.

To change all this, we might avoid the blues.
Familiar and remembered.  What we know.
So habit-forming.  All we have to show
for our misreading of life’s murky clues.
We always seem to find the undertow.

A downward drag is nothing but a drift
that takes no effort.  Energy is lost.
The sand grains of our falling merely sift
around us. We can still resist—can lift
to days of chances—find them worth the cost.

THE EXODUS GOES ON AND ON.

It takes forever.
Forever has no measure.
Only the goal
and the beginning—
a promise
and a goal.
One strives forever.
The goal is a word.
Forever is
the line upon which
the goal is written. The going
is the end toward which it hungers—
mountains and valleys under the weight
of effort, striving toward the word—ever
before you—a long line of letters—an alphabet
of going—toward—ever toward . . . .

___________________

IN THE BLUE HEART OF DREAM

A bird winds slowly skyward,
lifting a bronze shadow out of the murk.
It is heavy and lonely,
the last thought of a dying dreamer
who has heard the faint call outward.

What follows is grief, freed of weeping,
though it is heavy, too,
and folding like a weariness.
Too much effort is needed
to be free of truth and imagination.

A fan closes as if by itself, ending
the escape. The sky goes dark again.
Or stays bright. Who can say?
The delicate art is saved from eyes.
Nothing depicts.

Everything moves in relation
to everything else, even the stillness
which must breathe and wait.
A word is being offered to the silence.
A listener must make a choice.

Who am I to grieve over such things?
A dream cannot live without the sleep.
Let the bird go.
It is only your thought of it.
If it loved you, you will know.

ONCE UPON A LONG ROAD

Once upon a long road
into difficulty
we took turns
watching for signs.
But our eyes were slow
or looking at distractions.
And we always went deeper.

Each blamed the other.
We tore each other’s maps
in half
and watched for Nature-signals:
Streams of water.
Crows.
Whichever way life goes.

At last we understood.
The roads went nowhere.
All that effort—
for this place
that we named
“County of Lost Love.”

Others followed.
Settled here
with us.
We raised our children.
Sent them out
with folded maps of prayers.
they would make it—
anywhere but here.


(first pub. in Calliope, 1991)

RED SUNSET

This red sky, full of anguish, full of fire,
ground-shadows pulling forth,
tendrils of green things curling
as into sleep,

this landscape of stones and shrinking sunlight:
roundness against roundness,
edge into edge.
All is texture.

There is no word for time here.
Time’s meaning is lost.
Everything is swift—is one thing,
then another.  No time for description.

It is the sky that suffers—
all that color, for the eye, for the mind,
or even for the sky.
One needs at least a bird here to make a cry—

something to flash
across the last patch of light on the ground.
But day is dying down. The relief
of this is too much to bear. Words won’t do.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

EFFORTS MADE

It was as if all came apart at last in decaying pieces:
hopes    words    shadows    fringes
all the gloss tarnished, dull as a sparrow,
that common bird God cared so much for.

It was as if everything narrowed to a sigh—
long and eloquent, like a last note from a tired flute
being put down and left forgotten, say on a hillside,
or a windowsill, or carefully returned to its box
with the red cloth lining to keep it like new.

Music is like that—sacred somehow, and never known
fully, but for the little effort made, or the grand finale.

____________________

—Medusa, noting that we have a new photo album, World Music & Dance Festival, CSUS, by Michelle Kunert, on Medusa's Facebook page, and that our new Seed of the Week is At the Movies. Not everything that happens at the movies is up on the screen, yes? People attend movie houses less and less these days, but I have many memories, fond and otherwise, of things that went on, both in the dark and up on the screen… Send your poems, photos and artwork about At the Movies to kathykieth@hotmail.com/. No deadline on SOWs.

A Scroll of Infinities

—Poems and Photos by Katy Brown, Davis

A POEM I WILL NEVER WRITE

I don’t want to write about this because
even acknowledging it seems
like drawing a pirate map to it.

I have never looked inside the sealed box
—you know—the one I keep
in the back of my closet—on the floor,
under a pile of hiking boots and dirty clothes:

the black box that emits a growl from time to time.

Sometimes, if I lay very still at night,
I imagine I hear a faint whimper
from behind the closet door.

I’ve carried this box with me for as long as I remember,
from place to place,
noticing that it seems to get heavier,
though perhaps I am simply losing strength.
It seems remarkably dense for a plain box.

I have never opened it.  I want to believe it is empty,
but don’t know for sure that it is.
I lack the courage to force it open.

