Elemental

Tree in Orange

—Poems by Ann Wehrman, Sacramento, CA

—Photos by Chris Feldman

AS A CHILD

as a child, I played
at the foot of an elm—

its roots exposed
dipping into earth, snaking up again
curved surfaces, moss-filled hollows
sinuous stairways, soft beds
my Heidi-house

I longed to drink clean air
sleep with winking stars
marry my friend down the path
live nimble and free
on the mountain 

 Warmth

ROOTS

sun-kissed earth between bare toes
sand, not yet burning hot
campfire on twilit beach
fire in fireplace when power goes out
under coverlets with cocoa and candles
warm like cat on my lap
you stretch out next to me
curl into my back like stacked spoons

 Lily Pond

OPENING TO THE SUN

after yoga class
rest on stone bench
to my left
decorative garden patch

deep yellow-green spears
sway proudly in spring breeze
reach up to the sun
open like hands of cards
fronds are fingers
legs in cartwheels

along green stalks
new blossoms
creamy petals curl
still closed, soft sleepy fists
others fully open
stretch luxuriously in all directions
golden centers
blushes of lilac, fuchsia 

 Dryad

SENSITIVE

fill my eyes with joy
like a beloved rag doll
from childhood
fit right next to my heart

straight back, proud brow, clear eyes
skin, breath sweet
body clean, fresh
head in the clouds
strong hands on the earth

voice soft with tenderness
teasing, spills golden light
turns stern

warm, silky, soft, real
your chest rises, falls with love
with your breath

 Clouds on Fire

 

ELEMENTAL

walking through the parking lot
box of fundraising product on my hip
my steps became longer
lighter than usual, almost slow motion
twilight splashed golden across wide Illinois sky
afternoon’s rain passed, chill air clean, bracing
over puddles in concrete lot
skirting huddled masses of shoppers’ cars
I danced with joy, sure-footed, graceful
quality of light spoke to me beyond words
my heart realized permanent change
elemental, in my deepest cells
gray, gold, lapis clouds cherished sun as it slipped to rest

STRONG HEART

beat, rest, beat
rest, beat, rest
beat, rest
silent soldier
warm heart
flame eternal
day, night
awake, asleep
beat, rest
serve, give
create, love
beat, rest
persevere through
betrayal’s muck
abandonment
beat, rest
take it, take it in
transmute, rejuvenate
past the pain of loss
past death
your body’s aging
abandoned dreams
beat, rest
heart persists
love deepens
strength, courage
your shields melt
heart glows
within your breast
beat, rest

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

—Robert Frost

__________________

Our thanks to Ann Wehrman for her fine poems today, and to Photographer Chris Feldman for his beautiful work, as well!

Poetry in our area today includes the WakamatsuFest150 in Placerville, which continues through the weekend, and the annual farewell reading by UC Davis Creative Writing MA graduates at the UCD Arboretum (Wyatt Deck) in Davis, 7pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry and photography!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

A Healing Land

—Poems and Photos by Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

DAWN AT WAKAMATSU

Shall the weather change?
Pond’s a puddle without rain.

What was this land once?
Of redbud and of willow
they wove baskets for bounty.

Where gold is treasure,
men with picks, shovels and hands
reworked the creek’s path.
What harvest in broken rock
left in heaps? Wildflowers in
spring, and summer’s golden grass.

Where we saw small frogs,
willow has overtaken
the summer’s hard-baked shoreline.
Might its branches sing now with
all the season’s thicket birds.

Where are the egret
of wetlands across the pond,
and great blue heron?
In autumn-light wild geese trail
their wakes across shrunken pond.

We walk this morning
gleaning image on image
of a healing land.

BEYOND ME

White silhouette
in a weedy field—a bird’s
infinite patience—
it lifts off over my head,
great wings not waving goodbye.