When my daughter was little, I put it
high on the shelf, behind my extra blankets—
where she couldn’t find it
and accidentally release . . .
I’m not sure what is.
All I know
is that it thrives on darkness and it growls.

THE WAKE OF VULTURES

They side-step in an awkward circle
out of the rising mist of a morning field—
a ring of vultures,

wings outspread, shoulders hunched:
a nimbus of necromancers,
tattered brown mantles

obscuring the view
of what lies in their circle.
The new moon rises in Scorpio:

sacrifice of the old—
rabbit turned to flight,
red-winged angels

dancing at midnight—
brown mysteries in the emerald field.
A wake of vultures in Horaltic Pose

waiting on the ground like dark-cloaked
knights; preparing to ride
the last skeletal winds of dawn.

FINDING GLYCERIN CAKE IN MUMBAI

(From a Facebook posting:  does anyone know
where to find glycerin cake in Mumbai?)

My front door, with its Maori knocker,
a wedding present for good luck—
(the gift outlasting the marriage)
opens onto an overgrown garden,
a sea of questions, and only a few answers
for anyone who looks.

This door is half-a-world away
from Mumbai and the woman
—who does not live there, either.
She has a house in New Delhi
with a garden that she talks about
and a genuine love of painting.

On one of her many to trips to Mumbai
romance found her, sipping tea
at an outdoor table.
Is anyone sitting here?
still an effective line. . . .
Now, she splits her time between the two
cities, so different from each other—

as people are different from each other
—more similar, though, than two cities
on either side of the world.
At midnight here, I look for shooting stars,
listen to crickets metronoming the hours;
I think of her in deep shadow, cast by full sun,
while I search the stars in moonshadow
from the garden outside my door. 

So, the point? you ask.  Only that somehow
I picture the woman, the table where she sits,
the empty chair that invited love.  I can’t begin
to imagine what she wants glycerin cake for;
but, for a brief, inexplicable time in my life,
the central question is—where to find it.

LOKI'S KEEPER

No harness or leash for the ancient spirits
—no punishment or simple reward to shape behavior;
the old gods will not respond to anything
but love and respect.

They want to show you how clever they are
—how much they can do with little resources.
Once in a while, they slip among us;
manifest in the form of bone and fur.

Know them by the intensity of their focus
—by the way they watch you;
observe them solve problems without hands
or speech or symbols.

They mark the hours with purity of purpose
—love, play, work: creatures of the moment.
Loki’s keeper understands the difficulty
of trying to train the untamed Trickster Spirit.

FOR JUDY

She lives in Greater Rescue, on the
outskirts of discovery—with her
tracking dogs, her husband,
a bunch (you can’t really call them
a flock) of unruly sheep,
and her newsprint-ink-colored cat.

The shepherds read wind
like the morning newspaper; the sheep,
ever determined to make an escape;
and the cat, determined to help
with poetry composition—
with all this dedication to anarchy

you could expect chaos.
But this corner of the world
seems strangely bucolic.
Maybe it’s the poetry:
full of pastoral images;
forgiving and optimistic.

Maybe it’s the purpose-driven
lives, intent on contribution
and steeped in respect.
She lives on the outskirts
of Rescue, saving our lives
one poem at a time.

TRUSTING REALITY

Reality is the wall I run my finger along
to make sure I know where I am.

Wasn’t it Cupid who said, “Oh, Psyche, my soul,
love cannot live where there is no trust.”

Everyone knows that seeing is believing
and you can’t see a path in the dark.

This poem squats at the edge of sleep
keeping me away from oblivion.

If you go too long without sleep, without dreams,
you begin to see and hear things.

I had a dog when I was a child who snarled
at me when I wanted to get into my own bed.

I’d like to believe that I am the alpha
in my own reality.  But I’m beginning to suspect I’m not.

The root is all the same, you know:  psychosomatic,
psychotic, psychology, psyche.

When she was little, my daughter told her friend
that her mother was psychotic.  “She knows things.”

When I expressed my worry to a counselor,
he said that the difference was that psychotics

only thought they know what is going to happen.
Psychics get it right. 

Trying to reason with this poem is like reasoning
with a two-year-old.  We’ll talk in the morning
over pancakes and sausage.  It’s time to sleep.

_____________________

Today's LittleNip:

AH, THE LIGHT
—Katy Brown

can’t draw
can’t sing
never learned piano

no ear
for the correct
word

couldn’t spell it, anyway
no patience
ah—but for light—

for the lift of wings
—for the slow
step of the

heron
into its own image
on still water—

for the fractured second
for these:
an infinity

under the slow-rolling
sun
a scroll of infinities

_______________________

—Medusa

Hold Out for the Queen

WHAT WOULD SISYPHUS DO?
—Buck Moon, Rohnert Park, CA

The poetry of solitaire
is the solitude of poetry,
bound by who knows what
               neurological constraints.
Free Cell.  Should I wait for the Queen,
replay “Sketches of Spain”?
Or, go with “A Love Supreme”?
Either way, I won’t be alone.
There are no more possible moves.
What do I want to do?
What would Sisyphus do?
Play again, of course.
Let the Deuce pass
               and hold out for the Queen.
Close, but no Freudian smoking device,
which is after all, sometimes,
just a smoking device.
There is no such thing as the unconscious.
Am I counting cards, or just guessing?
The subconscious is, really,
                a peripheral cognition.
Is operant conditioning the key to Free Will?
Or, do I draw the Knave of Sarcasm.
That Ten is a club, not a heart.
Close, but no hand-held explosive device,
nor metal footwear for beast of burden.
Why do I choose the eternal game
               of Sisyphus
over the unbound neurological constraints
               of Prometheus?
There are papers to write,
appointments to keep and rent is due.
What would Sisyphus do?
Why, play again, of course.

_________________________

—Medusa, noting that Buck Moon is the older brother of Carol Louise and Christopher Moon, whose poetry and photography have graced the Kitchen in the past. A family of artists! Spectacular!

A Weaving of Weather and Dreams

Dawn, Locke, CA

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

THE GHOST IN THE CHURCH

The music was there.
The gift had been given.
The sky becomes undone
And terrorizes the rivers.

The bright tensions that cause
Fear to electrocute the finer emotions.
They appear as sudden herds
Of horses charging past, as if
On a mission that includes
Blindness as an element
Any song might contain, a rattling
In the lungs offered like prayers.

An incense of phantom lights
Slides across the night
Just above the gardens,
Lighting the pumpkins
And other squashes,
Making them candles for a
Breeze out to collect power
From anything that moves.

The drapes sigh before it.
The blinds chatter.
The bamboo curtain clicks
Its thin teeth and sways.

We turn out the light.
Sleep too has a job to do.
The ghosts in the church
Require stories best told
In the dark, best listened
To with votive candles lit.

The faces of the statues
Seem so life-like as they
Move along the walls of the church
Like the Stations of the Cross.

We are all heartily sorry
For having offended Thee.

High in the choir loft the wind
Has found the organ pipes.
It weaves through them, trying
To make a music.  Perhaps it does.

We don the required vestments and feel
Our way into the sacristy,
Fingering rosaries.  Pray for us.

 Visage

THE BIGGER SILENCE

The room was full of horses when we entered.
No one was caring for them but birds brought
Them food and fed them as if they were newly hatched.

The birds all had translucent, rainbow-colored wings.
They could speak and change shape almost at will.
Three of the birds discussed a great bull they had seen.
It lived near a wall by a river in Berlin.  Its bellowing
Caused people to weep.  There was a sadness in their telling.

Listen.  I am not supposed to be talking about these things.
I was to talk of the sea.  How it is incessant in its history.
There were to be famous characters here: Ulysses, Dante,
Lovely Cervantes, even Sinbad and Eric the Red.

It will do you no good at all to know about those birds
Or the horses.  This was to be a mysterious sonnet.

 Horse Skull

DISAPPEARED GLACIERS

At first it seemed like a flag
Or the severed wing of an angel.

I pressed my mouth against the mirror
To stanch the blood from my split lip.
The blood ran down the glass and dripped
Over the edges of the frame, pooling on the floor.

I began to ask questions again, knowing they
Could not be answered.  “Did you touch anything?
Can you untangle what these calls are saying?
Does this only happen in deep weather?
Did you imagine all those clouds in the first place?”

We live in the delta of a great river that
Slices through an even greater valley.
Fed by the buried bones of disappeared glaciers.
It is difficult for us to keep in touch out here.
We are very curious about most journeys.
They hold a weaving of weather and dreams.
This is much more than entertainment for us.

The mornings now are crowded with a fog
That rises from the ground and the sloughs
Behind our little town.  On some mornings
We cannot see to the other side of the gardens.