LET IT GROW

Gone are the sheep of all seasons, forever escaping their fences in search of greener pasture. Now their field’s invaded by bunchgrass—waist-high, still green long after foxtail, brome, and clover have faded to color-of-bone. What kind of grass, I wonder. Fescue, the nurseryman tells me, good for grazing. Not a pest-plant. Let it crowd out star thistle and annual grasses with their barbed-awns. I tell him I never noticed fescue till the sheep were gone; they must have loved it clear down to the root.

black phoebe’s hawking
insects my mower stirs up—
this field all alive

SPRING CHICKENS

Chickens of another spring
would have pecked this henyard
to bare soil. Our chickens are gone
to a better place, acres of green
where no thieving ground-squirrels
gorge on chicken feed and pilfer
chickens’ eggs. We’re left
with vacant henyard overgrown
in bull-thistle. My weed-
eater uncovers the chickens’
dusting wallows. How they loved
to loll in blessing of spring sun.
Sometimes I miss our chickens.

EYE OF BEHOLDER

    a Boketto for Wakamatsu Pond
 
I observed a girl
creating this pond with brush
and watercolors,
a rippled instant captured
forever on flat canvas.

kingfisher and I
watching wavering colors
of sky over fish

SATURDAY SURPRISE

On unmown grass, bright
as sunrise on a tall green
stalk—one red poppy!
How did it get here, and why?
emblazoning unplanned day.

Today’s LittleNip:

AVAILABLE
—Taylor Graham

This golden flower
in a field of fading green—
a fairy flower
where I thought just brittle weeds
waiting for the bulldozer.

____________________

Thank you, Taylor Graham. for today’s fine poems and photos, in addition to your work with Katy Brown on putting together poetry for all four days of this weekend’s WakamatsuFest150 at Wakamatsu Farm in Placerville, which begins today at 10am. See also yesterday’s article in The Sacramento Bee at www.sacbee.com/news/local/article230964913.html/. Plenty of fun and frolic of all kinds, including poetry!

For more about the Boketto form, see poeticbloomings2.wordpress.com/category/boketto-form/ or www.poetrymagnumopus.com/forums/topic/4736-forms-unique-to-poetic-bloomings/. (The latter site has lots of brain-busting forms that I bet you never heard of.)

And tonight at 8pm, Poetry in Davis features Brad Buchanan and Sac. Poetry Center President Stuart Canton, plus open mic, at John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 First St. in Davis. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry!

 Wakamatsu Farm

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

The Ocean's Calling

—Poems by John Patrick Robbins, Knotts Island, NC
—Anonymous Photos of Knotts Island

SPEED-DATING FOR DUMMIES

We sat there at the bar.

It was after a reading.

I was getting sloshed as usual ‘cause how else would a man sit through people
 rambling through their feelings?

She was beautiful and everyone took notice; her words didn't matter with a rack
 that any true hunter would take pride in taking home.

I had her laughing and that was always my most resourceful tool.

That and the fact I could afford my own drinks and didn't give a damn to talk
 about poetry.

She told me she was single.
So I kept her talking and bought her drinks.

She told me about her life.
Then asked me what time was it.
Then informed me she had a kid at home and her sister was watching her seven-
 year-old son.

I asked if her sister was single or had any kids.

She told me she hated kids and was a total slut, and slept with anything that
 had pulse.

She also said she would like to see me again.

I handed her a pen and a bar napkin, asking for her sister’s number instead.

She told me to go fuck myself and stormed off.

I watched her head out the door, surveyed the room.

Spotted a women half-lit, drinking alone in a corner booth.

Looks like I was onto another round of speed-dating tonight.

I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE SMART

She was a forbidden pleasure
 and I never could resist a good time.

Nights are best kept secret,
 but with writers, nothing between you and the page is sacred.

And no matter my efforts, every
 thought was only a twisted highway between her and my ever-so-bad choices. 

I poured the drinks and she
 set the trap.

I may have known it was doomed
 to begin with.

I may have been many things.
When it came to her, smart was
 never one of them.

WORDS NOT TO LIVE BY

I prefer to have strippers for
 breakfast and a side of little regrets and maybe a double shot of Jack Daniels for     
 my coffee.