High above we can hear the calls of migrating
Birds and sometimes we see wings or ghosts
Waving flags just above the tree tops.
There is always a calling from one thing
To another.  I was looking up into this
Kind of cloth in this kind of weather
When I bumped into the tree, shaking
Water down upon my head.  I had split
My lip looking to see the heavenly flight.

 Pear

EMPTY WAVES

The throat, with great kindness
Approaches the tip of the tongue.
It is wearing words once again.

Little by little, on the edge of an idea.
"Ask," it says, more intimately than is thought
Possible.  The lips begin to form around the words.

Alone for a moment, quite lost, waiting.
The words, a traveler cloaked against rain
Pauses for a moment beneath a great tree.

All words are sacred to the breath
For the breath is only the vehicle.
It searches every text for impostors.
What does the truth sound like.

Much is as empty waves crashing
Against a deserted shoreline.
Exploding into rocky sea caves,
Leaping high up the cliff face.

The making of words is a great
Gathering.  Children can hear and understand
Them long before we become aware of the swells,
The cross-currents the subtle changing
Of the tides, the silences. 

 Succulants

UNDER THE WIND

The Night has somehow developed
Its own mind and chooses to occupy
What small room I call my own here.

A second-story apartment, small
By many standards, above a former church.
Tonight I am filling it with Rachmaninov’s
Vespers, a choral work that recalls liturgy
With a chorus unaccompanied by instruments.

And now the Night wants a piece of this.
Nothing personal, I am sure. 
It loops in through the open windows
This cool and autumn-fragile evening
And begins naming the nameless,
The things Night can never know well,
Morning, afternoons, worlds lost in equations
Made by weather and the soft sound crickets
Make in late September, their own kind of vespers.

A glow that has nothing to do with the moon.
Nameless, it finds its way into this room,
Moves through it, in windows, out of windows,
Never bothering to consult the wind about anything.

I will greet it.  I am alone this evening.
Lost in the impermanence of all things.
Contemplating why the Night might want
To behave in this manner, quickening
My blood, causing me to go down the stairs
To the outside and stand inside its body,
Full of stars and broken clouds.

I give myself a prayer.
I will call it sunrise.
I will move to greet it. 

 Milagros

Today's LittleNip:

ONCE AGAIN I WOKE UP IN THE RED ROOM


NEAR THE END OF THE PRAJNA PARAMITA SUTRA

"I used to be able to remember my name," he said.


There were things happening to my body that I did not


Understand. If I had any courage, I'd kill myself," he said.

I picked up the lantern and threw it toward him.


Icicles catch the moon. The children become snowflakes.


"You are going to catch a cold if you keep talking like that," I say.

He smiles. "You think this is a dream
Or a bunch of weird photographs,


Don't you?" he says.

"Oh you impressionists, I say. You think everything is about light.


Emptiness is not different from form. 


Gone, gone, to the other shore gone,


Reach (go) enlightenment accomplish."

________________________

—Medusa

 

Patrick Grizzell

 

All We Can Do

—Photos by Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch

from his "St. Joachim and the Dragonfly" series

PRIMITIVE
—Claire J. Baker, Pinole

Wolves,
curious, cold, hungry,
gathered courage,
ventured toward cave people
and camp fire.

Early man,
seeing orange eyes peering
into their circle, threw scraps—
bones, raw meat, fat;
waited, reckless in wonder.

On Neanderthal nights,
sparked by light, food, warmth,
wolves gravitated
toward mankind—
campfire-by-campfire evolving

slowly into man's best friend.

______________________

AMAZEMENT
—Claire J. Baker

We arrive at a meadow
made musical by finches
and wild canaries.

In blades of grass we see
seven shades of green
growing even greener.

Surely we have admired
this one stem before
yet never before

and could find it
again and again
among waves of grass.


(from author's collection,Trails of Naming, Book Two)

DECEPTION
—Nancy Haskett, Modesto

To the bird,
the reflection offered
infinite extension of blue sky
and Oregon high desert,
more space to fly
between pine trees,
over bitter brush, junipers,
near the imposing home
with fieldstone walls,
built on rough edges
of the manicured golf course,
a redwood deck surrounded
by immense picture windows
that are cruel distortions,
deadly sirens that lure wings
to glass,
break necks in mid-flight,
cause a loud tremor which sends
shock waves into calm air,
leaving a smudge
that’s hard to wipe away
           