Do nothing until the sun sets
 then make the bars as usual.
Make others laugh and a few
 cringe with some very inappropriate jokes.

Burn the candle at both ends
 and maybe burn a little something extra too.

Stagger home and rinse with
 a little hundred-proof and probably forget to feed that dog.

But I'm sure he will enjoy whatever
 I splatter upon the floor.

As I pass out alone in hopes
 to not see another day.

Sharing my vices and if lucky
 that night, sharing my bed.

It's a cruel cycle I must repeat
 but I have to party for those less fortunate fools who embrace the grind and know  
 a wife and kids.

It's a sacrifice but I'm a selfless
 bastard.

Prosit my friends.

POETRY BY NUMBER

We all crave something.
A drink, a fix, a simple release
 from the bullshit of living this so-called life day to day.

Practice is for the piano.
And although I been chasing
 ass most my adult life, I have become far from an expert.

The next round sounds far more
 desirable than a second-chance sweetheart.

Maybe I'm getting too old or
 maybe common sense is finally kicking in.

I will keep watch over the whiskey.

And allow others to chase false
 hopes with little chance of a happy ending.
Whoever believes all poets are
 secretly romantics clearly has never read me.

Cheers.

NO SCREEN NAME NEEDED

I have sold books, been published
 in just about everywhere.
I never needed a stupid screen
 name or a gimmick to hide behind.

Course I been writing longer
 than most, living life instead of making it up.

Drinking far too much and convincing
 myself that the good times weren't more than addictions in disguise.

I didn't run workshops and didn't
 care for the novice opinion.

I had isolated myself on every
 level.
And lost everyone along the
 way.

I never hid behind a screen
 name.
Cause if I didn't believe in
 something I wouldn't have written it to begin with.

Don't be a novice.
You can't swim in the kiddie
 pool forever.

The ocean’s calling.


_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

—Thomas Gray

_____________________

Thanks, John Robbins, for your poetry today from the beautiful Knotts Island in South Carolina! John Patrick Robbins is the editor of both The Rye Whiskey Review and Under The Bleachers. He is also the author of Sex Drugs & Poetry from Whiskey City Press, and Once Upon A Nervous Breakdown from Soma Publishing. His work has been published in Ariel Chart, The Mojave River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Red Fez, Punk Noir Magazine, Blognostics, Romingos Porch, Beatnik Cowboy, The Dope Fiend Daily, Blue Pepper, Piker Press. He says his work is always unfiltered. Thanks again, John, for your visit, and don’t be a stranger!

Clive Matson holds many workshops in the Bay Area; this one is called “The Beat Aesthetic: Why We Need It Today” and is on-going, held on the 2nd Saturday of the month at Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck, Oakland. (See www.meetup.com/Crazy-Child-Workshops/events/njpttpyzhbpb/.) The date on that flyer is for May, but elsewhere I see that they will also meet this coming Saturday, June 8. Don’t be shy about jumping in; it’s drop-in, with a $5 donation.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves will meet tonight from 5-7pm at El Dorado Hills Library on Silva Valley Parkway in El Dorado Hills. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating the tough words of poetry that burns

 John Patrick Robbins

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

The Innocence of the Spring Chicken

Strange Eloquence

—Poems and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

THE CHILDHOOD       

It was this way of it:
All the death
was made of murder.
All the death
was made of scream.
And an innocent child
composing all of it.
With her pink crayon and her
tan sheet of paper.
All that time.
Whenever they’d let her.
The old parents who said
they loved her.
Who kept her
safe in her room.
And she would stare out the window
and draw what she’d remember.
After it turned dark.
After the lights were out.
And there was only the ceiling
where her eyes should be.
And she was all the sky.
Her long hair floating against the edges
of everywhere.
And her night hands gathering up
the birds that slept
so she wouldn’t see them.
She didn’t care,
as long as she could keep floating there
among the birds who slept in her hands
and trusted the way
she was the whole sky.


(first pub. in Kudzu, 1980)

___________________-

HER PRETTY SON
(after Italian Postcard, ca. 1920)

This child of shadows
with his far face and innocent pout
standing among the flowers
one finger to his mouth
a golden boy of mother’s kisses
dressed in her choice of clothes
looking that way forever
in the moment caught for him
looking like a paper doll
shining among the dark
of all the years
that trail away from him
he does not know of them
(he’ll never be old or dead)
he is inquisitive
his eyes blue and round
he does not know what the shadows
mean, so close to his shoulders
he does not know why his mother
has dressed him in white
so she can always see him
contrasted and clean
for her receding vision
her pretty son who does not
know what his childhood
means, after all this time
standing so sweet and small
holding a bouquet.
Time still adores him.


(first pub. in One Dog, 1997)

 Indeterminate Landscape

THE STAND-OFF
After Turkeys in the Snow by Liz Hawkes deNiord

1.

We know how the turkeys connect their voices
when we gobble out to them and they gobble back
in a racket-challenge of sound, just milling around
and waiting for us to challenge them again/ and
again/ and again/ till we grow tired of losing
the game—and just stand there—and they just
stand there—sizing each other up . . .

2.

Again the turkeys, in the snow, not straw. I wonder
what they think about : which follows, which leads,
so aimless, so unlovable, though they bobble in
closeness and tremble apart by turn, playing look-
out, bobbing their heads up at any disturbance.
Curious fellows. So innocent of treachery. In the
snow, in the season of the winter . . .

3.

To make this a triptych, I hear they run wild in cer-
tain neighborhoods where they have built up their
courage—still gobbling in unison to frighten any-
thing that startles them. Never engage them in any
sort of discourse if this bothers you. They are like
clumsy pets, annoyances, unapproachable. Just ig-
nore them. Maybe they’ll go away.

__________________

THEIR YOUNG PHOTOGRAPH
(after a photograph)
 
Dressed in a style, old fashioned, prim, two young
ladies, posed ladylike, hands folded in laps, blent
toneless against wall-stone, uncomfortable in straight
postures, eyes of one on the camera lens, the eyes of
the other toward someone who is speaking to them,
perhaps telling them
                             what to do, or trying to get them
to smile, but they are too sober for smiles, they are
being held as they never will be held again, innocent
as children on a gray Sunday after a rain. A shiver
passes over them under the weak sunlight of a day so
long ago it is ever beyond them now.

 Abeyance

THE INNOCENCE

Serpent came and lay down beside her and said, Do not
dream of me. I am not real. Then serpent left her—
half-awakened—wondering what she remembered.

            ~◇~

Serpent awoke one morning on her satin pillow, saying,
Oh, I like this dream—this texture—
smoother than I am. I wonder if this is love.

            ~◇~

Serpent looked for the way out of her mind,
but she had closed everything against his leaving.
Then she hunted all the rooms with her killing power.

            ~◇~

Serpent said, Watch me dance, and lifted into
a hypnotic sway and did not take his eyes off her eyes
until she began to sway in unison.

            ~◇~

Serpent stretched out his shimmering green length
and taunted, See how I surrender?
Come here and touch me.

            ~◇~
                                                                             
So you want to talk about love, Serpent fawned.
All right, I will give you all the words
you want. Every slither toward you will be about love.

            ~◇~   

I am innocent of all my rumors, Serpent swore.
It is all about hunger. I search only for what will satisfy me.
But she could no longer forgive innocence.

            ~◇~

And they grew warily silent—
looking through each other’s windows
which were covering-over with leaves and tendrils.

 Crack in the Ego

IT IS A LONG WAY THROUGH CIRCLES

it is a long way
through circles

how can
I enter places so small

what is
my structure now

I enter the hum
silence grows large within me

I have lost the
texture of have and gone

simplification!

pressure falls away from me
and I drift

as light as an innocent thought
untaught by truth

I dreamed this once
but I was lying underneath my heart

and all
I enter now

was above me
and descending

________________

THE SEQUENCE OF THE CURSE
After The Art of Poetry by Yves Bonnefoy

The curse is part of the mouth.
The mouth is innocent and led by the word.
The word is innocent of the mind,

The mind is contorted by the mouth.