______________________

WHAT HAS HAPPENED

to the yardstick
that always hangs in the closet
under the stairs,
or the small, heavy bolt
that was left right there
on the Delft blue bedroom carpet
under the unfinished inversion table,
and the narrow hand shovel
that’s always on the potting bench
or in a flowerbed,
or, finally, the hammer
which has its own designated spot
above the garage workbench—
all mysteriously disappeared
within the past week,
no signs, no clues,
and no sightings of the miniature,
household gnomes
who undoubtedly need all these items
for some major project—
a much more pleasant notion
than that of a burglar unlatching the back gate at night,
sneaking into our yard, garage, house,
or—worse yet—
that we have simply misplaced
or accidentally thrown away
all of these items
ourselves
and have no recollection
whatsoever
                  
—Nancy Haskett

DECISIONS
—Nancy Haskett

The everyday, easy ones
don’t get much thought—
paper or plastic, Ranch or Italian,
this shirt or that one—
hundreds of choices
we answer almost automatically,
rarely much at stake.

The harder ones—
the kind we wrestle with a little bit,
appear less frequently,
consume more of our time,
back and forth,
pros and cons—
grad school or marriage,
rent or buy, Honda or Mazda,
remodel or relocate—
win-win either way.

The rare gut-wrenching ones
that keep us awake at night,
the life or death choices—
coma or pull the plug,
chemo or radiation

or neither—

never have a “right” answer,
accompanied, always by “What if”,
so we weigh all our options,
take a deep breath,
close our eyes,
accept the future with no regrets.
It’s all we can do.

DEALING OUT LESSONS
—Nancy Haskett

I. It was Jay and Anna who taught us to play Pinochle,
nights spent sitting around the card table,
newlyweds in our first apartment,
we often played until well after midnight,
eating malt balls,
drinking RC Cola,
slowly catching on to the strategies of the game.
It’s where I learned, literally
what it meant to follow suit,
to stay confident and fight for the bid
when I knew I had strength,
to trust that my partner would, somehow,
be able to support me.
But it’s also where I learned what it meant
to renege—
to break a promise, in a way,
to admit my mistake in front of everyone,
press on
through this game changer.

II. One night years later we played Pinochle
in Pat’s Springfield home,
sitting at the wooden kitchen table,
carefully sorting our cards into suits
after she dealt the round,
and when it came time to bid,
we all passed, one after another,
nobody having enough points
to even begin the game.
“Bitter bunch!” Pat announced,
so we threw our cards into the center
where she collected them, shuffled,
started over.

III. I wonder if she thought of that
when she received this recent diagnosis
of lymphoma,
when nobody gives you a chance for a
do-over,
when you simply have to sit up straight,
make the best of a bad situation,
play the bitter hand you are given.

    
NO FEAR OF FLYING
—Nancy Haskett

In that moment just before boarding,
I raise my hand to touch you with Namaste,
a ritual greeting of skin on metal,
a connection of human and machine that affirms my trust,
acknowledges your power,
your heart beats beneath my feet,
your voice whines with excitement
as we are pushed back from the gate,
your arms dip somewhat clumsily,
awkward, like a large goose,
for this is not your element,
not your comfort zone,
you are destined for greater things,
impatient,
as you wait at the end of the runway,
I sense your restless spirit,
I feel you trying to lurch ahead,
a thoroughbred held back, reined in,
until you are free,
and there’s a pause as you catch your breath,
begin to jog, then run,
and a big smile forms below your nose
as you start to roar,
raise your head and lift your feet—
for this is what you were made to do,
this is what you do best,
this is your domain, yours alone,
where you carry me with extraordinary confidence,

and I am no longer afraid.

   
WATCHING A HARD DAY'S NIGHT FIFTY YEARS LATER
—Nancy Haskett
 
It’s the film I sneaked in to see
over and over on Saturday afternoons in 1964,
sat with friends in plush theater seats for eighty-eight
tantalizing minutes, then fidgeted through the second feature—
almost always Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey—
walked back to the lobby when it ended,
mingled cleverly with the incoming horde of teenage girls,
turned around, found a new seat and watched everything again
and again,
until we knew the lines by heart,
whispered them to ourselves as the scenes played,
dreamed of meeting each Beatle in person,
practiced a British accent,
dressed like the girls on the screen,
wrote stories filled with kisses and naive sexual references
in our beginning time.