The word must be uttered to escape.
The mind must free the word through the mouth.

The mouth is obedient to the curse.

 Esteem

THE BLAME

There is a blemish in life that began, then perpetuated,
breaking the path-line that snapped away like a broken
branch—a twig only—that left a distortion that grew

into a scar. A wrong that makes the innocent guilty,
that insinuates and insinuates itself between every flash-
back that, itself, learns to disregard and obliterate what

is there, not the elephant, but the ghost—to go around—
to avoid new confrontations, what shapes the will, away
from the refusal, that becomes the blame—

which in itself is blameless, the mind a blockage, not a
discerner. One works with the result, taking it into the
self like the growth that it is. There is a silent howler, a

companion that lives in the head that has closed eyes of
recognition—that has sensate memory that festers in the
odd moment of recollection; that emulates the shadow

you protect, that you cannot bear to harbor because pain
put it there. It has only itself to blame because it is your
discouragement, not your joy—not the guilt innocence

feels under imposition. Strength will evolve
with perfection. It must suffice,
heal over, and
suffice.
 

 Mood Changes

IF IT WERE NOT FOR SADNESS

Life must always bear sadness along,

that dead weight in the heart, the emptiness

 in the arms, the eyes ever-seeking to fill the mind,

the mind in recoil, or probe, the sadness itself,

innocent and guilty both, unable to bear itself.

Life must never blame sadness, it is the probe

at the beginning, and the lament at the end. It is

the one true thread of your existence, the one

that will never let you forget what is most

unbearable, you must love your sadness.

If it were not for sadness, you would lose your

equilibrium—forget to plod—forget to endure

—forget the evolving limit of your strength—

you are the common bearer of your sadness,

that gift that lets you complete yourself.

__________________

Today’s LittleNip:

REASONS
—Joyce Odam

Because we were indelicate at love,
great shifts of light severed like glass.

Bewilderment took place of need.
The mirror wept.

Rage suffered rage—
gone quiet, and inept.

Words did not know themselves.
It was the beginning

and the end,
because we were indelicate at love.

___________________

Thank you to Joyce Odam for today’s potpourri of poems and original artwork on our Seed of the Week: Spring Chickens! Our new Seed of the Week is a sweet one, The Candy Store. Think literal (all those colors!) or metaphoric ("like a kid in a candy store"), and send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from.

Next Wednesday, a week from tomorrow, El Dorado County Poet Laureate Suzanne Roberts will read with Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas at the El Dorado Hills Library. So El Dorado Hills’ version of Poetry Off-the-Shelves has graciously moved their meeting date from next week to today, Tues., 6/4, so as not to conflict, and the Placerville version meets tomorrow (6/5).

Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

For more about Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016), go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/yves-bonnefoy or poets.org/poet/yves-bonnefoy/.

—Medusa, celebrating the innocence of herself and others!

 —Anonymous Photo

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
 

From Angels' Wings

—Anonymous Angelic Vintage Photos

IN SPRING NEW CHICKENS ARRIVE
IN FAIR OAKS VILLAGE, CA
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove, CA

County fair closed
The last weekend in May,
And on Monday morning
We were greeted
By a whole new cast
Of resident chickens:
Birds their owners
Couldn't keep, couldn't bear
To sell to Campbell's.
Flocks of them, wandering
Around the firehouse
(Where would You dump
Your chicken, afterall?)--
Lacewings, turbans,
Iridescent bantams,
Disoriented, confused,
But with attitude.
Like so many of us
In the Village
In those days.

_________________

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL
—Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

A big man, 300 lbs. on a good day,
sits atop his Harley, commandingly
adept at alternating roars and purrs;
everyone is aware when he nears
the church

once inside he strides right for the
double-manual pipe organ, carefully
negotiating his large frame onto the
bench, feeling the pedals with his
well-trained giant feet like a nimble,
soft-shoed ballet dancer

big, meaty fingers leave spontaneous
depressions in the keyboards, notes
rush out for safety in uniform groups
and heart-stopping sequence, no
haven of purrs between the roars

Even Spring chickens from its duty to
bring warmth to melt the snow and
decides instead to blanket select parts
of the Earth with icy reminders of who
is really in charge, using that big man
at the organ to convey calamitous
coldness to a congregation predisposed
to bask in the soothing, relaxing summer
heat

ACROSS THE STREET
—Caschwa

(Inspired by the poetry of
Jon Bennett, Medusa’s Kitchen,
May 1, 2019)
 

When I started kindergarten, my family
lived in a triplex across the street from
where a new freeway was being built.

There were raw construction smells of
cement and concrete, but it was far too
soon for the music of its vibrating walls
and columns to have words and send
messages to my little ears.

Shortly thereafter we moved to a house
near a park where I walked the mile to
grammar school, day after day and year
after year, sharing classes and teachers
with many of the same classmates.

I really shocked one classmate decades
later because I remembered her name just
by her voice.

Never had that kind of connection with any
of the adults living across the street.

_________________

ARCHITECTURE LESSON
—Caschwa

In the company of flying stewardesses
on the way to see flying buttresses
holding together some old cathedrals
whose names don’t easily roll off the tongue
unless you learn them when very, very young

They offered me a drink, non-alcoholic
I’d much prefer a menu not so bucolic
need a vacation from all the procedurals,
from the new normal hysteria
from café-bacteria

Need to part ways with the standards of yore,
there are so many goodies to buy at the store
welcome Neanderthals in underalls
the plane is now landing, my seatbelt secure
a new hat would be nice, if it’s not made from fur

TOO MUCH IN COMMON
—Caschwa

Common sense! Common sense!
It’s all there! It’s all there!
Look it up! Look it up!

Definitions, meanings, rules, spellings
Anything you ever needed to know, and
infinite other things as well

1 How to, 2
3 FAQ, 4
5 It’s all 6
7 on you! 8

The “reasonable man test” now includes
looking it up on your Smart Phone
unless you are serving on a jury

of your wannabe peers
with their stupid questions
and stories that last years

in which case any and all questions
must be referred to the Court for reply,
and the Judge will pull out his or her

Smart Phone, look it up.
and wonder why:
How could anyone not just know that?

____________________

IT WILL HAPPEN
—Caschwa

Right here under my nose is
every answer I’ve been seeking;
just need to focus closer to home
each time I put finger to keyboard
carefully assembling words in patterns
to delight an unknown audience
itching to hallow my very name,
opting to respond to my submissions:
“No, no, a thousand times no.”

Send it in again, please, a little different,
lose the op-ed tone, do_not_preach,
include whatever makes it salable,
put your heart into it.

HOT BLONDE IN BLACK COCKTAIL DRESS!
—Joseph Nolan, Stockton, CA
 
Hot Blonde in black cocktail dress!
Looking like an oasis,
Out to show her best—
Oh, my!
Could I touch her breast?
I know she wouldn’t let me.
She only wants the best.

I am not
Good enough.
Some things about me
Are a little rough.
I didn’t grow up rich
And some times were really tough
And she can sense
The troubles
I’ve been through.

She might have a heart
Someday,
After
Her beauty fades away,
But by then,
I
Might no longer
Want to play,
Or to spend my day
Pleasing her.

________________

O, HOW I HATE TIME!
—Joseph Nolan

I used to be young,
Not long ago,
I remember it well,
Or, at least,
I think so?

Was it thirty years
Befell me,
Without my
Taking note?
Oh, how I
Hate time!

I say this
On the precipice
Of what’s
Left me behind:
Oh, how I
Hate time!