Seeing them now from this different perspective,
I am astonished at their youth,
their optimism and sheer joy of performing
simple harmonies and straightforward lyrics,
before the world recognized their true genius,
long before Sgt. Pepper and Let It Be,
before the weariness of travel, drugs and fights over money,
before Yoko, cancer, and Mark David Chapman,
they are that new 45 record that we couldn’t stop playing,
the new piece of sheet music carried home in the vellum envelope,
they are fresh, genuine,
captured forever in black and white,
in their beginning time.

______________________
              
Today's LittleNip:

MORE THAN PRUNING
—Nancy Haskett

If it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird,
it’s probably also a sin
to kill a living tree
like we did yesterday,
when we cut down the Chinese pistache,
chopped the trunk with an axe
until it splintered,
fell into the street,
bleeding red berries everywhere.

I will miss the way its autumn leaves
turned the north-facing rooms pink/orange
in afternoon sun,
but I won’t miss the berries,
the ones that stain the sidewalk
deep purple,
roll in the gutter,
stick to the soles of our shoes,
provide the main motivation
for doing this evil deed.

Next November,
the berries will be forgotten
when the new gingko tree is planted,
and our lawn is carpeted
in leaves of gold.
         
_______________________

—Medusa, reminding you to keep watching the "Webilicious" feature in the green box at the right of this column! Our current link celebrates Britain's Poetry Day (which was yesterday) with many fine readings.

Fall's Dance

 Fall in Cape Cod

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA
—Photos by Denise Flanigan

‪AN EARTH CHILD‬

Floating on suspecting
clouds, wind, warmth
covering the green sea
in your bare feet
over animated pine combs
and listened to shore voices
who linger at the ocean edge
among the gulls on dunes
my memory drifts
detouring by a rock garden
as you tiptoe this Fall
on what faces you
as another earth child
steps and glows on leaves
red, yellow and orange
in the first sunlight
on echoes of morning
of a clear geography
between hedges
the aspen grackles come closer
here ocean bird voices
color your presence
able to speak and draw
a line on the sandy beach
being a part of art
and attached to nature
on a jog in miles of landscape
before the threshold
of sensitized words
accessible to all
who will feel our language
embracing a transformed season
into an infinite profile
as laughing river run waves to us.

___________________

ORANGE

Now burnt orange
in the yellow sun
light of Mondrian's
disconnected discovery
of chilled lines
as we follow
shadow's shade in orange
escapes fiery paints
combined in echo
footsteps by a canvas
against a wall
of sketching landscapes.

         

EARTHBOUND

Engulfed by the newly built boat
as the morning's first passerby
enters and is photographed
by the tall sun
with my initials inscribed
on the wooden oars
a former student and singer
now living in Palo Alto
rests against the bow
greets me as a ghostly poet
in a safe cabin haven
as the ship turns in the sea
starts to quote
from a landscape poem
of mine I read at her graduation
illuminates our morning
and gives me hope
of language reliving in others.  

___________________

PREDICTABLE

Predictable
as cards, stars,
a gurgling from the crib
with a mirror's impression
apple and honey
at table,
outside dawn arrives
on the dark blue shore wave
sea bird wings sky borne,
Mozart meets Shakespeare
in the park
teenagers hang out
a thought on a page
of the printed future.

 B.Z. in Rockport

DRESS REHEARSAL

It's already six o'clock
for the dress rehearsal
for my play "The Beards"
in the shady early night
the actors in form
and shaped for the sound
of their performance
and hopefully no chance
of any breakdown
in the last love affairs
or at sleepless insomnia
checking that no one
of the extras is left behind
if an actor has had glasses
of vodka or rum
the morning before
and that the choreography
has matched the upstaged
scenes as were decided
last week
that all costumes are
back from the city laundry,
the hors d'oeuvres
wine and cream dips
are ready for the cast party
and after playing
marriage broker
psychiatrist and a prophet
as well as art director
for a fortnight
we are ready, like Hamlet
or a ham to cut up
for our "Beards."

______________________

TOLSTOY AT YASNAYA-POLYANA

Who in times past
an aristocrat
strolled by pines
drank like the swallows
scourged from passion's
once grey Gogol overcoat
turns out to be weeping
on a Fall's dance
of the hours
over bare-iced sheets.

He walks this night alone
by breakwater's embankment
through a mute September
yet knowing his fevered ways
where black bread
is only a genuflection
of a hunger much deeper
than his own peace.

Over a lake landscape
the birdsong's communion
of a child's awareness
pervades him
here in these woodlands
the dreadful cold blazes
under a full moon
of Autumn's fretfulness
with a deep seclusion
only a Count may hide.

MANTUAN
(1447-1516)

A city on a hill dream
from a Christian Virgil
awakes to fulfill you
into writing ecologues,
as Mantuan,
the Carmelite poet
writes masterful dialogues
without interruption
from a monastery,
searches for words
against impolite corruption
at warm summer's noon
now perched on a hammock
trembling inside
by a tree's birds
nesting on branches
for an upturned future
of a church's reform.

_____________________

DANNIE ABSE LIVES ON
(1923-2014)

A clearing path
insightful for us to dream
from your now absent eyelets
that between your hands
of language and love
will restore to us
a more healing time
from our often plagued century
enlightening our grief
in your passages
of revealing the undeniable,
that whatever preserves
will whisper of your presence
in wondrous line upon line
appearances in our recollections
through arrivals of syllables
as prophetic proverbs
reach out by sailing words
in your home harbors
now translated in many shores
and welcomed
for Dannie Abse
a poet from Wales,
with medicinal cures
and Jewish folklore
always in his background
as a doctor in body and soul
with a second nature
of an osmosis of unusual depth
as an articulate companion
in understanding our cells
with sounding alarms against war
and injustice
chose poetry in his long life
to accompany
his journey of gentleness.


(for more about poet Dannie Abse, see www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11127571/Dannie-Abse-his-greatest-poems.html)

______________________

Today's LittleNip:

FALL ORANGE

Fall is an orange,
defoliated leaves us
breathless as we visit Rothko
with orange as red on red
as his color spectrum,
a sponged creation in its flow.

______________________

—Medusa

B.Z. and Kayaks

In the Tower...

Chateau Le Mung, France

CHATEAU LE MUNG
—Allegra Silberstein, Davis

In the tower I knew
in the hours of my reflection
the inflections of ardor
printed on the split pages
of my heart...

In the tower I knew
moonlight gracing the dark
dawn light piercing the night

in the tower I knew
a shower of stars,
the light of my knowing.

Across months and years
thoughts of return came
mending, resending
something lost but now
the chateau has been sold.

 Large Tower

LEAVES
—Marchell Dyon Jefferson, Chicago

You brush them aside like the words I love you
You are never serious
Sometimes sign language isn’t enough

No longer excited with burning orange
October lovers are bipolar in nature

We are store-brought mannequins
Masquerading as a couple
Stifled by our world quickly turning brown

_______________________

TOMATOES
—Marchell Dyon Jefferson

Because they are going bad, because there is nothing else,
We take them with salt like sugar
Till something tasty overflows the fronts of our throats.

Together on the fire escape you and I sitting on crates,
We hang our toes between the iron bars;
We enjoy ourselves as our butts waffled.

We snatch and share molding thumbprints,
We peel with our teeth a thin plush layer, a ribbon round
With seed juice frothing from the side of our lips.

Long as we stay crouched in love
Blindsided by bliss,
Really—who notices who’s poor.

_____________________

CANNED FRUIT
—Marchell Dyon Jefferson

Down in the cellar collecting dust and moss
For a purpose saved

Left to congeal
Aspirations in reposed

Dream's coat hanger
Between the self and more tangible things

Jars you mounted
Knitting cobwebs growing fur

Sometimes a mystery tinkling moisture
Sometimes Polaroids of filtered sun

 Mantis on My Window Screen

—Photo by Michelle Kunert, Sacramento

PUBERTY
—Marchell Dyon Jefferson

My body flows a red river
I have wings now, uneasy ones
That by accident buzz on and off

I am knee-deep in a religion
I did not ask for

Once I was splendid as a Caterpillar
Now I am unsure of my own jazzy skin

My body flows a red river
I am often bright with color
I am often dull with sun

_____________________

EARRINGS
—Marchell Dyon Jefferson

Mom always wore bright dazzling earrings,
The kind of gold that prisms in the sun
And silver ones that rivaled diamonds.

Although she admired their style
She never wore pierced, just clip-on earrings.

Mom was often meticulous
About choosing which earrings to wear.
To the movies we were often late.
Then I hated those stupid earrings.

When she died I loved them all.
On the kitchen table I laid them all out
And took my time
Choosing for mom just the right pair.