SCREWED ON THE WAY TO PARADISE
—Joseph Nolan

We got screwed on the way to paradise.
It always ends up this way,
Since many competing alpha-males
Each must have his say,

About how he’s the only one
Who really knows the route,
The only one who can get us there,
So you “need to listen
To what he has to say!”

Well, it seems that we got stranded,
Way out far away,
In places like Dien Bien Phu
And New Year’s Day in Hue.

Things like this always happen
On our way to paradise:
Colonialists’ lust for land,
For gold and for command
Over other nations
Far across the seas
Eventually, in reality,
Grinds down in coarse sand.

_______________

CIVIL WARS UNCIVIL, ARE!
—Joseph Nolan

We live in fragile houses
Made, in part,
Of glass.
How easily a rock may pass
Through glass!

Oh, how fragile we might be!
We have no security.
Unlike the castles of old
That made things most difficult
For the treacherous or bold.

Civil wars uncivil, are.
Most uncivil! so,
They built their towers
Much taller than a man
Can stand
Or easy-climb,
Protecting precious princesses
From passing troubadour’s rhyme
And hand!

ANGELS’ WINGS
—Joseph Nolan
 
Angels in our natures,
Angels, each one.
And each angel nurtured
By a different ray of the sun.

Angels of longing
Angels in pain
Angels in beauty
Angels who strain

To heal and to mend
To touch with silken grace,
Whose knees bend to nurture
Who revel to please,

Angels at ease;
Finally, they are at ease!
As every finer virtue
Possessed by angels

Teases
Lovers to come closer
And providers
To stay stronger
And work longer,
They ever thought they could
Or would
Without the inspiration
That comes from angels’ wings.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A TRAIL OF TETHERS
—Caschwa

Former US Attorney
Former entry level worker
Former caterpillar
Former ugly duckling
Former bumper bowler
Former alone at the dance
Former business failure
Former detention denizen
Former Edsel owner
Former late bloomer
Former excessive drinker
Former tadpole
Former runt of the litter
Former prize winner
Former bench warmer

____________________

Thanks to our contributors today for lots of fine poetry! Our readings-week in this area begins at Fremont Park in Sacramento, as Sac. Poetry Center presents Hot Poetry in the Park with Alé (Twosense) Hernandez and Justin (Just Is) Lang, plus open mic. Note that this is a different location as well as a different time (6:30-8pm).

SPC workshops this week include Tuesday Night Workshop for critiquing of poems at the Hart Center (27th and J Sts.) on Tuesday, 7:30-9pm (call Danyen Powell at 530-681-0026 for info); and MarieWriters Generative Writing Workshop at SPC for writing poems, 6-8pm on Wednesday.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves read-arounds will meet in El Dorado Hills on Tuesday and in Placerville on Wednesday, both 5-7pm. Also in Placerville this week, beginning on Thursday, June 6, will be the WakamatsuFest150 at Wakamatsu Farm, concluding on Sunday, June 9.

On Thursday at Poetry in Davis, Brad Buchanan and Stuart Canton will read at the John Natsoulas Gallery, 8pm, plus open mic. And on Friday, also in Davis, there will be a reading by the UCD English Dept. “second-year” graduate MA students, 7pm at the UCD Arboretum (Wyatt Deck).

Then Saturday from 5-8pm, the Sac. Poetry Center Gallery will hold a reception for this month’s art installation, History of Life by Dawn Blanchfield, including a free ekphrastic workshop presented by Bethanie Humphreys at 5:30pm, followed by a reading of these ekphrastic poems at 6:30pm. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about these and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating poetry, the voice of the angels

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa. 
 