 Jenny Lake, Wyoming

—Photo by Christopher Moon

CROWS CALL US AWAY FROM HERE
—Carol Louise Moon, Sacramento

       the film of sunset’s smoky peach

       the air filtering between leaves

       a bird’s nest in my backyard tree
 
       squirrels rustling in the juniper


A neighbor’s gray arthritic cat laps
milk on the backyard porch.  I am
reminded of my old wooden school
house. Large dried leaves taped to
window glass; felt squirrel shapes;
paper snowflakes cut in the out-of-
season: “It never snows in Paso Robles
but maybe once or twice.” A small
robin’s nest is propped near a row of
picture books in the day room. In the
mornings we stood in line near the
kitchen door to receive the communion
cup—a “tiger-milk” concoction of orange
juice, milk and castor oil. Later in the
afternoon, we flopped our rag rugs on the
open floor to nap, maybe to dream…
a horseback ride through the smoky film
of our western skies, to a mountain so big,
and so fearsome…

_____________________

GOLDEN AUTUMN
—Carol Louis Moon

It is now.  We sense the muse, the warmth
on our skin, the light filtering into our
Dickinsonian studios, our desks only
slightly cluttered with enough room for
dictionaries, thesauruses, Atlases-of-Last-
Resorts. An array of exotic writing implements:
quill and ink, bone and blood, stick and ash
laid out before us, inviting the written word.
But make no mistake… to be sure… do not
use these.  Do not stay here, but step away
into the wide wonderful world, un-prepared,
vulnerable.  Begin your composition there.

(first pub. as "The Lunar Lyric", Poetry Now Online, 2012)

 Joshua Tree

—Photo by Christopher Moon

NEW HOME IN THE SOUTHWEST
—Carol Louise Moon

A lean coyote chases a hare through
heat of desert winds. His swift doe
darts past my boots.  They’ve both
managed to escape; he’ll lead the chase
another day.

I pause to watch the side-winding viper
who considers a kangaroo rat before
moving on between two century plants
to a rock ledge nearby.   The tidy yellow
rat continues eating seeds, gleaning
moisture, never needing to sip drink
in this dry, yet vibrant, land.

The cactus wren with spotted breast
sits atop a prickly pear. The gilded
flickers’ rosy cheeks and banded wings
are a colorful reminder of the beauty
I find here.   Their long blue tails prop
them upright against a great saguaro—
a hole carved out for nest.

I crunch the tangy bulb of a white
desert lily whose green tendrils curl
upon the ground.   At night our silver
moon illuminates this wondrous
desert scene.

_____________________

VERONA EARTH
—Carol Louise Moon

Verdant vegetation spills into this
turquoise stream.  There is a bone-deep
longing known by fish who swim upstream.
Vireo sings this longing until evening
as he settles  in.

River rocks record their observations
in waves of surrender, smoothed and
polished.  Trees vibrate their incantations
as listeners-in absorb the subtleties of
conversation.

The soil of this greening river bank
receives the feet of travelers, cooling
and leading them far along.

Life beneath the vault of heaven
prospers in vitality of sun by day,
vespers in the evening cool.

Ferns of the Forest

—Photo by Christopher Moon

Today's LittleNip:

SEPTEMBER
—Carol Louise Moon

Far off we heard
     the twelfth noon bell
and thrilled at the sound
     that throbbed in our veins—
the gold grain swayed lightly
     as harvest birds carried
the blood and the breath
     of our lives in their wings.

______________________

Our thanks to today's gourmet chefs for their tasty contributions to our Kitchen! A big welcome back to Marchell Dyon Jefferson, who was featured in the Kitchen on May 1 of this year. Christopher Moon and Carol Louise Moon are brother and sister; she is known around here as the editor of DADs DESK and Poetry Now, and more of Chris's and Carol Louise's work can be seen at www.ckmphotography.com

Medusa's Facebook page has a new photo album today, this one of last Saturdays' Sacramento Voices 2014 reading from Michelle Kunert. Check it out, and thanks, Michelle (love your praying mantis!).

And recently frank andrick sent an email around, talking about how he had discovered that the chateau he lived in while he was in France was for sale and has now sold. frank writes: my old house ... Chateau Le Mung ...  big tower was finished in 1301, my tower finished in 1540. Former Knights Templar preceptorie, stables, chapel, pigeonaire, 16 bedrooms, 18 fireplaces, 26 acres riverside property, 4 massive salon rooms with some walls tapestries dating back to 1380 ...  and so many stories and histories. This is what almost 2 million dollars will get you for a house in France! It was a great place to live and dream, great place to write and be inspired to write. Allegra Silberstein was inspired by his story and sent the poem about the chateau that you see here today. Thanks, Allegra and frank!

______________________

—Medusa

frank's Tower