A Great Train

THE NIGHT OF THE DARK RAIN
—Michael H. Brownstein

(Jefferson City, MO around midnight May 22, 2019)

When the great train exploded from the heavens
like huge bombs of gray napalm, the lights did not flicker,
they went out, everything deep in a cave black.
The rains came harder, the wind yelling, trees hysterical,
and then—nothing—no noise, no whisper, not even a sigh.
The trees realigned themselves, only a tickling rain,
a silence almost human—and my wife breaks the moment:
It’s here. Get to the basement. It’s here. It’s here.
I’m on the first floor, she’s on the second. No, I yell back,
I’m coming for you, but everything so dark, no real warning,
neither of us can find a safe place. (Didn’t the weatherman
a few hours earlier tell us the storms were all north of us?)
Everywhere the rancor of tornado sirens, loud and clear,
weaving their currents into the roar of the train racing too close.
I sat with the dogs, she in a stairwell away from glass,
and we waited until the wind of a familiar storm came back,
the rain louder, the train faraway. I went upstairs,
she’s safe, I’m safe, the dogs safe, a lack of sirens.
Maybe it was nothing, I tell her and for a long time
past midnight we sit on our bed holding hands.
At one AM the world erupted into flashing lights,
earnest sirens, and that is when we knew it was not.

_________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Michael Brownstein for his sharp portrait of this catastrophic event in Jefferson City, Missouri.

For more about the May 22 Jefferson City tornado, see www.foxnews.com/us/many-factors-helped-save-lives-in-jefferson-city-twister/.

The Tame and the Wild

—Poems by James Lee Jobe, Davis, CA
—Photos Courtesy of James Lee Jobe

 

Morning; pink-orange and glorious the sun rises above the Sierra Nevada, and casts new light down on the Sacramento Valley. Glorious. Perfect. Inhale the winter air and cast your gaze upwards, you are still alive and a new day begins.

_______________

A large, rather old-looking crow caws, and a wind sweeps through my valley. Not everyone gets to have that kind of power. Watching from my patio, I salute the crow, who caws again and flies away to rejoin the rest of the world.

I am tame, yet I am wild all the same. Think of me as you would think of a seedling tree in your front yard; you didn’t plant it, yet it grows there nonetheless. Will you uproot it or leave it to grow toward the sky, toward the sun, toward the moon? Life is about growth, and life is about about choices. Life is the tame and the wild sharing space together.

_________________

With compassion in one hand and kindness in the other, let me work.

_________________

What summer night is this? A heat that doesn't break at night binds us like stout rope to the coolness of these years together. You and I remain. Look up; do you see? Even the moon offers us his finest blessing.

Nights where the dead come to visit me in dreams, like rain on a river, like snow on snow. There was a time when they said my name, held me, told me their dreams. Now they are memories of memories, rain on a river. Snow on snow. Ghosts in dreams.

_________________

Mid-winter, and I miss sleeping with the windows open. Birdsong at first light. The first cars going by. The neighbor’s cat creeping out to my garden to crap in the raised bed, which looks, perhaps, like a giant litter box.

It was a stranger’s bed, and it was made out of stones and branches, but it was empty and you were tired—you slept there anyway. Forty days and nights passed before you woke up again, and when you did, you discovered that you had a new name and a new face.

You had walked a long way to get to that bed, across a valley that spelled fresh and clean, and the stranger who owned it was a woman fresh from a shower. She wanted you as much as you wanted her, and so you answered to whatever name she called you.

After making love, you are hungry, nearly starving. You ate the grapes, you ate the bread and hummus, and you licked your fingers clean one at a time. There was no clock. You did not know the time or where you were. What is the difference?

It was a stranger’s bed, and it was made out of stones and branches, and this time you were not alone. Still naked and bearing your touch and your seed, she lay down in the middle of the bed, and you climbed on to join her, circling around and around like a dog.

The sky is open above you and the earth is solid beneath your feet, are you being your true self? You are a human being living a life. Real. Own that life, fully.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

On the sidewalk past midnight, I wonder what this town would be like if we had monkeys.

—James Lee Jobe

____________________

Thank you, James Lee Jobe, for bringing your fine poems and photos to the Kitchen table today on this first day of June! Maybe as Poet Laureate, you should bring a few monkeys to Davis, just to see what that’s like…

—Medusa, celebrating another month of poetry!

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.